Brand Autopsy

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Electronically reprinting Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Change has become a New Year's tradition on Brand Autopsy. Enjoy all over again ...

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Originally posted on December 31, 2004

Bruce Mau, a designer, thinker, articulator, and massive change provocateur, has a lot of ideas on a lot of things. His Incomplete Manifesto for Change is a list, an incomplete one at that, of 43 ideas to get you beyond thinking differently but doing differently.

As 2009 turns to 2010, the message of doing differently is one we should all heed. Enjoy.

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth Author: Bruce Mau (1998)
1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ——————————. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

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*** Learn more about BRUCE MAU ***

Seth Godin asked 70 people to choose a provocative word and riff. Seth compiled the short essays into an ebook titled, WHAT MATTERS NOW. You’ll recognize many of the contributors. Hopefully, you’ll be inspired by their contributions to make your best contribution in 2010.

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*** DOWNLOAD THE PDF here ***

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Digitally riffle through the pages using Scribd.

Enjoy and share with others.

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My contribution is titled, SACRIFCICE. It's on page 62. It's also below...

We conclude our short series highlighting Bryant Simon’s book, in EVERYTHING BUT THE COFFEE: Learning about America from Starbucks (University of California Press, 2009).

Bryant writes how early on in his research he was supportive of Starbucks against its detractors complaining of Starbucks bigness and sameness. However, his attitude changed. He calls it his “Rwandan moment.”

In an email exchange, I asked Bryant what happened during his “Rwandan moment” causing him to go from being sympathetic to Starbucks to somewhat critical of Starbucks. He replied...

BRYANT SIMON: Before I started my research, I found Starbucks to be an interesting place, most notably a potentially important public gathering spot in suburbanizing America. But the deeper I dug into the company’s history and charted its actions and located it within the context of the changes in American society, the more skeptical I became about the promises it made. My patience with the company snapped when I learned about its behavior (both the promises it made and its deeper indifference to what was actually going on) in Rwanda.

Rwanda, as most people know, has had a mean and bloody past. Ethnic violence in the mid-1990s cost the nation, a former colony with a woefully underdeveloped economy and infrastructure, hundreds of thousands of lives. By 2000, the country was trying to get back on its feet and the coffee industry had the potential to help it and some of its farmers recover. Starbucks, it turned out, played on this history and this guilt – a western guilt over doing nothing to stop the killing – to sell some pricey coffee and make itself look better.

In 2005, Starbucks introduced Rwanda Blue Bourbon with its “subtle acidity” and “herbal, spice, and cocoa notes” as one of its “Black Apron Exclusives” – the designation it uses for its highest-end, most expensive specialty coffees. “Taste a special coffee,” an in-store sign maintained, “that’s helping transform farmers lives.” “A Promising Future in Every Pound,” a company press release announced to mark the introduction of Rwanda Blue Bourbon. “Following the devastating events of 1994“ – a store sign proclaimed and this was all it said about the country’s troubling past – “this new cash crop (coffee) has given Rwandan farmers hope for a better future and helped them afford better education, medicine, and housing.”

These signs – again promises – got me interested in what Starbucks was actually doing in Rwanda. I asked around a bit and found out that while Starbucks charged $22/per pound for its coffee, it wasn’t paying any more at origin than other roasters buying Rwandan beans from small growers and charging consumers far less. Starbucks, moreover, wasn’t buying its bean from co-ops or small farmers, at least not directly. “These are plantation beans,” one source who knew something about the Rwandan coffee industry commented when I asked him about Starbucks purchases. When I asked him what he meant by this, he curtly answered, “I meant what I said.” Starbucks was buying beans from large shareholders, not small farmers, from powerful landowners with, in many cases, ties to old colonial authorities, not from the victims of the ethnic cleaning campaigns that ripped the country apart.

But the Starbucks’ promises, again, made it seem like it was helping the least fortunate (not lining the pockets of people who never stopped getting decent educations, adequate health care, and spacious accommodations.)

So this was my Rwandan moment. To me, this was just too much. Manipulating the Rwandan tragedy to make money seemed totally out of bounds and nearly unethical. But even more, it demonstrated to me the utter ordinariness of Starbucks. It wasn’t that the company was exceptionally nefarious or greedy; it was that the company just like any other company, was willing to do just about anything and say just about anything to move product.

We continue our short series highlighting Bryant Simon’s book, EVERYTHING BUT THE COFFEE: Learning about America from Starbucks (University of California Press, 2009).

In the book, Bryant takes a look at Starbucks from all angles including its impact on the environment, cultural society, consumerism, and globalization matters. At one point he writes, “... it became clear that Starbucks fulfilled its many promises only in the thinnest, most transitory of ways and that people’s desires went largely unfulfilled.”

I asked Bryant Simon, in an email exchange, to give specific examples how Starbucks thinly fulfills its promises to customers. Here's his reply:

BRYANT SIMON: Many branders, following the lead of Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, argue that higher-end consumers are looking for experiences and wiling to pay extra to get them. I think about this idea in a slightly different way. I think we pay a premium to get the things that are missing in our lives – experience being just one of them (and I write about this in the chapter in my book on music and the feeling of discovery, both real and vicarious that Starbucks sells.) Back to my point, so I think that people increasingly buy to fulfill their desires or get a hold of the things that are missing in their lives.

But there is another dynamic at work here.

As other social forces – neighborhoods, community, unions, and politics – seem to recede, brands have stepped into our lives to offer more of the things that matter most to us – everything from authenticity to work spaces to belonging to social justice. Really, then brands sell promises – promises to fulfill our needs and desires. Yet, often they deliver only an illusion of what we need and want, some vapory facsimile that looks like the real thing, but usually isn’t even close.

Few companies, in what we might call the “promise economy,” sell more -- e.g. promise more – than Starbucks. But again, the company doesn’t always deliver on its promises.

Take the promise of Third Place. Starbucks has borrowed – expropriated -- this phrase from the sociologist Ray Oldenburg. Oldenburg calls these locations real – not virtual -- sites between work and home where people can gather. Starbucks serves this role, but back to the question, in only the thinnest, most ephemeral of ways.

To Oldenburg, third places are social setting where strangers meet and forge the bonds of community. Once they trust each other, they go on to discuss matters of crucial import to the community. Talk is essential for these places to genuinely work. But that isn’t really what happens at Starbucks. People come to Starbucks to get a moment of respite or to meet with colleagues, but rarely do they engage in the kinds of community discussions needed to bolster civic life. So what they get at Starbucks, is a busy, chatty looking place that looks like a third place, but isn’t really a third place. Kind of like those cup quotes.

Remember when Starbucks tattooed its cups with quotes? They were there the company said to encourage conversation and community, but they didn’t say much that could get anyone to actually talk or engage with others. Who isn’t in favor of finding love, the rainbow of colors, and the innocence of kids playing baseball? When the cups did incite a little controversy, Starbucks pulled the offending cups. That’s not free speech, and free speech is key to Third Places and to community. Just ask Ray Oldenburg.

Same with the environment. Starbucks knows that a growing core of its customer base cares deeply about green issues, so it promises to do its part (and allow them to think they have done their part). On every Starbucks cup, it reads right under the quotes, “Help us, help the planet.”

Sure, Starbucks has done some great stuff to limit its carbon footprint and utilize solar energy sources, but it doesn’t really help the environment, it actually leaves it in worse shape after each latte purchase. By not pushing in-store ceramic cups or reusable tumblers, Starbucks encourages takeaway, throwaway consumption. Every time we walk out the door with a paper cup, java jacket, and plastic lid (and perhaps a green plastic splash stick), we are – and so is Starbucks – creating trash (and all of the energy and oil needed top produce these additional cups and lids and then cart them off to the landfill where the take up place and slowly rot, but not be they get covered up by another bag of coffee house rubbish.)

These are two examples of promises that Starbucks makes – because the ideas they promise have value to their customers and add value to their products – but doesn’t entirely fulfill. And this is one of the avenues of inquiry I explore in my book. I look hard at what Starbucks sells and what it actually delivers.

More to come on Friday.

I first met Bryant Simon in 2006. At that time, he was in the early stages of researching Starbucks impact on culture and consumerism. We traded emails about nuanced Starbucks happenings from store-level operations to broader marketing matters. He was curious to learn the rationale behind a lot of the decisions he was experiencing in Starbucks stores. As a former Starbucks marketer known for sharing tribal knowledge about the company, I enjoyed my email threads with him and my face time with him when he visited Austin in 2007.

Since he’s a history professor at Temple University, Bryant comes at the Starbucks story from a unique angle. He uses this unique perspective to make interesting observations about Starbucks.

After a few years of research and thousands of hours spent observing Starbucks from hundreds of its stores, Bryant Simon has released his observations on Starbucks in EVERYTHING BUT THE COFFEE: Learning about America from Starbucks (University of California Press, 2009).

It’s a worthwhile read. We’ll be sharing Bryant’s take on Starbucks impact on culture and consumption over the next three days.

We begin with a highly condensed verbatim abstract of chapter two in his book. This chapter is titled, “Predictability the Individual Way.”

Bryant Simon writes ...

“Built for the postneed, status-seeking, civically challenged world, Starbucks offered an important variation on McDonald’s-style, branded predictability, sameness and comfort are certainly important for highly mobile yuppies, bobos, and creative class types.” (pg. 60)

“Predictability doesn’t just happen. Starbucks works hard to stage this easily consumed familiarity, starting with the coffee itself. Reluctant to franchise, Starbucks owns most of its outlets.” (pg. 65)

“Starbucks baristas also tend to look alike—usually smiling and usually young. This, too, is no accident. As thick as a chemistry textbook, the Starbucks employee manual leaves little to chance. It provides workers with a script outlining exactly what they should say and the tone they should strike. It spells out what they can and can’t wear and what they can’t show of themselves.” (pg. 66)

“Making every Starbucks look familiar and feel safe requires heavy doses of policing, employee disciplining, and systemization. In other words, as McDonald’s expert George Ritzer suggests, it requires that Starbucks stores operate like McDonald’s franchisees. Indeed, as Starbucks grew, it became more like McDonald’s every day, turning consumption, work, and management into a series of predictable centrally controlled routines.” (pg. 71)

“There is a tipping point here, however. Too much sameness alarms rather than reassures, many bobos and creative class types; it cuts into their sense of individuality.” (pg. 76)

“In one last twist on the themes of sameness and placelessness, authenticity and consumer desire, Starbucks, in some ways, has begun to consume itself.” (pg. 81)

More to come on Thursday and Friday.