Global CEO at Havas Creative and author of bestseller No Bullsh*t Leadership.
Over the past two years, four huge and mostly unconnected events have caused massive and discontinuous change in societies across the globe; their effects intersect and multiply. Each is characterized by their rapid rise to prominence, their mass mobilization, their far-reaching political impact, their disruptive nature, and, most importantly, that their resultant effect is permanent. These four events are: Me Too, Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter and Covid-19.
Taken in isolation, any one of these would be a significant historical marker, but together they represent a watershed moment.
These global events have not in themselves initiated change but have acted as accelerants, bringing forward huge cultural and societal changes that may have otherwise taken decades and compressed that change into months, weeks, even days. Such is their scale and proximity to each other that we should consider their collective rather than individual impact. We can characterize this in three words: humanity, ecology and technology — or a single acronym, HEaT. Any politician desiring election and any business that wishes to thrive must pivot their strategy to reflect this new reality.
Whatever your organization, public or private, HEaT will define the terms of the debate in the coming decade.
It used to be the case that if you were an ice cream manufacturer, success would depend on your ability to produce a delicious tasting product and your ability to find retail space that would stock and then sell it for a profit. Around that, the manufacturer could create an elusive blend of product attributes and emotional connections that forge it into a brand. This has been changed forever.
HEaT means that product performance (for example, is the ice cream delicious and affordable?) can no longer be assumed to be the primary consideration of the prospective purchaser, nor therefore the manufacturer. It has disrupted consumers’ relationships with “traditional” brands and is resetting brands’ relationships with the boardroom, redefining the boardroom’s relationship with its suppliers, employees’ relationships with employers and businesses’ role in society. Beyond this, it is also challenging manufacturers and businesses of all types to reconsider the very nature of their products.
MORE FOR YOU
Humanity is an organization’s responsibility to actively work toward equality of representation, opportunity and reward for its employees irrespective of color, background, faith, sexuality and gender. It recognizes that a laissez-faire approach will not be enough, and active structures and strategies must be used to ensure that every level of the organization represents the communities it is in or wishes to reach (through marketing, for example). Its customers, suppliers, employees and indeed the law will expect it to take active steps to measure and address imbalances — often with the implication that private sector businesses move closer and engage more effectively with the education and not-for-profit sector. Crucially, those that succeed will consider this an investment in the truest sense, with the expectation that this will ultimately make them stronger rather than simply as a cost of doing business.
Ecology is Humanity’s twin. If Humanity is an organization’s relationship with its employees and community, Ecology is its relationship with society and the environment. Note that this is not simply its immediate surroundings, but the global environment we all share. Ecology’s implication is profound in that it demands an organization considers the consequences of its actions not simply with regard to its direct stakeholders (employees and customers, for example) but all of us, the global community — a significant cultural change for many leaders. Organizations of all sizes and types, private and public, will have to actively measure and address the environmental cost of their activities and will be directly held to account by employees, customers, regulators and wider society to ensure they both understand and ultimately reduce their impact. For some organizations, the cost may be considerable, but the cost to them of not acting will, without a doubt, be higher.
Technology-driven change is not new, but amidst Covid, the driving force of change is coming from exponential shifts in peoples’ behaviors rather than innovation. It has, for example, been possible to do many things by video link for at least a decade — however, received wisdom was that people just didn’t like it. But nearly every industry that relied heavily on face-to-face interaction has now been changed forever: education, medicine, retail, business meetings, business travel, commercial property — the list is almost endless. In the future, even high-end restaurants will do takeout. None of these changes are technology-driven — the technology was already there. They are driven by behavioral change, a change that will, in turn, drive a huge new wave of business and technological innovation.
For the CEO, their task, therefore, is no longer a simple consideration of numeric shareholder value. No longer can brands and boardrooms inhabit different universes. Issues that may, in the recent past, have been considered the preserve of HR or CSR, Humanity, Ecology and Technology must now sit on the CEO’s desk and form part of the core strategy of their business. And if they don’t, employees, customers, shareholders and possibly even lawmakers will demand they do.
The best organizations of the future will grasp the opportunities HEaT presents with both hands and it will become their blueprint for success.
Those who understand the profundity of these implications will recognize that innovation can now be in how they work, who they employ, the partners they choose or their route to market. They will recognize that to attract the best talent (always a prerequisite to success), they will have to reimagine what it means to be an employer and to be employed; to redesign their role within — and connection to — their local communities and wider society; to understand that technology and human behavior must change in-step; and to rethink the makeup of the boardroom itself.
Some may characterize this as simply purpose-driven marketing, but it is wider, deeper and more profound than this oft-abused term. HEaT will be the business differentiator of the future.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
Go to Source
Author: Chris Hirst, Forbes Councils Member