The Vine

The Vine held its second salon at IDEO earlier this week. In a previous post I described the collaborative process that our workshop was built upon. This time I’ll keep it topical, and I want to highlight one theme in particular that I found most resonant:

The notion of culture as community.

IDEO’s general manager Tom Kelley spoke about the significance of an organization’s verbal language vs. body language. (And it holds just as true for communities.) Your verbal language is what’s on your website, how you describe your company, and what you say you value. Your body language is how you behave, and it shows up in the way you treat customers, employees, partners and the community around you. When your verbal and body language are incongruous, people will notice—and the body language is what they’ll interpret as the “real” you.

John Foster, head of talent and organization for IDEO, paraphrased Marshall McLuhan in reminding us, “You are the message.” All of us, as individuals and as organizations, can be incubators (or inhibitors) of community through behavior. If you are the message, what message are you sending?

Systems designer Patrice Martin then observed that great organizations (or brands, or causes) attract personality with personality. This starts with being distinct and genuine, to be sure, but it goes beyond that. It also requires the willingness to polarize and the guts to declare, “We’re not scared to lose you.”

The common thread running through these messages would appear to be authenticity…and that’s certainly at the heart of it. But underlying authenticity, I believe, is alignment. It’s being clear in the what, and grounded in the why, of all that you’re trying to accomplish. Everything else flows from that.

Thank you, IDEO, for two stimulating and mind-expanding salons. Thank you James Hardie and Target for sponsoring them. And thank you to everyone who participated and brought them to life.

A new series of salons is in the works. More to come.