Innovation in business has got us to a point where a rethink of the vision statement is needed. I’ve written about this before by stating that all (or most) vision statements are computer generated. And this applies to many types of business.
An early version of the new vision. The concept of the Dominant Idea – everybody has one. All businesses, political parties, billionaires, social groups, etc share their existence around one great Dominant Idea. Industries are created around one dominant idea that then gets implemented through many designs resulting in the competitive landscape. Mandela’s dominant idea resulted in the road to freedom, Google’s resulted in the journey to own the world’s information…
What a Dominant Idea is not…
not a vision statement that’s generic,
not a goal that is achievable,
not a bland description of some key action,
not fully scripted to allow for innovation.
It is…
something that describes the essence of your being,
can be translated into a mantra,
can be commercialized through a Dominant Design (will chat about this in a later entry),
gets described by your philosophy,
translates into a set of business and life principles.
Check out a previous entry on the The redundant vision statement. Can the description of your Dominant Idea and Dominant Design replace the vision, mission, goal, objective, etc set into something more specific and meaningful?
I want to focus on politics in this instance (business examples will be unpacked later…). A story of delivering on a Dominant Idea by using modern unscripted, non-professional, mashed-up, and fragmented media scape:
Let’s look at a recent topic of the American presidential race and the analysis of Hilary Clinton’s journey. Social media and general amateur media affected her campaign more than the scripted stories and robotic like behaviour – “She was being overscripted and controlling of her message” by the Next Right blog.
“What hurt Clinton most, political analysts say, is that she couldn’t consistently use the newfound ubiquity of video to soften her image with voters.”
Look at this media mash-up of the Hillary’s idea; and viewed more than 5million times on YouTube…
And if you haven’t seen (or cant remember) the Apple 1984 advert, check this…
If there ever was a statement that sums up the new world of media and communications then this is it:
“Conquering video in the digital age has less to do with being telegenic or smart, as both Clintons are. Being a politician in the YouTube era means being comfortable with giving up control of your message and realizing that everything you say or do can be uploaded within minutes for the whole world to see – and then mashed up into something new.”
And for a contrasting story…
What is Robert Mugabe’s dominant idea? Where are a YouTube media entries about his doings? Who is really questioning his actions? Do we know anything about what’s really going on in a controlled media world? I find Michael Trapido’s blog entry called What if Robert Mugabe was white? quite interesting. It shows that we are in a complex world of interwoven dominant ideas with dominant designs that are supported by philosophies not well communicated or supported.