I say this because there’s a lot of Maori legend and new-agey type stuff early on in the book, not least the subtitle on the front cover: “Unlock your potential with the ancient code of togetherness”. Don’t be deterred. It’s worth it. Eastwood is a native New Zealander who works with sports teams, particularly rugby teams, around the world. His ideas about how you build shared purpose and overcome differences are relevant to any team effort in the workplace, though it’s likely that only intact teams who are planning a future of working together will be able to do the fundamental work building trust and shared identity that he writes about.

This book isn’t only relevant for team-building, though. I see a strong resonance for brand managers in his ideas about a shared history, and how each of us is part of an unbroken chain in our team or tribe. I’ve always found it helpful to uncover the origin stories of a brand or company, the anecdotes people tell that capture its essence. Here’s an example. A hundred years ago the City of New York was ready to install its first city-wide telephone system. The Swedish telecoms giant, Ericsson, bid against the local competitor Bell. You’d expect the locals to know the market and to have the advantage. Bell proposed a system that could accommodate up to two thousand households, as per the brief, confident that telephony was a luxury most would never afford. Ericsson, with its Swedish concept of egalitarianism, proposed a modular system which could be expanded over and over, adding more households as the cost fell and demand grew. It was not part of their thinking to design something that would be limited to the fortunate few. Roll forward almost a century, and Ericsson was working more in mobile technology than the old-fixed line system that they’d installed in New York City. Their engineers invented a technology for short-distance communication between mobile devices. They named it after a Viking King, Bluetooth, and made it available without charge to the entire industry. Was that good for business? Maybe, maybe not. They did it because it was in their nature, a result of real, internalised values which had served them well for over a hundred years. In both cases, Ericsson’s choice was what was best for the majority, rather than for themselves.

Eastwood has also worked with elite sports teams in the UK. He writes about the England football team, whose current manager Gareth Southgate brought him in. You don’t have to be interested in sport, though, to follow his stories and see value in his ideas. The writing is personal, engaging and full of individual stories, making it an easy read. As the photo shows, it’s a book that people pass around with enthusiasm.

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The FT describes the book as “a polemic against the dangers of docility and group think in every walk of life.” These are two quite different but equally risky phenomena. We can become docile because of respect for hierarchy, or fear of authority, or a genuine but naïve belief that if the higher-ups think it’s ok then it must be. This is different from group think, where we simply fail to imagine different scenarios, or we are reassured by the conviction of others – a self-fulfilling situation. Remember when everyone in the UK thought house prices could only go up… until they collapsed? This has happened more than once, but still we take comfort from the certainty of everyone else.

Although UK-based, Heffernan is well-connected in the USA, and has collected fascinating first-person accounts that include New Orleans flood prevention efforts, the fiscal acrobatics at Enron, asbestos contamination in a Montana mining town, and crazy working practices in the gaming industry. Heffernan illuminates these situations but not to blame people for falling into the trap of wilful blindness. Instead she lays bare how it happens. She profiles those who dare to see, and to say what they are seeing. She has interviewed whistleblowers in the NHS, for example, and reveals the danger of a rigid hierarchy in which protecting your colleagues is more valued than people’s lives. This theme is also thoroughly explored in Matthew Syed’s book, Black Box Thinking, reviewed here. He contrasts the attitude to error in healthcare with the learning culture of aviation industry. One wonders whether, if surgeons’ lives were on the line as pilots’ are, the world of healthcare might become a bit safer.

There aren’t any easy answers, though understanding how wilful blindness happens – indeed, that it happens – is surely the first step in avoiding it. If you think this all sounds rather depressing, there is hope. The book’s final chapter provides a round-up of ways that organisations can tackle the problem. Ultimately, and perhaps most importantly, organisations are collections of individuals. The stories in this book show how thousands of people can act as if they are powerless, but sometimes just one courageous person can change everything. That is inspiring.

If you have the appetite for more reading on how one person can make a difference, try Inadequate Equilibria by Eliezer Yudkowsky. He’s a US-based academic and at times it’s quite abstruse but for those in business, especially trying to innovate, it’s stimulating and encouraging.

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The first question to answer is: Is it right for a shaving brand to take a stand on how men behave?

Second: If they do, how should the brand act on that belief?

Third: is a two-minute film the right way to tell the world what they think?

Quick answers: 1. Yes?2. Not like this?3. No.

Brand purpose is fashionable but that doesn?t make it wrong. Gillette has always been about helping men feel good about themselves ? not through advocating self-improvement, as many women?s beauty brands do, but through doing the basics well. Dove is perhaps the closest thing to a brand that tries to do the same for women, though it still assumes women must aspire to beauty, and merely broadens the parameters of that beauty to include older and chubbier women. Gillette is now stepping up a gear, daring to express an opinion in the #metoo world. That is admirable. It?s hardly a radical opinion, but it?s still a radical move. Men aren?t accustomed to pressure from brand advertising to improve themselves. And this goes much further. Even if you don?t take it as personal criticism, no one enjoys an attack on their tribe.

If Gillette now subscribes to a different view of manhood, one which rejects narrow interpretations of masculinity as a precursor for being a man, what should they do about it? They should act on it. Supporting the right charities, which they say they?re doing, is a start, though $1m a year for three years is not much of a commitment. It should go far beyond charitable donations. It?s about reviewing their own behaviour, considering the implications in everything they do as a business. At the very least, Gillette people need to walk the walk, get involved with those causes, make a difference. If they are doing this, they?ve not told us. There are other short-term actions they could take. Real principles are the ones that cost you. Equalising prices for male and female grooming might show they mean it.

Instead they?ve made a long advertisement telling men how to be nice men not nasty men, and by implication telling women Gillette is nice and on their side. Advertising is the lazy way out. Effective communication starts with the audience ? what do they think and feel now, what outcome do you want, how will you achieve that? Communication that starts with what you want to say, then says it, risks landing badly, as this has done. It?s striking how decent men feel got at by this film, even though they agree with its substance. Gillette hasn?t earned the right to lecture men. I don?t buy the argument that women do the grocery shopping therefore the ad is aimed at them. Alienating your user isn?t smart even if someone else does the shopping.

I hope the backlash won?t deter the Gillette team from pressing on and making meaningful changes to back up the virtue-signalling. Encouraging men to show their softer side is hardly a bold move. Helping to tackle male violence, which affects both men and women, would be more useful. Part of the problem is that businesses, and the marketers in them, are impatient. They want to show something is happening, but changing society takes a long time. Hence the instant gratification of making an advert. If they mean it, this cannot be a one-off.

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On the other hand, the share price fell on the news of anti-Nike protests, and brand tracking data has shown a dramatic drop-off in brand regard, among brand buyers and non-buyers alike, and across the political divide. Even people who support the Take A Knee protest think less positively of Nike now, though their view may change, and their behaviour may not.

Both these positions are about whether the decision Nike took – to get involved with a controversial, arguably political, issue and figure – is good or bad for business. What puzzles me is why people at Nike thought this had anything to do with their brand and needed a response in their advertising. Whether it’s naïve to think your consumers must share your political beliefs, or self-important to think brands should use their reach and clout for whatever their version of good is, or cynical to piggyback for profit on someone else’s principled stand, which cost him money, it’s a long way from “Just do it”. Given they are about sport it’s not surprising that taking a knee was talked about in Portland. But why make it a consumer issue?

Nike is about participation. Wearing Nike helps me feel I can perform and compete. Nike-sponsored athletes embody this attitude, and the achievement it can bring. I can’t see that the brand needed to adopt a position on TAK. There are social issues on which brands have to be clear. If you buy Nike, you are in effect endorsing its sourcing practices, so you may want reassurance that it doesn’t use sweatshops or child labour. The company is also defending lawsuits alleging horribly sexist practices in its US offices. But now they’re making me take a stand (knee) on US civil rights. Even people who agree with the take a knee campaign may want their leisure choices to be apolitical.

Levi Strauss has recently announced donations to, and participation in, gun control campaigns in the USA. This is no closer to its core business than civil rights for Nike, but at least it’s a corporate move, in that it’s their behaviour as a business that’s changing, not their marketing messaging. One wonders what behaviour from Nike would legitimise its use of Colin Kaepernick in its advertising. A demonstrable commitment to equality of employment opportunities and practices, perhaps?

Those cynical that Nike has suddenly found a social conscience say this is a hard-nosed commercial decision which indicates Nike’s confidence that non-racists are in the majority – or at least spend more on “athleisure”. But which side of the political divide is commercially best for brands like these isn’t the point. It’s whether marketers are getting it wrong in embracing every social and political issue out there, instead of focusing on, and fixing, the ones that connect to their business, on which their customers need to know where they stand.

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These are important social issues that play out in the workplace. Businesses need to have clear policies, and some people, especially employees and investors, want to know where they stand. But for the most part customers don’t care. This is not marketing.

But shouldn’t brands use their reach, their budgets and their influence for good? Yes, and there are many ways to do this, not all of them with that unflattering bandwagon look. It’s risky, too. Unless the brand is living the values it will emerge as inauthentic. It’s not just the glaringly obvious gaffes like Pepsi’s with Kendall Jenner. Some say that Airbnb is contributing to making life miserable for many social housing tenants who find themselves living next to party flats in big cities because it won’t cooperate with councils to reduce illegal and frequent subletting. Yet the affected tenants may well be the poor, recently-arrived people Airbnb’s inclusive stance purports to embrace. Paperchase ended up looking totally unprincipled recently when it denounced its chosen promotional partner, the Daily Mail, in the face of criticism of the Mail’s politics, which were surely not a surprise revelation.

Brands are a shorthand for a set of values, sure, but first they’re a signal of an offer, something that fulfils a purpose. That purpose is usually mundane and personal. It’s fashionable to reach for a world-changing purpose, but that’s no substitute for meeting a consumer need. Brands can have both but relying on the altruistic one is for charities and other “good causes”. The rest of the world wants something for their money. Employees want to know their work is worthwhile but that can be about little things that are helpful or enjoyable – it doesn?t have to be changing the world. Besides, satisfaction at work comes in many forms, with simple recognition perhaps the most important. People leave bad bosses more than bad jobs.

In these turbulent times it’s worth remembering that virtue-signalling brands are nothing new. Likewise brands that try to shock – think Benetton – or to campaign on political issues. It works when brands choose their own agenda, and set it out proactively. Cosmetics retailer Lush got into trouble this year for its spy cops campaign, which really has nothing to do with its products. Contrast that with The Body Shop, which was driven by issues of sustainability and fairness forty years ago. It was built into their sourcing, product development and distribution practices, not just a few radical tweets and ads. This was true brand activism, and it has lasted. The outdoor brand Patagonia encourages people to repair their garments rather than replace them; it has earned the right to comment on environmental issues, sometimes very boldly. By contrast, the new wave of brand activism seems to be about ensuring the brand is not open to criticism by failing to endorse social issues. As we saw with Paperchase, this can really get your wrapping paper in a twist, because there’s no pleasing everyone.

“There’s no pleasing everyone” is of course a sound starting point for any brand to position itself and create a marketing strategy. It’s the basis of market segmentation, which is still a marketer’s best friend. A brand that is confident of its target market and how it is relevant to them doesn’t have to worry about other people. Focus and consistency will win out over virtue-signalling in the long run.

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(If you’ve time to waste on this, start here and look at the related questions panel.)

For ordinary folk, the non-believers, Elon Musk is the Tesla guy. The space rocket guy. The crazy who wants to live on Mars. Also the guy who co-founded Paypal. He’s definitely rich, presumably clever and unquestionably ambitious. Not perfect, though. Watch him on YouTube (here he is launching his domestic solar panels on the set of Desperate Housewives) and you’ll see he’s a pretty dismal presenter. His delivery is stilted, awkward at times, and a little repetitive, a man who is untroubled by adherence to a script and certainly doesn’t bother to rehearse.

But the message is amazing. I thought Tesla was about electric cars. It’s really about accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy. You don’t have to be a signed-up member of the cult of Elon to admire the clarity of his vision. He says providing sustainable energy has three parts: energy generation, storage and transport. His solution is: affordable, attractive solar panels; larger better batteries; and desirable electric vehicles. Each of those three parts is described in this piece, and each one feels attractive and achievable. Perhaps it’s his outrageous ambition that inspires adulation.

So here are three take-aways about Elon Musk:

First, his cars are not what matter. Sure, Tesla seems disruptive in the motor industry. But the reason the automotive industry should really fear Elon Musk is that he’s not really competing with them. Like he says, there was no shortage of car companies in the world, good “gasoline car companies”. He?s not really in the car business – not as an end in itself. He’s in the sustainable energy business. The aim is not to build a better car but to create an alternative ecosystem. That must include how we power transport, one of our biggest uses of fossil fuel. So he’ll keep working on electric transport. Perhaps that’s where the Hyperloop fits in. It seems daft but it’s just another experiment in energy-efficient transport.

Second, he isn’t a great presenter but he knows how to create a good proposition. In a throwaway fashion, he delivers one of the best propositions ever. It’s here, six and a half minutes in. He says they’re aiming for a solar roof that looks better, lasts longer, has a better insulating effect, provides your electricity and where the cost of the roof plus electricity is less than a normal roof. The core idea is super-slim solar panels in the form of glass tiles which are printed to look like small clay tiles, large terracotta tiles, French slate, whatever you fancy, and all tougher and more resilient than those materials. Summed up as “beautiful, affordable and seamlessly integrated”. Just like his electric cars are way more desirable than both other electric cars and most combustion engine cars, his solar panel roof isn’t just nicer than an ugly solar panel, it’s preferable to a standard roof. That’s what will drive uptake of sustainable technologies. As the great man says, “if all those things are true why would you go in any other direction?”

Third, his big idea really is a big idea, and a coherent one. The real vision of Elon Musk is a sustainable future. If he succeeds we all benefit. Good luck to him.

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1. Forget about building a brand

As an end in itself, it’s pure vanity. Think about brands you know and admire, and why. A great brand is synonymous with a great proposition, not something separate. Even the world’s most valuable brands, like Google and Apple, set out to build a business by solving a problem or meeting a need. Do that well, and you will have a brand.

2. The name’s not that important

Plenty of successful brand names were created accidentally, and plenty of carefully-created ones were disastrous. Good names sometimes refer to the proposition (the Trainline) but this can also be limiting (Carphone Warehouse). I’m fairly sure Coca Cola no longer has any ingredients derived from the poppy plant, nor does Pepsi Cola position itself as a digestive aid. Steve Jobs chose Apple because he liked apples.

3. Don’t focus on creating brand awareness

Advertising is expensive. Even “free” social media is effortful. You’re competing with everything else that can grab attention. Most of the time, most people are not potential customers – even your real customers. Sometimes brands get lucky and get a wave of free publicity, which feels great, but awareness gained this way falls away just as fast. (When did you last think about the brand that had that beach-body-ready woman in the yellow bikini? How many people who did the ice bucket challenge still support that charity? Which charity?) Sustained awareness in the minds of potential customers comes from delivering to them over time, not buying their attention.

Here’s how to get ready to invest in a brand in a way that will be good for your business.

1. Sort out your proposition first

Start with what the business can offer, to whom, and why it’s useful to them. Sounds obvious but when businesses get caught up in a brand-centric approach, it’s easy to lose sight of the customer. Brand values, purpose, ambition, all have a place but they are secondary to the core benefit-led proposition that states who the customer is, in terms of their need, and what you do for them. It’s not about your business, it’s about what your business can do for the customer.

2. Make sure the WIIFM (What’s in it for me) is crystal clear to everyone

The customer has to know what makes your offer good for them. People in the business need to know too so they can deliver on it, and innovate against it to maintain competitive advantage. A clear WIIFM statement – from the customer’s point of view – helps a business to spot competitive threats wherever they come from.

3. Keep your eyes on the customer

Worrying about intermediate goals like awareness, or having a higher purpose, can obscure the fundamentals. Clarity about the need you meet or problem you solve, and for whom, keeps the focus on the customer. This is really going to help to make the business successful. Any good marketing services agency will also want a rich understanding of the target customer, so if they don’t ask, go elsewhere.

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Paperchase is a mass market purveyor of stationery and tat. The Daily Mail is a mass market purveyor of news and tittle-tattle. Seems like a pretty good fit to me. The Daily Mail is read by three million people a day. That’s a lot of people who could be popping into one of Paperchase’s 130 stores in the UK to pick up their free gift wrap. Yet Paperchase has now effectively said, we don’t like you if you’re a Daily Mail reader.

The row was orchestrated by a campaign group called Stop Funding Hate, which exists to “change the media” by taking on “the divisive hate campaigns of the Sun, Daily Mail & Daily Express”. Full marks to them for a crystal-clear proposition. It’s foolish of Paperchase to respond as if their customers are synonymous with this campaign group. This is totally different from advertisers pulling campaigns from Google and YouTube where there was no control over what sort of material might appear alongside their ads. Like it or loathe it, the Daily Mail is nothing if not predictable, which is excellent for its own brand value and for advertisers. If a tie-up with the Daily Mail seemed like a good idea beforehand, it probably still is.

If a brand has no standards or values by which to screen its plans in advance, it must live in fear of doing the “wrong” thing and being criticised by the Twitter mob. But criticism per se is not a problem. Brands should care about the company they keep – that includes where they advertise, what issues matter to them, and also what they choose to ignore. Brands have to decide what they stand for, and build it in to their activity in advance. Then they can, and should, stand their ground when someone else tries to lean on them for their own ends.

Campaign groups have always tried to throw their weight around. Twitter lets some punch above their weight. It can seem like a lot of people feel very strongly about an issue. Brands that panic, and seem to cave easily to such single-issue groups, may relieve short term pressure but they won’t earn respect. Most Daily Mail readers won’t boycott Paperchase, any more than Daily Mail-hating Paperchase shoppers were ready to give it up. Most of us are not in either of these groups; we just see a business that issued a grovelling apology for a harmless promotion in a national newspaper some people don’t like.

The irony is that the Daily Mail has long been used in business as a reference point. To assess whether something one says or writes at work could cause negative PR if it got out, I was told to imagine how it would look on the front page of the Daily Mail – that being the epitome of outraged middle-England sensibilities. Write a dodgy email, even as a joke, and it could look bad if taken out of context and blasted across the news-stands in fifty-point type. What strange times we live in, when the words “Free gift wrap” on that front page can be an incendiary issue for a brand.

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The proof is in studies done by Dan Ariely, the behavioural economist. In one, people were asked to assemble Lego Bionicles. For the first fully-assembled robot toy, they would be paid $2, then 1.89 for the next and so on, 11 cents less each time. How long would they keep working, given the diminishing returns? Half the people were allowed to line up their finished toys in front of them, but they knew it was for an academic study, and the Bionicles would be broken up at the end for the next person to assemble. For the other half, each completed toy was handed to a supervisor who broke it up in front of them and put the pieces back in the box. When they finished the next Bionicle, they got that box back, ready to do again. Those people who got to line up the fruits of their labours on the desk made an average of 10.2 toys before stopping. The people who saw them broken up stopped after 7.2. Remember, they were being paid the same, but wages were falling. The sense of achievement in the first group made them work on for less pay. Put another way, the absence of meaning in the second group meant they had to be paid 40% more for the same output.

In another experiment, students were given word searches, and were paid 55c for the first completed sheet and 5c less for each subsequent one. Some students handed each completed sheet to a “supervisor” who “reviewed” it without comment. Others were told in advance their work would be collected but not reviewed. A third group handed in their sheets to a supervisor – who fed them into a shredder immediately. No prizes for guessing that the first group kept going much longer than the other two. They weren’t getting positive feedback, but they were getting acknowledgement of their efforts. We might guess, too, that those expecting to be reviewed did more accurate work.

Having a purpose for the brand or company – worthy or otherwise – gives strategic direction, but for people to feel good, and perform well at work, every day, their colleagues’ and manager’s responses to them are critical. It doesn’t even have to be effusive praise. Simple acknowledgement will do.

Individual managers can give meaning to each person they work with, whether subordinate or colleague or even boss, through recognising their efforts. That’s something we are all in control of. Words are cheap, yes, but don’t underestimate their value. Whether you’re changing the world or just changing the toner in the photocopier, a little recognition goes a long way.

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This was Paul’s way to keep in touch with his running club friends while he was injured. He recalled long sociable Saturday mornings in Johannesburg that started with a run and ended several hours and countless coffees later. The coffee bit was integral – he would time his mates but they had to come and spent time with him afterwards. It was that simple. Paul created something he wanted, that he knew his friends would find useful and enjoyable.

Twelve years and a name change later, there are over 1000 parkruns a week, in fourteen countries, with over three million registered parkrunners. Three new countries will host their first parkrun this year. A new parkrunner registers every 29 seconds. The 2k junior parkrun is also expanding rapidly. The growth is seemingly unstoppable. Yet it does not advertise and it operates on a shoestring. Paul says, “It was never supposed to be more than a single event.” So what kind of start-up goes global despite itself? What can businesses in pursuit of growth learn from it?

I interviewed the people behind this remarkable growth story – parkrun’s founder, its former UK chief (now global COO) and its first CEO – for the business journal, Market Leader. For the answers, read the full article here: Lessons from the ultimate start-up Market Leader June 2017

This article is reproduced with permission of Market leader, the strategic marketing journal for business leaders. To subscribe visit warc.com/bookstore. Copyright  Warc and The Marketing Society.

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