I’ve been a bit consumed with the essentials of production over the past few weeks. That work, however, is generating a lot of good ideas for exploration in this blog. I hope in other words, to get back on a regular, even more frequent, pace soon.

In the meantime, to warm things up, I offer some of the things that we bookmarked this week, and hope they are of interest to you, as well. Let us know in your comments.

An emerging transformation of the values of business?

In the continuing examination of the role that Wall Street played in destroying the economy, there is a growing number of recognized thought leaders who are evaluating the culture of business and arguing for change in values, metrics, and even language.

I’ve been greatly appreciating some very different but delightful voices on the emerging change in business – Roger Martin, Umair Haque and Gary Hamel. Each addresses the importance of language and communications to shape the relevance and authenticate of a business and orient an engage its employees.

What we all lost when business lost respect…Martin has begun a series of articles exploring the enormous impact of inauthentic business values on the concept of the American community. Martin notes that, “as social creatures, much of our happiness is derived from our relationship with community — however that community is defined. We long to be: a) a valued member of a community; b) that we value; and c) is valued by people outside the community in question.”

He offers the example of Boeing, who offered its headquarters to the highest bidder and then abandoned Seattle for Chicago, as an example of the erosion in these community attributes that has been caused by the primacy of “shareholder value” in the expressed purposes of business. He looks at the “communities” of American business executives and concludes that “We simply have to acknowledge that the community created by a combination of shareholder value maximization dogma, executive compensation theories, Wall Street analysts and bankers, and the financial press creates an unhealthy and inauthentic community.”

The Wisdom Manifesto…Haque has been writing for some time about what he calls the zombieconomy as the root of the recession. He notes that a key characteristic of the zombieconomy is its lack of consciousness, intelligence and wisdom.

He contrasts wisdom and strategy and offers the examples of JPMorgan and Toyota to develop a metric of the billions lost in the difference. His 9-step plan to bring wisdom beyond strategy starts with the concept of expression, the language used to communicate purpose. “To get wise, articulate your essence: the change you want to see in the world. That means literally crafting a statement of intent about ‘the world’.”

The hole in the soul of business…Hamel offers considerations on the “paucity of purpose” in the American corporation, and the importance of a key shift in the foundation for strategy – to wave goodbye to the “knowledge economy” and say hello to the “creative economy.

He references the recent Global Workforce Study conducted by Towers Perrin that found that only 20% of employees are truly engaged in the work that they do. Hamel challenges the frequently expressed reasons – quality of manager – for this disengagement, and then speculates on other causes. He suggests that many of these companies have what he calls a “love deficit,” or an inability to express and espouse more “noble” values of purpose over “secular” metrics of performance.

Hamel concludes, “I know this—customers, investors, taxpayers and policymakers believe there’s a hole in the soul of business. The only way for managers to change this fact, and regain the moral high ground, is to embrace what Socrates called the good, the just and the beautiful.”

It was interesting that as these these voices on the changing language of business referenced values of happiness, purpose and community so also came the Gallup index on urban well being and a cluster of other articles on the places and spaces of health and happiness.

Global and local

While I doubt that these considerations of community and authenticity are at the core of emerging strategic moves just yet, there are signs of alignment with these concept emerging among some go the biggest brands out there.

For example, it seems not so long ago that we were assured that even in its most remote and exotic markets, we could get a bag of fries made of the same potatoes and fallow and tasting the same as back home. McDonald’s and other mega-brands now seem to be in the midst of a global shift. Undoubtedly driven by market considerations, there may also be benefits to local producer economies and even improved sustainability metrics. Any chance a McItaly might also have health benefits?

Starbucks’ approach seems to be a bit more subversive. The brand is now experimenting with burying its pervasive brand under the name and look of a more “local” and friendly coffee house.

Digital urban

Even as other local places and spaces lose relevance in an increasingly globally accessible world, the digitalization of content may actually be making things micro-local.

In its Room for Debate blog, the New York Times opened a virtual discussion/debate asking the question, Do school libraries need books? A number of authors, librarians and educators take up the topic.

In a similar mode, BLDGBOG took up the subject of the atomized library. Rather than doing away with the library, the concept explores the concept of smaller information spaces scattered throughout a city in various contextually-modified forms. For me, this also provokes a question about the places and spaces of work, and the potential of an alternative provider and concept than the oft-cited Starbucks-as-office model.

There’s a very nice exploration of the impacts of the new iPad in this context at City of Sound. Dan Hill celebrates the iPad as a “device for cities” in its use and role supporting work and life in the space in between buildings. I wonder if this device eases Hill’s concerns, in an earlier post considering Francis Duffy’s book, Work and the City, about the fragility of the relationship between work, the office and the city. In other words, will this be the device that tips the tide in how work is done, and therefore the places it is done? Will the iPad be the greatest tool in killing the office park and restoring vibrant urbanism?

Related, but a bit more challenging, is this exploration of the concept of a “post-text world.”

See you soon.

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I enjoyed, for a moment, Michael Idov’s recent lament in the Wall Street Journal over the death of cafe culture. My enjoyment was not over the death of places for a great cup of coffee and some conversation, but with Idov’s list of the world’s great coffee houses. I’ve never been in any of them, but something in literature, movies and other arts has built an expectation in my mind, and Idov’s article evokes a sweet nostalgia for imagined experiences, now apparently passing.

Imagno/Getty Images via WSJ

Associated Press via WSJ

Idov credits the loss of cafe culture to politeness, which, I think is polite of him. Instead of rogue revolutionary foment, Idov now hears only the tap of keyboards. I hear the tap of keyboards as the evidence of a revolution in work, corporate investment, and the notion of “brand.” None of it seems well resolved, yet.

Among the key concepts at the center of “workplace transformation” is the enabling and acceptance of mobility. I think much of this transformation has been very good. I feel liberated from the heaviness of the technology anchor that kept me chained to my desk and that, as a consequence, formalized and scheduled all of my interactions with clients and colleagues. I feel liberated by the new metrics of a more mobile workplace, with what I do now more valuable than my mere attendance. I am certainly more productive and more creative, since the lightness of technology and its untethering from the specifics of place and time have now allowed me to join others at will, to capture opportunity as it arises, to shape ideas on the run.

With this liberation has also come the definition and exploitation of the “third place.” Most frequently illustrated by the term “Starbucks,” the implication is a place between home and the office where the liberated among us meet, idealistically and romantically, in the manifestation and development of a sense of community. The Seattle model made us feel we were in the socially hip centers of life of “Friends” and “Fraser” even though we may have nowhere urban at all.

As the workplace began to evolve in a dawning recognition of its inherently social nature, the vending machines alcoves and utility kitchens began to learn from the coffee house. The office began to have a place where there was a recognition that “work” looked different now, and that whether in the beneficial development of a shared culture or in the productive generation and development of innovation, the conversations on the stools around the cafe counters were actually fulfilling the purposes and missions of organizations.

Now, however, there’s been a general transformation of the work place – the place of work – without an understanding of the role of place in work.

As corporations became more comfortable with third places as places where work might actually get done, the concept moved from the break from work to the place for work. The cafe became not just the symbol of but the place for the company’s productive collaboration. The commercial cafe was a manager’s delight in erasing the boundaries of time and freeing the corporation from the carrying costs of its own real estate.

The third place, then, also began to morph from social to selfish. Growing competition in an over-saturated market caused an evolving brand self-centeredness of Starbucks and others whose strategies caused a shift in focus from the customer to the coffee. And, as more and more cafes sought more and more locations, their market segments became smaller. With fewer people to serve in each store, there was less need for places to sit, and the support for the social nature of the place disappeared. Both in its occupancy profile and directly through the strategies of its owners, the modern coffee house became a place of production, not of imagination.

The recession and the resulting compression of the place of work and the loss of its social space has meant to short of a life for a workstyle and workplace that was just beginning to have its impact on innovation, creativity, leadership and performance. Moving the social space outside of the workplace moved it to a place where shifting strategies took its social purpose away. Now, neither the office nor the third place provides the setting for essentially casual but importantly purposeful interaction.

I suspect that the tapping of the keyboards that signals the death of cafe culture for Idov may be the tapping of those who, spun out from the office, have lost among other things a connection with their colleagues, a sense of the comparative measures of innovation, opportunities for uncovering opportunities for leadership, speed and efficacy in communications, perceptions of diversity and diversity of perceptions, and the benefits and pleasures of working with and through others.

The short life and death of the cafe in the life of the organization may signal a shorter life for the organization.

But Idov offers optimism –

Perhaps the economic downturn will untie our tongues and restart the conversation. With rents going down, the next Café Abraco or Café Regular may be able to afford a larger space and have some money left for tables and chairs. And the new Lost Generation of creative strivers is already here to fill these chairs.

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