"When the going gets tough, the tough get going!" This saying was considered the motto of the Kennedy family and was extensively sung by Billy Ocean in the soundtrack to "The Hunt for the Jewel of the Nile" (watch out for the background chorus!) Perhaps someone can be found for a current cover version? The hookline catches the current dramatic, tragic events around COVID-19 and around the world like no other: When the going gets tough, the tough get going! - The only question is where they go when they lack orientation. And that is missing. In many places, in fact and truth, even without the current experience of crisis, it has been lacking for a long time.
This much is certain for once: it will go.
TOO LAZY TO READ ON? THEN LISTEN TO ME:
In the blogcast, I read this recent blog article to you. With emphasis, of course!
And future as a shorthand for expanding the current comfort zone no longer plays.
Many things will simply no longer exist.
Many things will be different than before.
Many things will be new.
Much will be questioned, already now.
There is hardly a conversation any more, certainly not a public one; not a media spot of free expression of opinion in which the self-knowledge disguised as a question does not take hold: "Is this not in fact a sign of conversion, renewal, concentration on the essentials and farewell to too much?"
Yes, it is. It is.
A completely unnecessary one, especially since there is nothing new about this insight that is presented as new. It was already not new in 1972, when the Club of Rome issued the warning cry "The Limits to Growth". They didn't invent it, they described it.
Even back then, Ernst Schumacher and then Leopold Kohr postulated "Small is beautiful" and "Slow is beautiful", i.e. warned against the pandemically rampant pathogens Zugroß & Zuschnell, and went through the universally popular, customary three-phase wash: heard, revered, forgotten.
Suddenly, the butterfly effect gets its upgrade to bat effect, the hurricane thus generated at all other ends of the world is now no longer called "Sabine" but "Shut-down".
Between all the opinions, tragedies, despair, optimism, scenarios of catastrophe, hope, courage and renewal, there stands like a rock the sentence attributed to Helmut Schmidt: "Character proves itself in crisis". This sentence, although implicitly charged by Schmidt with a virtuous image of values, is nevertheless initially without any moral context.
Character proves itself, one way or another.
How we decide when things get tight, when we are in a dilemma, shows who we are. By their deeds you shall know them, one way or another ... And many are currently in a dilemma. I don't want to think at all about those doctors who are currently routinely faced with the decision of who to help and who not to help due to lack of resources. You don't want to have to do that!
Many of us on this side of life & death, where we stand, are faced with choices that decide our own immediate future and the immediate future of others. In March, the number of unemployed grew by 200,000. Someone had to make those decisions. You don't want to have to do that either.
Who do I lay off, and who goes on short-time work? Do I close my business forever and bury my life's dream? Where will I get the money for the next rent? Who and where can I ask for help, and at what price? - These are such questions.
There is usually no right or wrong, but only a choice between two evils: a dilemma.
Our choices in the dilemma show our character, one way or another.
The stories about this time of ours, which we will tell around the campfire when we finally roam around again in free-range herd immunity, will sound good. Will they also be good, not just well told?
Which stories will we tell each other, and which ones will we tell ourselves?
Often in them you will hear the sentence: "I had no other choice."
If that's what happened. All too often, "I had no other choice" is the protective mask of "I chose the easier way for me", at the junction between easy and right. This protective mask distributes the system as if it existed, the system.
True, sometimes it all feels like a system, always the result of the decision of people of flesh and blood, often those of skin and bones. Sometimes the system is ourselves.
A fundamental decision that almost everyone has to make at the moment, in mundane matters as well as in matters of substantial impact, concerns the issue of sharing. A rope made of values and virtues is attached to this, which everyone can hang on to or abseil. Solidarity, fairness, justice, loyalty, consideration - such threads are woven into it. The recently experienced decision-making battles of Armageddon proportions around the fictitious scarcity of toilet paper gives an inkling of how quickly, emphatically and in the highest arcs these values would be shat on only in the case of a real scarcity of - let's say - drinking water. I think I'll go and do some quick shopping.
During a sailing trip in the blossoming Croatia in the early 90s of the last century, I repeatedly made an observation that still jumps vividly into my memory: In the marinas there, the supply of drinking water was scarce. The fact that each of the skippers only bunkered as much drinking water as he would consume until the next marina was always so naturally anchored in practical seamanship that it was not even talked about. Until the first motor yacht arrived ...
It was a similar story with petrol, the drinking water of the wave beaters, and I suspect these specialists have shifted their stock portfolios in a big way towards the sanitary paper industry in recent weeks.
There is a headwind, the sea is rough.
How do we hold our course?
Is the compass needle rotating?
Can you see the fire in the lighthouse?
What questions!
The right questions and tangible orientation are scarce in the sea of quick answers and good opportunities. Especially in companies. "Every decision becomes easy when you know your values," said Roy Disney, and by easy he certainly didn't mean easy, but he also meant that character proves itself in a crisis. And what a brand story is good for, and the people who have to represent it, also proves itself.
Just as fame, power and wealth do not corrupt but reveal a person's character, so does every crisis. The breaking strength of the wood from which a person's leadership quality is carved reveals itself in every decision, in fact, one way or the other.
Why is this important?
Because the fate of many people depends on it, directly and indirectly, the future of companies in a cascading chain, the shaping of our society, which is driven by the economy.
Because companies, especially large ones, are able to inspire the public conversation. Their size is not only money-power, but also a gift and thus a task. They have a role model function and a responsibility to set an example.
Like this or like that?
I see the desperation and helplessness of SMEs, EPUs, small entrepreneurs, founders whose biggest private investment recently was a bit of luxury in the form of a new pair of adidas originals, for once not the cheap sneakers from Deichmann or H&M. All the other money is in the company and now, in the crisis, with everything else that is still there. These people are very happy when the public authorities - all of us - massage their piggy bank's heart until it can breathe again without a protective mask, and then back to square one, if there is anything left at all. Otherwise: a new start, not from scratch, but from less.
I can see their disappointment, their - completely groundless - disappointment in themselves even that they cannot keep their two marginally employed students in the job, that they have to send their staff on short-time work - or, breathe a sigh of relief, maybe even be allowed to - that they have to dissolve their team and send them to the labour market, which so no longer exists.
They know that a statistical unemployment rate of 25% materialises into 100% for each of them, but they do not know if, when and how it will change. Strictly speaking, they know: it will not change, but they have to change something, and as soon as they sense the opportunity, they will do it. We do something, with each other, for each other, that's for sure. Yes: #createwe
I can see the pang of relief at being able to suspend rents for their business premises giving way to bewilderment when they read that multi-billion corporations like adidas, H&M, Deichmann, C&A, hunkemöller, pimkie, Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof ... Tschappi & Quappi are suspending their rent payments. Of course they also have problems - who doesn't! - but at least they also have the choice whether to solve the problems they have with their own capital and assets or to pass it on to the assets of others and solve it with their own inability.
With the inability, for example, to read on their own website: "Fair play means doing the right thing even when no one is watching. That is integrity. Integrity is the courage to make the right decisions and accept the consequences. Integrity is important because the good reputation of adidas and our brands has been built over decades, but can be squandered in an instant with a few unwise decisions.
adidas stands for building a better society based on tolerance, solidarity and fair play in sport. Our roots are in sport and fair play is a core value that we transfer from sport to the way we do business. We believe in hard work, discipline and good preparation. We are determined to make the right decisions. We are not prepared to turn a blind eye or tolerate our partners doing so.
The Fair Play Code of Conduct describes how we put integrity into practice every day and act according to our values. It reminds all of us, you and me, of adidas' commitments and expectations ."
That's what you can read there.
In another place it says: "At adidas we follow a clear motto: We play to win."
Sounds an awful lot like two competing strategies to me: corporate goal vs. brand story. As it is, "play to win" vs. "fair play" has won hands down in the last few days, turning into a Pyrrhic victory thanks to social media, and a CEO's flapping of wings in the rest of the world into a shitstorm. Or, to use the poetry of German comedian Harry G, because it's hard to say it better: "Yeah, kiss my ass!"
The reflexive, violent backpedalling of the boss, accompanied by rabble-rousing from the "all-right-what-should-we-do-because-we-are-the-poor-people-who-can't-be-blamed" kitchen, where the usual lukewarm tea is available by the hectolitre, with which the appeasement PR servants generally pour on their critics, came with a new intermediate best time in front of their own fan curve. Hape Kerkeling recommends: "The boy needs to get some fresh air.
The question that faces each and every one of us, not only corporations that are as fat as a trainer, but especially them, is: Is this necessary help, or are we seizing an opportunity because we can and because it will make our black eye go away, even if it means elbowing someone we call a partner in the eye? In other words, does play to win mean "at all costs" or "seamanship"?
Attention: Interjection!
To wiggle your way out through loopholes is not wrong. Yet it is not right. It starts with the very mundane formality that a brand story is called a brand story because it is one brand story and not two. Brand stories are there to provide orientation, especially in times of crisis, turmoil and upheaval. The fact that in such a competition between two stories (if it was one at all) the story that makes life easier and the bank account fuller usually wins (statistical fluctuation range in the per mille range) lies in the nature of things, which is fertilised by the usual bonus system of management. The package insert of this fertiliser is entitled "God's work and the devil's contribution".
So when corporate goals and brand story differ, there is an acute need for action, not only for corporations, but for every company. Yes, in fact also for every person themselves, because the brand story of a company is nothing other than what is important to the responsible people as people: their concern.
This proves itself not only in the crisis, one way or another.
If we have a brand story, however, not much is gained in everyday life; certainly not in a crisis. Only when we translate it into practical action chapters, make a manifesto out of it and remind everyone in the company - and ourselves - of it in dense cycles, do we have a chance of transforming this story into corporate culture and the culture into lived, exemplified and experienced practice. If you are not ready to do this with honest sincerity and rigorous authenticity, save yourself the thinking time, the money for the lukewarm tea and us your blathering about your good intentions, meaning, purpose.
If you are wondering whether your concern is really a concern, I have written down ten basic questions that will help your compass head north.
But if you are convinced that growth, shareholder value and profit are the purpose of your company, that making money is the purpose of your work, then the same applies: stand by it, have a (one!) brand story, live it, and give everyone the chance to orient themselves. That would even be a form of fair play. At least until someone cries, and I have a firm guess who that will be. Even those who don't hear the shot can be hit ...
"Gnothi seauton", as it were: know thyself.
Why is this important?
Why is this understanding important, for you, for me, for all of us? Because at some point the finger will be taken off the pause button of the economy and our everyday life and then hopefully some things will be experienced, recognised and done.
Because then each and every one of us defines what normal means. Is normal that which is, because it takes up the most space with noise, speed, force & mass, or is normal that which is as it is meant to be - albeit fragile, small and little? It is defined by our choices and practical actions, one way or another.
Because then this story with the working title "Corona" did what stories are supposed to do: transform, if everything goes well: for the better. The definition of success, for example, into the awareness that you don't recognise it first from the full money bin and that you don't have to apply everything because it works, because it fits, because you can, because there's something to get, because you're not that stupid and ... because that's why you say "dieanderentunsjaschließlichauchbitt'Sie".
Then the "Corona" story would truly have a happy ending, which is not an end, but only the beginning. A beginning with more than zero, even if there is nothing left in the account. - Why? You can read about it in this blog article.
It is important for you, for me, for all of us, because in this time of change we need many of those at the helm who read a noble task between the lines of their job description, who make themselves available for this task and fulfil it, who find fulfilment in it; who lead with a steady hand, a cool head and a hot heart, who at least once lead their own lives. Leaders who have understood that the captain is not the last to disembark because he gets a bonus at the end.
The public conversation tuned to "Isn't this really a sign for conversion, renewal, concentration on the essential and farewell to too much?" deserves your, my, our double interjection: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going!" is one, "Just do it!", the other.
Oh yes, and I remembered a sentence by Margret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
No one should prevent us from becoming a little wiser every day. Our values in our story help us to do this, because they give us orientation, bring order into our lives and into everything else, because character proves itself before, in and after the crisis, one way or another. And that's enough of me interrupting.
My grandmother, old Story Dudette, would now interject what she said to Adi Dassler when he once again pulled off the leather with his tongue hanging out over the ripping heel of his football boots: "No Story. No Glory."