 Hello everybody, I'm Aaron Longwell. I'm the track chair of the business track at Drupal Con. When introducing our next speakers on your program, it may just say Jason Swain. It's actually two speakers. We have Kevin Sanders from Hanon Associates and Jason Swain from Swain Associates. They're going to be talking today about branding and organizational development, the topic of which is the authenticity advantage. So I'm going to introduce Kevin Sanders first. Before we get going, we wanted to talk a little bit about Jason and myself, not going to bios necessarily, but to give you a sense of why we're both here and why we're both sort of talking about stuff today. And we're going to take turns at covering some of the material. Again, my name is Kevin Sanders. I'm actually a marketing guy by trade. And a little while ago, in the process of doing a lot of branding work for clients that we've got, it became increasingly important for me and for us as an agency to really make sure that the marketing that we were doing for clients was authentic in the sense of it really reflected who the companies were. And so I found myself in a situation where I kept needing to help organizations figure out sort of really what they were about. And so a friend of mine, Jason Swain here, kind of brought him onto this team to help sort of figure that out. And I've always kind of had the opposite problem again. I'm Jason Swain and what I've done for a living is do organization development. So I help organizations kind of get healthy on the inside. And a lot of times I get a client kind of all healthy on the inside and working really well, but I have no capacity to help them tell their story. So who cares if you're working really well and efficiently if no one knows who you are and how you do what you do so that it became this great partnership where we like to describe it as two great tastes that taste great together. So an external marketing guy and an internal OD guy kind of joining forces. So. And that's really what sort of brought about this whole discussion and whole process that we've developed around authenticity, but we wanna really talk today specifically about some changes that we've seen in the world really and how they affect how organizations relate to their customers. And we call it the authenticity advantage and it is about creating loyalty in a distrusting world. Because we are in the midst of basically a distrusting world. We are in the midst of what we call a crisis of credibility. And by credibility what I really mean is trust. And the idea that trust, we as a society are trusting less than we used to. And this is not necessarily a new phenomenon. Actually trust has been sort of slowly eroding for decades, but there's been a number of recent dynamics that have significantly accelerated this decline of people's willingness to trust. And we'll talk about those today. We are, in fact we believe that we're in a bit of a tipping point with respect to people's willingness to trust organizations and really institutions in general. And it is as a society it is having a pretty profound effect on us. And it is fundamentally altering the relationship that customers have with their clients. For example, when we talk about trust, you know, people don't trust the government, right? In fact, trust in the federal government is the lowest it's been in a generation. The quick slide here that looks at people's trust in government over the last 50 years, 60 years. And you can see that in the last 10 to 12 years basically the trust in the government has been cut in half. And this is not just amongst a particular political party or a particular segment of the population. This is across the board. This is US citizens in general. People don't trust corporations either. Less than half of the people in the US say that they trust businesses to do what's right. And this percentage has dropped eight points in the past year. And as a country the US has now officially categorized as a distrusting company, the country, excuse me country. Fewer than one in five of us trust the business leaders to make ethical decisions and to be honest with us no matter what the cost. Fewer than one in five of us. And people don't trust the media either. This has actually been in decline for about 30 years but it's only in the past 10 years has the percent of people who say they distrust the media the clips, the percent that say they do trust it. It's really all institutions, not just those. This is data from Gallup that shows they actually track about 16 different institutions, everything from the military to public schools to the criminal justice system to Congress. And for the past about 45 years they've been tracking people's confidence in these institutions. Well in the past five years more than half of these institutions have historic lows in confidence and in trust. So this is not about any given institution. This is a societal trend. In fact it's not that we're just trusting less we're actually distrusting more. This is a slide that shows the number of countries that are in the, that are called, that are categorized as distrusting countries meaning that more than 50% of their population says they distrust the major institutions within that country. And the number of countries that are on that list has doubled, nearly doubled in the past year. So it's not just that we are trusting less we're actually distrusting more. And why is that? Well there's a number of reasons. The first is technological. And specifically the internet. And our ability to access information and share information about everything and anything. We know more, we see more, we learn more about the world around us. It used to be that companies could just sort of stay protected with inside their walls and just sort of put stuff over the wall at their customers, right? And because they pretty much controlled the flow of information. If they screwed up, likelihood, not many people would find out about it. Well not anymore, right? In this hyper-connected world now, every flaw, every failure, every transgression is not only exposed but shared with everybody. This information is being shared at rates that we can't imagine 10 or 15 years ago. And this level of transparency that allows people to have from a corporation, from a company standpoint, it's exposing all of the potential flaws that you have as an organization and allowing people to share it with themselves. And the effective it is that it is that everybody knows sort of what's going on and you can't hide necessarily from your consumers anymore. The second major dynamic is economic. And that is the great recession of 2008 and the world financial crisis. This had a fairly significant impact on us as a society. It really had a strong impact on our psyche. What was interesting about it is we just didn't take our frustration and our anger out on those institutions that we felt responsible or that were directly at the people that we blamed. It actually ended up undermining our faith in all institutions, both public and private. And you can see the impact of some of that data that I showed earlier. It's changing the way we view things as a society. And the last major sort of dynamic involved in this is the sort of repeated violations of our trust by the people that we hold in highest esteem in our society. Many of these people are our role models and they have sort of consistently and repeatedly let us down. I like to look at the picture on the bottom right down there, the look that Vanessa Bryant is giving her husband, I think sums it up for all of us. We're continually being disappointed by the folks out there that we put our trust in in some ways or that we hold up his role models for our children. These are all having a collective impact on our willingness to trust companies and institutions across the world. So to give you an idea of how this is really affecting the relationship companies have with their customers, we can look at the key drivers of corporate reputation over the past few years. They got a bunch of people together and they said, what is your definition? What are the attributes that you put in your definition of what is a good corporate reputation? In 2006, number one was having quality products and services. Number two was being attentive to customer needs. And number three was having strong financial performance. In 2006, this was people's definition of good reputation. In 2010, number one is now transparent and honest practices, being a company that I can trust and then having quality products and services. And by the way, strong financial performance dropped to number 10. And if you put in the percentages of the people that chose these answers, it really gives you a sense of how strongly people feel about this. Trust has never been more important to your company than it is today. So we believe that we've hit a bit of a tipping point. It used to be that people would trust you unless and until you violated that trust. The companies didn't actually have to build trust. They just needed to preserve it because the default position was that they would have it. And that's not the case anymore. It's not necessarily that you're guilty until proven innocent, but you can't take people's trust for granted anymore. You can't assume that people are going to trust you in the environment that I've laid out in slides earlier. So we want to step back, I guess, at this second and talk about what it will mean specifically by trust. Because we have a tendency to think of trust as a single thing. When in fact it's actually a combination of things. It's a combination of judgments and assessments you make about somebody on whether you consider them to be trustworthy. So when we talk about trust, we're usually thinking of it in the context of either competency or authenticity. And by confidence, see, we mean whether somebody is capable, meaning that they have the ability to do what they claim to do and that they're dependable. And that is that they have a history of fulfilling their commitments. On the other side, authenticity, what we mean by that is typically whether somebody is being sincere, whether we believe them to be acting honestly and in good faith, and also whether they're genuine. Do we believe that they are who they claim to be? So there's really sort of two sides of this dynamic of trust and what it means to people. We think most companies have done a really good job over the years of trying to build trust through competency, making high quality products and offering dependable service. But we'll also argue that a lot of the breakdowns and trust that we're experiencing now are due to failures in authenticity. In failures from organizations being sincere and being who they say they are. Now, most companies, excuse me, most companies when they screw up, they screw up on the left side of this equation. There's a breakdown in competency. But then they try to deny it or cover it up and it ends up undermining people's faith in their authenticity. We prefer people who are honest but incompetent over people who are competent but dishonest. There's a great quote by a gentleman, Kurt Dirks, who wrote a book about trust in leadership. Kurt says that people will forgive a leader who compromises their trust because of a lack of competence but not a lapse of integrity. We as a people have a tremendous capacity to forgive. We're more than willing to forgive organizations that screw up on the left side of that equation, right? But it's much harder to rebuild trust after you've been misleading or deceitful. So I'm going to invite Jason up here to now talk about sort of how do you build trust? I've talked about sort of what's broken and he's going to sort of help you figure out how to fix it. Thanks. Well, as Kevin has clearly illustrated, today you have to actively work to build trust. So the question is how? In fact, we less want to trust and actually looking for reasons not to trust you. How do you earn and maintain people's trust in today's world? And not surprisingly, our claim is that you have to be authentic. So the question then is, well, what exactly is authenticity and how does one become authentic? Well, philosophers and writers and artists have been kind of wrestling with authenticity for centuries. You know, everyone from Plato to Shakespeare to more contemporary folks. And the common definition of authenticity seems to always come back to this. It's being true to yourself and it's being who or what you say you are. So let's unpack these a little bit. Let's start with being true to yourself. So the first thing you have to do if you want to be true to yourself is you have to understand yourself. You have to know yourself. You know, what I would say is when most organizations go to create their identity, that's a process of creation. They're trying to create something that sounds good. Something that will convince people to want to come do business with them or come to work with them. And what we would claim is you don't want to create that. But if you think in most of the marketing campaigns, it's marketing people sitting down and creating a story. And there's a real danger in that because the second you're not who you say you are, that's exactly what creates distrust and cynicism. So the only way to ensure that your decisions and your actions and your priorities and the products and services that you make and that your customer has are consistent with who you are is for that who you are to be truly you. And so it's not a process of discovery. Instead it's a process of... I'm sorry, it's not a process of creation. It is a process of discovery. More on that in a minute, like how do you actually discover your own authenticity? But before we get there, let's look at the second piece of this. It's not enough once you do discover who you are and what your identity is. It's not enough to just stick with that. It makes me me or what makes my organization authentic. I actually have to consistently express that authenticity through those things I mentioned earlier. The products and services that we offer, the way we design our customer experiences, the kinds of people that we hire. And that's a very deliberate and prescriptive and disciplined process that you need to go through to make sure that we're consistently expressing our authenticity. Fortunately, we've got several great examples. So Kevin painted this very bleak picture of the declining rate of trust over time, but there are organizations that nevertheless have sustained these very high levels of trust and customer loyalty over that period of time. And so a couple of researchers studied these elite institutions to try to discover, well, what are they doing differently than everybody else that enables them to just stay at the top of their market and maintain this high level of trust and consumer loyalty? And not surprisingly, these companies were uncompromisingly authentic. They consistently are exactly who they say they are, and they are true to themselves. Well, one of the authors, one of the researchers named Jim Collins, and by the way, they wrote a book about all these companies called Built to Last, and he summed it up this way. These organizations understand that it's more important to know who you are, i.e. authenticity. It's more important to know who you are than where you're going, than where you're going to be. So it's kind of a lot going on in that sentence. So it's kind of unpacked that sentence for a second. And you'll notice that there's this interesting dynamic going on between a couple of things. There's something that never changes and something that's constantly changing. And these organizations have the rare ability to know the difference of what's sacred, what's enduring, what do we not mess with, and what's okay to tinker with. So the thing that's sacred, the thing that never changes is who you are. And that's, again, who you claim to be. You never want to violate that straight from that. But the stuff that's constantly changing, it's the products and services that you're offering, it's the technology that you're currently using, it's the strategic decisions that you make. And you have to constantly change with those things because where you're going to go is going to change as the world changes around you, but you only want to make decisions in that realm based upon whether or not it's consistent with who you are. So this might still be a little bit foggy, so let me give you an analogy to kind of flesh this out. Let's imagine that all of us suddenly found ourselves lost deep in the woods at night. So it's cold, it's dark, we're all hungry, we have limited supplies, and everyone wants to get the hell out of the woods. So if we're in that situation and we had no objective criteria for which way we need to go, it's literally anybody's best guess. And all we can do is base our decision on what's right in front of us. And chances are pretty good, we just lead ourselves further into the woods to our own demise. But now imagine that we had the luxury of knowing that the closest civilization is due north. If that's the case, and let's say we had somebody in our group that knew how to read the night sky, and we could identify a star that we knew as due north from where we were currently standing. Now every single one of us knows exactly which way to go. We just follow that star, and in terms of where do we go on the ground, we just find that star and trace our finger to the horizon, and we can agree on a point on the horizon and say, let's agree to rendezvous on the top of that hill in three hours. So now if we're all going on this journey, every single one of us knows exactly where to go and why and how to get there. So if I turn an ankle and get lost or I get chased by a pack of wild animals or something disrupts me, I as an individual can always write myself by finding that guiding star, finding the point, and knowing how much time I have to get there. So every single one of us is making progress. Where are we going to go after we get to the top of that hill? Well, we don't know yet because we can't see that far. Where we're going is going to change as the world changes around us. When we get to the top of the hill, we simply cast our eyes upon the star again and find a point on the horizon and agree to get there. And we always base our decisions upon that guiding star. I think this is a good analogy for organizations because of this. The star itself is not a destination. We're never going to walk up and stand on the star, but we're going to use that star to guide every step we take on the ground throughout our entire journey. Similarly, an organization that wants to remain competitive and trustworthy for long periods of time, its entire duration of its organization needs to have that enduring sense of who they are and why they exist and never stray from that and base all their decisions on whether or not they're consistent with that. So I want to take this analogy. I want to give you some real-world examples. I'm going to give you an example of an organization that has completely lost its way in the woods, as compared to a couple of competitors that I believe have never lost their way in the woods so far anyway. I know for me, growing up in the Midwest, my mom took us to Kmart for everything, from sporting goods to kitchen utensils to sheets and towels to automotive supplies, that sort of stuff. So back in the 70s and 80s, at least in the Midwest, Kmart was pretty much king. It kind of ruled the marketplace. Kmart still uses Kmart as your store of choice for those kinds of things. Okay, not a single hand. So I think it's a pretty good indication of the market share that Kmart enjoys today. So if you don't go to Kmart, where do you go for those sorts of things? Walmart and Target? Interesting. Okay, so here's what happened. So in the late 80s, early 90s, Walmart really hits its stride, right? They come on the market strong and they have always known exactly who they are and they've done not only a great job of indoctrinating anyone who ever comes to work for them into what that is, they've also done a fantastic job of making sure that every single one of us know exactly who they are and why they exist. So well that I'm confident that you'll get this right. What are they all about? Low price. So they've never not been that. So on that level, we trust them because they're always who they say they are. So let's go back to Kmart. Suddenly Kmart wakes up one morning and they don't have a guiding star. So all they can do is base their decisions on what's in front of them and the only choice left was to lower their prices. Well Walmart saw this coming from a mile away. They obviously went after Kmart, knew this was happening, they're experts at this, this is their own game. So no matter how low Kmart went, they were able to go lower. So Kmart's fighting this bloodbath, emerging cash and customers in a battle that they can't win. And someone else comes along and says, Duke in and out of our low price down there, we're not even trying to compete down there. So for you and I, if we choose to go into a Target store, when you walk through that threshold, you know I am going to pay more than I would have paid had I gone to Walmart. And yet millions of us choose to do that on a regular basis. So why is that? Why would you choose to go to Target as opposed to Walmart knowing you're going to pay more? What are you paying for? What's that? So they're much more of a premium on customer service, so they're nicer to you, the stores are nicer, and they have famous name brand designers. So let's go back to Kmart. So Kmart suddenly wakes up and another third of their market share is gone. And all they can do is base their decision on what's in front of their face, and they realize, oh crap, we're going to have to compete on that level too. And I don't know if you remember this, but they brought in the Martha Stewart line, the Kathy Ireland line and the Jacqueline Smith line. And I'm scratching my head, and I'm having this identity crisis. Who are we? Are we low price? Are we high end? Because we can't be both. And as consumers, we're looking at this scratching our head and saying, well, why the hell would I go to Kmart? Because if I just need the lowest price on something, I know if I go to Walmart, I'm going to get that. But if I wanted something a little bit nicer and a nicer shopping experience, and I want a particular designer, I'll go to Target. Why would I go to Kmart? And I'm from Bakker Psi, and I would argue that they're probably not long for this world. So, the question is now, how have these companies done this? And more importantly, how do you do this? In other words, how do you discover your guiding star? Well, if you go back to that study, the Bill Tillast study, all those companies that have enjoyed that long-term competitive advantage and customer trust, they all had a couple of things. All of them had a very small set of core values. And by small set, I mean none of them had fewer than three and none of them had more than five. But the thing about these core values is they're alive. They use them deliberately and prescriptively on a regular basis to make sure that all the decisions they make are guided and informed by those values. So again, that's like that guiding star. So the values define what the company stands for. It's your identity. The other thing now is a very clearly articulated core purpose. That defines why the organization exists. And there's a very big difference between why an organization exists and what that organization does. You can pursue your purpose to the end of time, but you'll go through lots of different things that you do, different products and services and so on. But you're always pursuing that core purpose. So some examples, well actually let's kind of further define these core values. Again, there's a small set of timeless guiding principles. These are things that you would adhere to even if they became a competitive disadvantage. And these are the things that you have to look inside and discover what they actually are rather than create things. They're independent from current environment or competitive requirements. Again, you go back to Kmart. They're responding to the current competitive environment. Authentic companies pay no attention to what's happening in the world and they adhere to their core values. And they always are who they say they are. They don't require any external justification. It's just who they are. And they have intrinsic value and importance only to the people in the organization. So again, a lot of times we'll work with an organization and we'll help them discover and unveil their core values. We're not creating anything new. We're helping them discover what's already there. And inevitably they always have these employees that say, well, we've got this group over here that don't really have value congruence. So you guys are smart. Help us. How do we get these people to align with our values? And we have to say we have bad news for you. You don't. You have to find people and attract people that already share your values. So just to give an example of an organization that knows its values and how it manifests, so it is authenticated and expresses its authenticity consistently, I'm just going to do a couple of these. Just to give you an example of how Starbucks lives its values. Let's look at everything matters. Never ever lose focus on your customer's perspective and point of view. One of my favorite stories of how this manifested itself at Starbucks is there was a particular store and they discovered that a high percentage of their customers were deaf. So the employees in that particular store took it upon themselves to bring in an American sign language tutor and learn sign language so they could communicate with their customers via sign language. And let's just take a leave your mark at the very end. There's a couple of things that Starbucks does really well here. They actually have corporate policies that mandate environmentalism, volunteerism, and philanthropy. And the other thing they have is their famous triple line. Most organizations just have the financial bottom line. Well, Starbucks puts equal measure on your financial bottom line, as well as your societal impact and your environmental impact. So they're very true to this and that's what causes people to trust them and be loyal. So let's look at core purpose. Core purpose is another thing that I'll have to come and share. Again, it's why the organization exists as distinct from what it does. It reflects people's idealistic motivations for joining the company. Again, if you find people who share your values and believe what you believe and want to be part of your purpose, when they get to work, they're excited because they get to do that all day. That's why they come here. It captures the soul of the organization. It should be something you consider should last for about 100 years. Something I could devote my entire life to pursuing and hope that I leave a legacy so that others can keep doing it after I've gone. It's got to be that powerful. It's why you do what you do. So again, goals are to be achieved, but you can never fulfill a purpose. That's why it's that guiding star that pulls your company forward through thick and thin. Here's some famous core purpose examples. 3M, the purpose of their organization. Not what they do, but why they do what they do is to solve the world's unsolved problems innovatively. So again, if I'm an engineer and I love to innovate and I get a job at 3M, I have arrived because I get to show up and innovate all day. And one of the ways they manifest itself is they have what's called 20% time. So all paid engineering staff get to spend 20% of their time working on anything they want to. Now you might think they'll be watching back episodes of Breaking Bad on Hulu or checking their email or whatever, but no, these people who love to innovate. And that program is a thing that's yielded things like the Post-it Note and other of their famous products. Mary Kay Cosmetics, one of my favorite stories. The sole purpose of that company is to provide unlimited opportunity for women. Now what they do is sell hair and makeup products. But the story is that Mary Kay Ash was a senior executive in the 70s and 80s and she got so sick of hitting the glass ceiling. And she said, you know what? Forget this. I'm going to go start my own company. And the sole purpose for this company is to make sure that there is no glass ceiling. And the fact that they sell hair and makeup products wasn't afterthought. It's the way in which they pursue this purpose. And undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of women all over the world are driving pink Cadillacs and making farm bar money than they ever could have had this company not come to pay. Let's jump down and look at Apple. One way of saying their purpose, I think, is fair to say that they've always been about challenging the status quo, resisting Big Brother, and giving us more simple alternatives and choices. And if you look at everything they've ever done since the dawn of their company, it's always been devoted to that singular purpose. When they first started their company, they took on IBM, the big status quo monopoly organization that made things challenging and difficult. And suddenly they take them on and force them to do things very differently. And then they challenged Microsoft. And then they're challenging the music industry, the phone industry, publishing industry. And if you're in television and movies, watch out because you're probably next. So it's singularly always devoted to that singular purpose. What they do is sell computer products, but a lot of other companies do as well. This is why they do it. So I think it's fair to say that if you're truly authentically you, people will connect with your organization on an emotional level. And they'll experience this as an invitation to belong to something rather than just an opportunity to make a purchase. And as social beings, we're drawn to things like that. And it's at this point that choosing to do business with your organization, as opposed to one of your competitors, is no longer a rational decision. It's an emotional one. And this is when consumers and your clients and customers become beyond reason. They're loyal to you and trusting of you beyond reason. I think my picture of this, people waiting in line, giving over nights in the rain waiting to buy their next Apple product. So Kevin's going to come back up and round out the talk about authenticity. So the other half of this equation of being true to yourself is being what you say you are. This is the area, unfortunately, this is about sort of being honest and genuine and accurate in how you communicate yourself. This is sort of the marketing piece of this. So the marketing guy gets to come up and talk about that. When they ask people what forms of communication were trusted and not trusted, it'll come as no surprise to you that what others say about you is considered far more trustworthy than what you say about yourself. And as marketing people, this is the area that we've got the sort of biggest hill to climb, the most work to do. And it's a part of our organization that we probably ought to put more focus on when it comes to authenticity. And that is because, like I said, when it comes to marketing, our products were a bit authenticity challenged. There's a reason why marketing as a profession and people that are marketers are in the top five of the least honest and ethical perception of professions year on year on year. It's because they are a bit sort of authenticity challenged. I'll give you a couple of examples, first of all. I believe that somewhere, somebody is brewing a beer that is truly using the finest grains and hops. They just don't believe it's PBR. Much as I like their product, I gotta believe that somebody is actually using the world's very best grains and hops, and it's not them. Let's look at Snapple Apple real quick. If you take the bottle of Snapple Apple and you flip it around and you notice the ingredients, notice anything missing, apples. Snapple Apple contains no apples whatsoever. They say it's made from the best stuff on earth. Apparently that does include apples. This is not being genuine, right? Not being authentic. There's another one we'll pick on Burger King. This is what they say they are. This is what they actually are. We'll pick on just Burger King, we'll pick on McDonald's too. And it's not about... I understand the idea of sort of making the product look attractive, right? But look at the meat. When you tell me that I'm gonna get that, and when it turns out I get that, how likely am I to trust you in the future? What's worse about this example is the advertised burger doesn't actually fit in the box that they serve it in. Again, this isn't being what you say you are. Now, I'm sure there's people in the audience saying, I'll come on, this is harmless, right? It's just sort of salesmanship. Nobody actually believes in stuff anyways. Isn't that exactly the point? Every time an organization hucks this stuff over the wall, it chips away at their credibility just a little bit. It makes us question their trustworthiness and potentially trust them a little bit less. We tend to think that the purpose of marketing is to build our business. It's ironic that it's also one of the areas where it is most inauthentic. One of the best ways to build trust is to stop tearing it down. So who's doing a good job of this? You guys probably remember this campaign from a few years back from Domino's. It's the, I call it the we suck less strategy. This is essentially Domino's saying, admitting that their food's kind of crappy and vowing to repent. In fact, they went so far as to stream customer feedback in real time unedited on a billboard in Times Square. That is transparency. So you got the good comments. For example, my order was made just as I ordered so the bad ones wasn't cooked all the way. That is, it takes a, how many people in this room would have the sort of nerve to do that at Times Square broadcasting what people actually think about you. But it sends a message. It's transparent. And it's honest. Is it working? Well, you tell me. This is their stock price in the last five years and this arrow represents when they essentially kicked off this initiative. It is attributable to a marketing campaign, right? But a lot of it is. I mean, have you tried their pizza? It's definitely better, but it's not that much better. So they've done a really good job, I think, of being honest, being authentic, and trying to continue to push themselves further to make a better product and to be honest when they don't and when they screw up. And they're building a reservoir of trust and of good will that if nothing else is reflected in their future earnings potential as rewarded by Wall Street. The reality is that we as consumers have way too many choices and not enough time or energy to figure out which one's better and how they're different. In fact, we're actually kind of looking for ways to eliminate people to narrow our options down. So coming off as inauthentic brings your trustworthiness and credibility into question. It's often enough to get you eliminated from the list right there. Just why we consider trust to be the new currency. 30 years ago, companies competed on quality and then it was service and more recently innovation. Now those are all out of the price of admission, right? We talk about this idea of organizations being transparent and being authentic and knowing who they are, because that is really the true source of sustainable competitive advantage. So we think that the future, in the future authenticity will be a differentiating force within the marketplace. Those companies that know themselves, are true to themselves and are actively building trust with their customers will achieve rewards greater than those that don't. Authentic companies will have increased levels of customer loyalty. They will have a more engaged and motivated workforce. They will have, because they understand clearly who they are and never stray from that, they will have more focused and efficient operations, unlike Kmart, who's jerking all over the place trying to figure out who they're going to be next. And finally, they'll have a stronger and more resilient brand. You guys remember back the old example of the dominoes I just gave when they had that unfortunate YouTube video about the people doing unsavory things to their pizzas? Remember when that sort of hit their ways? Millions of views in a matter of days, everybody watching what could potentially theoretically happen to their pizza. They didn't suffer a really significant and certainly not a long-term damage from that situation. Why? Because they had been building for several years this reserve of trust with their customers. People at least said, okay, you screwed up. I honestly, I believe you're going to be honest with me and I believe you were honest with me in how you handled that. And that stands for something. So again, we see that authenticity is really your only true source of sustainable competitive advantage in a world that is increasingly becoming more and more distrustful. The good news is that it's never too late to start being you. Trust me. Thank you. Thank you guys. We appreciate it. Yes, this is our Q&A if you guys have questions about so much stuff that we've thrown up here. Be happy to answer them. Try to tell you when we don't know. Please. I think if it's truly authentically you and it's part of who you are and that's the way you continue to operate as an organization, I think it's fair that you might want to be somewhat careful about it. You don't want it to come across as using this to sell myself. But if it's truly authentically you and your organization always supports those kinds of things and you show how you do that, I think it's fair. Absolutely. Again, I think there's nothing wrong with and I've worked for a number of companies in the past and one of them was Timberland. You guys are probably familiar with Boots and Apparel Company. And Timberland did an awful lot of stuff, a tremendous amount of stuff for the environment, for the community and they gave back much like Jason talked about with Starbucks and they were always reticent to talk about it because again they felt like it was bragging or that it was somehow boasting about the things that they did. And we had to figure out a way to tell that story because it was part of who we were and when Jason talks about this idea of sharing our values so you could attract people that will also share those values. That only works if you've communicated your values. If you've taken a stand and said this is what we believe in, if you believe in the same thing you may want to think about joining us. We had to work really hard when I worked at Timberland figuring out where that line was because again it would be much like you said people are concerned about overstepping it. But I would say if the opposite of that becomes not sharing that kind of information about what you're about and what you do, but all the software consultants please step outside. Well the question was about do we have any particular feelings about software consultancy? I guess I don't. I don't have a strong opinion either way on whether or not it's a trusting segment of industry or not. What I will say is that as consultants and we're actually kind of consultants as well, again if you think back to that equation or that sort of trust we work really hard to build trust and competency, right? Look at all the things I've done and look at all the things I can do and again fail to consider the idea of what are we doing to build authenticity and to get people to believe that we are genuine and sincere about the way we're going to operate our business because consultancies have a tendency again to be sort of thrown in with maybe some of the baddest bankers but very close with authenticity challenged in many ways and again when we talk about a lot of what we're talking about today with authenticity not just being can you get the job done? Because again the reality is even if you can't I'm more likely to forgive you than if I don't trust you and so if you think about companies and this idea of this tipping point the idea that companies have to work at building trust and that they're going to have it and God forbid they're going to keep it if they don't keep building it from a consultant standpoint is often how do I build that trust and I would argue that start with the authenticity side the company's decide will follow So my question is you know sometimes it's very relevant to a company very relevant to even a consulting group and a lot of that's very relevant here but what about the authenticity of a group of business, right? I was at a talk with NBC and it relates to what I do in the CES I'm a small group within that but we are also selling our services internally so do you guys see that really applying in that same context as well? Absolutely, I've got several clients just like that within larger organizations like right now I'm working with just the accounting department in a large city or working with you know within a university one particular department so a lot of times the people within that department or team they're providing services to other people in the organization and the other people don't trust them and so helping that particular group people kind of coalesce around well as an organization internally who are we, why would people come to us and how do we want to be treating people and they essentially sort of internally brand themselves and over and over again I've seen that that takes off definitely they become the place where people want to work and then the next call I get is from another department within the organization or the senior leadership of that organization so absolutely I think the beauty of the work that I do is it translates to any group of people who've come together to do anything I don't have to understand what you do I just help you get better at that because I help you discover and determine who are we and why do we exist and let's all work on that together really well so absolutely I think it's it has to come from the top of your department and everyone has to be on the same page there but absolutely the other question the other corollary I'll bring into that is the idea of partnerships and relationships and that is people needing to spend more time thinking about what about the authenticity of the folks that I am going to associate myself with not just within an organization but across organizations so who are you guys partnering with out there in the community what are you creating yourselves with who are you saying I'm with them and how authentic are they because again the types of things that they may be doing to either undermine their authenticity or to increase the distrust in it of the folks that they're working with might also splatter on you by being associated with that so we haven't talked about it here but the idea of organizations often making partnerships out of because of things like companies inside of it those folks can do something that we need to have done therefore we ought to partner with them without considering what do they represent and who are they about and whether we want to be associated with them whether they will hurt or help our brand by being associated with them anything else thank you very much I appreciate you guys stopping by today I appreciate your time