WHAT IS IT ABOUT PERFECTION THAT WORRIES ME?

I keep on hearing the word “perfect” nowadays. When someone asks me my name and I tell them they tend to say “perfect” as if in awe at my accurately and confidently remembering my own name. Perfect has become the new “great”.

I’m not sure I much like “perfect.”  Seth Godin the management guru and inspirational writer said: “stop trying to be perfect. Be remarkable”.

Remarkable is what a live performance can be.  When, many years ago, I stood just a few feet away from the Kinks playing “You really got me” they did, get me that is, because it was quite remarkable. But it was far from perfect.   Dave Davis was so drunk he could hardly stand and Ray was reviling him. It wasn’t perfect but it was very exciting wondering if rock murder might occur in front of me.

It’s the danger of live performance that provides the frisson of what has been called “the dramatic moment” when the suspension of disbelief is total.  It happened to me in Lewes at a performance of Othello in a hotel when suddenly I found myself almost part of the action arguing about a handkerchief. Rather than grand Shakespearian Tragedy I was embroiled in a domestic.

Life is not perfect. And if it always were perfect how dull we’d find it. I talked to real live Russians and Ukrainians last week at a conference, not the sort you see on TV. All that these smart people wanted was to get on with their lives, better themselves and their prospects, become remarkably successful. Putin and Poroschenko seemed a million miles away from the reality of life I was hearing about.

Nearly all politicians we are told are increasingly aggrieved by the apathy and active dislike the electorate feels towards them (and that includes you too Nigel.)  It’s because they really don’t have our interest at heart at all. They want to do their own thing and create their own perfection. Their persistent criticism of business seems a bit odd.

Business generates wealth, generates opportunities, generates jobs and generates happiness. Not perfect but pretty good.

Innovation is seldom perfect either. The first version of almost everything is slightly defective. Have you ever had a “new improved” mobile phone that wasn’t “new and nearly improved but not quite yet.”  But that striving to improve is what appeals not the perfection. Psychologist Carol Dwek established praise of effort has a much more beneficial effect on recipients than if they are praised for their talent.

On Friday we went to a promenade performance at St Paul’s Cathedral by the Cardinall’s Musick, a group of accomplished singers whose speciality is early English Church music by composers like Tallis and Byrd. And it was remarkable because we were there watching something being created live with all the risks that entails.

Listening and having our hearts and minds moved. Mere perfection would have been plastic and still next to this live experience.

WHO'S IN CHARGE NOW?

It used to be so easy.

There were people who were in charge and there were those who obeyed them. Think of school. Think of work. Think of society. Society was neither big nor was it small; it was just a perfect triangle of rulers at the top and the ruled at the bottom - kings and subjects.

And then, following the American model of checks and balances, we had the executive, the legislature and the judiciary and, added to that, the free press. Remember Watergate, that moment when all rulers trembled. Followed by a period when through processes of consultation in companies, concepts like referenda in politics, abnegation of decision making to others (“this one has to go to Brussels for a ruling”) and an over eager use of market research,  the tree of ruling has been damagingly shaken. We have delegated the decision making process and those whom a one-time gardener of mine used to grimly call “the authorities”,  are now no longer in authority or, more to the point, have any authority.

And it’s been, happening again and again and again. Dictators, Party Leaders, MPs, Police, Media have all lost their influence and next? It’ll probably be the judiciary because it’s time for the biters to be bitten as the always wise Matthew Parrish put it.

I don’t know about you but I’ve never had a greater sense of power. If I don’t like something that’s been done or the way it’s being done I shall complain and kick up a fuss. That’s what social media can help me do but beyond that the so-called authorities are running so scared that any blip on their political or publicity radar will make them fumble with their bone china strategies.

Which brings me to marketing. I’m rewriting my book Brilliant Marketing for its 2nd edition. Since 2008 when I first wrote it much has changed. As marketers we used to practise mass-marketing, what Seth Godin calls “interruption marketing” and power-marketing…telling people what to think and do. Marketing was once a baseball bat of a weapon where we stunned consumers first and then left it to salesmen to finish them off (closing the sale we called it), now we are using conversation, irony and gestures of friendship. We are building relationships not inducing transactions (or we should be.)

Most of all, we, the customers, are in charge. Let’s hope we use this better than the ones that went before us.