Team leader, is your creative designer making you see red?

Remote work is creating a divide among practices in the workplace. Read these three tips for better understanding your creative colleague as a budding project manager.

Alright, I’ll admit. I’m a late-blooming Jodel user. The app in question is an anonymous messaging platform originally targeted for university students, where – along with the #techgossip channel – I keep an eye on the working life debate, which is known for exaggeration and harsh generalizations.

Having monitored the #AdAgency channel for a year now, the amount of frustration towards project managers has been striking. Why are these workhorses of working life being so brutally disrespected? Can these people possibly be serious?

Going through the threads of #AdAgency, one is prone to visualizing the Teams-hopping team leaders as tormenting schedulers and concept vandalizers. Very few of them seem to understand a thing about graphic design. Of course the discontentment might just be trolling or a more general dissatisfaction with the remote era and the management styles that have come with it. Yet, I do think that behind the phenomenon lies a more treacherous change.

Could you get this done… End of day?

With remote work the variety of working methods expands. A recent Harvard Business Review article – with a Finnish tint – claims the coordination skills of middle management are being put to the test like never before. The remote era poses quite a challenge for rookie project managers.

One main problem is that the working habits of string-pulling project managers and their creative colleagues rarely intertwine.

If you haven’t led a product launch in the pre-pandemic world, understanding the nuances of creating a concept or a visual identity from the perspective of your own home might not come easy. And how could a project manager succeed in their job with a mere theoretical understanding of what the creatives do?

So do your creative colleague a favor and memorize these three tips:

1.Brief your team and be available.

“He (the project manager) constantly tosses around so-called brilliant ideas that have nothing to do with the client’s brief or goals.” – a fed up Jodeler.

The illusion of being a solo artist, which is promoted by remote working, easily drives a project manager into thinking project progress depends solely on their own talent. You email your colleagues thinking you’ll save everyone’s time by dropping futile meetings, and everything will be ready on time. It’ll work itself out.

But no. No one will read your emails, internalize them nor finish their tasks, so don’t presume. Give personal briefs when needed, and share your thoughts on the next phases early on. The first step is being available and providing answers to even the hardest questions.

2.Pushing the creative side will only get you grumbles.

“What to do with a project manager that pushes in every planning meeting, loves brainstorming and her own voice, but doesn’t understand why a concept should be necessary?” – a Jodeler.

A project manager breathing on creatives’ necks often stirs up grumbes about the value of creative work, unrealistic production schedules and a lack of shared vision.

It’s fine if the manager can’t outline the time it takes to develop a concept or a key message at the start of a project. But if this is the case, hurried schedule updates and double exclamation points won’t help.

Admit what you don’t know. Communicate. The client can wait for that small second.

Give the team a chance to participate in scheduling the production and make space for sharing thoughts together. It would be silly not to utilize the skills of the whole team, now wouldn’t it. And oh – listen to what your team tells you.

3.Revise your team’s core expertise – now.

“I need to shift down, yoga just doesn’t do it anymore. Where can a project manager go to collect dust and wait for retirement? Hit me with your best tips.” – a pondering Jodeler.

During the last one and a half years, dozens of fresh project managers of the remote era have rushed to the field. Sadly, remote work has given them useless tools to understand the phases of creative design.

Luckily your workplace community and dear colleagues can help conserve this skill.

Why not organize an internal revision, a workshop or a short course to reminisce what your main area of expertise actually is, see how your team’s graphic design or animation skills have developed during the pandemic and find your hidden copywrite talents?

I promise that astonishing stuff will come up. Exactly the kind of ideas you’ll later stumble upon on Jodel.

Why do we hate going to work on Mondays?

While writing a book on the power of change with Mika Sutinen, Chairman of the Board of Ellun Kanat, Mika threw out a question: if humans are naturally curious, why aren’t organisations (that are made up of these people)? This is a question worth thinking about a bit. The dissection might also give us some insight into why we are pissed off/tired/fed up/exhausted when Monday comes and we have to go to work.

We want our curiosity back! So what’s the hold-up in organisations?

Humankind has always wanted to be exposed to the new. We have adapted, but we have also thrived because we have always stayed on the move and never stagnated. It’s in our genes, and it’s one of our most significant traits. Neophilia, or novelty attraction, is a theme that appears in academic research and in psychology literature. Along with reward dependency, avoidance of unpleasant things and perseverance, neophilia is considered one of the four components of human temperament, says Leonard Mlodinow in his book Elastic. While today’s world demands a tremendous capacity for change, it also requires that we simply lean on the power we have had all along, one of the things that make us human. Our ability and willingness to adapt, explore and create new ideas.

If humans are naturally curious, why aren’t organisations (that are made up of these people)?

In his book Alive at Work, London Business School professor Dan Cable goes even further: the human body and mind are not meant for routine and repetition, but for exploration, experimentation and learning. Dan echoes the idea of our book about change: curiosity, creativity and the courage to experiment are innate in us. The flip side is that when work becomes repetitive, bureaucratic and/or highly controlled, it becomes oppressive, restrictive or at the very least boring and unmotivating.

A culture of control is the opposite of curiosity. In the book The Fearless Organization, Amy Edmonson references to research on the unwritten rules of organisations that create a landscape free of curiosity:

Don’t ask questions or criticise something your boss has been involved in doing.

Don’t speak up or suggest anything if you don’t have enough data.

Don’t talk about problems if your boss is present.

Don’t raise issues or complicate a project by disrupting it, as this will lead to a stalled career development.

And then you’ll be pissed off about going to work on Monday.

A curious organisation wants to know, knowledge creates experiences and motivation to act, and action creates new and better ways, innovations and ideas. Significant innovations are not born out of answers, but out of questions, even the tricky ones: out of curiosity.

Another contradiction between a curious person and a curious organisation is efficiency. Despite what we might imagine based on the self-help section, life is not mathematics, and happiness does not necessarily stem from 24 hours of maximum efficiency. A good working life is not a mathematical equation but a human equation.

In efficiency thinking, we easily fall into a rigid role of performing our own expertise. We already know that Ford’s conveyor belt model was efficient but devastating in terms of the joy of work. However, as if by accident, we have slipped into a relatively narrow role of execution in our thinking. We do our bit without ever seeing the end result.

Secondly, we have forgotten relationships and their essential impact on the meaningfulness of work. An organisational culture based solely on individual performance wastes a vast resource. In a complex world, great deeds are done together, not alone. If we want to feel mentally safe and trusted, we need more collaboration, a better understanding of team dynamics and time to build meaningful and whole relationships. Collective curiosity can be built on top of a culture of trust. If employees are judged and rewarded only based on individual performance, no one will bother to create anything that is shared. Behind a successful team is a common shared purpose of existence that individuals can connect to deeper personal meanings.

If you were to ask me what the purpose of (work) life is, I would say this:

In a fun and bright group of people, to build together through curiosity, adventures with more profound and significant meanings than the adventure itself.

In the search for lost motivation, it may not be worthwhile for an organisation to limit itself to the question ”why?”. It is at least as necessary to answer the question ”how?”. With curiosity.

Crisis communication exercise for the executive team

The Change Agency Ellun Kanat is Seeking a New CEO!

Ellun Kanat is nearing its twenties as a change agency, gearing up for another leap forward. Would the winds of change blow you into our office as the new CEO?

According to Taloustutkimus’ communication industry image study, we’re Finland’s most recognized and one of the most visionary and creative communication agencies out there. Our strategic approach is particularly esteemed. As a change agency, we’re known for our ability to help clients see and implement change.

Watch Mika’s greetings for you:

We believe that adaptability is the key to our clients’ future success, meaning the ability to understand, communicate, and innovate in a changing environment in a way that builds trust. The most significant forces of change in the 2020s are societal. So, whoever can foster trust within their stakeholders will soar in growth and change the world for the better.

Let us introduce ourselves first.

Ellun Kanat is a consultancy firm whose superpower lies in identifying the societal forces of change and the stakeholders that critical to our clients’ business success. We help our clients adapt their business and practices in an ever-changing world in a way that fosters trust with their key stakeholders.

We help our clients in the following service areas:

• Strategy and Change Management

• Brands and Design

• Public Affairs and Corporate Activism

• Crisis Communication and Confidence Risks

• Strategic Communication

Exploration Zone!

Together with our clients, we’re changing the world for the better, which also guides our culture. Our principles of social responsibility include taking care of employee well-being and resilience, openness, responsible leadership, lifelong learning and individual career paths, fair compensation, as well as fostering diversity and equality.

Our actions are guided by the following values and principles:

PARTNERSHIP PRINCIPLE. We don’t leave anyone behind, not our colleague or a client. Partnership includes deep trust and respect. We work together, and we are responsible together.

CONFLICT READINESS. We believe in direct speech, and a respectful way to give honest feedback. We dare to challenge ourselves, each other, and the client.

CURIOSITY AND OPENNESS. We do things that haven’t been done before and break boundaries. We live for change, learning new things, and changing the world together. We strive for absolute openness. All tasks and responsibilities, as well as all financial information, are open to everyone.

WE LIVE FOR CHANGE. We have both the drive to do and the ability to hatch ideas. We’re enthusiastic thinkers and doers who eagerly venture into the Exploration Zone. We immerse ourselves in the client’s world with interest and eagerness.

So, as long as the work gets done with top quality, everyone is free to choose how, where, and when to do it. This allows everyone to shape their life the way they want and to have fun. We don’t make rules just for the sake of certainty; we solve problems as they arise.

What would we offer you?

The opportunity to lead a visionary and creative, agile and professional team in a top company whose thinking leans towards the future and the opportunities it brings, and through which miracles can be worked for our clients. In short: speed and danger, challenges and new prospects, the development of the entire industry, and the improvement of the world through our clients.

Ellun Kanat is a group of the best thinkers in its field in Finland, who are at their top game in an atmosphere that allows for sufficient autonomy with good leadership. We’re collectively guided and stick our tongues out at pecking orders. We’re team players, making stars out of our clients and each other. And we’re hungry for growth and development. The best experts in their field deserve the best possible captain.

In addition to the usual CEO skills (participatory board work, goal setting, and reporting):

• You’re an excellent people leader. You have the ability to lead, inspire, and influence people. Success in this requires good interpersonal skills. A creative organization requires a lot from its leader. You have evidence of leading expert work and experts. You can set realistic but ambitious goals and inspire the team to exceed them and themselves. As Ellun Kanat CEO, you would lead based on our culture, preserving what’s excellent and unique about us.

• You’re an inspiring and visionary strategic thinker who can engage in strategic planning, grasp future trends and impacts, are willing to innovate, and can communicate your ideas enthusiastically. You’ve got excellent communication and interpersonal skills, both internally and externally. You’re not afraid to put yourself out there, even in the public eye, and be a beacon for our industry.

• You love our clients and get a kick out of exceeding their expectations every time.

• You see opportunities where others see roadblocks, and you’ve got a track record of successful ventures. You’ve led growth initiatives, and selling comes naturally to you. You navigate through challenging times with confidence and experience. You’ve managed complex projects, and your deep understanding of change management translates into actionable plans. You’re a multitasker who can juggle many responsibilities effortlessly. You involve the team in decision-making and don’t seclude yourself in a corner office. Well, we don’t even have those. You bring comprehensive commercial experience, either in running a business or leading its operations.

•You have a strong ethical and moral compass.

• You’re eager to explore the unknown, always hungry to learn, understand change, and adapt to a shifting world.

Sounds like a lot, right? It is!

See, we’ve been lucky with our CEOs in the past.

For the last decade, our CEO, Taru Tujunen, has steered the ship successfully. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the company has thrived under Taru’s leadership. Currently, we’re a solid team of 42 strategic thinkers generating around 5 million in revenue, ready to tackle the ever-changing world.

Taru Tujunen is joining Ellun Kanat board and remains one of our major shareholders. So, we’re not saying goodbye; Taru’s expertise will still be invaluable, just in a different role.

We’re casting a wide net for our next CEO because you might be in a place where headhunters won’t think to look. You might be someone’s friend, who’d be the perfect fit for us and might pass this opportunity along.

If this sounds exciting to you:

The application period starts on March 4th and ends on April 2nd. Our aim is to make the selection by spring. Send your applications (starting March 4th) and any questions to Kirsi (kirsi.piha@ellunkanat.fi.)

We’re looking forward to meeting you!

Is there room for grace in the climate discussion?

We live in a relentless era. A steady feed of disconcerting climate news fuels the debate around finding a culprit, and public discourse is so focused on pinning the onus onto someone that the virtue of grace is dismissed altogether. But what would a graceful climate discussion look like at best, and do we need it?

Apocalyptic images are featured on every other news illustration. One barren planet is on fire, the next is flooded. One account after another reports a sombre story: we’re headed towards a canyon with an anvil on the gas pedal. The climate crisis evokes sadness, anger and fear in most of us, and the rest are in denial because they can’t cope with these feelings.

This loop of negative sentiment is easy to get stuck on. With the weight of the world on our shoulders, it can be hard to lift our heads up to envision a better future.

It’s true that we need to change right now. It’s also true that all change isn’t in our power anymore – parts of the climate battle have already been lost. Greta Thunberg is right in screaming “how dare you?” How dare we dismiss our planet’s future? How dare we keep advocating for polluting industries? How dare we make our daily selfish choices and justify them as creatively as we do?

We need the truth, no matter how hard it is to face. But to handle the truth, we need other feelings too – besides this titlewave of nausea.

Mercy isn’t very hot in society right now. Instead of being forgiving, we focus on judging each other; those that are close to us and our enemies, imaginary or real. Social media is the perfect platform for ruthlessness: hostile and judgmental commentary thrives, while clemency withers. It’s simply easy to assume the worst of people, companies and nations.

But could there be some room for leniency in the climate discussion? Or do we not need it at all?

The climate crisis is the biggest threat our species is yet to encounter. Being lenient wouldn’t mean burying the issue, it could in fact influence the opposite. The thing is, there’s no time to hide the problem anymore, so we need to change tone – because all communication is about tactics. No-one wanted birds to die off, forests to catch fire and cities to flood. The climate crisis isn’t what we asked for, it happened in spite of what we wanted. Most of us want to salvage what’s left to save.

That’s why a strict approach to the climate discussion comes off so unreasonable. No-one will solve the climate crisis alone. Not climate-wise people, nor individual nations or companies. Those who look to individuals for solutions are as far off as those who think that the solutions only exist on the system level. Instead of bickering about whose responsibility this is, shouldn’t we try to find grace in the climate discussion?

Grace is searching for goodness. It’s understanding our shortcomings and that we all fail sometimes, against our best intentions. Cold showers and biweekly vegetarian meals alone won’t save the planet, but neither will dismissing them as virtue signalling. Climate activists require firms to change abruptly – with good reason – but the changes companies make often go unnoticed. Grace would be to acknowledge, embrace and commend these actions; celebrate the solutions, instead of settling for them.

There’s one solution to the climate crisis: making things happen and communicating about it. We already know what we need to do. Now’s not the time to wait for regulations and legislation. Now’s the time to do your part without bickering. It’s not ruthless to say there’s no space for freeloaders – it’s just the truth.

Amidst the climate crisis we all have three options: lead the change, follow the leaders or get out of the way.

Communicating your climate endeavors is not virtue signalling when the actions are significant. Communicating your actions may even inspire others to join. It’s safe to say no higher power is coming to atone for our climate sins, so we need to do it ourselves and hope we don’t die in the scuffle.

In the long run it’s easier to defend than to resist: hate is a great force for setting things in motion, but it doesn’t stand the test of time. Alongside hate we need hope, and grace. These will help us shape a horizon that we can’t yet see.

It takes more effort to be gracious with yourself, others and the big institutions than it does to curl up in hatred and blame. However, the emotional leap from judgement to grace is worth taking. A gracious eye sees the accomplishments beside the flaws. A success every now and then might do us some good, seen as how everyone’s just surviving from one crisis to the next.

Future foresight: companies should focus more on collective curiosity

Study: Finnish companies stumble when doing future foresight.

If a company wants to be a trailblazer in the industry it operates, it must be able to create disruptive innovations. In order to do that, a company must be a pro in recognising and evaluating the indicators of potential future events – that is to say, to be competent in future foresight. Especially due to recent events, the role of foresight in preparedness and strategy work has increased.

Despite the many functions of future foresight, companies in Finland often fail to execute it in a holistic manner. According to a study on future knowledge in Finnish companies, there are several issues that Finnish companies stumble upon when doing future foresight. We wanted to highlight two of them.

1. Future is not given – identify the possibilities

First, the future seems to be perceived as a given state that simply exists despite its often emerging nature. Future is both inevitable and emergent. There are things that will occur in the future, no matter what. Still, most things are shaped by our current actions and perceptions. Change is indisputable – whether you drive the change or the change disrupts you.

Future is both inevitable and emergent

Philosophically the question of predicting the future is an interesting one. You simply can’t have knowledge of something that hasn’t happened yet. This may at first appear as an obvious fact, but it’s often disregarded in business. We should never underestimate the power of words and conceptions: The way we see the future drives our actions today. Adapting a well-thought and wide definition of predicting leaves room for organisations to prepare and react to quick changes in business. When we understand that the future is not predetermined in a certain way, we also abandon the restrictive ideas of it.

What this means in practice is that we can have an effect on how things will turn out. But in order to drive change, we need to have a mindset that acknowledges this. If we act as if there were no alternative futures, it already narrows the scope of possibilities.

2. You’re chained to your perspective – give room for others

The other, and the most unsettling, discovery about strategic foresight practices in Finnish companies was that the perspective for acquiring future knowledge seems to be rather narrow. The primary sources for future knowledge come from a person’s immediate business environment and colleagues.

When it comes to a narrow scope of the future, the aim of pursuing the objective point of view is problematic. The first thing to do is to accept the obvious: You are always a prisoner of your own viewpoint. Accepting this may open your mindset to actually listen to employees instead of just trying to assume how they see things. It’s not worth it to risk your own business while trying to think on behalf of your employees. Constructing a building is collective work, and so is effective thinking. Why wouldn’t you share tasks in thinking too?

Be curious – it’s contagious

If you want to combat the previously presented two issues, start by challenging your own thinking by letting others tell you how they see things. Don’t just listen, pay attention. Don’t just question how others think, question yourself. Interact frequently with all parts of your organization. By being a curious leader you also cultivate the collective curiosity inside the whole organisation. Acknowledge how your position in your organization affects the way you see your business.

Acknowledge how your position in your organization affects the way you see your business

Collective curiosity needs to cross-section the whole organisation. Hence, make it systematic. For instance, a multinational software company Adobe discovered that most ideas and thoughts are bypassed by corporate bureaucracy and will never be uncovered. Adobe wanted to remove obstacles from the way of promising ideas, and created the Kickbox program to promote the input from people throughout the organization who typically wouldn’t be heard at the strategy planning meetings. Today Kickbox is a systematic open-source method for employee involvement used by thousands of multinational organisations.

Cisco, a multinational technology conglomerate, established the “My Innovation” ecosystem for innovating and sharing ideas that could shape the company’s future. In 2018, 70% of Cisco employees were users of My Innovation platform and 43% of employees were actively participating in Cisco’s innovation challenge. Cisco employs nearly 76 000 people. This means that more than 53 000 people are bringing forward indicators about plausible futures and actively participating in shaping the company’s future.

Providing space that attracts new insights also allows people to be more open with their thoughts. While we are openly curious, we want to understand new perspectives and listen to the new ideas that could otherwise easily be ignored. Making this gathering of viewpoints systematic, your own thinking will also develop. You’ve heard this before and we’ll say it again – “know that you know nothing”. A humble start might lead you far.

The future is not a given state that resides in the heads of the management. We should ask more often: What is going on in the world? Am I missing something? In a complex world you must see beyond your own field. Instead of focusing on what you already know, think about what you don’t. As science-fictionist William Gibson said: “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed”.

Are you interested in future foresight and scenario work? Ellun Kanat is looking for new trainees for 2022!
Application period ends in late November – read more on our website and follow our social media channels for more information.

All the perfect people around me

You would think that people could easily determine the meaning of things for themselves. But everything is relative when it comes to meaning. And more than we like to believe, meaning is influenced by the social context: what is valued by friends, what is valued or considered meaningful by the society around you, and what things were valued – or not valued – in your childhood home.

A good test to determine whether you think your work is meaningful and valuable is how you talk about it to others. Do Friday night conversations at the bar make you feel uncomfortable when others talk about their promotions, the world-saving purpose of their company, or the excellent company culture they spend their days working in? Or are you the one who readily tells others how excited you are about your work to build a valuable future not only for yourself and your company, but also for future generations? Or are you the one who was perfectly happy doing your job until you heard about all the great things your friends seem to be accomplishing every day?

Do you feel that you start the day more and more often satisfied with your life and your daily routine? When you wake up, the first thing you do is go to Instagram, where everyone has a perfect relationship, a wonderful family life, fashionable outfit choices and an eventful life that includes an impromptu trip to Punkaharju or Paris. Then you go to LinkedIn. A big mistake, especially when you’re tired after a full day’s work. Or tired even before that. How does everyone seem to get so much done? Some have been promoted, some have found their dream job, some are reaping board seats, and some are writing books on the very subject you’ve been planning a book on for ten years. But you haven’t had a chance because life…

By embellishing, we also create a reality that is no longer really anyone’s reality.

No worries. Next thing you know, you’re on Twitter, spewing all the bad stuff at everyone, getting into a squabble about some parking spaces in the city centre when you really have no opinion on the matter and shouting to the world how Sanna Marin’s bungalow is an insult to us all when in reality you couldn’t care less about the Prime Minister’s living arrangements and they don’t affect your life one bit. Except, of course, in relative terms. And meanings are created in this big picture. As they say, this is how things are perceived.

The good news is that we all lie, at least a little. Despite that perfect second-hand find, an Instagram influencer’s life is still a basic Tuesday or Thursday, with screaming kids, a nagging wife and a dog with the runs. The bad news is that by embellishing, we are also creating a reality that isn’t really anyone’s reality anymore. Yet it still affects us.

In his book Life is in Transitions, Bruce Feiler argues that all this has led to a situation where we no longer know how to tell the story of our own lives in a way where adversity is normal and is overcome by pushing through. Instead, our reality feels hopeless, our lives feel meaningless, and our adversity feels final.

So what does this have to do with working life and its meaningfulness?

As solution-oriented people, we are often sensitive to what we lack and less sensitive to what we already have. At our best, this trait drives us to improve everything in an organisation, from business to well-being at work. At worst, it makes us feel that (work) life is not meaningful. It’s constantly missing that something that would make it so.

We live in a world of fast action and change, which we ourselves accelerate by constantly being in many places at once.

We live in a world of complex and fragmented realities, with more choices than ever. It is possible that in our search for perfection, we will find nothing. Instead, we are constantly in between choices and not committed to anything. We are not satisfiers but optimisers. So we lack depth. At the same time, we are herd animals who have been caught up as ants on a big hill, where we efficiently perform only our own task without seeing the genius or the joy of the whole. So we lack a larger purpose. We live in an optimiser’s heaven. We live in a world of fast action and change, which we ourselves accelerate by constantly being in many places at once. Seneca once said that he who is everywhere is nowhere. The fast-paced way of life easily reduces experiences to superficial and fleeting moments that are not connected and do not form a meaningful continuum.

What if finding peace of mind through meditation, yoga and mindfulness is not the answer? What if it’s even simpler? What if we should start cultivating a focused state. To put away the stimuli and leave our comfort zone as concentration requires? Not just for the sake of work performance but for the sake of meaning. In the documentary, The Last Mountain, the father of Tom Ballard, a climber who died on a mountain in his thirties, says that “there is something very simple and primal about having only one task.”

That’s where meaning lies.

What will corporate responsibility focus on in the aftermath of the pandemic?

Time to exit the pandemic. Are you ready?

When Covid began, other global crises were effectively sidelined. Now, we’re beginning to see rays of light at the end of the tunnel. It’s time to resurface the responsibility issues that define how businesses operate, both today and in the post-pandemic world.

What does a responsibility trend mean? As opposed to the colloquial perception where trends come and go, the statistical definition for trend is a long term trajectory. Trends do not refer to the current situation we’re in. Therefore, trend lists should be considered roadmaps for the future.

Responsibility trends are the ground level: they’re actions that are required of everyone at the moment, and even more so in the future. Your company won’t distinguish itself by following trends, but you can’t really ignore them either. It’s good to know what the trends are, so you can shape your own operation accordingly.

But can companies afford responsibility measures, when they should be resuscitating their business? Can the younger generations that appreciate responsible consumption even afford to consume at all?

Even though a recuperating world will fuel inflation, the surge is expected to remain short-lived. The economy is recovering fast, and there’s no reason to assume that responsibility won’t become an integral value in a world torn apart by crises. The 2021 Edelman Trust barometer revealed that companies are the only institution that people trust. According to Edelman, businesses are trusted more than the media, governments or NGOs.

The same insights can be spotted in the Disruption Barometer by Ellun Kanat, which posits that people expect businesses to participate in solving difficult societal issues. It’s show time for companies: they need to prove themselves worthy of the trust and carry their weight as problem solvers.

We listed five responsibility trends in the post-pandemic world. Every business should consider at least the following when planning their future.

1. The climate and preserving biodiversity

It’s apparent that solving the climate crisis is, and needs to be, the principal focus in companies of all shapes and sizes. A dead planet won’t support jobs or production, and if a company’s climate and environment actions don’t stand scrutiny, the business has no right to exist.

Climate questions and biodiversity protection include, among others, reducing emissions and pursuing carbon negativity, solutions for absorbing emissions, and promoting circular economy. Moreover, primary production and raw material sourcing are increasingly attended to from a climate point of view. Water is also a hot topic: where can we find clean water, who does it belong to, and on what terms? Is water a human right, and if not, should it be? (Spoiler alert: yeah?)

Concrete measures that companies can take:

Tangible and ambitious climate goals, e.g. carbon neutrality or negativity by 2030
Paying attention to recycling packages and substituting plastic
Measures to preserve biodiversity at every stage of the production chain
Energy related solutions: renouncing fossil fuels, self-sufficient energy production, reducing energy usage, utilizing renewable energy sources

2. Responsible consumption

In the responsible consumption sector, consumers challenge businesses to practice fair and increasingly sustainable production. Clothes, food production, traveling and energy questions receive a lot of the attention. Consumers insist businesses commit to surpassing minimum production standards and want to be able to easily track a product’s supply chain and climate impact. Indeed, transparent supply chains are becoming an increasingly influential factor in purchase decisions. Supply chains must withstand both ecological and humane scrutiny.

Supply chains must withstand both ecological and humane scrutiny.

Concrete trends that firms can consider in their planning:

The end of fast fashion
Ground travel
Flexible vegetarianism and preference to plant-based products
Local food
Interest toward solar, wind, hydrogen and hydropower.
Requirements for transparent supply chains
Human rights of producers

3. Human capacity

Covid has changed the nature of work. A swift transition to remote work and the polarization of the workforce (white collar / service industry) have transformed public dialogue on working.

Once people return to their desks after exiting Covid, there are many questions to consider. Will offices continue to exist, are employees entitled to work at the office and should they be, what shape are people in mentally when they return, and will the dynamic of the workplace have changed?

With the Covid-induced uncertainty, more and more people are questioning their career choices. These doubts and the limited human capacity also have to do with how pleasant the work is: an increased number of people want to work in a company that shares their values and has a bigger purpose besides pursuing profits.

The Corona exit forces businesses to consider at least the following:

The changes and increased strain caused by remote work
A new form of leadership in remote work situations
Rejecting loneliness and fatigue at work and in society
The role of digitalisation in enabling human contact while also increasing loneliness
The mental capacity of people amidst Covid and climate concerns

4. Technological solutions to enable a carbon neutral future

Technological advances are rapidly transforming nearly all industries, from foodstuff to energy, communications, mobility and construction.

All technological solutions aim at more or less the same objective: a green, carbon neutral tomorrow. Green technologies inspire new business models in almost all sectors.

Green technologies inspire new business models in almost all sectors.

Independent of industry, a business should consider the following trends that pertain widely to mobility, energy production and equipment:

Equipment that requires less energy
New energy distribution grids
Green energy production
Absorbing carbon from the atmosphere
Hybrid and electric vehicles
Alternatives to air travel
Energy intelligent construction
AI in both manufacturing and sales
The possibility to communicate and work regardless of location

5. Responsibilities of the financial market

Bank of America, Wall Street, Financial Times. A growing number of financial market and media operators proclaim the end of capitalism, the climate awakening of banks, and the financial risk of industries that lean on fossil fuels.

Capital channels into future-proof and climate friendly investments, and the climate crisis is substantially defining the financial market. Covid resuscitation will be in the center of attention for a few years, but right next to it, growing by the minute, is the climate crisis.

So it’s high time for businesses to comb over their operations, investments and clients from a climate perspective. Does the climate crisis affect your clients’ solvency? Will you receive funding in the future? Can you divest from environmentally detrimental industries?

Trends that affect a firm’s financing are at least:

Emissions requirements in the financial sector
Capital withdrawing from industries that don’t practice sustainable responsibility and climate endeavors
Strong financing for green growth
Private investors’ enthusiasm towards responsible funds and companies

“What’s in it for me” or the global role of a brand

Branding is often a battle of two perspectives: are you creating value for the individual or solving global problems? Few brands excel at both, and the brand’s more prominent role in the world is often overshadowed, even if it would benefit the business. There are ways to do both, although it is not always easy.

The situation may be familiar: when managers, marketers and consultants start designing brands and communication strategies, the discussion often turns to whether to serve the customer or the world. It doesn’t take long to find a designer who sums up that, in the end, it’s all about the value perceived by the individual target audience member – “What’s in it for me?”

At least at Ellun Kanat, you don’t have to wait long for another designer to throw up a convincing amount of research data on how brands are expected to solve global problems, or at least problems bigger than the company itself.

So are we delivering value to the customer, the individual or solving global problems? Brands are made for customers, so the answer is probably yes to both; we are doing both. If customers perceive making the world a better place as an important selection criterion, then clearly, there is value for the customer.

The aim should be to find a way to better the world that most naturally fits into a profitable business for the company and convinces its target audience.

So our branding work, and that of other agencies, should be able to help clients find a way to better the world that most naturally fits into a profitable business for the company and convinces its target audience. So far, the overall picture still feels manageable and precisely what each of us portrays to the customer in our proposals. But I would argue that it may not be so simple after all. Unfortunately, many real-world examples also show that not many brands ultimately excel at both.

It’s not easy to give a specific answer to a customer’s what’s in it for me question in a way that paints a clear picture of how we are building a better world together. At the top level, it works, but when you refine the idea to make it stand out and thrive in a multichannel information overload, it’s easy to lose sight of one side or the other. Sadly, the brand’s more significant role in the world is often overshadowed.

A social understanding becomes easily obscured

At Ellun Kanat, we are particularly good at understanding the forces of social change and analytically applying them to all aspects of design. Virtually all of our commissions go through a social analysis at some point in the process. We believe this is a great strength and the key to success in many branding projects.

Last winter, our Design Director Sasu Haanpää realised that the social understanding had somehow been hidden in the final products of our brand portfolio. We conducted analyses and justified our narratives and choices with social movements. Still, the brand book was filtered through texts and images with a rather traditional feel, in which the social aspect was left out of the story. In practice, however, branding only kicks in when it moves into implementation. Hence, it makes no sense to leave the understanding of the context and social movements only in workshops and background materials. This observation was the starting point for our latest branding product development project.

The brand needs to be relevant to multiple stakeholders. Customers, staff and shareholders are already something, but today’s brand needs to look at the world more holistically.

To address the need for brands from a societal perspective and to enable brand activism with a bolder sense of action and leadership, we developed a couple of additional tools for brands.

At the heart of socially relevant branding is the understanding that a brand needs to be relevant to multiple stakeholders. Customers, staff and owners are already something, but today’s brand needs to look at the world more holistically. To map these stakeholders and create real and relevant brands for them, we developed the CSRE analysis. With this tool, we identify the key stakeholders as challengers, supporters, business framework-setters and enablers. In the planning phase, the tool brings a more holistic perspective, and in the crystallisation phase, it helps to prioritise and focus messages. In contrast, the implementation phase provides better guidance for targeted communication and action. In this way, the brand can be brought to life in a way that is naturally present in the social debate.

The importance of recognising the forces of change

Another new tool helps to monitor and identify the various drivers of change in society. The tool helps define navigating the turbulent seas of social movements and phenomena. The tool will be calibrated as part of our branding work, i.e. we will identify the phenomena we take for granted, identify the phenomena and debates we monitor as potential threats and those we see as opportunities.

We live in exceptionally uncertain times, where geopolitics, empowered minorities and crumbling structural injustice are putting brands and organisations at the mercy of significant pressures for change and risk-filled circumstances. Old tactics are no longer enough, so it is time to adopt new tools. For brands facing a more complex operating environment, we now not only have good analysis to offer as before but also tools to make brands more resilient in times of uncertainty.

Permission to change

When I was 16, I left for a 3-week language course in Menton, Southern France. I didn’t know anyone from the course, and there were no other Finns in the house. I realised I had an opportunity to change; no one knew me, so I could be anything.

I realized I could be any kind of Kirsi I wanted to be, and try to break away from the role I had assumed during my first 16 years. And I tried. I was no less myself, more like another dimension that had previously been scared to reveal itself due to existing expectations.

Later on, this experience has been an observation of crucial importance. People can change, a lot even, but it can be hard if those around them keep reminding them of “how they’ve always been” as a person, through their existence and their stagnant presumptions.

This experience and its value came back to me as I read Katy Milkman’s new book How to Change. Milkman has an intriguing way of writing about change from various points of view: how to change behaviour, reach targets that always manage to slip from one’s fingers, or how to transform into a person that one desires to be.

We all have our own inner “demons”, be it spending too much time on social media and Netflix or spending too little on sports or resting. How can someone change permanently?

Making change happen is always exciting, yet the most interesting part of the book might have been the role other people play in our transformation. The book provides an example where two personalities of a military academy, an exceptional achiever and an under-achiever, are put on the same team – a team in which the members interact together closely during the first years. The presumption was that the under-achievers would be motivated by team members to aim for better personal achievements.

This presumption was far off. The under-achievers formed their own inner circle and the exceptional achievers tended to hang by themselves. There was little to none interaction between them. The next test put average-level achievers together with the exceptional ones, which provided slightly more encouraging results. The average achievers found they had higher chances of becoming exceptional themselves, which motivated them to work more and eventually achieve higher results.

In any case, the Finnish proverb “you become the company you keep” is often accurate in many ways.

In firms and organisations, this is called culture. We aim to employ people that together form a culture that encourages exceptional achievements. Ambitious objectives are set and everyone strives for excellence. People spur each other forward. The end result is good.

This phenomenon can also have a different impact. We’re pigeonholed into personalities according to how our colleagues perceive us. In order to change, we often need to change jobs.

We’re pigeonholed into personalities according to how our colleagues perceive us.

If you enter a firm as an intern, is it possible you’re always seen as a youngster? You’re the eternal “hope for the future” even though you’ve been achieving top results for years. Does your role influence the opportunities you are given?

What if your place within the workplace is built around one mistake or failure? The role is going to be “the loser”. Or what if you are the one person who can hold all the strings at once, so you keep getting closer to burnout as people expect inhumane performances from you?

Are you the helper, the understanding one, the joker, the problem-solver, or the one who’s always asking for praise? Are you the target of an old joke? We all know the one joke that was made of us and it was fun in the moment, which quickly passed. Still, it keeps growing deeper roots within your colleagues. This shows the essence of how we are. Unchangeable.

Firms and corporations face immense change in an increasingly fastened space. Entire fields disappear, sustainability goals shape the core of business, and new startups breath in your neck. While startups may recruit people for specific needs according to their own business and the general market, established organisations face the challenge of changing each employee’s attitude, actions and habits. Otherwise the change never leaves the strategic document, and after a couple of years the entire project might be forgotten.

Established organisations face the challenge of changing each employee’s attitude, actions and habits.

Implementing changes and achieving strategic objectives in organisations depend on the members’ abilities to change. The most common reason for failing to execute a strategic change is that people continue to follow their old roles. Success is determined by how we manage to change our own attitudes and environments to become curious towards change.

Stanford Professor Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindsets is familiar to many. The growth mindset is one’s own belief in the human capacity to change. It is possible to become wiser if one gives it a chance, tries hard enough, and believes they can develop their intelligence. However, Dweck fails to include in her research how other people’s beliefs in someone’s ability to change might impact that person’s own beliefs – how roles tend to take permanent shapes, how they allow for little and slow change, and how one might be trapped by their existing role. The environment and atmosphere are often stronger than a person.

Philosopher Esa Saarinen describes beautifully how we form each other’s shared environments. Therefore, it’s essential to think about the kind of environment we create for others: do we perceive people without prejudice, expect them to constantly evolve and develop, prompt them to fill a bundle of stereotypes or, at best, allow them to remain the same? And if you think you’re not the judging type, reflect on it: when was the last time you said someone “always” does this or “always” says that? The word “never” also belongs in this category.

When was the last time you said someone “always” does this or “always” says that?

Organisations may often need external help in shaking these roles and expectations.

So, did I permanently change into a different Kirsi at Menton? No. But I did manage to release another version of myself in another environment. I also gained this understanding that people have many personalities, and that one should not remain captured by a specific role, which is still relevant today. Life is too short for us to play the role of someone else. This can be called a growth mindset. I try to remember this when it comes to others too, even though my husband always leaves his socks on the floor…

Ps. Katy Milkman, unlike many others, praises new year’s resolutions. Change is not a one time thing, it requires many steps both back and forth. A new year’s resolution is often the first step towards a change – even if you don’t achieve it the first time (read: I stopped going to the gym in February), it plants the seed for change. So go on, make those promises!