Leading with "AND" (Part 6 - Where 1 + 1 = 1000)

There is a trend in the marketplace that is not necessarily new. It seems like brands and corporations are excited about collaborations and partnerships with other brands in order to remain relevant, add excitement and uniqueness, and boost revenue and NPS.

This is certainly a prime example of the ‘Power of “AND”’ at work.

Take one prime example that I am infatuated with. When adidas and Allbirds announced they were collaborating on an environmentally friendly running shoe, to me, that put a dent in the universe (to quote Steve Jobs) – anything was possible. Firstly, adidas is at least 40 times bigger in terms of revenue and more than that wrt global reach and brand recognition. Allbirds is a relatively new niche player in the footwear category that prides itself on doing well by doing good especially as it relates to the environment, its processes, and the materials they choose and develop (they have branched into apparel and accessories just recently).

This was a creative idea that took courage and confidence to pull off. adidas benefits from being aligned with a hip, environmentally friendly, and cool brand. Allbirds gets to be associated with a global brand superpower with reach and recognition that would take decades to build. The brainstorming and facilitation were no doubt led by “AND” thinking and they unleashed an increased amount of energy in doing so together than they would have separately. (By the way, adidas is also partnering with Peloton on apparel and accessories as well – but that seems more obvious to me than Allbirds – an erstwhile competitor).

There is all manner of collaborations that happen in the apparel/footwear space (including Jill Sander x Uniqlo, Louis Vuitton x NBA, Gucci x The North Face, Kith x BMW, Gap x Kanye, Torrid x Betsey Johnson, Crocs x Justin Bieber, Nike Air Jordan x Dior, IKEA x MUDD Jeans to name a few). Some of these are an out-and-out attempt to attract a different demographic or psychographic cohort or there is huge alignment in missions and values – I get that. But a few are mind-blowing in terms of their affiliation and creativity – and that is what Leading with “AND” is all about.

“Destructive innovation can hurt, especially if you are not the one doing the disrupting” – Clay Christenson

The term ‘creative destruction’ was first coined by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942. ... Basically, the theory of creative destruction assumes that long-standing arrangements and assumptions must be destroyed to free up resources and energy to be deployed for innovation.

In this ever-changing, fast-paced, technologically advanced global economy, organizations need to creatively destruct themselves especially when their products or services are popular. If they themselves don’t disrupt their own market, a competitor surely will. Companies who have successfully managed to disrupt themselves have led with “AND” as they see the importance of innovation and disrupting their own well-oiled offering with the next best thing it will evolve to while being successful at the latter. But unfortunately, there are more examples of companies that could have and should have disrupted themselves and eventually drifted into either oblivion or long-term mediocrity.

Take Blockbuster. We all know that story by now as we craved renting movies from their hundreds of stores - business was booming. But as CDs came to prominence over video cassettes, an upstart named Netflix came along and started sending us our CD movies by mail. The difference between Blockbuster and Netflix was that each had the same opportunity to creatively destruct their own business by evolving into streaming services – the next wave of watching movies at home. You know the moral of that story as Netflix pivoted completely to streaming while running a successful mail-order business. Blockbuster did nothing and went bankrupt.

Take Barnes and Noble (or Borders). They had the same bricks and mortar model as Blockbuster but sold books in hundreds of stores. They didn’t see what was coming until it was too late. Along comes a guy named Jeff Bezos who launches an online bookstore with a larger catalog than anyone could imagine. He then has the audacity to innovate in a disruptive manner the very notion of holding a physical book and creates the e-book called the Kindle and now hundreds of books are in your hand just like hundreds of movies are on your tv or laptop. Barnes and Noble was in a perfectly good position to creatively destruct their business but they didn’t lead with “AND”.

Take IBM. They were way ahead of their time in developing and engineering mainframe computers and actually developed the first desktop computer that caught a certain Steve Jobs’ eye wandering through the basement at HQ. He asked them what that was and they replied they didn’t think it was going to be on their radar and so he and Steve Wozniak bought it from them. The rest is the history of one of the most successful companies on earth – Apple. IBM certainly wasn’t into creative destruction – they were into incremental improvements on their mainframe models. But if they had anyone leading with “AND”, they should have found a way to do both and understood that a personal computer would be a much larger market than the large mainframes they were selling.

The moral of the story is it takes Leading with “AND” to properly unleash the creative power in an organization. It takes that mindset of possibility and what-if scenario planning to properly see around the corner as to what is next, even if it means disrupting your own current business model for the next best thing. Do not settle for “OR” and “BUT” in your brainstorming and creative strategy sessions - embrace the power of “AND”.

Lloyd A. Perlmutter is Founder/President of Veritas Advisory, LLC and has been leading and advising organizations for over 35 years. Call 248-794-9673 to have a meaningful and powerful conversation.