by Michael Cayley & Jonathan Salem Baskin

Lincoln and Roosevelt are heralded as great American leaders in
times of crisis, and their vision and fortitude are recognized as
drivers of their historic accomplishments. However, we think their
greatness had far more to do with their abilities to be catalysts for
network effects.

If we’re right, it reveals a very different interpretation of the
calls we’re hearing for “leadership” to restore confidence in our
economic system. In fact, there’s a good chance that no government
policy gesture or announcement will mollify the worries of businesses
and consumers, let alone stabilize the markets.

Confidence must emerge from the networks in which we all participate. We need to lead ourselves.

This raises intriguing issues and opportunities for corporate marketers looking to craft a way forward.

“In times of uncertainty consumers rely more on trusted
relationships when making purchasing decisions,” says Dr. Brent
Simpson, an expert at the University of South Carolina who specializes
in understanding how social order is formed.

Stanford University’s Matt Jackson, a leading social network
theorist, adds: “People’s friends and trusted social relationships are
important in influencing their behavior, and people learn from and
emulate their friends. Attitude certainly can play into that,
especially in turbulent times.”

So what does this mean for businesses directly impacted by the
financial crisis, like banks, brokerages, and insurance companies, as
well as any consumer business facing the prospect of declining (or less
profitable) sales?

First and foremost, you can’t brand your way out of it. You can’t
rely spin doctors to declare your path through the crisis; your
customers must see and verify it. While your hired guns are hatching
ads and press releases to statically “position” the situation, your
networks are trading information and defining it in real-time.

And that information, whether accurate or not, has absolutely
nothing to do with how the brand has been envisioned, promised, or
promoted. Every network is founded upon the tangible realities of
action and reaction, just as the mechanism of their function is cause
and effect.

How do you empower these networks to step up and lead?

* Know your networks. Invest in software to map connections between people and content.

* Move your enterprise closer to customers, employees, partners and
investors. In the past we talked about flattening hierarchies; now it
is time to integrate internal & external sources of value.

* Trust opportunities that emerge from the exchange (don’t just talk, and certainly don’t lecture).

* Make information a utility as ubiquitous as electrical light. If
what you share isn’t affirmed and forwarded, don’t repeat it…instead,
recast or reimagine it, and find new ways to prove it to your networks.

* Demand feedback and ideas.

* Stop looking for ‘home runs’ and play ‘singles and doubles’ by
finding small wins, frequent trials. Make constant adjustments.
Allocate resources towinners and abandon losers without blame.

The larger revelation of today’s various crises is that the era of
symbolic branding is waning, if not over. The woes of the financial
institutions have graphically illustrated to us why.

It was always untenable for lenders to ignore the details of
weak/bad relationships and to expect instead that homes or property
(i.e. commodities) would appreciate in value with no accord to the
strength of home owners (i.e. the source of value that differentiated
the commodity). Instead of accessing and fostering the relationship to
make the loan a better product, the banker chooses to focus on the
derivatives.

All businesses face similar risks. From toothpaste to software
services, consumer brands invite significant downside threats when they
focus on manufactured identify and perception, and not on the drivers
of true business strength: connection, interaction, involvement,
collaboration, consumption and the other aspects of human behavior.

There are no brands, or businesses, without the networks of people
who make them real. It is in, and through, the behaviors of these
networks that the Lincolns and Roosevelts for our business and social
communities will ultimately arise.

Jonathan Salem Baskin and Michael Cayley met through the concurrent release of their manifestos in the 50th issue of ChangeThis.

Jonathan Salem Baskin recently released the book Branding Only Works
on Cattle. This post also appears on Jonathan’s blog at
http://dimbulb.typepad.com.