Adrian Swinscoe » Interviews

Today’s interview is with Keith Lewis, the UK Managing Director of Matchtech, the UK’s number 1 and multi-award winning recruitment agency in Engineering & Technology recruitment, and follows on from my recent interview: Our customer service and success is driven by happy people all striving for the same high standards: Interview with Will Beckett of Hawksmoor It was when they ranked No. 25 in the Sunday Times’ 100 Best Companies to work for in 2012 that I decided I’d like to find out more about what makes them tick and what makes them so successful. This interview makes up number forty-nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service. Here’s the highlights from the interview I did with Keith: Matchtech is the UK’s number 1 Engineering recruitment agency in Engineering & Technology recruitment. They offer their clients specialist recruitment and Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) services. The business that Keith runs is a predominantly UK based but their global footprint is growing as they have followed their clients overseas and have established in-country solutions for them. They have a very high level of employee engagement and low staff turnover. In 2012, Matchtech Group was announced as 25th in the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For. Entering the competition was a way of benchmarking themselves and gaining recognition for the work that they are doing and the success they are having. It's also a good way of attracting talent. Engagement has been more challenging as they have grown from a single site firm to one that operates from a number of different offices. However, to maintain that level of engagement some of the key things that they do to maintain engagement are: One, every 3 months, at least, the CEO of the Group, Keith (the UK MD), the Finance Director and members of the Group Board present to all of the staff at all locations about how the business is doing and what the short, medium and long terms plans for the business are. Two, the CEO of the Group, Keith (the UK MD) and the Finance Director conduct monthly lunches with the staff where an open invite goes out to all staff. These are conducted as Q&A sessions and staff at any level can come and talk about any issues that are relevant to them. Three, cross function and department working groups are set up to promote cross-business working, communication and selling so that they can provide their customers with the sort of holistic service that they need and deserve. Four, a great social, sports and volunteering scene exists within the company and, five, there is a continuous and rigorous training programme, linked to qualifications, for all members of staff. The result is a great environment, high productivity and a very committed team. As recognition of their efforts, in 2012 they were voted in The Most Admired Recruitment Company by their peers at The Recruitment International Awards. Keith's top tips for getting the most out of your teams: 1. Engage with all of your people at all levels of the business; 2. Listen and respond. That doesn't mean giving everyone everything they want but listening and then responding will go a long way to helping people feel like they are being paid attention to and their opinion matters; 3. Regular communication with the team on where the business is going and what it stands for. Your frontline people represent the business and they drive the business forward; and 4. Finally, succession planning is vital as it means you will be thinking long term and not just short-term. When asked what he would like to plug, Keith mention that Matchtech has just launched the Engineering Showcase, a gallery which aims to celebrate celebrate engineering professionals and organisations, and the work they do on a daily basis.

Today’s interview is with Will Beckett of Hawksmoor, a rapidly growing restaurant brand in London, and follows on from my recent interview: Customer service, people and how caring does scale – Interview with Gary Vaynerchuk #1aDayQandA It was when the...

Today’s interview is with Gary Vaynerchuk and follows on from my recent interview: Unruly engagement, creativity and collaboration is built on two things: People and Places - Interview with Sarah Wood of Unruly Media. If you haven't heard of Gary then suffice it to say he is a successful social media and wine entrepreneur, sought after and entertaining speaker and best-selling author. You can also learn more about him in the bio below. This interview makes up number forty-seven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service. Also, this interview is part of Gary's #1aDayQandA interview series where he has committed to giving 365 short interviews to different people about different topics over the course of this year…some effort! Here’s the highlights from the interview I did with Gary: Business is human and people make emotional decisions Gary wonders why more businesses don't spend more time on customer retention rather than customer acquisition given that the economics points to the value in doing so. The world has been driven more by IQ than EQ but this is changing Gary believes that transformation of your business into being more customer centric has two essential elements. One, your whole company belief system has to come from a place where you fundamentally care about your customers and it's not just lip service. Two, if businesses want to deliver better service and a better experience then they need to invest in it. And, that could mean cutting ineffective spend on things like advertising and spending more on people that actually deliver your service, your experience and scale your caring. People often talk about how people and service doesn't 'scale', especially on social media. However, Gary doesn't necessarily agree with that and is more focused on using money in your business where it will generate returns. For example: rather than spending $3 million on a Superbowl ad why not hire 60 people at $50k a year to deliver better service on Twitter or other social media channels or give this budget to an agency to deliver it for you. Something like this is not often considered or talked about in the business world as it refers to 'non-working' media ie. not advertising. However, this is likely to become more and more talked about as more and more people realise that it is the human being that is delivering value to businesses. That doesn't mean that companies need to go out and hire lots of higher paid people to deliver better service as it's not always about the amount that someone gets paid. Often and just as important is the attitude of the people and the atmosphere that you create for them. If you care for them then they are more likely to care for your customers. Gary's top three tips to transform your business into being more customer centric: One, audit your business to find out what you are spending your money on (advertising, operations etc) for what return. Being able to afford to transform your business is just as important as wanting to transform your business. Gary believes that most organisations are spending 20-30% of their money for no return. Two, take that 20-30% and invest in (more) people so that they can execute whatever you think is extraordinary service. Three, restructure your organisation and leadership to be able to deliver on that and continue monitoring to make sure it is working. Gary has a new book coming out in the Autumn called Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy World and Gary has promised to come back and talk to me again about the book when it is out. About Gary (taken from his About page) Meet Gary Vaynerchuk, a 36 year old New York Times and Wall Street Journal Best-Selling author who is also a self-trained wine and social media expert. From a young age,

Today’s interview is with Sarah Wood of Unruly Media and follows on from my recent interview: Social business is not just social media, it takes real transformation – Interview with Brad W Martin and Vala Afshar of Enterasys. Founded in 2006 by Scott Button, Matthew Cooke and Sarah Wood, Unruly has 120+ full time employees and offices in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, LA, London, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Sydney. Unruly has delivered, tracked and audited 1.65 billion video views across 2,000+ successful social video campaigns for over 400 brands since 2007. Milestone campaigns include T-Mobile’s Life’s for Sharing series, Evian’s global Roller Babies hit, Old Spice’s Man Your Man Could Smell Like campaign and Coca-Cola’s Happiness series. Unruly’s mission is simple: to deliver the most awesome social video campaigns on the planet. However, it was when they ranked No. 27 in the Sunday Times' 100 Best Small Companies to work for in 2012 that I decided I'd like to find out more about what makes them tick and what makes them so successful. This interview makes up number forty-six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service. Here's the highlights from the interview I did with Sarah: Content marketing is becoming increasingly popular as it can apply to both global brands and local brands all things in between. Content marketing has an inherent resilience Just realised some research related to The Superbowl that says that 50% of all views of video content related to The Superbowl comes one month after the event. Unruly Media were featured in the Sunday Times Best Small Companies in 2012 and were recently placed Deloitte's Tech 50 in the UK and EMEA. Most proud of the Sunday Times award. Entered because they want to get feedback from their people as they had been growing very fast over the preceding months and felt that they wanted to get some objective feedback about how they were doing as founders and management. One of the things they found was that people who had joined the company early felt very differently about the company and how it should be run as compared to those that had joined later when the company was more established. Culture is a big part of their success and growth and one of the things that they do to keep things fun and exciting is create opportunities for people to do and try new things. Things that take them out of their work comfort zone. We encourage people to do new things. If it doesn't go to plan then that's okay but all of this is backed up by training and support as they are all learning new things all of the time. They take an 'agile' approach to their software development and their culture, where they are always making small incremental changes. To this is tough as it demands lots of communication. Their culture of creativity and collaboration is built on two things: People and Places. They don't have an HR team. They have a People and Places team. When they recruit they look for PANDAS (Positive and passionate, Anything is Possible, Nurturing with no ego, Determined, A+ players and Social creatures). If you get someone with those qualities then they are very likely to want to brainstorm, collaborate and share ideas. Combine that with the right Places where people can come together. Sarah believes the kitchen table is the most important bit of furniture that you can ever have in a business as it a place where people can come together and chat. They look to create spaces where people can have random meetings and chats. It's all about enabling serendipitous exchanges between people that wouldn't normally speak together. You need 1,000 ideas to find the one great one. All of this has a positive impact on productivity and retention but, also,

Today’s interview is with Vala Afshar and Brad W. Martin of Enterays who have recently written a book called The Pursuit of Social Business Excellence, which charts Enterasys' transformation into a truly social business. This interview follows on from...

Today’s interview is with Neville Hobson, an entrepreneurial communications professional who has been blogging since 2002 and podcasting since 2005. This interview came about after Neville posted on his blog in the middle of December that he started blogging ten years ago. Following that post, I was thrilled when he agreed to be interviewed for my blog about the lessons that he had learnt from his years of blogging and podcasting. This interview follows on from my recent interview with Jacob Morgan Solve customer and business problems faster through collaboration and makes up number forty-four in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service. Highlights from the interview: Neville has a curiousity for technology and how people use it Neville has been blogging for ten years He started out of curiousity to see if it it was something that he wanted to do and started using blogging as an online diary of sorts. However, initially was a very infrequent blogger and has realised over time that you have to be clear as to why you are blogging Do want to share insight (thought leadership), do you want to think out loud, do you want to engage in discussion around a a certain issue etc Blogging has become a broad term and is not just about writing a blog but also encompasses Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc updates/posts Broadly, a blog allows people to get to know you over time and facilitates connections that may not have otherwise have happened The barriers to entry for blogging are effectively zero with so many free services around People worry about the technical side of things but if you can operate Word or another word-processing package you can write a blog post There are advantages to having your own self-hosted blog for a number of reasons including discoverability and control When someone googles you and nothing shows up that can say a lot about you to the person doing the search and can often be worse than finding a negative comment Whether you like it or not everything is online or has an online presence these days Some people are not great writers so writing may not be the best route for them but there are lots of other choices whether video, audio, voice/video over a slide deck presentation. Because of those choices it makes it harder to not do it The biggest barrier to starting is fear. If you want to get started here's something to keep in mind: Write informally, conversationally, don't use jargon and write with energy and passion so it jumps from page. That does not mean that it needs to be frothy and full of hyperbole but that your users get a sense of who you are. Write something that you are interested in and that people will find useful Think about what people search for (keywords) Ask yourself this question: Do you know what keywords your customers are using when searching for the thing that you do? Not everyone will read your content on your blog so think about your headline as that is the most important part of your post when it comes to getting someone to read or share your post….a bit like a headline in a newspaper Try and write a headline that is 'tweetable' Attribute, cite and link to other content on the web - this will get your link building off to a good start Post frequently…Google loves new content Like most things that bring value, this requires time, energy, patience and commitment The reasons for podcasting in the US and the UK are very different. In the US, there was/is a general belief that radio in the US was not very good and people were looking for an alternative. However, in the UK it is different as the UK has really great radio. But, outside of mainstream radio you are hard pressed to find good business podcasts. Like blogging, the barriers to entry for podcasting are almost zero.

Today's interview is with Jacob Morgan, the Principal & Co-Founder of Chess Media Group, a management consulting and strategic advisory firm focused on collaboration. He has also authored of The Collaborative Organization, a best-selling book on collaboration strategy. Increasing collaboration within organisations using social tools like Chatter, Yammer and Jive etc is increasingly becoming an area of focus amongst businesses as they seek to leverage internal social business tools to help improve communication, efficiency, knowledge sharing, employee engagement and other issues. This interview follows on from my recent interview with Prof. John Seddon on Systems thinking, customer service and unlearning the way we do things and makes up number forty-three in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service. Highlights from the interview: Jacob published The Collaborative Organisation in the middle of 2012. He wrote the book on the back of a series of questions from clients that they were receiving about enterprise collaboration, how to do it, how to get support within an organisation, how to get started etc. Jacob also found that, at the time of writing, there wasn't a comprehensive resource on collaboration strategy that people could go and refer to around enterprise collaboration. The book focuses on collaboration on the new social digital platforms that are emerging like Chatter, Yammer, Jive etc Jacob highlights the following as the biggest barriers to the use of collaborative tools in organisations: Lack of resources; Company culture doesn't support collaboration; Managers themselves don't get behind it and don't use the tools themselves; Staff see the tools as just another 'add-on', just another initiative; There is no incentive for staff to use them; and Their use is not integrated into the employees' regular workflow. The main reasons why main organisations start to think about employing collaborative tools and strategies include: Employees are spending too much time in their inboxes, Staff find it hard to locate subject matter experts and people; Companies find it hard to align staff with goals; Employees typically work in silos and it's hard to get them out of their silos; Staff don't share information that could be beneficial to others outside of their department or physical location; Executives want a better insight into what is happening within their companies; Issues with employee engagement; and Companies want to leverage collective intelligence to fuel innovation. Jacob shares a story about Lowe's Home Improvement where one member of staff asked on their collaborative environment if any other stores had any spare stock of a particular product. This caught the attention of other stores who were having problems selling their stock of that item. They asked the original employee how she was able to sell so much of the product and she explained that she was conducting in-store demos of the product and that that was driving sales. Other stores started to adopt this technique and this materialised into an additional $1mill. in extra sales in a very short period of time. There is not set recipe to harness a higher level of collaboration. Sometimes, the environment and conditions may be right for collaboration but it can need kickstarting via something like appointing a group of local, regional or departmental leaders to lead the way and get collaboration started. Small as well as large companies can benefit from the increased use of collaborative tools. It's all about sharing ideas and information, getting people out of their inboxes and releasing the intelligence that sits in people's inboxes by making it available on an open and collaborative platform. Tops tips for getting started: 1. Understand the reason why increasing collaboration in your organisation is important; 2.

Back in November, I shared an interview with you called: Using systems thinking to improve customer satisfaction and employee engagement – Interview with Rob Brown of Aviva. I met Rob at an event run by John Seddon and Vanguard Consulting. John was...

At the end of last year, I set myself a number of goals for this blog. One of which was to interview Seth Godin. So, today I'm excited to share with you a recent interview I conducted with Seth about his new book project: The Icarus Deception. Seth is a bestselling author and a legend when it comes to marketing and business thought leadership. In our interview we talk about his latest book, the interesting way that he got it funded, why it is important to take risks and what is changing around us. This interview follows my recent interview (Commitment, clarity and fanatical customers and employees – Interview with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing) and makes up number forty-one in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love. I've intentionally tried to keep the highlights brief in this interview as I want to encourage you to listen to the conversation that Seth and I had. If you don't have time now please download the podcast and listen to it later. Alternatively, you can now subscribe to the whole podcast series via iTunes here. Below are highlights from our interview: Seth has a new book coming out at the end of the year called The Icarus Deception. What's he's tried to do for his whole career is take his own advice. So, with Permission Marketing it was marketed using permission marketing, for Unleashing The Idea Virus he gave the book away to create an idea virus and Purple Cow came in a milk carton as it was one way to make the distribution and marketing of a book remarkable. The Icarus Deception is about one short sentence: 'This Might Not Work' The book is about how, in this connected economy and world of ours, we need more and more people to create 'Art' - not decoration or painting - but things that connect with other people and make change happen. But, you can't make 'Art' if you are not willing to fail. Therefore, Seth used Kickstarter to get his book project funded for two reasons: One, it might not work as it had never been done before and not getting the book funded, especially as a well-known author, was a risk and would be a very public failure; and Two, to establish to other authors that it can be done. The project, however, did get funded and reached it's target of $40,000 in around 3 hours! Overall, the project generated 4,242 backers at various levels who funded the project to the tune of $287,342. I'm proud to say I was one of the backers too. In the process Seth ended up writing/putting together not one but four books in total. In the Industrial Economy, only a few people were responsible for the design and creation of new things. However, in our technology rich and connected economy, we can all be on the design side of things, if we choose to be. That is a huge shift as most of us were raised to do what we were told and not to figure out what to do next. It's always been wrong to take away the dreams of our young people and we have been doing that for decades in the way we educate people to be employees. However, this is no longer just wrong it is also foolish. Most learning involves a map or a compass. Seth is in the compass business and not the map business. Not giving people a map is intentional because if you give people a map then it becomes 'paint by numbers' and it's not 'Art' anymore. The cost of failing these days is incredibly low and the main reason that prevents people from trying is fear. We are taught that when the stakes are high we should back off. But, part of what The Icarus Deception argues is that when the stakes are high, backing off is the worst thing that we could possibly do. One piece of advice: Fly closer to the sun! Build an environment/life where it is clear that failing is cheap, failing is not fatal and where you can learn how to, in small steps, start doing innovative or unique work.

Today's interview is with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing who has recently added The Commitment Engine to the set of books that he has authored. John is a legend when it comes to small business marketing and in our interview we talk about his latest book, why commitment and clarity are important to any business if you are to create fanatical fans and employees and shares some tips on how he keeps up to speed as a small business owner himself. This interview follows my recent interview (CRM, social media, social business and the future – Interview with Jon Ferrara of Nimble) and makes up number forty in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love. Below are highlights from our interview: Owned his own small business, a small business marketing consultancy/agency, for the last 25 years About 12 years ago, created a marketing approach/system called Duct Tape Marketing aimed at small businesses that focuses on delivering simple and cost effective marketing to small businesses. Now, he has a network of certified Duct Tape Marketing consultants around the world Has published a couple of books: Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine. However, has recently published a third book called The Commitment Engine: Making Work Worth It The book aims to set out to do is outline a business model that has purpose and clarity at the heart of it. This then helps business owners clarify and communicate to their customers and employees why they do what they do and what they are trying to achieve. This book grew out of John's experience of writing The Referral Engine where he found in writing and researching the book a number of companies that had 'fanatical' fans and he wanted to unpick what it was that they were doing to create these fans. He found that businesses that had fanatical fans also had fanatical and really loyal employees who really shared the vision and commitment of the business owner. There is a virtuous circle that operates in a business that has these sort of fans and employees where the leadership and clarity and commitment is directly linked to the employees that the business attracts, retains and develops. This then feeds into the level and quality of products and service that employees deliver to customers. (Insert diagram) Building a commitment engine is based on three foundational planks: the clarity path, the culture patron and the customer promise. However, if you want to build your own commitment engine you have to start with the clarity path ie. why am I doing what I am doing, how does this business serve my life, will this message attract and resonate with others and can I build a business around that? There are a lot of case studies in the book and in the interview, John talks about 37signals and Jancoa as particularly great examples of companies that are operating this way, getting great results and doing wonderful things. Listen to the podcast for more details and insight. This might seem easier if you are a start up but John found when researching the book and interviewing lots of different companies that many established businesses get great benefit from revisiting their clarity and purpose, particularly when facing a challenge. Towards the need of the interview, John shares some great tips about how he as a small business owner manages his time and maximises his productivity. As part of his 'shameless' plug at the end of the interview John encouraged people to check out www.ducttapemarketing.com and he also mentioned that he has never been to the UK before and would like the opportunity to come and share a few ideas via a speaking gig. About John (taken from his profile page) John Jantsch has been called the World’s Most Practical Small Business Expert for consistently delivering real-world, proven small business marketing ideas and strategies.

Recently, I spoke to David Meerman Scott in Inbound marketing is about instant communications and creating content – Interview with David Meerman Scott. To follow that and as a result of my attendance at that conference, I met Richard Young (@richard_...

At the the Inbound Marketing UK conference that I wrote about in Inbound marketing is about content and context, I was able to catch up with a couple of the speakers for interviews for the blog. The first was with Mike Volpe, the Chief Marketing Officer of Hubspot, and you can check it out here: Inbound and content marketing may make up 80% of all marketing in the future. Following on from the interview with Mike, I was also able to catch up with David Meerman Scott, the keynote speaker at the conference and author of several books on marketing, most notably The New Rules of Marketing and PR with over 250,000 copies in print in more than 25 languages. In the interview, we talk about inbound marketing, the impact on traditional marketing, what your inbound and traditional marketing ratio mix should be and newsjacking. This interview makes up number thirty-eight in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love. Below are highlights from our interview: Marketing is about instant communications and creating content. Put those two things together and you have a winner. When people want to get information on something new they will do two things: 1. Use a search engine and 2. Tap their networks. If they tap their networks they will want to be sent a link, whether by email or on Twitter or Facebook or other network. Once they have that link then they are in your buying process. The best content wins when it comes to the search engines and also when it comes to what information and content gets shared. Inbound marketing competes with traditional marketing methods both in terms of budget and also the people cost of marketing. However, it's not an either or proposition. Inbound marketing should be work with more traditional marketing methods like advertising and PR. David believes the balance in terms of time and budget should be 50:50 if not more so in favour of inbound and content marketing. However, we're not there yet but the needle is shifting. David believes that we are in the middle of a marketing revolution. However, revolution can take a long time to manifest itself and the transition can be uncomfortable. Marketing has for decades been done on a company's timetable i.e. planning a campaign or a promotion weeks and months in advance. But, now there is stuff that is happening right now and all of the time….. people on your website, news stories breaking that will affect you, your customers and your business. So, businesses need to get used to the idea of harnessing instant communications in their marketing. If you are a business owner or marketing executive then David suggests that there are two things that you need to consider. One, you need to start to create a culture around creating content. That may mean that you are probably employing some of the wrong people in your organisation or that you are hiring the wrong agencies with the wrong skills at the moment; and Two, hire journalists or those with journalistic skills onto your marketing team as they will have the right type of skills to help you create content (text, audio and video) and help you tell more real-time stories. Go to Google and type in newsjacking and check out the idea of inserting your ideas into a breaking news story. About David (Taken from his website) David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, advisor to emerging companies, bestselling author of eight books including three international bestsellers, and a professional speaker on topics including marketing, leadership, and social media. He is a recovering marketing VP for two U.S. publicly traded companies and was Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the world’s largest information companies. David has lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. He currently lives in the Boston area.

In Inbound marketing is about content and context, I reported back from Inbound Marketing UK. However, whilst there I was able to catch up with Mike Volpe, the Chief Marketing Officer of Hubspot, who was speaking at the conference. In the interview, we...

Following on from my recent interview, Using systems thinking to improve customer satisfaction and employee engagement – Interview with Rob Brown of Aviva, today I am very excited as I want to share with you an interview that I conducted with David Hieatt, an entrepreneur that is not short on experience in creating businesses and brands that customers love. This interview makes up number thirty-six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love. Below are highlights from our interview: David is an entrepreneur at heart and loves creating brands that customers love Spent 8-9 years at Saatchi & Saatchi under Paul Arden, learning from and, frequently, getting bollocked by him :) (Note: Paul Arden wrote 'It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be' one of my favourite books of all time.) After spending time in London, returned to Wales and founded Howies (later sold to Timberland) and the Do lectures. Has now set up the Hiut Denim Company to try and revive Cardigan, where they are based, as it used to Britain's largest producer of jeans, producing 35,000 pairs of jeans a week for 30-40 years. However, the factory has now closed and all of the skill and knowledge in the town was going to waste and the workers had nowhere to practice their 'art'. From his time at Howies, David grew to love two things: merino and jeans. Jeans are the uniform for creative people and David spent his working life with creative people and their ideas always inspired him. So, with the Hiut Denim Company, he set out "to make a great product, in a great town that knows how to make that great product and sell it to those great people". There is a lot riding on this project and some of the main things is helping Cardigan not lose the skills that they have embedded in their community, helping it pass on those skills and to get Cardigan making jeans again. When David is asked 'How do you get somebody to love your company?' he replies that you have to first love your own company but love it in all sorts of ways where you consider just about everything from a label, to how they open a package from you, to how they can return stuff to you and to make all of those things simple steps for a customer. But, David also believes that you have to consider what a company stands for (it's cause) and it's ideas as being really important. Hiut Denim's cause is to get Cardigan making jeans again. Hiut Denim personalises their jeans and gives each of their jeans a story, a history. David believes that an artist should always sign their work so each pair of jeans is signed by the people that helped make them (see picture below): We want to make the best jeans we can and not the most jeans we can. It might be that our company may always be small but it will always try to be great. By getting everyone to sign their work it helps build a culture of pride, care and personal responsibility. When you make something great you want to put your name on it. There are about 70 processes that are involved in making their jeans and, in order to be great, they have to be great at all 70 of them. The details matter. David has always been interested in not focusing on growth through sales but through ideas i.e. what ideas can they bring to their industry, what influence and change can they affect. The by-product of which is more customers as the business is seems as being innovative and leading its industry. Simplicity and common sense (that's not so common) is at the core of their business. Patagonia has always been a great role model of David's. Visited Patagonia recently and they were super nice to him and he learned that something that he wrote called 'Journey of a carrot' whilst at Howies was the inspiration behind Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles. We make great jeans and we, probably,

Following on from my recent interview, Influence marketing, Klout, social scoring and why they are important – Interview with Mark Schaefer, today I want to share with you an interview that I conducted with Rob Brown, Systems Thinking Director at Aviva...