Creatorship

"Good bye for Nau"

Well, while I've been off contemplating my navel this past month, much seems to have happened in the world.

A company I felt had revolutionary concepts bit the dust, Nau is closing its virtual doors.  The reasons for this will undoubtedly be grist for the MBA case study mill for years to come. Personally I am sad.

True the styles didn't quite fit me. They were geared to those with a much younger body. This might have been part of the problem as they were also geared to those with a higher income. Still, their values set a standard. There is now floating in the airwaves of the collective consciousness, a model of a different way of doing business. [see my post on Nau]

The thing about creating is that there is no guarantee something will work the first time you try. (Remember Thomas Edison had 1000 failures before his invention of the light bulb worked.) Creatorship is not for the faint of heart.

But, if the scientific premises underlying creatorship are true, then the choice is not whether or not to create but whether to create consciously and have the courage to go for what you really care about.

We are creators. If we are going to fail big at something, let it be ours!

Note: picture is from www.clusterballon.org , a fun example of creating what you want.

 

The importance of relationships - a quote.

"The scientific search for the basic building blocks of life has revealed a startling fact: there are none.  The deeper that physicists peer into the nature of reality, the only thing they find is relationships.  ...
The only form of organization used on this planet is the network—webs of interconnected, interdependent relationships.  This is true for human organizations as well.  Whatever boxes we stuff staff into, people always reach out to those who will give them information, be their allies, offer support or cheer them up.  Those lines and boxes are imaginary.  The real organization is always a dense network of relationships."

by Margaret Wheatley 2006 from Relationships: The Basic Building Blocks of Life.

photo by Bob Ardell

"Nau "that's interesting

I had to return the pants I ordered. My account amazingly showed two reimbursement entries: one for the price of the pants, the other for the shipping costs. Nau that's what I call customer service!

What might a creatorship organization look like?  Try Nau, the new outdoor clothing company. The stated intention for their business is:

"To demonstrate the highest levels of citizenship in everything we do: product creation, production, labor practices, the way we treat each other, environmental practices and philanthropy. We believe that companies have a broader responsibility than simple generating profit" (from website)

That's not to say they don't have an ambitious business plan. They do, projecting $11 million in revenue in 2007 according to Fast Company's June issue. It is just that they are coming from a world view that says we are all connected and somehow we ought to be able to do business in a way that reflects this. They not only espouse the notion that the environment, human rights, public health and safety, the communities in which it operates, and the dignity of it employees are on the same level as their shareholders, they have written it into their articles of incorporation.

Designing their organization and ways of doing business from scratch, they created their stores, products, relationships with suppliers and policies to be in line with their intention. Some of the results:

• LEED-certified leased retail space
• minimum age for overseas factory workers
• 5% of sales is donated to charitable organizations that the purchaser chooses at the time of their purchase (the industry standard is 1%)
• to meet their design philosophy of performance, sustainability and beauty, they designed, developed and commercialized 29 of the 30 fabrics used in their first collection AND they are keeping these new fabrics as "open source" to encourage the industry to make use of them
• stores are essentially a "webfront" where customers can try on the clothes but are then encouraged to have the items shipped allowing for small inventories and smaller store spaces
• part marketing and part just fun they have a blog: The Thought Kitchen which Intends to "stir the pot." They recently did an interesting post on the Cascadia Scorecard for sustainability  that is worth a read.
• there is a V.P. of Sustainability who is involved in planning and decision-making

True to the principles of creatorship, the people at Nau are intention driven (both in clarity of intended outcomes and passion), view the world systemically and perhaps most importantly, believe in their power as creators on this planet. They are co-creators of a new, consciously chosen way of doing business.