The Authentic Organization

Maybe I shouldn’t read Fast Company, but I do. I also read sites that reduce complex ideas into a series of bulleted “hacks” and mainstream news sites that can’t seem to step even a millimeter outside the guiding tropes of our very painful times.

If it’s just an occasional craving for outrage, then I can say with confidence that, with his recent article on the “appeals and risks of authenticity” entitled Who Do You Love, Bill Breen of Fast Company has thoroughly satisfied it. It’s not that everything he says is wrong. On the contrary, in the particulars most of what he says is right. It’s the way things are framed and contextualized that makes it all wrong.

Let’s pull a few quotes, shall we?

Overloaded by sales pitches, consumers are gravitating toward brands that they sense are true and genuine. Hunger for the authentic is all around us. You can see it in the way millions are drawn to mission-driven products like organic foods. It’s there in the sex-without-guilt way people respond to the footloose joy of BMW’s Mini.

People choose some car for the same reason that people choose organic food? Now, I know there is plenty of fake organic food and that plenty of people eat it because it’s fashionable, but come on! “Sex without guilt” is something that advertising has caused this car to appear to be. People eat organic food because of what it actually is.

Brinn does seem to get this distinction between appearance and reality at some points, but then totally loses it in his ultra-hip quest to frame authenticity as a brand experience.

Playing the authenticity game in a sophisticated way has become a requirement for every marketer, because the opposite of real isn’t fake–it’s cynicism.

He puts his cards on the table here, I think, by calling this the “authenticity game”. I can see it now, the CEO directive to the advertising company: “You know boys, this authenticity thing is kind of in right now. Why don’t we see if we can get ourselves a little of that. You’ll do that for us? Great!”

Consumers quite rightly believe, until they’re shown otherwise, that every brand is governed by an ulterior motive: to sell something. But if a brand can convincingly argue that its profit-making is only a by-product of a larger purpose, authenticity sets in.

Well now, he touches on an interesting issue here, doesn’t he? For-profit corporations are required by law in the US to put profit first. There have been shareholder lawsuits that have made that the corporate law of the land. People are understandably cynical. Do I think there are alternative models for supporting double and triple bottom lines? Yes, I certainly do and I’ve been involved with some of them. But there is a fundamental tension here that goes far deeper than appearance. If an organization cannot honestly reconcile its deepest roots, then authenticity will indeed be just a brand game.

As I said earlier, Brinn gets lots of things about authenticity right. He identifies four factors related to authenticity and each of them has merit: a sense of place (or origin), a strong point of view, serving a larger purpose, and integrity.

Authenticity isn’t some paint you apply to a product or an organization. Therein lies the heart of the problem with this piece. Branding is about appearance or, at best, the consumer experience. Authenticity is about being true to yourself. This, of course, requires a self to which to be true. Unfortunately, you can be authentic without appearing so. But branding says that appearing so is more important, while integrity says otherwise.

Reading this article about putting authenticity into your brand reminds me of those nonprofits that are looking for advice on how to craft sincere email to their constituents. Have they so lost touch with their own sincerity that this has now become a craft, to be learned and then bolted on to the machinery of the organization?

As individuals, people mostly remember what it means to be sincere. But as members of an organization, they often forget. My quest here is to discover the organizational qualities that preserve and deepen our innate sincerity. Maybe then we won’t end up playing the “authenticity game”.