Business leaders confuse extrinsic values with intrinsic values, while cult leaders often focus on intrinsic values at the expense of the extrinsic.
We are searching for brands that mirror our values. And we value that which gives us purpose.
Brand leaders should learn a thing (or two) from cult leaders because building a brand isn’t dissimilar to building a cult.
Cult leaders understand (and sadly often exploit) those intrinsic values. They mirror the world not as it is, but as people hope it to be. At their best, they take the insanity of society and create idealized seductive (and often reductive) solutions.
Thinking like a cult leader forces you to consider the role your brand plays in the real world. To be conscious of what people will fall in love with, defend and advocate for. To give people tools to see themselves — their role — and their impact.
Thinking like a cult leader isn’t easy. It’s not about cost vs benefit and it doesn’t have a library of entrepreneurship jingo. The process of thinking like a cult leader will force you to think harder and be more intentional about what makes this brand relevant in making a difference to the lives of humans.
There are some things we need to stop doing. Stop thinking we’re a business person. We’re going to stop thinking unfettered global growth. Cults are powerful when they have a sense of place, and people sense their place within them.
The interconnectedness of our world giving all of us (including you) just 6 degrees of separation to any of us, gives brands extraordinary reach to humans that share a universal truth. To do that it’s our role as a leader to use & build tools to reach across each degree of that separation. That’s the difference between thinking like a business that relies on advertising and thinking like a cult that works word of mouth.
Stop thinking deductively, and give inductive thinking a chance (again). You’re not building business because you see a market opportunity. You’re building something with a higher order belief system based on a universal truth. You’re building something because you’re fed up with the status quo. The real experts in doing that (beyond cult leaders) are kids. They follow their heart, and ask the dumb questions that point out the flaws so obviously.
Stop thinking universal truths are universal. The most often abused form of universal truth is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs gets lots of mileage by business people building brands. But its a privileged perspective to think everybody around the world has the luxury to live this hierarchy, today.
We need to be much clearer about the truth of the human beings that are business is relevant for.
The third cultism we need to adopt, is to define how you’ll empower & enable disciples & acolytes to represent the brand. You’ll need to define how you reward, educate and inspire those people. You’ll need to be generous with how you define the ownership of the brand. Unlike a business person where you might think about strategic needs and milestones the business needs to hit, start thinking like a cult leader.
