Conclusion

This work therefore concludes with an assertion. The two critical – the sine qua non – management disciplines from here on are Leadership and Branding. Both must however dramatically adjust their focus and activity if they are to be in any sense effective.

Leadership we have reconfirmed as the creation and management of meaning, and perhaps also, as a result, the distribution of energy throughout the organisation.

Branding is from here the delivery of meaning, and is operationally the discovery and optimisation of positive stakeholder experience across all key touchpoints, in all channels, along the entire relationship cycle.

These activities will also need to be approached and managed with utter integrity and authenticity. Information, with its immediacy, its transparency and its reach, no longer tolerates behaviour that is unacceptable to your most important stakeholders. And they are watching, and they talking to each other.

I suspect that The Age of Meaning will, like the Information Age before it, prove to be a surprisingly brief milestone on the way to yet another Age.

This series is dedicated to the hope that our children will live to see a world that is built upon shared meaning. That, surely, would be an Age of Unity.

« Managing for meaning

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