Agency rhetoric - arguably more predictable than ever - tends to be built on an unhelpful contradiction: “We transform businesses”, everyone says, and then in the same breath goes on to describe their work in the form of the ‘things’ they make, whether it’s apps, campaigns or ads. The misleading message being: we make nice little things that COMPLETELY DISRUPT YOUR ORGANISATION. It’s a curse of reductionism’s power to sell things. [And by masking complexity, we also undersell things, but that’s another post]

We (Made by Many) occasionally fall into this trap too. ‘Things’ are just so tangible, and sexy. Before you realise it you’re blurting out that you made thing X for client Y. Watch the light shimmer from its nav bar! But that’s not what we’re selling. Our real product is the change we cause, both in our client’s businesses and in the marketplace. The specific products and services we develop can end up swooping in and absorbing the credit. Which doesn’t help anyone. In fact it undermines the value.

So back to Undercurrent’s posts. We tend to associate the word ‘responsive’ with how websites behave. But really the word describes not the actual result of responding to different media constraints, but their ability - their readiness - to do so. This is a result of important, unsexy things like up-front architectural considerations, design decisions, and well-executed code. The point isn’t ‘a website that works nicely on all screens’, but ‘a service that has the capabilities to adapt.’ Which is where Undercurrent’s language works so nicely. (I’ve never been a fan of the ‘operating system’ metaphor, but that sentiment is bang on too)

One of the things Made by Many has done that most excites me is redesign the tools that ITV journalists use to publish news. Not the ITV News site itself (which we did in tandem), but the system behind it. This was a tool and a new way of working that gave ITV true responsiveness in every sense of the word. In fact, even that tool was only part of it. We had to help ITV to redesign their workflow, collaborating with journalists to optimise it. There are no gaps between the board, the journalists, their new tools and the resulting news service. They are tiers of an entire system we helped them to develop. As a result, responsiveness runs from the top of their organisation right through to a specific news story on a device. This nods to Undercurrent’s ‘nested domains’ diagram, which elegantly renders the responsive onion. (Oh god, Andy, never say responsive onion again.)

The problem is that lots of people would find that particular ITV story dull, or too long. The story about the consumer-facing news service (manipulated with this system) is much easier to swallow, because we’re still hung up from the early - loosely connected - days of the web where websites were seen as the ‘end product’ and no one was banging on about service ecosystems yet. ‘End products’ are notoriously easy to shove into Powerpoint decks too, and whizz round an organisation to make everyone feel excited. We made this thing and it’s on the internet!

It’s not just a matter of waving goodbye to the word digital, it’s also (as Mike alludes to) shedding the superficial values still lingering from the days when deploying a shiny thing and seeing people talk about it felt magical.

Organisations need to disrupt their values before they can disrupt their markets. Which means ceasing to hurl the word ‘innovation’ around as though one, heavily abused word can cause even a glitch in existing corporate rhythms. People need to start finding organisational responsiveness as exciting as the products they want to launch. It’s harder, less sexy, less easy to dumb down for presentations and less appreciated by your end customers, but this is what responsiveness means. And it works. Googling around, I see there is a whole ‘movement’ around the responsive organisation. Maybe it’s something that’s about to get a lot more attention. I hope so.