I say posited because recent announcements in the development of 3D printing suggest we may not be far away from a time where death becomes an option.

Far away being a relative term. Your children's children, perhaps. 

While we consider the ramifications of that kind of evolution, an email circulating this morning highlights the requirements of sustainable evolution within the current limitations of medical science.

• Knowing what you stand for.
• Applying those standards consistently.
• The capacity to evolve. Ideally, pro-actively.
• The ability to accept there will always be critics. No matter what you do. 
• The discipline to remain focused regardless.

In this case, good genes have also played their considerable part. Proving that when it comes to longevity, medical science is still the pupil.

1. Don't build a business on all or nothing bets. Coming second in a football match means you lost. Coming second in business means you're Bill Gates.

2. Be precise in your vision for the future. Only then can you hold yourself accountable. The first step to improvement.

3. Learn from your mistakes. When something doesn't happen the way you forecast it, analyze why and what you can do to improve the outcome next time.

4. Don't expect limitless growth from a group without some mistakes along the way.

5. If you're an Englishman, never ever expect Germans to do what you want.

Around 5pm EST this coming Sunday, Germany will win the World Cup. 

It will happen because six years ago, having been unceremoniously dumped out of the European Championships - during which the team failed to win a single game - the German football authorities decided to rebuild.

The did not undertake this mission lightly. They didn’t embark on a conversation-heavy, action-light series of meetings and investigations. 

They hired a man and asked him for a plan.

Fortunately for them, and for the rest of us waiting for our respective countries to demonstrate there is a reason beyond passport issuance to believe that next time will be our time, they hired a man capable of giving them a plan.

They hired a man called Jurgen Klinsmann. 

Klinsmann had won the World Cup with Germany. He had played at the highest domestic levels of German, Italian, French and English football. He had moved to California, thereby removing himself from the day-to-day petty politics of European football and ensuring he retained objectivity.

Klinsmann did three things that are a model for anyone re-building a business.

One. He solicited opinions. From players and managers alike. Everyone who would have some influence over how his German players would play. Then he empowered them to make a contribution.

Two. He defined the characteristics of how his Germany would play. Characteristics that were based on well-established German traits. Being dynamic. Aggressive. And decisive. Traits that Klinsmann readily admits were the cause of two World Wars. But which he believed could be better Purposed on the football pitch.

Three. He built an organization capable of surviving his departure, in the knowledge that the emotional effort required to build the foundations would quickly create friction between him and the German Board.

It was not an easy transition. Early results were poor. And he almost lost his job after 18 months. Only a decisive win over the U.S. in 2006 keeping him in place for the World Cup that year.

His team came third. And was celebrated throughout Germany. Then Kilinsmann resigned and handed over the model to his young assistant, Joachim Loew.

Two years later, Germany were runners up in the European Championship.

This afternoon, they play in their second consecutive World Cup semi final. 

It is a case study in organizational re-structuring.

Vision. Execution. Evolution.

And built, not around an irreplaceable individual or a single skill. 

But around a Purpose and a set of timeless characteristics.

Klinsmann’s work has changed the face of world football. Created a template that others will follow. And will bring hundreds of millions of Euros worth of value to the German economy.

As an Englishman, praising German anything is hard.

But between now and Sunday evening I'll be doing something for the first time in my life.

Hoping for a German victory. 

Change indeed.

How we’re doing is relative. To the day, the hour, the occasion and the group we are with. 

Cannes is geo-locational and hierarchical. Success being measured on a complex, unwritten, but widely known metric. Lunch at du Cap with two prospective clients is trumped by a boat ride to St Tropez with one, but beats drinks at the Carlton with three. And La Colombe d’Or is worth changing your flight home for. 

For many that don’t go to Cannes, particularly those that pay the bills, the week is seen as a waste. Of money, of focus and the opportunity to do meaningful work at home. 

It’s easy to see why. Four days in the South of France comes conceptually attached to the world of Ian Fleming. Beautiful, powerful women mingling with men in white suits in the pursuit of global domination. Proof that every spy novel comes from a basis of fact.

But beyond the billionaire’s yachts’ moored off St Tropez, or Cap d’Antibes - is that a helipad or a swimming pool on the aft deck and is Armani on board this week? - beyond the glistening sheet metal of the most expensive motors, beyond the limitless supply of rosé, the simple truth is that for any advertising-related business, Cannes is the most valuable investment of the year.

People comes to Cannes wanting to engage. Heads of companies, thought leaders, decision makers, movers and shakers. All are willing to meet, to talk and to explore what might be made of this. The blue and white strata of Ralph Lauren-inspired summer vistas removing limitations of imagination that otherwise restrict the vision of those paid to have one.

This alone makes Cannes worth the price of admission. The limitless possibility of meaningful and memorable conversation with people that can make things happen.

The other return on investment is membership to the club that Cannes represents. The club of, ‘I’m serious.’

If you go to Cannes you’re tempted by the potential. If you’re there it’s because you’re serious. Oh, the beauty and booze are part of the compensation. But use them as motivation even once and you’re not going back. Because if that’s why you’re there you don’t get it. And Cannes separates the don’t get its from everyone else like a canning factory.    

But there is waste at Cannes. Sleep for instance. Cannes operates in a different reality. Time passing six to eight times faster. That boat ride to St. Tropez for lunch takes 30 minutes, though your watch tells you it's seven hours since you left. Lunch at du Cap? 15. It is a reality that makes sleep impractical, every moment of disengagement a wasted opportunity to make a connection, have a conversation, promote an idea.

Fortunately, most people don’t. Sleep. At least not much. The four hours a night that seemed like a bare minimum when the week began, is reduced to nothing by the time Saturday come along - sixteen hours after we arrived on Tuesday.

The other waste at Cannes, is opportunity. Wasted by the ocean-full.

There are obvious examples. And some that are almost imperceptible.

Of the former, this year’s winner was Yahoo. A company desperate to be seen as relevant. Proving that money and its spending are not dispositive in an attempt at brand significance. Yahoo sponsored the Gutter Bar, a folly of immense proportions. Sponsoring the Gutter Bar is like sponsoring air. Everyone knows it's not true.

Yahoo also handed out purple flip flops to anyone they could find on the Croissette. All of which went un-worn, from what I could see. And promoted a branded sand castle event on the beach, at reportedly vast expense. Somehow seeing a team of people put Yahoo’s logo into a pile of sand does not convince me I should do something about my relationship with Yahoo. Nor does it tell me what they would like that relationship to be. In a world in which consumers and brands are having conversations, sticking your logo on my feet and in my face, morning noon and night is the act of a bored child, or a dying brand. Not a company trying to solve my problems or provide me with value.

Yahoo’s waste did inspire me to think about how to create the most effective brand placement at Cannes next year. The idea I came up with would change the way Cannes works for everyone that attends. And I’m going to suggest it to one of our clients. I’ll let you know if it goes anywhere.

But the greatest waste at Cannes this year was the opportunity for re-definition. By the Festival itself.

Cannes operated under the theme of  “Connections Made Easy.” As an example of truth in advertising, it leaves a little room for improvement.

Cannes is an analog event. It has a badly designed, difficult to navigate, hierarchical (that word again) website. And offered ‘Cannes Connect’. An unintuitive online delegate tool.

But at check-in you are handed an enormous canvas shoulder bag filled with reams of printed paper. You could hear trees crashing in Brazillian rain forests. The week’s schedule is offered in a booklet that has no page numbers. And is too large for any short or shirt pocket. 

“Connections Made Easy” is the foundational Purpose of advertising. And there is much about the Festival that encourages those connections. 

But the “Made Easy” part is a work in progress. 

Which makes sense.

Because Cannes is a reflection of an industry.

One struggling to separate from its past and embrace its future.

But one with the ability to change the way we see things. In this case, in 72 seconds.

Happy 4th of July.

In addition to Magic Johnson, there were about 6,000 delegates. As well as some 2,000 people who attended without seeing the benefit of registering for the seminars, workshops and Awards ceremonies.

At 2,800 Euros it’s been hard to argue with that decision in years past. The downside to missing the seminars and workshops being hard to discern. The results of a 50 year old food-chain that had little new to offer, and conversations each year limited to the debate of whether a Grand Prix would or would not be awarded. Whether the consumer gained any benefit from that discussion is open to debate. Albeit a limited one.

But over the last two years the advertising food chain has been bent out of all recognition. And at Cannes this year, the conversations inside and outside the Palais started to pulse to a different rhythm. That of getting started.

The future of advertising has been debated incessantly over these last couple of years. The tv commercial is dead. Publishing is dead. It’s the web. It’s branded content. It’s apps. It’s geo-locational. TV is back. And is here to stay (this I read on the way to Cannes). It’s digital. It’s integrated. It’s all about brands. It’s all about utility.

For an industry based on subjectivity, the desire of the cognoscenti to define the future in absolute terms is at best confusing. At worst, it’s destructive. And very, very expensive.

The advertising industry is about making connections. Between an advertiser and its customers. Everything else the rest of us do serves only that purpose. 

For fifty years, that relationship was one way. Today, it’s reciprocal. A concept that the industry has more success talking about than doing something about.

The advertising industry typically points to two pieces of work as representative of its ability to evolve. The first, BMW films, contributed to record breaking sales the year after they appeared on the web. That was nine years ago.

The second, Nike ID, is widely touted as the best example of an integrated platform. That work is nearly six years old. 

For an industry based on innovation and creativity, it shows a frustrating paucity of imagination. 

This year the festival awarded its Advertiser of the Year award to Unilever’s CMO, Keith Weed. During the week he described the industry’s attempts at digital evolution as reminiscent of high school sex. “Everyone talks about it, a few do it, no one’s very good at it.”

On Saturday night when he picked up the award he made a wish. “That a year from now, someone will have stopped talking about being integrated and will have done something integrated.” Hard to argue with that.

At best, the advertising industry is engaged in a reluctant revolution, the brakes to which  are being applied by the very DNA on which the industry is based. The vertical hierarchy of the food chain, from advertiser, to agency to supplier, being reflected in the internal structure of most agencies. 

Some mid-sized, creatively renowned agencies have begun to break down those constraints. Other companies, Mekanism and the Barbarian Group among them, have grown up around a horizontal model in which collaboration acts as both the glue and the fuel.

But with these relatively rare exceptions, the companies that deliver most of the industry’s work are still defined by a top-down model in which motivation is guided by winning awards, getting a better title and better clients, and the associated compensation that goes with all of that. 

And at Cannes on Saturday night as the flashbulbs flashed, it was easy to see the mortar being re-applied to the traditional model - virtual tuck-pointing to a tired edifice.

But through the strobe lights it was also possible to just make out the beginnings of a new industry. A horizontal platform. Founded on two traditional strengths. 

• The power of story.
• And our species’ limitless capacity for originality when we work together.

Over the rest of this week, I’ll talk about why those characteristics are so important, how to spot the obstacles that slow their growth and how to build them into a business model capable of leading the change. One comfortable with uncertainty. 

In the meantime, I encourage you to watch the Man Who Walked Around The World, provided for your convenience below.

As I said, the power of story, and our limitless capacity for originality.

But great delivery helps as well. 

As I write this we're passing West Point, a powerful monument to strategic positioning and strong foundations. I'm struck by its permanence.

And after being home sick for a week, by our fragility.

I emerged back into the real world this morning, grateful for the power of antibiotics, but regretting last week's decision to rub my eye in an airport terminal filled with germs. It seemed unimportant at the time. Six days later, it's now clear it was not.

The power of technology has allowed me to remain productive. Virtual meetings, online presentations and free conference call services maintaining both our methods and our margins. Important foundations on which to build a better business.

The diversity of companies with which we work continues to expand. One week, a solo entrepreneur. The next, a global holding company. The scale and complexities change, of course. But the fundamentals remain inexorably the same.

What are we trying to achieve?

Why are our customers our customers?

Who will be our next generation of customers?

Every other question becomes a subset of these three.

Profitability: Do you want to maximize operating margin or build scale? Are we a parity product competing on price, or have we found a way to articulate our value in unique ways?

Expansion: Are we taking full advantage of the talent and capabilities we've already built? Do we add offices, services, both or neither?

Marketing: Are we built to talk or built to listen? Are we consistent? Are we surprising?

Talent: Will the people we have today solve the problems our clients will have tomorrow? Do our systems and workflow help them do better work, and help us identify the great ones faster?

It requires discipline to ask these questions. And honesty to answer them clearly.

And you may have temporary success without them.

But if the effort you put into your business is not matched by the quality of the foundations you are building, one of two things are certain.

The cost to repair them will be memorable.

Or fifty years from now, passers by - whether physical or virtual - will be looking at something other than the business you so painstakingly built.

If you are not actively investing in your business, your company is decaying. Perhaps not yet in ways you can see. But inevitably and with growing impact. The cost of repair increasing exponentially.

Investment comes in many forms. Money being the most obvious. And often the least impactful. For the simple reason that much of it is misspent. Typically on initiatives that feel strategic, but are often simply reactive.

In today’s business environment, many companies are seeking ways to expand their income stream. Extending new services to existing clients is one strategy that most business leaders explore. It appears reassuring and feels instinctively right, building on existing capabilities and relationships.

But vertical expansion has limitations. Its very familiarity luring us into quick justification for the decision to act, while obscuring the need for more comprehensive analyses.

When building a business, the most imperative investment if that of our own ego. The question of what we do, and whether that is the best use of our company’s assets and experiences, requires a willingness to see ourselves as something other than that which our success has been built on.

Great business leaders ask themselves these questions every day. Their concern being not whether their past defines them as a success.

But whether the future they have planned is the best return for the most precious investment they have to make.

Themselves.

Almost. Because for some, the high-wire is their preferred state of being. A work-hard, play-hard, sleep-fast fueled journey of trial and error. 

As with all extremes, this one is counter-balanced. By an analytical, risk-averse approach that is instinctive to many business leaders. An approach that drives conversation and consternation. But not decisions.

But as management strategies, paralysis-by-analysis or jumping without a net both leave a business in the same state. 

Inert. 

The challenge is to find a management approach that creates economic return and emotional reassurance. For you and your clients. 

The key, in our experience, is how you use time.

In any service business there are two ways to charge your customers. By time or by value.

In the advertising industry, time has become the norm. A model that in most agencies works like this:

1. Hire someone. 
2. Give them an office. 
3. Technology. 
4. Benefits. 
5. Add a profit margin. 
6. Divide by 52 weeks
7. Divide by 40 hours.
8. Find a client willing to buy as many of those hours as possible.

A model that turns a company selling creativity into an employment agency.

And rewards it for working slowly. And for using a lot of people. To do anything.

Slow and big. A model for the Industrial Revolution.

But this is not a problem limited only to large enterprises. Smaller companies, particularly those selling specialized services, have developed their own version of this particular cognitive dissonance. Enthusiastically offering clients rate cards and line item estimates with promises of the time they will spend working on that project, while talking about their creative originality

A model which presents as unique creative inspiration. While turning the most valuable resource we own into a commodity. 

Because ideas are infinite. But time is finite. 

A reality we deny because measuring what is left is impossible. And undesirable. 

And so we exist with the conviction that though our time will come, it will not do so until we are ready. Until we have done what we set out to do. 

Even if we are not sure what that is.

But time is not free. For everything we do there is the opportunity cost of that which we chose not to do instead. 

In our youth, those choices are invisible. But as we mature, the choices we make become sharper, more consequential. A reality which affects our businesses even more severely. Size being an obstacle to flexibility.

Any business that sells creativity should have only one reference for how it measures time. 

What can I create from it?

The better that answer, the less your clients will care how long you take. 

And the more they will reward you for the difference you make. 

 The good news is you have high levels of influence over all of them. Whether you choose to exert that authority depends heavily on three factors.

 One. Do you see the inconsistency? Until you define what you expect of each group, yourself included, you can not judge whether your business is meeting your standards. Or whether those standards are realistic. Or fair.

Two. Have you articulated your expectations? In the very early days of establishing our first business we were negotiating the purchase of a million dollar’s worth of film editing equipment. I told the sales rep that we were looking for a fair deal. But more importantly a relationship with someone who would treat as as partners. Honestly. And transparently.

Two weeks later, after extensive sessions of back-slapping and promises, I discovered he was selling us technology that was about to be replaced by a significant upcoming upgrade. When I confronted him, the cost to his credibility was far greater than the cost to his bottom line. And he spent the next decade working to justify my decision to give him a second chance.

We got better pricing and better service than any of our competitors. The latter being much more important when you’re running your own service business.

Three. Are there consequences when people fail to meet those standards? Consequences can take many forms. The willingness to have an uncomfortable conversation. The confidence to fire an employees when it is clear, for whatever reason, that your standards and theirs don’t match. The courage to hold yourself publicly accountable. And most powerfully the ability to fire clients whose standards undermine your own. Whether in their economic or inter-personal valuation of you and your employees.

Every day, we have a choice. To build this business. Or to do something else.

Every day we choose the former, we should make sure the things we do are actually helping to create the business we want.

The alternative is destructive.

And a waste of time. 

A concession here. A short-cut there. A reaction justified by a passionate argument. Followed by the need to solve the next problem. Answer the next call. Get to the next meeting.

Big and small companies alike do not undermine themselves intentionally. They do so by choosing to see the world falsely. 

And protecting themselves from the wrong threat. 

While leaving Keyser Söze to wreck havoc without distraction.

Successful companies confront the issues that are really controlling their business. 

For small businesses, that is often the partnership. Do you all want the same outcome? And what are you sacrificing to keep everyone happy? 

For mid-size companies, look at your staffing. And get rid of those people that you love and adore, but who don’t have the talent to let you be the company you want to be.

And for large companies, confront your client contracts. If the advertising industry is typical, they are one sided and driven by factors that provide no value to either party. 

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist."

Success comes when you discover he does.

And that beating him is easier than you think.