The Dream Society by Rolf Jensen

Author:Rolf Jensen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 1999-04-22T04:00:00+00:00

Example: Hurricane Andrew’s Gift to Burger King

An excellent example of tomorrow’s corporate culture can be found in the company spirit that grew in the wake of Hurricane Andrew’s wrecking of Burger King’s Miami headquarters in 1992. Out of the ensuing chaos emerged a corporate culture based on social interaction, imagination, and having fun. But hard fun, as chief operating officer Jim Adamson commented to then CEO Barry Gibbons: “Have you noticed that you’ve gotten more done in the past two weeks than in the last two months?”56

The core of the new Burger King culture was “creative thinking, aggressive decision making, and fresh ideas.”57 Now, all days are casual days and the hierarchical structures of the past have been swept away along with the former headquarters. The former hierarchical structures had been a problem in several failed cooperative ventures with advertising agencies, and that in turn had messed up the way people saw the corporation. The Dream Society company cannot afford to have a blurry public image. The market for stories demands a full concept.

At Burger King headquarters, the new offices have no doors. All the executive offices were moved out of the choice top-floor locations. These occupants are usually away on business, so why not give people who are at their desks most of the day a chance to see daylight and an inspiring view? The layout of the new offices was conceptualized when the corporate executives noticed the enormous growth in communication after the old offices were literally blown away. People talked to one another, teams emerged, and since the company wanted this to continue, the new offices were designed to foster an easygoing, comfortable atmosphere in which employees actually managed to produce more.

Corporate survival will depend more on the ability to create an effective image, on great new ideas, than on worrying about whether the accounting system works to perfection. Future technology will see to that.

Today, the reception area of the Burger King headquarters is dominated by a giant burger stuck in the wall; the walls are decorated with giant murals in happy colors filled with happy people. In fact, the background music in the reception area is not Mozart, or anything like that, but sound effects to go along with the murals.58 These may be jungle noises, singing whales, or the sound of wind sweeping along the rigging of a sailing vessel.

Increasingly, companies will have to deliver more than just products that satisfy material needs. The successful companies of the twenty-first century will be the ones satisfying emotional needs. The job market will have similar demands, so it stands to reason that the market for products will behave like the market for labor. Attractive pay and potted plants in the corridors will no longer suffice. That was the Information Society idea of a fine corporation. The Dream Society corporation will have to meet the social and emotional needs of its employees.

Besides meeting employees’ emotional and social needs, the corporation will want to cater to consumers’ emotional and

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