W-Women Globally

The Guru
She describes herself as a rebel by heart. Others describe her as a social marketing guru. Her way of living is to search new ways of re-defining orders and terms, combining tech and art and use it in a business context: to help businesses develop themselves so they can create a better world with their actions and at the same time they get a bigger profit.

As 19 years old Danish girl she started her professional experience in Apple in Ireland. And now, 10 years later, she is still passionate about the Web and its ‘uncontrollable mechanics’. And she still searches the reasons why some companies fail to embrace the new business standards that has been created by the Web and – in particular – the users of the Web.

The e-book
Recently she published her first e-book called ‘why every company should be a rockband’, where she gives the arguments to support this idea.

‘Being a rockstar is a childhood dream that many of us, have had.

All I’m sayin’ is: Who doesn’t want to be in a rockband?
If we as companies facilitate childhood dreams
and involve ourselves in the lives of our surroundings
– the return of the involvement will be huge’.

Rockbandism
So the new term: Rockbandism is about how to successfully become an attractive workplace for the employees (rockstars) and the preferred brand for the customers (users, fans and groupies). The way of achieving rockbandism goes through changing the set of company values and behaviour. The terms ‘mainstream’ and ‘control’ should be replaced with the appreciation of individuality, creativity and employees (rockstars) differences:

‘let the musician play the instrument she/he is best at’.

The New ROI
Henriette Weber approaches also another term: ‘Return on involvement’ (which is also the topic of her book, now still in the stage of preparation). This new form of ROI should become a must- have approach by companies in their interactions with people (the audience). The simple ROI equation is that ‘return gets bigger the larger the involvement is’. The company should focus on giving something in return (to the world, surroundings, people, etc.), having a higher goal to fulfill, ‘making the business of business more than business’, be passionate about something and express that passion to the world.

‘A great brand these days is all about: authenticity, trust and remarkability’.

The perfect manager would be in that case the one who should practice a “no command and control mentality” and should learn how to embrace and enjoy the chaos of the ‘musicians ‘and the ‘audience’.

The Change
But where does the whole idea coming from? Henriette claims that the world has changed and is still changing and

‘it is the companies that are the quickest to adapt and change, who are going to be successful in the future’.

From the dreams of being in a rockband since her childhood years , she has now created a business metaphor people can relate to in a much more down-to-earth way than the normal marketing- and business development thinking.

so what is the ultimate rockband all business should strive to become?
‘I think the rockband they should strive to be, is the kind of rockband  the organisation can handle. In an ideal world I would say that if e.g. you have a building that does not consume energy but gives energy that is a great ideal to me. I like to see companies giving back to society. The ideal is to have other companies inspired by you by doing good. I think striving to be the “ultimate rockband” is a ideal in itself. Ultimate should be an ideal. As I am writing this I also think that making your company into an experience would be great. Like the Jimi Hendrix experience. ROCK ON!.’

The e-book on rockbandism which can be download free (in English, Danish and very soon French) has been published through Henriette’s own publishing house Toothlesstigerpress.com.

More about Henriette on her websites: henrietteweber.com and toothlesstiger.com

P.S.
By the way, why TOOTHLESS Tiger?
Henriette Weber: He, I get that question a lot and I often combine it with “because I am GREEEEAAAT” kind of like the tony kelloggs frosties tiger. Well, it has a family attachment. When my daughter was a baby we called her toothless tiger. I like Tigers a lot. She was toothless. Then I and my husband decided it was a good name for a design agency. Half a year later we founded Toothless Tiger as a new media consultancy. Today we call it a freelance web agency. I like the humbleness of Toothless – a tiger is dangerous. Without teeth it becomes less dangerous. It still bites sometimes – but in a playful way. It is about taking an incredible dangerous animal and making it more social.’