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What if your business isn’t just fundamentally ill-equipped to survive and thrive in the 21st century — but is actually unequipped for it?

Indulge me for a paragraph, if you will. Imagine that there was a country in which bailed-out bankers announced extravagant bonuses. OK, that part’s eminently realistic — even mundane. But then imagine that people (not activists, or even dreadlocked sign-waving hippies — just regular folks) began to express their dismay, anger, even outrage, everywhere from Twitter to the local bar, and that served as the spark for a self-organizing movement. And because people had the courage, self-belief and just plain orneriness to self-organize, their parliament was forced to do what just mere months ago might have been unthinkable: to tax those bailed-out bankers’ bonuses at 100%. And not just going forward — but retroactively, since the beginning of the crisis. Poof: kiss that fleet of supercars, that fourth vacation home in Bermuda, and that closetful of handmade Swiss watches goodbye.

The above is no idealistic dream: in its broad contours, that’s pretty much what’s happening in Holland (psst — someone tell the Dutch that banks probably need society a lot more than society needs banks). This was no mere “consumer revolt.” It was open rebellion by the people formerly known as consumers. Far from “voting with their wallets” or their “feet” — often impossible in an economy chock-a-block full of cushy, cozy oligopolies — people decided to take collective action of a very different kind: as citizens of a vibrant society, not merely as mute, hapless “consumers” of mass-produced junk.

Sure, as some have done, you can try to aggressively portray your giant corporation or notable investment bank as a shining beacon of humanity, progress, achievement. But who are you kidding? In a day and age where your once-secret follies and foibles leak across the globe at the speed of light, the only people who are going to take that at face value are probably all sitting around your boardroom table right now (and they’re staring nervously at their shoes).

It’s way past time to add to the increasingly lengthy list of lethally existential threats facing industrial-age institutions — threats I’d say already include the natural resources economists quaintly term “inputs” running out faster than the suspiciously quick-to-empty ink cartridge in your printer, entry barriers falling harder than the Berlin Wall’s collapse, the world’s most talented people increasingly mind-numbingly bored of (when they’re not deeply troubled by) the soulless tedium of business as usual, and a global macroeconomy perpetually poised on the brink of a nine-alarm meltdown — the inexorable rise of a new kind of people power.

Hence, my opening question: are you ill-equipped to survive the 21st century — or unequipped? Yesterday’s massive, sprawling organizations could pacify “consumers” by buying them off with a discount or three, an overblown celebrity promising the moon, an entirely new “brand” designed as camouflage, or adding an extra blade or five, patty or three, or cylinder or four, and calling it “innovation.” But that probably won’t pacify people concerned not merely with what they “get,” but with what, if anything, you’re really contributing to society.

What might it take to weather not mere “consumer revolts” (after all, you’ve spent a century learning how to break, smash, and crush those like the tiniest of obstacles, by mastering the art of “marketing warfare”, deploying grand “campaigns” full of “tactics” waged against “targets”) — but people actively, relentlessly, consistently self-organizing against you? Earth to the 157th floor: there’s not a trick in the tired, toxic arsenal of business as usual that’s going to help. And in fact, if you’ve followed me so far, I’d say: most of the tricks above are likely to throw gas on the flames of rebellion — not douse them.

Because, when, you think about it, they are tricks, mostly. And they’ve become commodities. Anyone with a few grand and zero imagination can buy all the above off the shelf instantaneously from literally scores of low-cost suppliers, consultancies, agencies, and freelancers. They are as predictable as the tides ad as obvious (and as obviously uninteresting) as a bad pick-up line.

Instead, what it might take to survive and thrive in the face of the many insurgencies bubbling and boiling above — of which people power is really just one — is this. A searing passion to make a positive, tangible difference. The impertinence to question the status quo. A heaping bucketful of empathy. A sweep of vision that makes “five year plans” look like a daily laundry list. The resilience to weather the mightiest of storms. Deep creativity — the ability to do what your rivals think is not just impractical, but impossible.

You probably wouldn’t ask your customers to believe that Freddy Krueger was really a ballerina just because you asked him to wear a tutu and do a pirouette. Here’s my guess: in the 21st century, if you’re playing by the rules of industrial-age business and trying to dress them up with the saccharine sugar-coating of marketing as usual, that’s pretty much exactly the bet you’re making. And it’s probably going to be worth about as much as a Dutch bankers’ bonus.