An Octopus' Garden

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” ~ John Lennon ~

You know the lyrics -

“I'd like to be, under the sea
in an octopus' garden in the shade.
He'd let us in, knows where we've been
in his octupus' garden, in the shade.
We would be warm, below the storm,
in our little hideaway beneath the waves.
Resting our head, on the sea bed,
in an octopus' garden near a cave …”(Excerpted from The Beetle’s – "Octopus’ Garden")

Don’t those lyrics deliver a soothing pulse of security and symbiosis? How about this finale;

“… How it would be, until you try to flee,
his eight arms firmly grasping you to stay!”



Entanglement strategies can be very effective for enterprise success. Like the quotation above – “a dream you dream together …” can be reality to the extent that you are involved in more than arms-length transactional business with your business partners everywhere along the supply chain.

Why not embed some unique and beneficial elements of your business into the workings of your suppliers and customers that will make your relationship more securely interdependent and influential as a whole? It’s the whole concept of virtual organizations coming to life. Data-sharing, packaging and labeling standards and electronic funds transferring all facilitate seamless business transactions and lower the costs of business. They entangle while providing commercial benefit in both directions. Customers so entangled are hard pressed to jump out of a relationship on a passing quality glitch, late shipment or spot price opportunity. Rebates, pull-through marketing that effects downstream brand recognition and customer loyalty incentives are forms of marketing and financial entanglement as well. They are all investments in a relationship for sustainable growth. They also ensure a “win-win” relationship bias that mitigates the second guessing that goes on in arms length relations that distract the participants from focusing on the value- added operations that they individually contribute and do best.

I once worked for a manufacturer that had achieved ISO9000 certification. With that certification we had developed valuable expert knowledge of that process and we leveraged it as an entanglement strategy by offering free seminars on the certification process to our customers. We did the same with other systems and methods talents we had acquired in the course of improving our own infrastructure. The same could be done with just about any generally recognized business system, practice, tool or compliance protocol that you may have mastered for your own purposes.

Maybe you have a particular expertise in Lean practices or the use of social media in marketing. Package it and offer knowledge transfer to your customers as a value-added service - send your managers out as trainers. A valuable by-product of such strategies is that your managers become better administrators when they begin to train others.

But beware; entanglement is no replacement for true value.

In life every relationship gets tested for authenticity. Sometimes a relationship that looked good on the surface begins to manifest signs of a bad sort of entanglement. There are times when disentanglement is in order when unhealthy, suffocating or distracting influences divert energy away from honest, free, profitable and worthy ventures. There is practical application of a biblical principal found in the Second Book of Timothy in Chapter 2 where it is written, “No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.” So, use entanglement strategies for genuine relationship building and beware of the potential for its unscrupulous use on you.

"The biggest break in my career was getting into the Beatles in 1962. The second biggest break since then is getting out of them." ~ George Harrison ~
All the Best!
Bill