Home > Introduction
DOD 2007 ©
Doing without frontiers
The Department of Doing was founded in 1999. With a new millennium around the corner, it was a time
booming with possibilities, driven in part by the power of the internet. More importantly, it was
driven by the power of human imagination, which the internet was helping to set free.
Of course the dot.com hype of the 90s carried a sting in its tail. But as we’ve
seen since, the connectivity and power of the ‘net truly has changed our world.
Today, ideas can travel and grow synergistically at lightning speed.
Yet, even before the ‘net made all this possible, we saw too many fine ideas
founder because no-one knew how to get them done. Or, more commonly, they
couldn't be bothered to work out how to do them.
There are many reasons why this is the case. We’ve written articles and made
presentations about them all over the world. But, at heart, it's because most
organisations are set up to replicate prior actions: to effect business as
usual.
This is fine for stamping out widgets. But when you need something doing that
you've never done before, business as usual won't get the job done. Which is why
The Department of Doing was created and why we set no limits on what we do. As
our Directives make clear, we get the job done, whatever it takes.
Described in a dry, management-jargon sort of way, we might say that we have
generated organizational growth, removed obstacles to change, facilitated
investment decisions, and created new markets and channels of distribution. The
language we prefer, however, is more down to earth and understandable. Which
only makes the results, we believe, more impressive.
As an example, we helped a New Zealand entrepreneur source a unique, natural spa
product in Singapore, develop an entire brand around it – including all
packaging and marketing materials – and establish distribution in the UK.
Another couple of New Zealand export stories includes shipping apples to Sudan
and Saudi Arabia, and rocks to Switzerland.
On behalf on a client from India, we have sourced Butter Oil, a key ingredient
to manufacture ghee, an important cooking medium in the sub-continent.
For General Motors Asia Pacific, we were a central part of the team that changed
the Daewoo brand to Chevrolet in 17 markets, and in 14 languages, virtually
overnight.
Truck stops built in record time across the United States; establishing a
multi-million dollar motorsport and karting business in Dubai; turning around a
two-year new business losing streak for Australasia’s biggest corporate apparel
company. These are just some examples of the ‘Doing’ we have done.
They are achievements that, by the standards of conventional thinking, are hard
to categorise. They cross disciplines as wantonly as they ignore geographical
boundaries. They are, in fact, all examples of Doing without frontiers.
So, no matter what we might have done in the past, what we do in the future
could be entirely up to you.
