Japan’s hi-tech carers

By 2050, the over 65s in Japan are expected to make up a third of the population… and it’s likely that technology will be relied upon to help look after them. Read the full story from BBC News, here.

Generational theory is not just about the youth market, and becoming more applicable to an emerging generation. It is also about realising that today’s seniors are the youngest, healthiest, richest old people the world has ever seen, and they represent a massive (often untapped) market for new products and services aimed at the elderly and ageing.

Tougher Bankruptcy laws in the US

On April 20, George Bush signed tougher personal bankruptcy laws into being in the USA (read about it). About time!! For too many years, the likes of Suzie Orman and Robert Kiyosaki have been able to peddle their money management wisdom around the world, without feeling any need to enculturate or localise it. One of the biggest dangers of their often cavalier approach to generating passive income, is that they live in a country that has allowed people to go bankrupt “for fun and profit”. No problem to lay up soaring debts, to take a chance and then if it all goes wrong, shut up shop for a few months and start again with a clean slate.

In South Africa, for example, it can take up to 7 years to “rehabilitate” after declaring bankruptcy. We can’t be a risky here as the Americans can. While the old US laws are part of the reason they have an entrepreneurial culture, the proctection of defaulters had gone too far. It needed to be fixed up.

I am no fan of George Dubble-Yu, but the man has guts, whatever else he doesn’t have. He’s taking on pensions, bankruptcy, and a whole lot more. Good for him.

The Enforcer, the man, the other man, the woman, that other man, and the whole planet at first glance

Walking up the stairs to the airport lounge I overheard a conversation happening on a mobile phone declaring that the Pope had been chosen. Upon entering the lounge it was fairly obvious that the announcement had captured every eye anywhere near the TV. I phoned Ray (a colleague who had just dropped me off at the airport) to tell him, as I was aware that he probably didn’t have a radio on, and would be interested by the news.

As I described the scene where I was he pointed out how the world’s attention had been captured by this event. An event that has direct relevance to 1.3 billion Catholics, and several million on the on the edge of the Catholic Church.

But why does an event which really isn’t going to have much, if any, bearing on the majority of people’s lives capture so much attention? Maybe they know something I don’t. Enter the Enforcer….

The Sovereign Individual

An article in last week’s “The Spectator” (I won’t tell people that you read this blog, if you don’t tell them I read Spectator ), is possibly the best single article description of the new emerging connection economy you are ever likely to read (in fact, that’s why I read the mag – it’s the best use of the English language I have ever encountered in mag print). Find the article here. [[The Spectator needs a subscription to read online content. If you don’t have one, then I have put up a JPG copy of the two pages. I don’t want to have intellectual capital issues, so I have just scanned it in – you can read them but otherwise not use them. Please buy the Spectator. Read them: Page 1 (490Kb) and Page 2 (531Kb).

It comments on the closing of the Rover factory in England a few weeks ago, and expresses astonishment. Not at its closure, but at how long it managed to stay open. It goes from there to comment on how conservative Britons express dismay that “Britain doesn’t make anything” anymore, and asks them to wake up and smell the services revolution. It goes on to comment on the braining up of China, the fact that more Chinese people are leaving Canada to go back to China than the reverse, and suggests what the world might look like in a few decades time.

It will take you 10 minutes to read, is witty and insightful, and plain brilliant.

Come, visit my valley. Please.

Where you live becomes irrelevant in a virtual team – or does it? Recently I had quite a peculiar experience. Graeme had a presentation close to where I live and we agreed to have coffee afterwards at a coffee shop just around the corner from my house. I was there a bit before him and ordered so long while I waited. When he arrived I had the strangest feeling. It wasn’t the excitement of coffee with Graeme (sorry Graeme!). It was the fact that this would be the first coffee I had with one of our team members in MY valley. My space. The piece of earth where so many of my stories intertwine and weave across each other. My piece of earth. My valley. Me.

What can we learn from this experience regarding the importance of geography in virtual teams?
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Lern how 2 spel

We often say in our “Mind the Gap” presentation, that there is nothing sadder than a bunch of Boomers trying to be cool. By this we mean that a lot of Boomers (in their 40s and 50s) in marketing/sales/advertising tend to think that because they were young once, they understand today’s young people, and are easily able to connect with them. I was reminded again this morning how simple mistakes can prove this belief to be false.

Standing in a bus at Cape Town airport, I noticed MTN’s campaign. Quite clever. “If ur coming, switch us on. If ur going, switch us off”. Except for the spelling mistake. They were trying to use the new SMS txt speak of the mobile phone generation. But they didn’t bother to do a spell check with a 13 year old. Anyone of whom could have told them that there is a difference between “ur” and “u r”. The former means “your” and the latter means “u r”. The space is critical.

Older generations tend to dismiss the free flowing world of text talk as having no grammar or rules. On the contrary, it has specific rules, and very careful etiquette. Pity the marketers at MTN didn’t lrn hw 2 spl. mayb nxt time?

Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand.

Updated, February 2010

If you copy and paste this saying into Google you’ll get 3520 hits attributing the saying either to Aristotle, Confucius or some native American wizard. Yet it is just as true today as it was hundreds of years ago. Perhaps it’s even more true today. We live in a world where information abounds and where people from diverse backgrounds are more in contact with each other than ever before. This post-modern world is one where traditional views are challenged and authoritive statements are doubted.

Why should I believe you? Who says you are right? My Japanese friend says they’ve been doing it differently for centuries and he believes they are right. But they look wrong to me.

It is in a world like this one where a social constructivist approach becomes critical. An approach where people develop their own meaning from experiences and from interacting with each other. Using experiences. Based on relationships.

This is one of the keys to TomorrowToday’s approach to helping our clients get more out of their people – their leaders, staff and customers. We agree with Ron Heifetz, legendary leadership guru at Harvard, that “leadership can be taught” and that a key to doing so is to help people to become “adaptive” in their approach to the world.

In 2010, we will be launching an exciting new initiative aimed at integrating adaptive intelligence with leadership and strategy development and implementation in organisations. You will be able to find out more about this from March 2010 at http://www.strategicleadershipintelligence.com.

Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to developing these capabilities. But the path is certain, and the benefits well worth the effort.

Mind the Gap: Generations @ Work

This is the original submission as published as the Keynote feature in the Journal for Convergence (ISSN 1606-6162), Vol 5 No 4,www.axius.co.za

‚We can’t seem to keep our bright young things‛. This is the common complaint of businesses around the world these days. Talented employees, especially young people, are not staying, and an older generation of managers don’t know why they can’t keep them. No ‚quick fix‛ solutions or simple, 1-2-3 strategies will work. And none of the tried and trusted motivational tools seem to have any effect on this new generation. The solution lies not in more techniques or cuter strategies, but rather in understanding that a radical value system shift is currently taking place in society. This shift is best explained by generational theory.

What are ‘Generations’?[i]

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Targeting Geeks and Geezers

In their book, Geeks and Geezers (buy it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net), Bennis and Thomas wrote about the old generation (GIs) and the young (Gen Xers/Millennials), and coined a phrase that has entered consumer-market jargon.

In the Journal Gazette of 14 April, mention was made of a trade show for consumer goods where it was obvious that the winners were those that had understood either the geek (10 to 25 year old) market or the geezer (age 60 and over) market (read it here.). The older group especially are a prime target market for retailers and manufacturers – they are the richest, healthiest and youngest old people the world has ever seen. It makes sense to target them specifically. These Boomers like “trophy purchases” that can be displayed, are techno gadgets but with a retro feel (and even though they won’t admit it, they also need appliances that have larger font type displays .

Overlooked . . . for being too young

The Times of London, 13 April 2005, reported on a survey by the Hay Group (remuneration specialists) on age discrimination against younger workers (specifically those age 18-24). You can read it here.

The main reasons for young people (Generation Xers) being held back were:

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The Power of Connection

By engaging with the reality of the emerging Connection economy the signature tune is that of connection: in other words ‘relationships’. Here is just one more story of that power at work – a story that if you are in the medical profession might just save you from litigation!

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Fathers were different then

In the 4 April 2005 issue of Newsweek there was an article on Jack Welch’s new book, ‘Winning’. As part of the article there were a couple of ‘interest blocks’, and the one that caught my eye was on Work/Life balance. Huh! I thought to myself. What does Jack know about this? And I was right. Jack starts the piece off with something like, “this is one area you should do as I say and not as I do.” Darn right Jack.

But somewhere in that block was a fantastic generational insight from Jack as to men ‘back then’. Here’s what he had to say…..
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Rant: Vodacom and Voyager

Excuse me while I scream. Every now and again, I just need to rant. Today, two of them converge: Vodacom (cell phone provider) and Voyager (South African Airways Frequent Flier programme).

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Just give it all away

The NY Times, carried a story on 11 April, on IBM hopes to profit by making patents available free (access it here). ABSTRACT: “IBM plans to announce it is making 500 of its software patents freely available to anyone working on open-source projects, like popular Linux operating system, on which programmers collaborate and share code; analysts say new model for IBM represents shift away from traditional corporate approach to protecting copyrights, trademark and trade-secret laws; estimate IBM collected $1 billion or more last year from licensing its inventions; IBM senior vice president John Kelly calls patent contribution beginning of new era in how IBM will manage intellectual property; company was granted 3,248 patents in 2004, far more than any other company.”

When “Big Blue” starts getting it, then everyone needs to understand the new era has come. This is the connection economy. Protecting WHAT you know is no longer the best competitive advantage. Your competitors will work it out anyway, and will find a way around your copyright protection sooner rather than later.
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A Unique Period of History

The category, “Balancing Today and Tomorrow” relates to our understanding of the emerging connection economy. In their book, “The Individualized Corporation”, (click here to purchase it online) Sumantra Ghoshal and Christopher Bartlett try to help readers understand this emerging reality by doing a brief historical review of some of the major shifts that have taken place during the last hundred years of corporate history. Top executives who have been around for a while are fairly united in recognising that they are leading their companies through a unique period of history. Here are some quotes from the book to illustrate the point.

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Spanglish – a surprisingly good movie

I must admit that I was not looking forward to my wife’s choice of movies this evening. Adam Sandler, and the prospects of a chick flick meant that I really felt I was doing duty, rather than going on a date. How wrong I was.

Spanglish (check it out at IMDB – Internet Movie Database) is about a Mexican worker, Flor, who finds employment in the home of a seriously disfunctional, wealthy LA family. The husband (Sandler) is a chef and works late nights, leaving him time to be at home during the day. The mother (Tea Leonie) is a laid off exec, with serious self-image issues. It is a really great movie, which delivers punches all the way to the very last line. But this isn’t a movie review (check out the IMDB site for that kind of stuff).

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Generation X (a Bright Young Thing) stirs things up in Japan

Mark this name: Takafumi Horie. See a pic of him here. In a Newsweek article entitled, “The Kid v. The Man” (read it here), I discovered what an Xer can do to even the most traditional of “Silent generation” environments, i.e. Japan.

This 32 year old made billions of dollars with his Internet portal, Livedoor. Now, with his money, and his attitude, he is taking on the establishment, threatening the old boys’ club and generally causing corporate mayhem. Its great to see the reaction of the old men of Japan’s corporate world, snootily smirking at him, as if he is just a kid who won’t make it. How wrong they are going to be! I don’t know Takafumi, but I know his type. They’re called Gen Xers. We call them, “Bright Young Things”. Around the world, these young people, now in their 20s and 30s are changing the rules of the game.

Anyone who thinks that this is just a fad, is wrong. Anyone who thinks that you can just grit your teeth and wait for these “kids” to grow up, is wrong. Gen Xers (read more about them here) are no longer kids – they’re coming up into positions of influence and they’re bringing a new way of working with them. Yes, even in Japan!

Do we expect too much from young people?

Here’s a thought I am working through at the moment…

…Erikson’s notion of Adult Development supposes that there are Key Stages that all people have to work through in order to become a ’rounded’ person, fully functional, with a healthy personality. If someone does not work through one of the stages adequately, that person will find it difficult to function in the next stage: so, for example, if a baby does not receive the love, care and attention it needs as a baby, early childhood will then be impaired. You get the point…

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Can I Bring the Kids?

Inc magazine (June 2004) ran a short story on new employee benefits – one of which is child-care facilities. Read the article here (and see the online poll that indicated that 65% of Inc online readers would consider adding daycare). Its more than just creating a warm fuzzy feeling amongst staff – corporate “do-gooderness”. Its one strategy in the critical task of attracting and retaining star performers (we prefer to call them “bright young things” (BYTs) – see here for our take on it at TomorrowToday.biz.)

This, by the way, was not a big company. Inc is a magazine specifically targetting small and medium size enterprises. The company in question employed only 50 people, losing on average only 1 per year. A phenomenal achievement in the SMME sector! Small and medium companies have an opportunity to “steal” top talent from big corporates precisely because they have the flexibility to provide non-traditional employee benefits.

Interestingly, there is also a business opportunity for the outsourcing of some of these creative employee benefits (who, after all, will run the corporate day care facility?). All-in-all, a set of serious market opportunities in the BYT space.

Cheap movie tickets all smoke and mirrors

So the whole ‘new low prices’ for movies thing has come to an end, not even a full month after activation. (click here for Marketing Web Article) You gotta love these guys.

Didn’t it seem strange when they cut their prices by over 50%? It felt like a desperate move in the first place. Things were obviously getting ugly from a bottom line point of view. Did anyone believe for a minute it was about making movies affordable to the majority of South Africans? Give me a break. And now we see just how ‘civic minded’ they were being. Because now we discover that some movies prices are back to plus R35. Beeeooootiful.

You can’t mess with your customers like this. Or can you? I want a front row seat for this one.

Intellectual Property – Up in smoke

According to an article on allAfrica.com (click here for article) Weber (the makers of Kettle Braais and Barbeques) lost a copyright case against Cadac with costs and damages (ouch). The Weber legal team say they’ll appeal and that they lost on a technicality. Here we go again…

I say that because it’s just another example of old thinking in an emerging environment that is forcing everyone to re-think Intellectual Property (IP), what it is, and if it should or even can be protected? Obviously there’s a lot at stake here, especially in a world in which many businesses have succeeded because they’ve been able to protect their IP. But should that continue into the future?

Weber are not the first, and nor will they be the last. The entertainment industry is struggling with this currently, and it’s strategy thus far has been to use the ‘might of the law’ to protect the business model they have become rich using. With one or two small innovations, nothing has really changed.
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Meeting Franke

Following up on our involvement in the Franke conference I met with the CEO Gerhard yesterday. And an amazing meeting it was! Two questions I asked him were: What was the best advice he had for leaders? What was his take on leadership & storytelling? Oh yes, of course I also asked him what role TmTd could play in his amazing business into the future…
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Whispering Windows – puleeze

Marketing Web featured an article today (Click here for the article) about ‘Whispering Windows’ now employed in Nike stores across South Africa. What’s all the fuss about? Granted I haven’t seen or experienced (heard) it, but we’ve been doing whispering windows of sorts in SA for years. Hit the streets of Jozi City and you’ll see not only whispering windows but shouting, jiving and screaming ‘windows’ in the form of loud hailers and sound systems. So it’s cleverly intergrated into the window and has a novel gimmic appeal for now, but consumers will soon realise that it’s not some fancy American (or where ever it’s from) innovation, just a small tweak to a home grown product currently being used in most South African cities, by stores far less ’sophisticated’ than Nike.

Sugar and Spice, and Biochemistry

Several big food and beverage companies are looking at a new ingredient in the battle for health-conscious consumers: a chemical that tricks the taste buds into sensing sugar or salt even when it is not there.

Kraft Foods, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Campbell Soup are all working with a biotechnology company called Senomyx, which has developed several chemicals, most of which do not have any flavor of their own but instead work by activating or blocking receptors in the mouth that are responsible for taste.
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Death of the dinosaurs

I have just finished reading an article in the New York Times outlining the recent goings on at AIG in the USA. This has led to the dismissal and resignation of Maurice Greenberg as both CEO & Chairman of the company. In reading the story I have been left wondering how someone who was one of the leading strategist and strategic thinkers of his day could be so short sighted. The bottom line in the Greenberg saga is that he didn’t adjust his way of working when the post-Enron world around him required it. His ego was such that he….
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Sony Playstation Portable – another Sony stuff up

The new Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) is receiving rave reviews. It has an 11cm wide display, with superb graphics and comes in a lightweight, well designed skin. There will be a great many games available for it, since it is in the PlayStation family. It has Wi-Fi capability, for multi-player games, either with other PSP’s or via a wireless connection to the Internet. It is also an MP3 player, with great stereo sound (via headphones), and an impressive five hour battery life. With everything that Sony knows about game consoles, it seems a sure winner.

But Sony does not understand (maybe never has) the connection economy.
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Managing different generations at work

Research put out by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas (www.challengergray.com) (as quoted in The FUTURIST, May-June 2004), indicates that in addition to the well-known merits of using older workers (e.g. experience, reliability, stability), an unexpected benefit is the tendency of older workers to be early risers. The University of Toronto have also released findings indicating that older people are at their sharpest in the morning. John Challenger, CEO of CGC, says, “Companies are going to get the best work out of the older employees by confining their schedules to the early part of the day. It is also the schedule that the majority of seniors are likely to prefer. Offering such an option will be highly valued by older workers, aiding the employer’s retention efforts.” Flexible office hours that start very early in the morning will work well for the older generations, with the related increase in productivity.

In the same edition of The FUTURIST, the work of Harriet Presser, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, in Working in a 24/7 Economy: Challenges for American Families was also highlighted. Her concern is the growing rate of working of nonstandard hours in America. Her research indicates that one fifth of all employed Americans work variable or rotating shifts, and one third work weekends. There are advantages and disadvantages to nonstandard working hours, and a definite increase in the complexity of family functioning. Younger generations are more likely to be involved in this type of working environment, and are more likely to be attracted by the flexibility it might offer as well.

As companies need to continue to extend their operating hours, and at the same time create systems and structures to attract and retain employees, thinking generationally about how to do so makes a lot of sense.

4 Words that got me excited – and I don’t know why?

Global Reach;
Location Independence;
Electronic Knowledge Network;
Time Compression.

These four headings were used to describe VeriFone’s business model in a FastCompany article today. Click here for full article

As I read through the article there was something that immediately grabbed me, and it’s killing me, cos I don’t know why? I can imagine that some people read this and got exhausted, but I read it and while I don’t want to work with VeriFone, I want to work like VeriFone. Well actually I do work like VeriFone (most of the time). Maybe I got excited because they did such a good job describing me? Certainly this has got to be a model to be considered for the future. How you lead in that environment is going to get tricky. Without people who want to work like that, I’m not sure you’re going to easily be able to demand it, even request it, nicely. The kind of passion and ownership (and other words in that category) that’s needed isn’t going to be generated after employment. If you don’t come in with it, I’m not sure you’re going to get it (easily).

TomorrowToday.biz Core Values

In the past few weeks, we have attempted to pin down and codify our core values. At a gut level, we know who we are, but we need to ensure its more than just a gut level. We also need to be able to let others know about who we are, and what we stand for. People who want to connect with us need to know what they’re connecting with. For all these reasons we have tried to “freeze frame” our values.

This is not a “wish list” of what we want to do. It is a statement of our current reality, and what we want to live by.

We will use this list to help us remain focussed on who we are, and why we do it. These are helpful when we ask the question, “Is this a TomorrowToday person?” or “Is that what TomorrowToday is?”. That will in turn help us to define what we do, who we do it with, and why. Because we work in a virtual, fractal network, it is the adherance to these values that will ensure an indivdual connects with us and stays with us.
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Gatekeepers

Within a fractal, virtual, networked team, its critical to create hubs for various functions and information flows. We call these “hubs” gatekeepers, and we have allocated people to these roles. Their responsibility is to “push” information to the team on the area they’re responsible for. They are also the first port of call for any questions related to this area.

The list for internal purposes is below (included is a picture of our current structure)…
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