1st world vs 3rd world – which is which?

This morning I took my baby to Ampath to get blood samples for the Netherland-lab. We also had an option to take him to the Pretoria Academic Hospital tomorrow for the same sample. Obviously we rather decided to go for the Ampath-option. You know – first world, private sector, blah blah blah. Anyway, the sister couldn’t even spell “Francois”, let alone obtain the blood sample. After the second prick (with a much more vicious lance-like utensil) she still couldn’t get nearly enough blood to cover the required space on the ticket. She then called two other sisters and none of them have ever done this before. So we decided to stop the circuis (baby screaming) and take the state-hospital option.

What an ironical situation. There at Pretoria Academic Hospital you will find a Dr Izel Smuts. She is a world-famous pediatric neurologist yet she has her life their on grass-roots level, so to speak. All the private pediatricians we talked to, refered us to her as a last resort – because she’s the best. She doesn’t have a secretary. Her office, the clinic where she sees patients and the ward where she does her rounds are each a few blocks apart. Her desk is smaller than a 2-man table at a coffee shop. When you walk into that clinic it really feels as if you are in middle Africa somewhere. Really. And of course she only gets a state salary.

Amazing how South Africa presents vignettes like this one. People just living out their passion – no, their calling – and not asking for anything more than being able to make a living contribution of outstanding excellence.

Blogging…who cares?

In an information-overloaded society who cares who blogs and why? Note that is a question and not a statement. But could it be that when one has 109 books on the ‘waiting to be read’ shelf, a pile of journals, magazines and clippings a couple of zillion meters high (Ok that’s an exaggeration but the book number isn’t)…and this is just the print media…that blogging becomes an irratating addition to an already irritating overload? Or…
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The Interactive Workplace

This was sent to me by email. I am trying to track down the URL to reference it properly, but for now, enjoy.

EDS’ Jeff Wacker: Interactive workplace scary — in a good way
POSTED:03 May 2005, SOURCE: Edmonton Journal

Gamers could rule the world when the Next Big Thing comes down the technology wires, according to futurist Jeff Wacker.

Wacker calls it autonomics, and it will have as huge an effect on our lives as the last Big Thing — the personal computer — the Texas author, lecturer and bison rancher told an audience at MacEwan College on Monday.

Autonomics is an intelligent, instinctive system that interacts with us rather than merely responding to our commands, the same as the body reacts when you start running by increasing the heartbeat and oxygen intake, Wacker said.

And interactive games are a great way to teach people how to manage this scary future, he said.
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Ignore blogs at your brand’s peril

Since Le Monde (see it here), Fortune and BusinessWeek ran cover stories on Blogs and business (read BusinessWeek’s here), it seems that a lot of column inches have been expended on debating whether blogging is just a fad or the “next big thing”. I think its the latter. Its the virtual water cooler, that allows formal and informal communication within a virtual office (which includes brick and mortar offices where people spend more time at their computers than in the corridors anyway), and extends beyond the boundaries of the company to, to virtual networking between people across companies and industries. For this reason alone, blogging is worth taking seriously – even if you just act as an observer, ready to react if required.

If you need examples of companies that weren’t ready for it all, just flip to Debbie’s Weil’s CEO blog site for info on Kensington laptop locks, Kryptonite’s bike locks, and more.

On our blog, we have a category called “The Quick and the Dead” where we tell stories of those companies who understand the connection economy, and those who don’t! There is some great reading to be done (click here for the full list so far). We usually contact the companies involved, and link them to our blog site so they can see what we’ve written – but that is a courtesy not often extended to brands by other bloggers.

In chatting to a colleague earlier today, we realised the power of this medium, and what would happen if it was turned on us. “People out there can just as easily blog about us”, he said. Quite a thought. But, then I relaxed, because if they did, we would know about it – most likely – within a day. How is this possible? Simple, we use Google Alerts. Free of charge, you put in search strings you want Google to monitor – on the web and/or in the news – and then each time Google picks something up, it sends you a link immediately (or once a day/week/month in summary format). As soon as Google knows about it, so do you. And then you can choose to act on it. I have about 20 alerts active at the moment, and takes less than 5 minutes to scan them each day, and see if there is anything of importance to respond to. If someone blogs about us, we’ll know about it, and can start the brand protection process immediately.

Blogging is important – and needs to be seriously considered. IBM has encouraged all 320,000 employees to start blogging (read about it here) – and have even posted a PDF of blogging guidelines for employees (get it here, or a summary here). BusinessWeek put out some tips for running your blog as a corporate endeavour – available below.
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How, how how?

I’ve loved this blog site within TT.biz as an organisation. 20 odd people invited weekly by one person to participate. I’ve sniggered at the ‘marketing’ strategy, the promotions and sweetners, the threats and begging. The net result is that never before has so much been written to so many by so few. And then I read a blog this evening (this morning) submitted by Graeme (click to read) and it hits me again. That darn question. The one I’ve not ever seen solved (for too long anyway) How do you get all the team, most of the team to play in a similar space for a prolonged period of time?

We have a virtual organisation that’s more fluid than most. We change regularly, and we regularly change. This is exciting, and even spectacular. But it can be dangerous. Very dangerous. People move on, and leave other people behind. Not on purpose, but because we were playing in different spaces. One day you can see everyone, and the next day you find yourself out there all alone.

So how do you get similar thinking and conversation around similar things? The question again. I don’t know the answer, but I recognise the importance.

Nuf Sed

Control, Alt, Delete – the key for leaders!

Control, Alt, Delete…the dreaded key that is brought into play when your will and that of the computer march off in different directions and a reboot becomes the final option. Control, alt, delete should be what leaders reach for if they are to lead effectively into the future. The temptation for leaders to guard the tried and tested, to entrench the philosophy and methodology that has resulted in success is both understandable as it is compelling. However that is the best way to ensure failure in a context that demands we keep up with the times or perish. Leaders have to change…and the change that is required sits not at the perriferary (where it can be delayed or even ignored) but rather at the core where ignoring it is akin to turning your back on a charging bull. Tom Peters writes…
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Imagine everything worked like this….luverleee

Last week I got an e-mail from one of the tech sites stating that FireFox (the browser you should be using by now) had a security flaw. No kidding on my next download, there was another mail from the same tech site, saying FireFox had released a patch, and then my FireFox browser automatically informed me of the patch to download. Wild.

Netscape (click here) released their new browser this last week. Again after shouting about it’s security, it too was found ot have a flaw, to which it very quickly responded with an update.

That’s the beauty of the world of open-source. It’s a community of people working for a greater good (ok so it’s not that idealistic) but it works.

Don’t you just love that.

Who you are more important than what you sell

It is our contention that the emerging era (we call it the “connection economy”) is forcing companies to make a massive shift from “what” they sell to “how” they sell and “who” they are as the primary competitve advantages. This means that companies must take public perception of them very seriously. This is where blogging becomes the “next big thing” – another tech weapon in the transparency war.

Disturbingly, many of the issues that companies now have to contend with have a religious underpinning. Especially in America, evangelical Christians, with their schizophrenic love of personal armament, hatred of abortion, support of the death penalty and abhorrence of euthenasia, are becoming more and more active in their activism.

Check out this article in BusinessWeek, where Microsoft flip-flopped on supporting/not supporting the civil rights of gay marriages.

Culture Wars Hit Corporate America: Increasingly, business must weigh in on hot social issues — and suffer interest groups’ slings and arrows

What makes one African?

In this weeks Sunday Times (South Africa) on page 4 in the main section in the bottom right corner is a small piece with the title, ‘Party debates what to do about race’. In summary the question being asked by the ANC is this, in a post-apartheid South Africa, does the characterisation of race contradict the Freedom Charter which states that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white”? And a secondary question is, what is meant by ‘African’ in the context of a non-racial South Africa?

Both these questions are difficult to answer as they don’t just exist within a South African context, the answer is also complicated because South Africa and South Africans find themselves participants of a larger transition of society and generation. The ANC would be making a mistake if it did not take at least these two other transitions into account when sitting to find some answers.
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Spam Filter – next addition to your Mobile Phone

A while ago one of our Blogs featured a thought on whether Mobile Phones would get more complex or more simple? What can possibly be added, or what should rather be taken away? That debate aside, it’s time we had a mechanism that allowed us to filter out Spam. If sms spam hasn’t hit your phone yet, it’s going to. Soon!

I get 2 or 3 a day. One, sometimes two from some fool asking if I’d like to be his and sometimes her friend? No! And then every now and then South Africa’s green airline sends me a special. Last week they sent one, and got their own name wrong in the spelling. Duh!

And then of course there’s the sms spam that hacks me off the most, from my own Mobile Phone Provider, Auto Page Cellular (Click here if you really want to see them). You’d think they’d get it more than anyone else? That sms is still sacred and shouldn’t be exploited just yet for spam. Well not unless you want to hack off your clients. Well done on that front. You’ve succeeded completely.

Or maybe they just figure it’s going to happen sooner than later, so they’ll be the first in? Good luck. You want my opinion….. this is one area you don’t want to be rushing to be first in.

Good to Great

Good to Great and its predecessor, Built to Last are two of the best selling business books of all time. Built to Last is, in my opinion, a seriously dodgy book that purports to give timeless advice for building enduring companies, by analysing the antics of seriously industrial age companies over the past 50 years. There are, of course, some good principles that emerge, but on the whole, I’d give it a skip.

Good to Great, by Jim Collins (buy it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net) (2001) is a much better aid for 21st century companies battling with the connection economy and how to build a really great company. The one enduring weakness of Collins’ work is that he only focuses on stock market returns as a measure of greatness, rather than societal contribution – but, in his defense, he has very little option given that he was trying to do an objective, scientific analysis.

There are some excellent summaries of Good to Great available online – I’d recommend this PDF document, from Executive summaries.

The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence

I have been a fan of Dan Tapscott for years. He was one of the first authors to fully grasp the implications of the Internet technology, and has been writing about its potential and impact since the early 1990s. I still think his book on how it will impact young people, especially educationally, is one of the best yet written: Growing Up Digital may be a bit dated on the tech info side, but its still a brilliant read (get it at Amazon.com). In 2003, he jumped into the arena of corporate governance, with (buy it at Kalahari.net).

Trolling through the Net, I found a book review for one of his earlier books, from 1997. It’s “The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence”, (buy it online at Amazon.com) and the review/summary is available here.

Protect the people against LOAN SHARKS

As I write this I stare across the plains of Northern KwaZulu-Natal. The closest town is 30kms away. Very few people speak anything but Zulu. Very few people had any (proper) education. My mother-in-law started a Nougat factory here and currently she employs about 160 people. All women. All Zulu. Most of them on education NQF-level 1 and ABET level 1-2. Fransie, my wife, runs a coaching and training programme with the workers. The purpose is to give them proper ABET (Adult Basic Education and Training) training and to give them the opportunity to share and work through some of their personal difficulties.

Guess what their main personal difficulty is: They receive at least R1000 per month. They need to sustain themselves, their children, their uncle’s children and pay school fees. Still they need/want to buy furniture and clothing. They get credit from Joshua Door and Jet. They don’t understand how credit works. They get in trouble meeting the repayments. They get a cash loan to pay the debt. They are stuck.

What an unethical way to do business! Making money out of people’s crises and their lack of understanding compound interest. How can someone who can hardly count understand compound interest and its devestating effects (if it works against you)? I think government should, as part of its fight against poverty, ban all loan sharks. Let them use their financial skills to make money out of the wealthy and not to squeeze the poor to death!

Bring your car in one day earlier and we’ll charge you more than double…

Me: “Hi, this is Jean Cooper speaking. I just want to point out a small administrative error: I hired a car from you at R88 per day, but you charged me R235 a day.”
Car rental company: “No, sir, it is not an admin error. You were supposed to hire the car for 6 days, but you brought it back on the 5th day.”
Me: “My flight schedule changed. Yes, I brought it back earlier but how can that constitute a 294% price increase? What harm did I cause you by bringing the car back earlier? In fact, by having the car back a day earlier you could rent it out again one day earlier…”
Car rental company: “I’m sorry sir, the contract was for 6 days, not for 5.”
Me: “Yes, but can you understand my point? I will pay for the full 6 days – you can even leave the car in your carpark for today, if you want to. I benefited you by bringing the car back early. How can you penalize me for that?”
Car rental company:“Sorry sir, our system works that way.”
Me: “Why?”
Car rental company:“Because the contract was for 6 days, not for 5.”
Me: “I know about the contract, I’m asking for some reason. Can’t you change the system?”
Car rental company:”Sir, our system works this way. We had a contract….”

(I’m not putting their name here as I don’t want to use the power of this blogger for my personal fights)

The Connection Economy

The Open Magazine (a weekly e-zine for Linux and Open Source computing), recently ran an article entitled “The Connection Economy” by by Geoff Cohen, Senior Consultant, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation
(read it here). It’s a nice simple, and short summary that prefers the title, the “adaptive economy” for the transition time we find ourselves in.

I have reproduced the entire piece below.

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A Trip to Ikea could change your marriage (no really)

The Independent (UK) on Sunday, 15 May, (read it here – premium content) reports that Ikea is dominating a market you wouldn’t expect. They have had a wedding in a (Canadian) store, their famous in-house branded meatballs have become legendary and their restuarants have become the first choice for many couples on Valentine’s day. An estimated 10 per cent of Europeans are now conceived on the store’s beds. Elen Lewis, the book’s author, said many Ikea staff believed that the brand was good for a couple’s sex life because of its obsession with flatpack design.

The queues for the car park are enough to push many couples to breaking point. But a new book claims that a shopping trip to Ikea improves marital harmony. Great Ikea! A Brand for all People (but it online at Amazon.com).

The book attributes much of the store’s success to the fact that its self-assembly furniture allows men to reclaim their hunter-gatherer roots, and so keep their relationships healthy – by demonstrating to their wives and children that they are capable of masculine tasks. In Sweden, the aseembly of a piece of Ikea furniture has now become the standard final act of a stag night out.

This reminds me of the story (I cannot remember the details, so please remind me if you do), of the company in the 1950s (or so) that first gave us instant cake mixture. They couldn’t get it to sell, because the generation of the day needed to feel that they were actually working hard to bake. So, they changed the recipe to say “just add an egg”. They didn’t need to, but it gave the women something to do to actually bake the cake. Their sales rocketed after this.

Maybe Ikea has found the same secret with men!

How is this adding value to other people?

A number of things coalesced for me this evening – so I can’t help myself- I should have been in bed twenty minutes ago. I got home a few hours ago, after a great presentation to about 250 parents at a school – my mind was buzzing, and as part of the relaxation technique I decided to have a long soaking bath and read a good book. Couldn’t choose which book to read, so picked up Tom Peters’s Re-Imagine! (but it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net) . I have been avoiding this book for awhile – it just looked a bit ADD to me (but that’s how I look to others, so no disrespect meant). (PS – also check out Tom’s blog site: http://www.tompeters.com (hey, Tom, get trackbacks!).

I’m not sure what the rest of the book is like, but the first 50 pages were excellent. By then my bath was lukewarm. As I got out, I noticed a large A3 poster on my bed – it turns out it’s my six-year-old daughter Amy’s first school project. Amy is in Grade 0 – a singularly badly named school year, though not as bad as her sister Hannah who is in Grade 000 (triple nought) – so this is a milestone for her, and one she obviously wants me to be involved in.

In his book, Tom Peters calls for a new vision. He imagines:

How can I help my daughter to become one of these beings? One of the ways is to heighten the entrepreneurial instinct – may be getting her to ask the question, “how can I make money out of this?” But even as I had better thought, I realised that that type of thinking is part of the old contract. To help my daughter be part of the new one, I need to get her to ask an entirely different type of question. A question I can embed in her consciousness – a question she will ask of everything she ever does. WOW!

What will the question be?

Right now, a few moments before switching off and going to bed (and possibly a few moments after my brain has switched off), I am leaning towards, “how is this adding value to other people?” So, we went to Cape Town, we took photos, we stuck them on cardboard, we’re showing you – but what value have we added? How have we improved other people’s lives? How is this adding value to the people?

I think I like that…

Leaders, blogging and where to start

You’re a leader? Check.
You want to connect internally and externally with your network? Check.
You don’t feel the traditional channels are working as well as they could? Check.
You’ve heard of blogging, but it sounds scary/tough/like some school kid’s play thing? Check.

If you’re still with me, then you need to get with the programme. Blogging is fast becoming a strategic leadership tool, going way beyond fringe gimic, to the “next big thing”. There are some great resources available for getting going as a serious business blogger. Check out our own: Blogging 101 (or Blogging for Boomers) and Why We Blog.

But also check out the following:

More links coming here soon.

Willingness to learn promotes organisational change

Here is an interesting extract (with some random commentary by me) from an address by Dr Goran Carstedt (2002), a former senior executive at Volvo and IKEA (See original here).

ORGANISATIONAL learning (OL) is the process of identification and correction of errors in organisations, in which learning takes place through individuals who act as organisational agents. This is sort of obvious, but often needs to be said. An “organisation” does not know anything. Its maximum potential knowledge is the sum of all the knowledge of all of its employees and network. Its actual organisational knowledge is the sum of the actual knowledge used by actual employees when making actual decisions. I’d guess the ratio of actual knowledge to potential knowledge is somewhere in the region of 1:100 for most organisations.

The four integral elements linked to OL are knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation and organisational memory.

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remember ME

If you’re looking for trends, here’s one you can’t afford to ignore.

‘remember ME’ is the cry of todays younger generations (It is most often used by webpage designers as a checkbox when entering your details on their site – it means you don’t have to enter them again next time you come to their website). Not because they’re desperate to be remembered for their mark on the world, or even because significance is an important value. They want you to remember them for a far more pragmatic reason… because you can, and therefore why shouldn’t you?

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Guess our collective ages and sit with us in the cockpit for the landing

Yesterday I flew down to Cape Town. I fly on a variety of airlines. It depends on time and price. These are my variables and I do all my own bookings online.

The delight about yesterday’s trip was the attitude and friendly manner of the team. We are all tired of the same sick jokes on some airlines and would rather they kept quiet or found some new lines.!!

The first thing that happened was the captain mentioned that the crew had heard about a birthday of one of the passengers and wished this person by name from us all.

The little girl sitting next to me was delighted and clapped. I noticed that all the children were given a great bag of goodies as they walked on board.

About 90 minues into the flight the captain asked us to guess the combined age of the crew and the winner would sit in the cockpit for the landing.

This was all great relationship building. We were also asked to fill in a survey to improve our future trips with this airline.

Well Done to the BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS on this crew. Combined age of all 6 members …. 155 .. average……25.83

Well done to 1 Time. Even though we left Johannesburg late you made up for it by building great relationships.

Deciding on how to decide who is talented

I met yesterday with a journalist doing a feature on talent management. Having spent over an hour talking about what TomorrowToday.biz does, I was unsatisfied with my answer to one of her questions. She asked, “How can you know if someone is talented or not?” My answer was that it would be difficult to give a definitive answer, since each job, company and industry would have a slightly different definition. I gave some suggestions though about a generic definition for talent: an inquisitive mind, a willingness to challenge, entrepreneurial flair and creativity, self motivated, self-honest (by which I mean they know their strengths and weaknesses as well as their personality traits), hard-working, technology-savvy, and so on.

So, I wondered to myself, they must be people out there who’ve tried to do this as well — come up with a generic definition of what we’re looking for when we say we looking for talented people. A quick Google found a few interesting sites:

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Death of the sms (or…an upside to the Tyranny of Blackberry)

When will it stop? When will we stop inventing things that allow us to be in greater contact with more people so that we can do more, be more productive? I thought the whole purpose of inventing technology to do our work for us is that we’d have more leisure time? I guess not. Now we can check email on our phones…just another way to be connected to the world. Barrie installed some free software on his phone that allows him to be logged in to MSN Messenger all of the time so he can chat (for free) wherever he is. But is being “more” productive such a good thing? Do we allow ourselves to put down our cellphones and actually be present when having coffee with someone else? Have we lost the meaning of silence…and of disconnecting/unplugging for a while?

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60 years on, and the debt is nearly paid off

Everyone thinks that it was a wonderful gift to Europe that America entered World War II. And, yes, it was. It was a much needed boost at a dim time for the Allies. Of course, the US had already been supplying the Allies with arms and materials for the duration of the war, so they had an important involvement all the way through. But it wasn’t an altruistic venture at all. Big business in America (and America itself) has often profited from the wars it has been involved in.

What most people don’t know, for example, is that America’s assistance of the Allies didn’t come for free. In fact, America charged England one billion pounds (£ 50 billion in today’s money) for their involvement – and amount loaned to the UK. And interestingly enough, on the 60th anniversary of VE day, England is about to make its final repayment (of £ 40 million, I believe) to finally settle the account. This payment is due before the end of July this year. The US has never once even considered writing off any of this loan or reducing the repayments required. Sure, charge something for your services, but surely there came a time in the past 60 years when it would have been a good gesture to write off the remainder of the loan?

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So just how valuable are these brands really?

So, South Africa’s most valuable brand list has been published for 2005, and the top 5 are made up of 3 banks and 2 mobile phone network companies. (Click here for the article) Value is based on future earnings discounted back to a net present value.

Here’s the interesting thing from my perspective; that while these top 5 provide an extremely valuable service to their clients, I’ll bet that they’re not the most loved brands in their customers lives. I’ll bet their brand is not on the list of top 5 brands they’d have tattooed onto themselves. I’ll bet that they would and they do swap in and out of other companies in the 2 industries these 5 belong to( at the drop of a hat).

Interesting lessons that can be drawn, eh?

Humility and Leadership

Jim Collins (author of “Good to great” – buy it online at Amazon.com and Kalahari.net) makes a case for Level 5 leadership which he states is the paradoxical combination of humility and will. Humility is a tough one. It is the kind of thing that if you say you are (humble) you aren’t! It is something I believe can only be conferred on one and never claimed by one. It is seen by others but not by oneself. What frameworks then are there for growth in humilty? Richard Rohr offers one worth consideration. Spirituality he writes is the link of ones wound with ones strength. And spirituality, writes Collins, is an essential part of Level 5 leadership. Not linking our wound and strength is to live a life in denial or disguise.

Racist or Conservative: The thin red line…

Last week I had a conversation that shocked me. Cold. It was with someone in my extended family. The conversation started with the war in Iraq and ended with a debate about racism. I know, it sounds impossible to have a debate around racism because what is there to argue about? Racism is wrong and all new South Africans know that by now. Wrong! There are actually young people in South Africa who are coldblooded racists! Perhaps I was just very naive because of the circles I usually mingle with, but I awoke with the shocking realisation that there is a very thin line between being conservative and being racist…
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How many more cards can I carry in my wallet?

I was out at a meeting yesterday and one of my collegues remarked that I am SUCH a Baby Boomer due to the number of cards in my wallet.

Is this a baby boomer tendancy or not? I think my 25 year old son has more credit cards than I will ever own?

Most of the cards are related to cheaper movies, points at Clicks, Fanatics card and MySchool card .

What will the consumer carry in the future? Will a few points towards a flight that you can never book win over helping an underprivileged school gain some money in their bank account?

I believe Emotional Loyalty will be the main reason I pull out a card. This makes me feel good while I am spending.
It shows I care.

What do you think?

Come Fly With Me

An Outsider’s Analysis of SAA and the Airline Industry

On a recent flight on South African Airways (SAA), I browsed through their in flight magazine (Feb 2005). The new CEO, Khaya Ngqula, wrote a short one page article on the launch of a new internal initiative to bring SAA back to profitability after years of loss making, including the past 2 years in which it has posted R15 billion losses. (Those losses are paid for by the South African tax payer, since SAA is a state-owned asset).

The article starts off with following analysis: “The airline industry is facing a period of deep uncertainty and risk, with increased fuel and production prices, uncertain medium-term economics in the key US and China markets, low barriers to entry and the emergence of new Low Cost Carriers, and unstable currency markets.â€?

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The last man to wear pantaloons

Last night, in between watching South Africa beat the West Indies at cricket, I flipped in and out of a B-grade mini-series on life in the early 1920s. It was the time of transition between the Victorian era and the modern Industrial era. The shift from horses to cars, from provincialism to nationalism, from rural to urban living (for the rich), from hooped skirts to the sleek flappers (The term “flapper”, which became common slang in the 1920s, referred to a “new breed” of young women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered “decent” behavior. The typical flapper was unafraid to wear cosmetics or to be seen smoking or drinking alcoholic beverages in public – from Wikipedia), from top hats and cravats to suits and ties.

It was a fascinating look at the times of transition, following one man and his family from mid 1800s to the 1930s. One of the interesting things for me was the clothes people wore – epecially the men. A question sprung to mind: who was the last man to get up in the morning, go to his wardrobe and decide to put on pantaloons?

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