My favourite blogs of the past fortnight

A bluffer’s guide to keeping up to date with the TmTd blogsite.

Check these out (and know why):

• The problem with HR doing leadership development – because Keith is right about this. 100% right – leaders should be responsible for leadership formation, and until HR professionals are given real leadership responsibilities in organisations, they should stick to their compliance and IR functions.
• File swapping now illegal (at least in the USA) – because this is the next blow in the entertainment world’s slugging match with its own customers. Stoopid!
• The difference between knowledge and skills workers – because I think its important to know what economy you’re working in, and what that actually means.
• The Sequel to my Story (and the first part: If I Ruled the World) – because this is the funniest set of experiences, and makes you want to cry if you weren’t laughing so much (read them in order for maximum effect)
• Conversations vs Information and Our need to contain, control and understand – because these two entries helped to define our view of blogging. And because it was interesting that mainly Boomers responded to Keith’s (a boomer) first entry, and mainly Xers responded to Barrie’s (Xer) entry. Its the same conversation from two different generations, and its fun to compare them, and learn from both.
• Empty Nest Syndrome or Empty Country Syndrome – because I think more and more Boomers will go through this.
• The great HRDA vlog – because its our first vlog – a little gratuitous, but hey…
• Professional or not? – because there is a lot we can learn from the world of sport, and because of Mike’s comment.

Adrenaline Junkie

To those who make the world go round, the achievers, the movers and shakers, the driven, the unstoppable, the determined, those who strive for excellence in all they do, and those who live life to the fullest … a warning: You may have an addiction problem – one that threatens to shorten your days on earth drastically.

“I’m an adrenaline junkie!” is a boast that tends to draw more admiration than condemnation these days. Hopefully the next few lines will dispel that unapprised swank and help those of us who feel this way to keep our cravings to ourselves.

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Leading Diversity: An Invitation to Leaders Everywhere

Understanding and leading diversity is complex and demanding territory for leaders everywhere. It also is territory, which in a global economy, is simply unavoidable. In the face of relentless diversity care needs to be taken that leaders avoid the temptation of looking for an easy or simplistic formula. An ‘ABC’ to leveraging diversity where all you have to do is ‘add water’ and in an instant you have the solution!

Here is what I am learning about diversity and hopefully these ongoing lessons will provide you with some of the signposts that will assist you in your own unique yet shared journey.

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Will Brands Create Your Child’s Value System?

Parents and peers shaped the values of previous generations while the most powerful influence on today’s children is most likely to be marketers and the media. The power of the brand and the battle for the individual mindset and values will pre-occupy us for years to come.

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Organising the Future: The Individualized Corporation

How’s This for the Latest Craze?

So, what is the latest craze sweeping the UK amongst children at the moment? Is it a Star Wars toy or something from War of the Worlds? Is it the new Monopoly, updated to include new London sites and streets? No, none of that…

The latest craze is the Scoubidou (pronounced Scooby-Doo).

What is a Scoubidou? They are multi-coloured thin plastic strings-like wires that children weave together to make necklaces, key-fobs, friendship bracelets and so on.

The size of the craze? I kid you not – it is enormous! They retail as cheap as 95p for a small bag of Scoubidous. Woolworths say that they are outselling PlayStation 2 stuff, Nintendo products and Star Wars light sabres by 2-1. They are outselling Batman products by 3-1.

And here’s the amazing thing about them – there has never been any advertising or marketing for the Scoubidou at all. None. Not a single advert anywhere. It is literally a product coming from the street – a consumer-product led by consumer demand.

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The problem with HR doing leadership development

The more I deal with HR departments in various companies the more I have come to understand that if it is HR that is entrusted with leadership development (and it usually is) the more it is likely to fail. Let me explain what I mean by this.

Most leadership formation programmes I have encountered either are not working or will certainly fail to produce the kind of leaders needed in a connection economy. My concern is that even amongst the ‘professionals’ – the business schools – that several companies entrust with their leadership formation programmes, are also following down the same ‘dead-end’ path.

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File swapping now illegal (at least in the USA)

The Economist are reporting today that America’s Supreme Court has ruled that makers of peer-to-peer file-swapping technology can be held responsible for the copyright infringement that their products allow. They say that “This may stop much of the free downloading of music and film over the internet, but it will not cure the entertainment business’s ills. Nor will it do much for innovation.”

Firstly, if they think it will stop downloading of music, they’re crazy. The ruling only applies to the USA, and how do they think they’re going to stop it happening? Who’s going to police it?

Secondly, this may stop innovation in the USA (I doubt it), but it will sput it on elsewhere in the world. Legal or not, file swapping is here to stay, and the industry had better get used to it. They’ve got a short reprieve – won a minor battle in a war they’re losing horribly. They’d better learn quickly how to profit from this, rather than fight it. File swapping is the natural extension of democracy, freedom, technology and the free market – all the things America stands for. Its created its own monster, and its can’t tame it again.

The industry are doing themselves irreprable harm at the moment. A 14 year old girl was fined just over $ 4,000 this past week for downloading files. Does the industry think that this will (a) stop this 14 year old ever doing that again, and (b) be a deterent for anyone else to stop the practice? Are they mad?
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This TRUST thing!

I recently had the “joy” of sitting between two men on an early flight to Johannesburg. In the middle seat you feel quite challenged as to what you can and can’t do. There was no way I could disturb the BIG guy on my left to move so that I could get my briefcase down and do some work. So my options were: put my head on his nice fat arm and catch some zzzzs or read the latest airline magazine.

I opted for the latter. A recent interview with Baby Boomer, Bruce Willis, caught my attention. I found his response to one question on trust very interesting: ” I trust everyone – until they break that trust”. Now I relate to that! So, Im wondering if trust is a boomer value or not. How do Xers view trust with regards to people – it is such an integral part of relationships. Is it a generational value or a characteristic. The phrase “trust me, I’m a gynaecologist” – I’m sure was coined by a boomer. So, how,where, when and why do you Xers trust? Do you DO a Bruce Willis and Glenda Warrin or not??

Posted by: Glenda

THE “BABY BOOMER” DISASTER – By Robert Holmes

A fellow-boomer recently emailed this article to me the Title alone caught my attention and so did the content!

A GENERATION WHICH STRAYED FROM GOD

During the past thirty years Christianity has been in serious decline. The so-called ‘flower power’ generation (the Baby Boomers) began to run after eastern religions, search for god in nature and experiment with mind-bending drugs. They shall be renowned as the generation which threw away sexual restraint, cast off definitions of fixed moral boundaries, rebelled against authorities- church and state, and proclaimed a breed of morality which is almost exclusively self-centred.

The catch cry of the 60’s became ‘if it feels good, do it!’. It is interesting tonote some of the sociological changes which has come about as a result of this explicit cultural inheritance today’s social leaders embraced. Australia has seen a marked increase in substance abuse, legalisation of many forms of drugs, promotion of homosexual ‘equality’, euthanasia made legal in one territory, one of the highest rates of youth suicide in the world and more violent deaths from gun shots each year than Australians who were killed in the Vietnam war. Likewise we have seen rampant abuses of power among senior management in both corporate business and in government departments, especially the police. Divorce rates, child abuse, pornography, and childcare attendance are increasing, and surprise, surprise: church attendance is in decline!

Posted by: Glenda
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Trafalgar 200

Tomorrow it will be exactly 200 years since the battle of Trafalgar where Lord Nelson won a famous victory for England over the French armada. As I watch Sky News, and the interesting politically correct descriptions of the “re-enactment” that will take place by a massive fleet of ships from around the world, it suddenly dawned on me that we were not here talking about an event from the mists of time. This happened just 2 centuries ago.

It feels so much part of a more distant past to me. Yet, how the world has changed in this time. France and England are now in union with each other (if not bosom buddies), and Europe is a very different place. No longer can any war be won because of a superior navy. If we look forward 200 (or even just 100) years from now, what new alliances might emerge? What new hostilities will have replaced the current ones? And will America have lost its leadership position, just as England has lost hers in the past 2 centuries? We know for sure that the world will look vastly different in 100 years time. Working out in which ways is critical to our success between now and then.

All obvious comments I know, but it took a significant memory to trigger them.

A Virtual Coach

A change of schools is usually a bit disruptive for most ten year olds. When it’s from a football playing English medium to and rugby playing Afrikaans one – the change can be traumatic. Playstation can change all that …

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A Walk Down Memory lane……. that I don’t recall

This past week I went to the Apartheid Museum. This was my second trip and certainly one that I would recommend to EVERY South African. It has a very vivid, balanced view of the past 55 years in context of a total history of South Africa . Most of this history was not in our textbooks at school. In our presentation on Mind The Gap we state that our worldview is shaped in the first ten years of life. We don’t often get the chance to go and see visually what that was like later in life like you can here……

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The difference between knowledge and skills workers

It goes without saying that we currently live in an era dominated by the “knowledge worker”, as opposed to manual labour or those who use skills as their primary contribution. There is a fundamental difference between these two distinct types of workers. It is not only that one is slightly more labour intensive than the other (skills based workers can spend a lot of their time providing services, and knowledge workers do occasionally do some manual work) – the distinction is one of substance and form.

People who rely on skills for their livelihood have a much greater window of utility from their development – skills change very, very slowly over time, and skills-based workers do not need to panic about keeping up to date. Skills changes are fairly easy to identify and quantify. Investment in reasonably regular updates will suffice. Of course, some personal development is necessary, but over a work lifetime, it is unlikely that they will need to do much more than keep up with slow incremental changes in their skillset.

Knowledge, on the other hand, changes itself. Knowledge workers have to work much harder to keep up. In fact, Peter Drucker suggests that every 4 years, knowledge workers should do some additional studies. In fact, a fairly regular basis throughout a knowledge worker’s life, it will probably be necessary to completely reinvent oneself. Not just “retrain” or “revitalise”, but actually reinvent. In a 50-60 knowledge worker working lifespan, this may be necessary 3 or more times. Especially if you happen to live through a “tipping point” period of history, such as the one we’re living in right now.

Our need to contain, control and understand

There’s a fantastic, watch me say this really loud, CONVERSATION, happening at a blog entry a little further back (click here).

It got me thinking as I read through the conversation (there I did it again) that blogging is bringing that very human urge we all have, the need to contain, control and understand, to the surface. A quick scan of the conversation (yup) brings up the following words/phrases that lead me to my conclusion…

*danger
*can’t provide context
*overwhleming information
*guilt
*work towards some “policies” for blogging
*blog properly
*facilitation
*find some way to slow down
*clogged
*blog editor or editorial team

Why can’t we just let this go a little, leave it be? Why not let it get out of control a little? (if that can even be said, cos what does control look like?)

Quote of the blog written about at the top comes from lily (you biscuit) – “blogs are my link to sanity!” I’m with you.

Talking to customers the AVIS way

In a world where relationships are king, where connection is critical, how is it that AVIS gets to send letters of demand to their clients like the one below. I’m just a little irritated because I think the tone is one in which I’m written to as a stranger who is being warned to pay or be pursued. Maybe I’m being a little sensitive? But I’d find it difficult to write a letter like this to one of our clients, especially this being the first piece of correspondence on an issue that may be really simple to resolve.

HISTORY
~~~~~~~
* I’m a client of AVIS
* This happened in March
* It was my fault and I’ve paid (sent the cheque)

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The Sequel to my Story

Well, avid blog-reader, you may remember some time ago (4 June to be exact), that I blogged my dismay at the airline which didn’t know anything about geography or the finer aspects of British constitutional history, to whit: I queued up at the “All UK flights” section to check in for my flight to Northern Ireland, only to be told that Northern Ireland is not part of the UK “for the purposes of our company, sir”. I won’t bore you with the finer details of that experience. Check the archives if you have forgotten or not read it in the first place…

…Well, the sequel to my story is this…

Yesterday morning, at 0600, I arrived bleary-eyed at the same airport for a day-trip to Holland on business.

Holland.

Not England. Not Scotland. Not Wales. Not even Northern Ireland.

Holland.

(Are you with me so far, avid blog-reader?)

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Conversations vs Information

Today I enjoyed a thought provoking conversation concerning the overwhelming amount of information that one is required to engage with in our world today. I don’t think I need to make a case for what certainly is a reality experienced by most. Not being connected today is as rare as an anartic heatwave. But there is a distiction between information and connection; between information and conversation.

We in TomorrowTday.biz have championed blogging. Rightly so. The potential value of blogging is awesome but there are also some dangers, dangers that perhaps are not yet self-evident as the ‘blog at all costs’ sweeps into vogue. Let me mull over a few dangers that are becoming more obvious to me.

Information out of context is problematic, even dangerous. Often (but not always) super-highways of information (like blogs) don’t or can’t provide context.

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Game, Set & Match @ Wimbledon.

Wimbledon fever has gripped most of Britian this last week. And never more so than last night … as Greg Rusedski (GBR) battled it out on centre court against the young Swede, Joachim Johansson. It was an epic battle and a nail biting match to watch as these two sportsmen thrashed it out on the court.

There could only be one winner … and it was Johansson. But what really impressed me was the attitude of Rusedski. In a TV interview later that evening he again held his own and showed the same strength of character that was on display earlier.

He was positive and smiling … and he said that tomorrow he starts preparing for Wimbledon 2006. He focused on what he had learnt in the match and what had gone well. In other words – he saw the experiece as positive – even though he didn’t win!

In life and in business we are constantly growing, learning and changing. And failure is apart of growth. Sometimes the best lessons are learnt through adversity or failure – and it’s our attitude to that failure that determines how we growth and our future sucesses. Businesses place so much importance on success – and while that is obviously a key element – there is also something to be said for failure. It should be celebrated – because it means there is still opportunity to learn and improve!

Another reason to question advertising awards

My good friends who work at Ad agencies will disagree, I am sure, but there are always question marks about the nature of Advertising Award Ceremonies. Right now, the ad world’s attention is focussed on Cannes 2005, where global entries are competing for attention. I spent the whole of the last night tracking down and downloading the top rated entrants, and most of them are excellent ads.

The concern has to do with the correlation (or lack thereof) between the winning of advertising awards and the effectiveness of the advertising for the customer. Let’s be clear: advertising is a product/service that has a specific purpose – to sell more of the client’s products and services. That is the ultimate decider of whether an adevrt is “good” or not. Does it motivate people to spend money on the product? Of course, some adverts are subtle, and about awareness raising. Others are more PR than sales-focused. But, although simply stated, my point is valid.

The big news at Cannes 2005 right now is the forced withdrawal of two spectacular Sony Playstation 2 adverts: “Duel” and “War”. Barrie blogged about them earlier this week (here). But there is controversy. They were produced by TBWA South Africa for the North American office, and their client, Sony Playstation. But TBWA South Africa reports to TBWA London within TBWA’s global network, and apparently didn’t get permission to do work for America. So, TBWA Global has withdrawn the adverts from Cannes and all other international competitions. Who knows what politics is going on behind the scenes at TBWA, but it certainly doesn’t feel like they have their client’s best interests at heart in the process.

I copy the full press release from SA’s Marketing Web below. But one line stands out for me: “its in the network’s best interests to first consider what is in the client’s best interests”. At this early stage, it looks as if TBWA has dropped this ball… (TBWA has no comment yet on their website – which, amusingly, trumpets their status as “global network agency of the year”).

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Client Service

Today I’ve an incredible experience for service beyond the call of duty.
I broke down, called the AA, who arrived 20 mins quicker than they had estimated. He assessed the problem, tried to fix it, with out much joy. While he was deciding where he should tow the car to, he said if he had the part he could fix it, in the time it would take the tow truck to get to us. To cut to the chase, he ordered the part from the local VW supplier from a cell phone, drove me there, in his car to pay for it, drove us back and replaced the faulty part, and woolaa, my car was purring again.

What impressed me was that he got another call-out while we were driving, knew he couldn’t get there immediately and so referred the call to another technician.

When I asked why he didn’t just tell the new client he would be there, but in 45 mins. (I thought a reasonable time to wait for roadside assistance)
His answer was “We can’t be so busy that we don’t service our client’s needs as soon as possible. If I can’t do it now, then for the client and the AA, I’d rather refer it�

What a great message to all of us in client service. We can’t make our own “Busy-ness� the client’s problem.
What kind of service are we offering on a day to day basis?

Blogs, Leaders and towing the line

Here is a quote from the June edition of Newsweek; “As power flows away from the corner office – driven too by technology like blogs that make organizations more transparent – the pressure on leaders to act appropriately will only grow.” Harvard professor Barbara Kellerman, author of ‘Bad Leadership:What It Is, Why It Happens, Why It Matters’ in the same article writes that this will “keep leaders more in line in the future – we’re simply watching them too closely now”. Certainly the advent of blogging is having a huge impact on companies in general and leadership in particular. For one thing it means that the company control on PR has receded even further in that anyone can blog on their relationship / experience with the company and as they do so, it immediately enters the public domain. Censorship will be almost impossible. Leaders are going to have to understand this further shift in power away from their corner office. Blogging has brought yet another wall of the corner office crumbling down.

OUCH…Tom Peters shoots himself in the foot

Tom Peters who is known for his ’shouting in capitals’ in his varoius publications and who advocates being “mad at the world” shot himself in the foot during his recent seminar in South Africa.

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SAA Baggage and Valuables Awareness Campaign

My favourite campaign on the planet belongs ot SAA. It’s a little green and blue slip of paper that you can pick up when checking in for a flight. On the one side they warn you that theft happpens within the airport while loading your baggage, and so you should remove any valuables, as they are not responsable for any loss. (and why should they be?)

Then on the flip side of the paper is another warning, letting you know that you are under no circumstance allowed hand luggage over a certain size and weight.

Don’t you love it? Remove all your valuables from the baggage you might have normally checked in, and carry it with you. But don’t forget we limit the amount you can take on the plane.

Loverleee

Nuf Sed

The Dalai Lama never had an iPod

I was part of an interesting conversation with a couple of people the other day. The topic was meditation. The conversation moved to silence and it’s role in meditation. As I listened to the effects of silence in meditation, I recognised many of them to be the same as what I have experienced while listening to my iPod.

My iPod was purchased mostly to help me avoid the frustration of flying. I’m a ‘not so great’ passenger, and I’ve found that my iPod allows me to travel to a different world while being transported by one of the carriers I happen to be on at the time. It has helped reduce the stress I normally end up feeling on the other end. What’s interesting is that often I find myself in complete ’silence’ even though the volume is at 80%-90%. It’s like I ‘zone out’.

Now I’m now expert on silence and meditation, but it did get me wondering about what mediation might have looked lilke if iPod’s had existed way back when? Way back when silence was the chosen method to ‘zone out’. And I don’t know if the Dalai Lama has an iPod or not. I have a friend who’s seen a picture of him in a Nike cap. But if he had one, would he use it as part of his meditation? I’d like to think so.

Nuf Sed

Machines take our jobs

In our presentation, Balancing Today and Tomorrow, we argue that white collar/service jobs are rapdily being replaced by machines. We point especially to the professions: starting with accountants, engineers and lawyers, but including architects, pilots and even doctors.

Now a report from New Scientist (2 April 2005) on software agents that will give PR advice (read full report here). These days it’s important to know what is being said about you. But finding out is becoming ever more difficult, with thousands of news outlets, websites and blogs to monitor. This new software, about to be released by a British company, Corpora, can automatically gauge the tone of any electronic document. It can tell with a report about you is positive or negative, or whether it is praising or damning you. This is a function that has often been managed by a PR department or firm, who reduced teams of people to read through everything written about an organisation, person, the event, product or issue. This is both expensive and slow. So it’s great news to hear that there is some software, using complex algorithms, that can do the same thing with about the same level of accuracy.

The program is called Sentiment, and should be available soon.

Eureka… the wheel

In 2001, patent attorney John Keogh, successfully filed a patent in Australia for a “circular transportation facilitation device”. It had a circular frame of strong lightweight composite material, reinforced with radial spokes and a hole in the centre to accommodate a shaft or axle. Sound familiar? Yes, it is a bicycle wheel. Yet, his patent (reminder: to qualify for a patent, an invention is supposed to be new, useful and non-obvious) was accepted and registered.

He did this to prove the growing deficiencies in the international patent system. The databases themselves are choked full and highly unsearchable. The systems of filing and investigating are hopelessly out of date and overloaded. And that’s not counting the number of missing documents from offical registries (now estimated to be be over 1 million missing files around the world). Of the 45 million patents around the world that have been digitised, only about 15 million have a full text version.

In a world where innovation is trumpeted as a religion, this is unacceptable. This creaking system will soon collapse, with disastrous effects on the world economy.

Or maybe, it will just prove the point that actually, to stay in the game these days, you need to continually keep ahead of the pack, rather than relying on ageing patents that bring in royalties. Keep ahead of the pack by using your innovation muscle to continually produce new stuff. Your competitors will copy you anyway, and do just enough to steer clear of even the most rickety patent laws.

An Ode to delicious CRM (with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

We need to go beyond “customer satisfaction” to something far, far beyond that. Why not aim to “amaze”, “impress” or “dazzle” our customers, rather than simply satisfying them. I am really tired of making choices as a customer based on “who is the least crap in this industry?”.

What will it take internally, to produce a set of client interface staff who have what it takes to provide “customer delight”?

My customer, my client – let me delight you…
by Graeme Codrington (apologies to Elizabeth Browning)

How do I serve thee? Let me count the ways.
I serve thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when in feeling and in sight
For my end is to your freeing and to you embrace.
I serve thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I serve thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I serve thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I serve thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I serve thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I serve thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, so I choose,
I shall but serve thee until dying breath.

See the original at http://www.netpoets.com/classic/poems/008003.htm.

Empty Nest Syndrome or Empty Country Syndrome

I had a conversation last night with my Irish brother in law who lives in the USA. We were chatting about the fact that my daughter will be moving to Thailand after her marriage here in SA next month. My son will be moving to London in January. His question was: Do I feel like I am experiencing empty nest syndrome or as his Irish mother calls it , EMPTY COUNTRY SYNDROME.

His Mom has seven children. Not one lives in Ireland. They are in fact on every continent spread all over the world and she spends her life travelling, greeting and waving goodbye to those who visit her. We tend to think that it is only South African parents that are expereincing this syndrome. Global travel and technology is making it so easy to move around. How will families of the future cope and what will happen to parents who have no children close by ? Will cousins get to know one another when they live all over the planet. I know that my sister and I make the effort due to distance. Will we try harder due to logistical challenges. Who will replace this group in our lives? Will friends become the new families of the future?

Maybe the new slogan for Baby Boomer parents will be : HAVE CHILDREN – WILL TRAVEL !!!!!!!!!!!

The great HRDA vlog

What’s a vlog? Simple – a Video webLOG. Cameras are rather cheap and so many people have one. Combine that with low-end video editing software (iMovie on Mac, in this case, but Windows Movie Maker also does the job) and voila, your thoughts get communicated in a more personal way. Here’s our first vlog – from the HRDA expo a few weeks back. Graeme and Buhle get to say something profound, Lynda is rather chuffed at teaching Graeme something and there’s even a (topical?) crash on the playstation. Click on the image to view the vlog (Quicktime required).