British Airways cabin crew on strike – how to strike back!

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, I hope you’re expecting a calm analysis of yesterday’s announcement of a 12 day strike of British Airways cabin crew, effectively grounding the airline over the busy Christmas holiday season (remember schools only break up this coming Friday in the UK, so the holidays are for two weeks starting this weekend). Well, you’re going to be disappointed. As frequent travelers, all of us at TomorrowToday tend to lose our rag with airlines and airports. I am normally a calm individual, proud of being unflappable. But put me in an airport, and somehow the red mist descends…

So, here is what I can’t understand.

The cabin crew are going on strike because they’re upset. Their strike is designed is to “hurt management”, which means “to reduce company profits”. They say that they do not want to hurt customers. This is complete nonsense. If they wanted to hurt profits, they would announce a strike for at least three months in advance. There are very few people who have not already booked and paid for their flights over the next month. So, yes, BA will have to give refunds, but actually they will save money, since there will be massively reduced operational costs. The biggest losers here are not management, but the customers. And most of those are families, hard hit by the recession of the past year, who have scraped and saved up for a holiday abroad. They will lose not only their airfare, but may have to forfeit the holiday and the costs of hotels, cars, etc. And BA management will bu unhurt.

So, the cabin crews must not try that line on me. Their goal is disruption and chaos. The outcome will be heartache and pain.

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Who owns the moon?

This is not a frivolous question. China is making great strides towards a presence in space – as is India. Russia, the UK, the EU and the USA are already there. And it’s not all about national pride and the “because it’s there” motivation. It is highly likely that there are some very useful and very valuable minerals on the moon. And right now, it could very well be a “first come, first served” scenario for their usage. Oh, and let’s not forget that Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is also in the mix and should soon have the ability to launch and relaunch space vehicles at will. So, this will soon be a government and private interest issue.

Can you own property on the moon? This question may have to be answered sooner than you think.

Earlier in 2009, a NASA probe crashed into the moon’s surface and discovered frozen water – they claim lots of it. This makes establishing a base on the moon a lot more feasible. There are lots of reasons someone might want a moon base. There would be military benefits and scientific ones, too. But most important, there would be commercial ones too. There are some amazing mining opportunities on the moon, including huge quantities of helium 3 which could be used to generate clean energy on earth.

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Capturing the Asian Opportunity

S+B (Strategy + Business) is a great ezine from Booz & Co. This week’s edition focuses on where multinational companies might want to focus as the recession draws to an end and an upturn begins. And the place to look is probably Asia – if you have a clear focus. Read their article at their website, or an extract below.

Capturing the Asian Opportunity
Economic recovery in China, India, and elsewhere in the region could be the strongest source of sustained global growth for years to come.
by Andrew Cainey, Suvojoy Sengupta, and Steven Veldhoen

In September 2008, the global financial crisis hit Asia like a tidal wave, flooding in from the U.S. and Europe. Within weeks, Asian GDP growth rates began to tumble: China’s annual growth rate dropped from 13 percent in 2007 to about 9 percent in 2008, India’s slipped from 9 percent to below 6 percent, and Singapore’s plunged from 8 percent to less than 4 percent. Underlying these stark statistics were significant declines in exports. In March 2008, China and India had boasted year-over-year export growth rates of more than 30 percent; nine months later, both were well into negative territory. Foreign direct investment in these countries, and in Korea, Japan, and the nations of Southeast Asia, fell significantly as well.

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Which movie does that come from? (Wonder know more!)

I picked up a tweet recently which talked of a great new resource called MovieClips. Simple concept – you can remember a line from a movie, but cannot for the life of you remember which movie it’s from. You could search the Internet Movie Database or Google, of course, and find a text reference to it.

But why not search a movie database where the output is both the movie AND the clip you were looking for? That’s what Movie Clips does – 3 minute clips from movies with an exciting search feature. They have kicked off with about 12,000 clips, so you won’t find everything you’re looking for. But hopefully it will be supported and will grow. What a great idea!

But, I want to say more about this. When I checked it out, it told me that the content was only available in the USA and Canada, and that I should email them (link was provided) if I was from another country and wanted access. I was disappointed, but sent the email anyway. I expected very little. The next day, I received an email (from a real human being) saying that they had just switched on the functionality for the UK and that I had access. Oh, and could I comment on the speed and usability, too, please. They’re phasing in different countries, so as not to overwhelm their servers. Good thinking! Great service! Excellent connection! Superb product!

I’m already a huge fan! Long live MovieClips. Check them out.

Seth Godin on How to protect your ideas in the digital age

I have never done much to try and protect my intellectual capital. Some of my friends who are in the same profession – authors, speakers, consultants – agree with me, and others think I am nuts. My view is that the best way to keep ahead of the pack is not to protect what I have done, but to simply do more and better than anyone else does.

Seth Godin recently wrote about this issue on his blog, and he sums up my thoughts precisely.
Read his blog here, or below.

How to protect your ideas in the digital age

If we’re in the idea business, how to protect those ideas?

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A lesson in personalisation – your very own font

One of the trends we’ve been tracking for some time at TomorrowToday is the growing desire for personalisation. This is more than mere customisation. It is about creating something completely unique and tailored specifically for a particular individual. Nike was one of the first to make the news with their offering of customised shoes – you bought the shoes online and then selected a customised tagline to emboss onto the shoes. (They had some fun with people selecting offensive slogans, and had to have a level of censorship that ultimately backfired on them. But the idea was the right one).

I keep my eyes open for examples of customisation – big and small. Here’s a small one, but for someone who spends a significant time in front of a computer screen, it certainly grabbed my attention. Fontcapture.com will allow you to create your very own custom font face. It’s free and will take you about ten minutes to do. Download the font form, write your font face on their template, scan it, upload and wait a minute or so for the font file to be sent to you. Simple. Neat. Nice!

I don’t know how I’ll use this new font yet, but it’s nice to see my handwriting unfolding across my screen as I dictate this blog entry using voice recognition. One day, I’ll be replaced by this machine. I hope people notice if that happens….

(PS – for a more indepth look at the trend of personalisation, check out TrendHunter Pro’s report on it here).

Book Review – Free: The Future of a Radical Price

Chris Anderson is the editor of Wired, one of my favourite magazines. He has written two great books based on HBR articles. The first was “The Long Tail” – an awesome concept (Google it). Now, he has offered us another view of how the Internet is changing the world. It’s “Free”. A deputy editor at The Economist (my favourite magazine of all) has written a review. You can read it here, or below. Buy the book at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com or Kalahari – South Africa.

Chris Anderson is a guru of the information age. Under his editorship, Wired, the voice of the digital world, has won zillions of prizes. His speeches on the economics of the internet command vast sums. He’s a brilliant journalist; I know that, having worked with him before he was a big shot. But it is as an author that Anderson has gained most fame. He writes, broadly, about how digital technology has made the world a better place. His first book, The Long Tail, was hugely influential. In the bricks-and-mortar world, it said, in which the costs of marketing and distribution are high, companies make money by selling vast quantities of a few blockbuster items. In the digital world, in which the costs of marketing and distribution are low, companies can make money by selling small numbers of lots of different items.

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S+B’s Best Business Books of 2009

Booz & Co’s Strategy + Business ezine is one of my favourites, and one I always make time to read. Last week’s edition looked at the best business books of 2009, selected by their top team, and helpfully categorised.

If you want to read their reasoning, and some excellent background comments, start here. All I am going to do is list the books (and make it easy for you to buy them – choose from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net – for South Africa):

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After Shock: the five trends disrupting business in the next 5 years

Updated in March 2010 (now with an added Executive summary in the PDF format)

Download a copy of this article in PDF format – right click here. The contents of this article can be presented as a keynote or a workshop for your team. Contact our UK or South African offices to find out how.

As the world slowly emerges out of recession over the next few years, it will become increasingly clear that this was more than just an economic downturn. Disruptive forces are significantly reshaping the world of work. Some of these changes have been brewing for a decade or more – and now this recession has exacerbated their influence and speeded up their effects. Companies that have survived the downturn need to shift their focus to surviving the upturn. We are not ever going to “get back to normal” – a new normal is emerging for everyone, everywhere.

Understanding the forces that are driving this disruptive change will give an organisation the insights needed to adjust their systems, structures and methods and gain a significant competitive advantage in the next 3 to 5 years. It will also set them up for longer term success in the next few decades. It is therefore essential to provide not just senior leaders, but all staff throughout your company, with a framework of thinking about this “new normal”. You want them to work together to take advantage of the opportunities that will emerge.

There are at least five key drivers of disruptive change that every organisation in every industry and sector needs to track. These are the T.I.D.E.S. of change. (It’s a corny acronym, I know, but hopefully it will help with both remembering the framework, as well as making it easy to use on a regular basis in team meetings and informal conversations throughout your organisation). Here then are the key drivers of disruptive change in the next decade, and some questions to ask yourself and your teams as you plan to respond to them:

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Book review: Upstarts

I was sent the following book review from a trusted friend. I have not read the book yet, but have it on order, and trust the guy who sent me the review. It looks like a good read…

Upstarts!: How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit from Their Success was written by Donna Fenn who has been an expert on small business trends and entrepreneurship for over 20 years. Buy this book at Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net.

In Donna’s book, she discusses how Generation Y is changing the business world and creating a whole new crop of entrepreneurs. Inspired by the success of past generations of entrepreneurs, these young entrepreneurs are creating cools startups that are changing the way we do things.

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Don’t treat all the Boomers the same

I recently had a chance to have interact with Warren Evans, a top international speaker and futurist. Like our team at TomorrowToday, Warren tracks the trends that are shaping the world of work, and has an interest in demographics, technology and other key drivers of change.

Having heard Warren talk about demographics, I checked out the video snippet on his website. He makes a great point. Simply put, he is skeptical about generations. Actually, he is skeptical about how people use generational theory as a blunt instrument. They talk about “Boomers” or “Gen Y” as if everyone born in one twenty year period is identical. This is an abuse of the theory, of course, but is often how it is used. At very least, one has to take into account the cuspers (those born between the generations). But one should also consider that younger and older cohorts within a generation are often quite different too.

As Warren points out, treating the Boomers as a homogenous group is not only silly, it’s also dangerous. The pace of change in the 1950s and 60s was so fast that what may at first glance appear to be only one generation (“the Boomers”) is in fact three generations. If you were born in 1947, you had a very different growing up experience from someone born in 1966. The promise of demography is that we can predict what someone aged 64 will do (and that you will do the same things at age 64 that people who were 64 in 2001 or 1995 or 1975 did). Yet, younger Boomers and older Boomers had different starting points, different life experiences and now live in different life stages.

I think Warren is right about this. As Einstein is reported to have said, “The sign of a true genius is the ability to simplify complex information as much as possible. But not more so.” Generational theory has a compelling pop psychology appeal to it. But some people have simplified it too much.

We’re working on a new model that brings together the concept of younger and older cohorts, and integerates this with the concept of cuspers. Of course, we also have to consider other psychographic influences, such as religion, gender, culture, class and socioeconomics. So, segmentation models are tough to get right. But the value of doing them properly is enormous. It allows one to deliver on the promise of demographics by understanding how behaviour will change as new lifestages are reached.

That’s the kind of stuff that gets me out of bed in the morning! Feel free to contact me if you want to chat about this more: graeme@tomorrowtoday.uk.com

The James Martin 21st Century School – understanding the future

I am a huge fan of James Martin. Not the celebrity chef. Nor the inventor of the aircraft ejection seat. Nor any of the other famous James Martins. I am a huge fan of James Martin the futurist and author of one of the best books of all time, “The Meaning of the 21st Century” (see a previous post about the book here).

I recently discovered that a think tank “school” has been created at Oxford university, and named in his honour. It’s the James Martin 21st century school. It seems to be a fantastic institution. You can see an 8 minute video of the Dean of the school, ex-South African, Ian Goldin, speaking recently at TED. Follow the school at Twitter/21school.

The school’s aim is to tackle the toughest challenges of the 21st century, and provide input and resources for the Oxford university community on these issues (see the list below). They aim to formulate new concepts, policies and technologies that will make the future a better place to be. Very nice!

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Cleaning up the game (ban Henry from World Cup, and boycott Gillette?)

For the last few years, there has been a lot of talk about corporate corruption. It can probably be traced back to Enron, and the spate of corporate scandals that emerged at about the same time. More recently, the economic downturn has exposed some amazingly brazen corporate scandals, topped by the grand theft masterminded by Bernie Madoff.

Quite rightly, industries and countries alike are moving to try and cut out corruption at its source. The biggest danger is not rogue individuals (you can never stop them – the best you can hope for is to catch them early). The greatest danger is that corruption and rule breaking become endemic and “the accepted way” of doing business.

I remember as a young articled clerk at KPMG being stunned to be told by audit manager that a certain client account I was looking at was “for bribes”, because this was the “cost of doing business in the homelands” (the homeland states were puppet “countries” set aside for blacks in the old South Africa). Top multinationals, with the knowledge of their auditors, were involved in bribing corrupt local officials to make sure the wheels of industry kept turning. Maybe there was no other way. Maybe it was “how things worked”, but it didn’t help Africa, did it? We need to remove the CULTURE of corruption.

And there’s only one way to do this: immediate, brutal retribution when people are caught. One strike, and you’re out!

The reason I thought about this was because I watched the World Cup Qualifier between the Republic of Ireland and France last night. Ireland looked good to beat France, and force the game to penalties. This was a monumental result for them. But, in the dying minutes, Thierry Henry received a long ball just next to the goal, controlled it with his hand, and presented it to Gallas for an easy goal. Henry obviously knew he handled it – he handled it twice. In fact, he might as well have caught the ball and thrown it into the net. See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qZJrOcgkYM (see especially at 39 seconds!).

The best that FIFA could do now would be to ban Henry from the World Cup. He clearly cheated. He did it knowingly, willfully, and has fundamentally created personal advantage at extreme loss to others. This is corruption, and football is filled with it! They should use digital referees – why they’re scared of it, I don’t know. A quick replay, after the Irish appealed would have been enough to disallow the goal – and send Henry off! But, now that it’s obvious what happened, they need to send the strongest message.

But they won’t. Because it’s France. Because it’s Henry. And so, corruption will remain. And then we are surprised when it becomes endemic. There is no surprise here at all.

Ban Henry from the World Cup. That will send the right message.

It’s (still) good to be good

One of the trends we’ve been tracking for some time is the rise of the ethical consumer. This growing group of customers do not simply look at your product or service through the traditional lessons of price, availability and value for money. They’re increasingly asking tougher questions, including: who made this?, how much are they paid?, how much are they paid in relation to how much your CEO earns?, how much damage did you do to the environment to make this and get it to me?, and so on.

A new report indicates that the recession has not dampened these consumer’s demand for an ethical component to their purchase. Doing good is still increasingly good for business. Read more here, or see the extract below.

Most consumers will swap brands for a good cause

Thursday November 12, 2009

Despite the recession, consumers are still spending with companies and brands that have a clear social purpose, according to third annual Edelman Good Purpose Consumer Study which surveyed 6,000 people in ten countries.

In fact, 57% of consumers globally feel that a company or brand has earned their business because it has been doing its part to support good causes (with Asian countries coming in highest, with China scoring 85% and India scoring 84%).

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The PM’s misspelt letter – a parable of modern Britain?

Poor old Gordon Brown. The Prime Minister of Britain just can’t seem to do anything right. This past week, he did what he always does, which is to hand write a letter of condolence to a bereaved family member. Every time a British soldier dies, Gordon Brown writes a personal letter to the family. But his past week he misspelt the name of the serviceman, calling him Jamie James, instead of Jamie Janes, in a letter to his mother. He had made this same mistake when he had read Jamie’s name in Parliament a s few days earlier.

Mrs Janes was outraged, and took her story to the newspapers (The Sun – the most sensationalist national newspaper available!). She made such a noise about it that Gordon Brown phoned her to chat about it (I do not say “apologise” because he refuses to accept he made a mistake). She then recorded the conversation and provided the recording to The Sun (listen to it here, while watching a video that includes a copy of the letter). Read more about the story here.

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The future for banks and a better way to pay bankers

POSTED 10 November 2009; UPDATED 11 November 2009

One story is going to run for the next 3-5 years at least: how to fix the banking system. The big media headline grabbing story is how to regulate bankers’ pay. It appears as if bankers don’t know how much their image has been tarnished, or how important trust is in their business – at least if their announcements of monumental bonuses to be paid out at the end of 2009 is anything to go by. The spoof magazine cover in this picture is just one example of how bankers are now less trusted than estate agents! (OK, that’s unfair on agents).

Whether or not they actually go ahead with this is irrelevant – the fact that they might have is enough. Change must come to banking and financial sector. It will come in the form of greater regulations in the background (linked to Basel II and other related legislation that will be coming). But in the glaring public eye, bankers’ remuneration is a key issue that will need addressing.

The CEO of Booz & Company wrote a great piece for their latest S+B ezine. Read it online here, or an extract below. Then, they followed that up with a further article about how banks need to change – read it here or an extract below.

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1989 – a year that changed everything (everywhere)

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down.

In just a few weeks, we’ll also celebrate twenty years since the Velvet Revolution (Prague, 17 November), the execution of Nicolae Ceau?escu (Bucharest, 25 December), and the release of Nelson Mandela (Cape Town, 11 February, 1990). So far this year, we’ve seen twenty annivesaries for Tiananmen Square (Beijing, 5 June), Ayatollah Khomenei’s chaotic funeral (Tehran, 6 June) and the Baltic Way (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; 23 August) – all political revolutionary moments that changed their countries.

Add to that, the culture-defining events of Lockerbie, Hillsborough, the invention of the HTTP that forms the foundation of the Internet, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and the debut of The Simpsons, and you have quite a year! That was 1989 (and a few months on either side of it, for Lockerbie and Mandela).

In my studies of generational theory, it’s common to come across a variety of definitions of who fits into which generation. Different authors, desperate to prove their research credentials, define the start of “Generation Y” as anything from 1978 to 1996. Most go with 1984 – defined such because children born in 1984 or later graduated high school in the new millennium (hence the other name for this generation: “Millennial kids”). Yet, to me, 1989 is a much better cusp year.

The worlds before and after 1989 were very clearly different. That is why 1989 holds such an important place in my mind – it marks a real change in human history. It will be remembered forever. If you want to reminisce with me, you might like the following links:

• A detailed introduction to generational theory
• New Statesman magazine – 1989: The Year of the Crowd special edition
• Lead article from New Statesman 1989 special edition
• TIME magazine 1989 special edition
• A list of TIME magazine special edition articles – easier to access index
• Remembering 1989, The Times, UK

The Twitter interview

I was recently interviewed by a journalist on the issue of Twitter and social media, and how it might impact traditional media. It was a fairly focused interview – not broad ranging – but you might be interested in some of the thoughts that emerged.

Q1. How has Twitter changed the landscape of social networking?

A1. No, I don’t think so. Twitter is to online communication what text messages (SMSs) did to email. Because you’re only allowed 140 characters, you’re forced to be short, sharp and to the point (or, in many people’s cases: vague, confusing and silly). I think Twitter has added to an already growing trend towards social networking.

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Funtheory – changing people by having fun

TheFunTheory.com is a website dedicated to the thought that something that is fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.

There are some great examples of this theory. My favourite is the sticker of a fly that has been put in men’s urinals – when men have something to aim at, they aim at it! And this has reduced mess in the men’s room dramatically. Simple. Fun. Works.

I like it. Check out The Fun Theory for lots of other examples.

Office Technology, Boomers and Generation X & Y

For most Boomers (born 1950s and 60s), the office had the best technology – much better than they had at home. I started work at KPMG Johannesburg in the early 1990s, when they had just imported over 100 Apple System 7 “luggable” computers. This gave KPMG more computing power than the USA government had at the time (they needed special US Senate approval for the purchase)! I was a techie nerd as a kid (from my awesome first Atari 800SX, with green screen, to my AT computer in the early 1990s).

But I had nothing at home to match what I had available to me at work. And that’s not to mention the fax machine, the photocopier, the mainframe, the telex (OK, I’m not that old, but it’s the concept that’s important here), and other amazing technology available at the office. And the most up-to-date software too. I used to try and book an Apple out every weekend, and take it home with me to play on.

But now times have changed. Most of today’s young people come to work everyday, completely frustrated and irritated by the out-of-date technology available to them. Their office has worse technology than they have at home. And, even worse, restrictive IT policies mean that they can’t bring technology from home to the office, as they’d like to. IT requires them to use Excel and Word, when they’d prefer to use Google Docs. IT restricts their ability to load apps onto their machines – little programs that would help increase their productivity and efficiency. And, if they’re Apple fans, tough like if the company has chosen a PC platform. Standardisation trumps productivity and enjoyment!

This doesn’t make sense. If you can’t keep ahead (or even keep up) with current IT specs, then the least you should be doing is allowing staff to use their own technology. I know IT will faint and give 100 reasons not to do this (their starting point will be “security concerns”, I’ll bet). But IT should not have the final word here. There are other considerations, including the motivation and engagement of your staff, especially your top talent, productivity and efficiency, and the reduction of costs (why not let staff use their own technology and give them a small personal budget to get what they want for themselves).

The military needs to change

In our latest presentation, “After Shock“, we talk about the five drivers of disruptive change that are shaping the new world of work. One of these is institutional change.

The institutions of the world are the pillars of our society – things like the financial system, the political system, family structures, religion and so on. The military is one of these foundational systems. We cannot think of one system that is not currently undergoing a crisis of change. And these are not small crises either – the rules and structures of these systems are being radically rewritten. From the Pope announcing that Anglicans can be Catholics again (October 2009) to the Parliamentary expense scandals and the BNP being elected to Parliament in Britain (2009), and of course the banking crisis that will most likely lead to new rules and regulations in the next 3-5 years.

The military is changing too. No longer does the country with the biggest army and the most impressive weapons automatically win. America was the first to discover this as they rolled their military into Baghdad and had President Bush declare “Mission Accomplished”. That seems so long ago now, and yet this week saw more deaths in Baghdad. Terrorism, leaderless cells, counterinsurgency and “winning the peace” are now military institution issues.

Here is an excellent review of British involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, from the Spectator, arguing that the generals just don’t get these changes and share blame with the politicians for what is happening.

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What it means to “be British” – a response to Nick Griffin

Like 8 million other Britons, I watched BBC’s “Question Time” on Thursday night. Nick Griffin, the head of the British National Party (a right wing party who restrict membership to white’s only and want to keep Britain “British” – by which they mean white, Caucasian) was given a place on the stage alongside other panel members. Click here to see a list of uploaded YouTube clips of the hour long Question Time.

Besides the fact that the BNP’s central issue of race is abhorrent, it is also an impossibility for them to actually enforce (or even define). They want Britain to be for those who “aboriginal” Britons – for the “original inhabitants”. They claim that this goes back 17,000 years, and is irrefutably about white people (not English speaking, of course, but they come very close to claiming this in their made up histories on their website). They want a complete halt to all immigration, and a return to a white Britain.

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Was I only dreaming?

Last night I had the wierdest experience. I woke up in the early hours of the morning, wakened by a disturbing moment in a fairly vivid dream (the contents of which are not important for this story). My throat was parched, and I needed a glass of water. I knew I had an empty glass next to my bed on the bedside table, and so, not wanting to switch on a light and waken completely, I stumbled out of bed and peered through my bleary eyes into the pitch darkness of the hotel room, trying to find the glass.

I saw the shadowy outline of the glass exactly where I thought I had left it as I went to bed, and reached for it. But it wasn’t there. The shadowy circle that I thought had been the glass immediately shifted a few inches to the right. I reached for it again. It wasn’t there either. Now I became half aware that my brain was telling me where it thought the glass was, rather than actually showing me what was on the table. I ignored what I thought I could see, and swept my hands across the table until I found the actual glass.

OK, so this was not a science experiment. But it did remind me of a TED video I watched recently on optical illusions and why we need to be carefully of thinking we can know anything objectively and how we learn. Check out Beau Lotto on Optical Illusions. You can also see another example of an illusion here. Finally, there is just a fun look at optical illusions here.

When we are developing strategies and looking at the world around us, we need to be careful not to allow our brains to tell us what it thinks we want to see there. It happens all the time. Watch the TED videos – they’ll amaze (and humble) you. Then, check out our presentation on “Seeing the world through other people’s eyes“.

The Recession Generation

Each generation is defined by the economic experience of its youth. The generation now finishing university and entering a dire job market will be shaped by this experience forever. This generation is what we call the cusp between Generation X and Generation Y. This week’s Spectator magazine contains an excellent cover article that explains them wonderfully. Read it here, or a summary below:

The quiet agony of the recession generation
by Matthew Lynn
17 October 2009

Each generation is defined by the economic experience of its youth. And Britain is breeding angry, thrifty cynics who are beginning to wonder if they were mis-sold university education.

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This is not your father’s Mail strike

I am sitting in a hotel in Birmingham, watching the live press conference where the CWU is announcing that the planned UK postal strike will go ahead from tomorrow (Thursday, 22 October 2009). There is the typical bluster of Unions to Employers rhetoric, and I have little interest in the details of the strike.

The point I want to make here is that the parties involved – specifically the unions – have failed to understand that the world has changed. I was speaking to someone earlier this week who lived through the postal strikes in the early 1970s. He was at boarding school, and the postal strikes effectively cut them off from the world. There were very few private couriers then, and they were hugely expensive (he remembers the first class stamp cost 4p, and a courier would charge over 40p!). Postal strikes in the 1970s could cripple the country and devastate the economy.

Today, strikes will do little more give the economy a kick in the shins and a slight bruising. But, the ageing dinosaur that is Royal Mail has not been trusted for some time now.

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Halliburton, rape and mad Republicans

I cannot tell you how much I wish I was wrong. A large part of my job is to try and track trends – especially those issues that will shape the new world of work. Every now and again our team at TomorrowToday gets to check in and see whether we were right or not. Obviously, we want to be right – our reputation and ability to get work from clients depends on it.

But, today I wish I was wrong. You see, in April 2005 I did one of the most in-depth pieces of investigative journalism I have ever done, and put together an article entitled: Would You Work for Halliburton?. It’s worth a read – as we chronicle the nasty habits of this nasty company. In the article in 2005, I suggested that Halliburton would have trouble hiring the right kind of people to turn their company culture around, and that the future might be bleak for them.

It turns out I was horrifically accurate in this assertion.

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Space Tourism is 18 months away

Last Thursday, Sir Richard Branson updated shareholders in Virgin Group on “Virgin Galactic”, the company that has taken $200,000 deposits from over 200 people for seats on the first commercial near-orbit flight. However, his announcement indicated that the first flight would be reserved for his family (an a few friends and some journalists, too, no doubt), and that it is expected to happend within about 18 months.

In addition to these tourist flights, Virgin Galactic will also put satellites into space, train NASA crews and is investigating orbital hotels and tours of the moon. Anyone who says this won’t happen clearly has never heard of Richard Branson (or the Wright Brothers for that matter)! A few people alive today are old enough to remember when cars were considered a luxury for the truly rich and famous. How long will it be before the middle class can afford space tourism? Probably in my lifetime, I would have thought.

The “mother ship” that will launch the actual space flights: VMS Eve (see photo), named after Sir Richard’s mum, got its debut in Oshkosh, Wisc., this past July. And SpaceShipTwo, the suborbital plane for space tourism, will be unveiled on December 7, Branson says. He added: “What started off as a dream to send people just for the excitement of a voyage to look back and marvel at Earth has turned into a business.”

How, when and why I Tweet and Blog

I’m often asked how I use social media, so I thought it might be helpful to do a quick blog about it. Not because you really care about me, but because it might help spark some thoughts about how you use social media and because it might help you get more out of this website and TomorrowToday’s other resources.

Firstly, then, this blog site. I use it as my filing cabinet for good ideas and good stuff I’ve seen. I focus on tracking trends that are shaping the new world of work, with a particular focus on demography and shifting societal values. But I’m also interested in the impact of other major forces, such as technology, institutional shifts, the environment and ethical consumption. I use this blog as a way of capturing case studies, ideas, trends and especially for writing up bits and pieces that I can later use in longer articles, white papers and books. The categories on the right hand side are linked to existing and expected frameworks (which we use as presentations or workshops with our clients).

As an author, I try and keep a discipline of writing about 200-400 words every day. Sometimes these words are rubbish – those are filed in fragmentary documents on my hard drive. Sometimes they start something that then inspires me to develop an article length entry – most recently, for example, I wrote a monster entry about Good to Great – that took nearly a week to complete. But every now and again, the 200-400 words produce a great thought – and that becomes a blog entry. My aim is one of these every other day.

Our blog has an automatic widget that then reports the new blog entry on Twitter (the feed is at @tomorrowtodayza). I wait about 30 minutes and then Retweet that auto notice using my own Twitter account (@codrington).

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Surprise! Creating experiences for your customers

For many years now, we’ve been telling our clients that one of the keys to connecting with younger customers (Generations X and Y) is to add an experience to your offering. No longer are the traditional “Ps” of marketing (product, price, placement and promotion – and even people) enough. You need to create experiences that transcend these, and give customers a further reason to connect with you.

Some people are talking about tribes (see, for example, a great video by Seth Godin at TED.com). Others are doing funky stuff with their stores (Walt Disney have Steve Jobs to turn their stores in mini theme parks, for example). There are countless examples of creating experiences that develop your brand (Red Bull are geniuses at this).

But here’s a new one…

Hipstery ask their customers to fill in a questionnaire about yourself. They then choose a T-shirt design for you, and send it to you. It remains a surprise until you open the package. This adds an interesting thrill to the boring task of choosing a T-shirt.

It seems that while most companies are providing ever more choice and ever more information, there is a growing trend of businesses relieving consumers of the burden of decision, and helping them make choices. Obviously this can go wrong. So Hipstery will replace any t-shirts that customers don’t like, with the option of a refund if they’re wrong the second time too. Sometimes a lack of choice is a good thing, especially if it is used to surprise and delight consumers.

Nice one.

Good to Great… to Gone!

Jim Collins got it wrong. Not totally wrong, but wrong enough that we need to be careful (as always) about who we listen to when designing companies for future success. Too often, leaders take a shortcut and blindly apply models they find somewhere else, without doing the work to adapt it to their culture and context.

Jim Collins is, of course, the international superstar guru author of “Built to Last” (buy at Kalahari.net or Amazon.co.uk), “Good to Great” (buy at Kalahari.net or Amazon.co.uk) and most recently, “How the Mighty Fall” (buy at Kalahari.net or Amazon.co.uk). His first two books are the two best selling business books of all time. His latest is bound to follow suit.

I have to declare that I am not the wildest fan of Mr Collins. I have read too many reports from the research teams that have worked with/for him, and are very disgruntled at how he has used their work without giving them any credit. I also received my copy of “How the Mighty Fall” yesterday, and was amazed to turn to the back cover of the book and see a single quotation, made by none other than… Jim Collins. I’m still to read the book, but I wonder if “hubris” and “arrogance” are possible ingredients in how the mighty fall? (Certainly “humilty” was a key element of his “Level 5 Leadership” principle). I’ll say more on this at the end of this (long) post… (But, then again, maybe I’m just jealous).

That personal comment aside, though, the question nevertheless remains: Are the models Jim Collins presents worth following? This is especially important since two of his “Good to Great” companies have recently gone bankrupt, and on average the whole lot have performed WORSE than the general stock exchange index over the past year or so of the recession. Are the principles in Collins’ books eternal? Or do they belong to an era that no longer exists?

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