Newspapers and Blogs. A great conversation

It’s not often I get sent a read like this one. And I follow a truck load of ‘reads’ everyday. Twitter, RSS, e-mail links, etc, etc. There is a lot of stuff that flows through my browser (is anyone else frustrated by Flash and Safari with the new Snow Leopard upgrade?).

The article I’m referring to (Let’s get sentimental; the readers deserve it) can be found on Marketingweb. It’s written by Gill Moodie:

Gill Moodie spent 14 years as a salaried hack in print media in South Africa and the UK before escaping to the blogosphere and freelance journalism. She is the publisher of Grubstreet in between unpacking and packing the infernal dishwasher and bringing up a four-year-old with attitude.

I suppose in all web 2.0 fairness I should take the time to credit Mel Stevens for sending it on, via e-mail (she’s barely a Tweeter or a FB’er). Thanks.

Back to the article. It’s an overview of the conversation between, primarily, Peter Bruce (Business Day editor) and Matthew Buckland (20FourLabs) and their good natured exploration of the future of newspapers in the midst of a web 2.0 onslaught. It brings in Barack Obama’s recent comments, along with a host of other great thoughts and comments from other great thinkers in this space.

Now, here’s why I love newspapers. Most of this excellent debate came from people schooled in the rigours of newsrooms. I, as a blogger for instance, may delight in thumbing my nose to traditional media but I can only do so because I was knocked into shape and learned how to be fair, accurate and (sometimes) thoughtful because I worked at newspapers, including at OMG’s (Peter Bruce).

I can’t do justice to her great article. Definitely worth going ‘there’ for a read. Certainly you’ll leave with at least one thought.

Social Networks and how we communicate

On Friday 2 October 2009, I was interviewed by Rueben Goldberg on Classic FM on his show, The Internet Economy.

I’d not met him before we recorded the show. He’s a good guy, fairly active on Twitter, and interesting and interested to talk to.

Our PR company, SimonSays Communications, assisted in getting the interview and I’m hoping this wont be the last chat to Reuben. Yeah, it won’t be.

If you’d like to listen to the PodCast (7 min) of my interview on his show, you can find links to it here.

Star Workplace Article

I was published in The Star (South African newspaper) earlier this week on ‘diversity’. I’ve had a few requests from people who wanted to read it, but couldn’t find it online.

Our PR company (SimonSays Communications) scanned a copy and sent it through today. It’s missing one or two lines through the middle : ), But I’m fairly certain it’s still readable.

Click here to see the image (it’s a .jpg)

VWV Red Plug on Generation 2.0

VWV is an interesting company, that I still don’t know enough about. Take a visit to their web site to see some of the ‘interesting’ I encounter when I meet with their people (wherever they may be).

Tomorrow I’m spending the afternoon with them as part of their ‘Red Plug’. It’s an informal forum they pull together made up of clients, media, friends and other interesting people who don’t fall into those 3 particular categories.

I’ve got a slot at tomorrow’s Red Plug. Talking about Web 2.0 (whatever that is) and it’s impact on people and business. It’s a monster of a topic. I get to put my little bit forward. how I see it from this particular corner of the planet.

I’m going to test out the term ‘Generation 2.0′. I’ve borrow it from Gen X, who are often referred to as the ‘TV Generation’, simply because they were the first complete Generation to grow up with TV. Today’s younger set are the first complete generation to grow up being influenced by Web 2.0. I think it’s a fitting descriptor.

Of course you’d have to be at the Red Plug at VWV to hear some of my thoughts. Or perhaps another day over some coffee, a beer or a glass or two of red wine.

I’m looking forward to the afternoon. Fer sure!

[after the event] The session was tweeted by Bev from SimonSays Communications – click here for her tweets

A web war between two countries

OK so the title of this post completely over-states what you’re about to read, but once you read it you’ll hopefully sympathise and appreciate the dramatic exaggeration : )

We’ve recently updated the look and feel of our brand to ensure a more consistent look and feel for our South African and UK offices.

Outside of the new look and feel, we created a single landing page from our historical web url (www.tomorrowtoday.biz) and from there offer two options:

• South Africa
• United Kingdom

Of course one of the first questions asked was which country get’s to be on the left of the page? The answer was simple. Our SA team designed the page we choose. However, our competitive streak entered the conversation and we agreed to track Google Analytics on each of the two country sites and whichever had the most hits, most unique visitors, most pages visited, longest time per page, etc, etc (a very complicated algorithm is always involved when Graeme’s involved) would get to be on the left.

This month (our first competing month) the UK won. It was tight and there is obviously a query from our side on a sudden very unusual spike in the middle of the month. But we’ve edited the landing site in the mean time, while we give our UK colleagues some time to come forward with the true story around that unusual black swan spike of theirs : )

Click here to visit the South Africa Web Site

Submitted by the TomorrowToday South Africa Team

: )

12 ideas that’ll have you thinking a little differently

I picked this link up off of Twitter (@tomorrowtodayza if you’d like to follow us). It’s from Wired and it’s a list of 12 counter-cultural ideas from various ‘experts’ in a variety of fields. If anything else it’ll certainly have you thinking differently for a little while. Had me!

Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year’s list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with controversial, game-changing propositions. We found a prison reformer who wants to empty jails, an economist who thinks foreign aid hurts more than it helps, and a military theorist who believes the US should launch preemptive cyberattacks, right now. Then there’s secretary of defense robert gates, who wants to win wars, not just prep for them. Risky? Sure. But this is no time to play it safe.

The emergence of Neuromarketing

Traditional market research has it’s limitations when one considers the influence of the ‘observer’ on the ‘observed’ when attempting to understand people’s true thoughts and feelings on the product/brand/service being researched. If we could just get into their heads to withdraw a pure brain impulse without the constraints traditional market research introduces in the mechanisms it uses. Enter Neuromarketing…

Neuromarketing is the practice of using technology to measure brain activity in consumer subjects in order to inform the development of products and communications–really to inform the brand’s 4Ps. The premise is that consumer buying decisions are made in split seconds in the subconscious, emotional part of the brain and that by understanding what we like, don’t like, want, fear, are bored by, etc. as indicated by our brain’s reactions to brand stimuli, marketers can design products and communications to better meet “unmet” market needs, connect and drive “the buy”.

FastCompany posted an article recently that explores the issue and the companies that are using this new ’science’. It also suggests a few shortcomings and some interesting ethical concerns.

Neuromarketing is only poised to grow in use and influence. But as the practice makes its way out of the lab and into the real world, at the grocery aisle, onto your computer perhaps…a debate, well beyond marketing, will rage.

Proof we had a Billboard

At the beginning of September I wrote of the billboard we got through a barter with INM Outdoor. Edward’s comment made me smile as he asked what we were doing with ‘old technology’ being a company that explores an emerging world of possibilities? Other than the fact that we swapped some of our time, for some of their space, there wasn’t really another reason for doing it.

We did all wonder what would come of our 2 weeks of space? We made sure the call center was open 24 hours a day and bought triple our normal bandwidth to deal with the large volume of e-mail, web and blog hits we were expecting. Of course none of that happened. Other than a supplier’s wife mailing me to say she’d seen it, I’m not sure we had any response. Doesn’t mean that there wasn’t anything useful about it? Just means we didn’t get to hear about it.

Anyway our 2 weeks are up on Peter Place, and I’ve been meaning to post a pic as proof that we did have one.

Check out the security we had on it : ) Electric and metal fence. Can’t be too careful with our well designed billboard.

Oh and that’s me, to prove I at least saw it.

Oprah and Supply Chains

We all know about Oprah’s ability to significantly impact sales. In both directions. She loves it, we love it and we buy it. She hates it, we hate it and don’t ever buy it. It’s one of the reason’s, I suppose, that her business is as large as it is? Started as a simple talk show, added a ‘home shopping network’ component, and now she moves markets (and I’m sure a whole lot more)

I enjoyed this article from CIO because it moves from sales and profits and focusses on supply chains and logistics. I suppose it’s an obvious curiosity, but it does create an interesting question around logistics and supply planning for a product being Oprah-tised.

There’s a great case study exercise around Amazon.com and their Kindle being Oprah-tised. Even the highly efficient Amazon didn’t seem to cope with the added demand apparently created by Oprah.

“The day of the endorsement, visits to Amazon’s website were up 6 percent over the previous Friday, according to Experian PLC’s Hitwise. Web traffic going from Oprah.com to Amazon.com increased more than 15,000 percent.”

Keith’s at the APLP for 2 weeks

Keith Coats lands in Hawaii today (or possibly has already landed – it’s a long long flight). It’s a trip he’s been doing for 6 or 7 years now around this time of the year. He plugs into the Asia Pacific Leadership Programme, run by the East West Center at the University of Hawaii.

I’m not certain of all he’s involved with this year, but based on previous years it’s mostly focussed around Leadership, Generational Differences, the Enneagram, Diversity and Global Trends. There are usually other bits and bobs that take shape during his time time there with other organisations, both business and education.

I’m hoping he uses some of his ‘down time’ to keep us updated via the blog and his Twitter account. You can follow him on Twitter here (but I’m not promising he’ll use it to keep us updated : )

Mom’s are big

Every now and then I discover thoughts from marketing experts exploring the value of women between 35-55 and in this example mom’s. Their research and observations remind the marketplace of the value of the people who match the criteria of these segments, and how over-looked they are from a marketing and communication perspective. They either have incredible spending power, or massive decision rights in their world, or are inhabiting a particular channel that isn’t effectively communicating to them.

The Israeli Diamond Industry web site has an article around social media and mothers titled, ‘Mothers use FaceBook, Twitter, Blogs more than average adults’, and again suggests the retail world is missing a trick if they’re not using these platforms to speak to them.

“Retailers who aren’t engaging customers through social media could be missing the boat. Twitter, Facebook and blogs are becoming increasingly popular with moms as they search for coupons or deals and keep in touch with loved ones. The web provides efficient, convenient ways for brands to stay in front of their most loyal shoppers and attract new ones.”

I am always left wondering if these segments have been overlooked for so long is it because there isn’t an effective way to single them out, or is it because companies aren’t wired to see them. Reminds me of that quote that goes something like this, “Do we look at what we see, or do we see what we look at?”

Viva Themes – They rock

It’s often really easy to moan about bad service and poor customer facing performance. But when good things happen I often make the note, but never ‘post it’.

As many will know we’re currently embarking on a re-branding exercise. No easy feat for a small business. At times like this you wish you had a team of people dedicated to the task. It happens on the fly and isn’t ever completely done, as you spend the next few weeks tweaking and changing.

We use Wordpress as a backend for the sites we keep. And so step one was finding Wordpress themes that would do what we needed and then work with the look and feel we had decided on. For those of you who know, there are literally thousands of themes available, so many hours were spent just working through what was available.

We have a blog (connectioneconomy.com) and 3 websites (tomorrowtoday.uk.com / tomorrowtoday.co.za / tomorrowtoday.biz)

For the blog we chose ‘Massive News’ from Press75. And for the websites we chose ‘Revival’ from Viva Themes.

Because our team’s main focus is researching future trends around people and business, our web development skills aren’t nearly close to what we wish for (although we don’t think we’re too shabby on the bell curve distribution). I’m glad we chose ‘Revival’ from Viva Themes.

Moving websites isn’t ever as easy or as simple as you imagine when you start out. So having Mike at Viva Themes respond to us within 24 hours every time we called for help was a massive win. He was also to the point and ‘easy to use’. It never felt like we were being a pain, and he always gave clear and simple instructions. So simple even I was able to follow.

We’re almost done (whatever that means) tweaking and changing, and things are looking pretty much like we wanted them. The UK team have the next task of moving across to Revival, but we have the SA sites looking and feeling like theirs.

Our next goal is a commerce site for our resources. We’re a little while off that at the moment, so I’ll wait for then before I put out any more info : )

TomorrowToday is getting a Billboard

TomorrowToday South Africa is getting a Billboard for 2 weeks in September. We did an exchange with INM Outdoor earlier this year. We did some work for them, and they’re doing some work for us. So a swap of sorts.

We’ve not had anything like this, and we’re looking forward to seeing what it does for business? We’re not even sure what we can expect? But we are excited, and it has been fun getting it all together.

It’s also been a great catalyst for us to get our international branding on the same page, and we’re starting this with look and feel driven largely by our websites. So by the time the billboard goes live we’ll have a new South African look and feel to our website, followed shortly afterwards by our UK office.

The billboard focusses on Talent and Leadership. In a business world with a changing worker (so called Talent) there has to be a rethink on how to lead. You can’t expect to lead a different group of people in same way. Can you? We don’t think so.

I’m sure we’ll post updates and results, if only to post our thoughts on the medium of outdoor advertising.

Watch this space…..

The world is changing cell phones

Once upon a time cell phones changed the world. They arrived when we didn’t expect them, and allowed us to do things we never imagined possible. We can quite safely say that our world today (where cell phones have had an influence) bares scant resemblance to the world of 15 years ago.

But people, being who they are, mastered the new opportunities cell phones created and we have individually and collectively pushed cell phone manufacturers and network operators into spaces they once never imagined possible. It’s a lovely example of what we’re capable of with opportunity, resources and a little time to tinker.

FastCompany recently published an article focussed on one cell phone manufacturer, the world’s largest, Nokia. If the article is to be believed then I am incorrect calling them a cell phone manufacturer. They no longer see themselves in that category. As to who they are, not even Nokia is certain?

“Just three years ago, we were competing against Motorola, Sony Ericsson, some Korean players, even Siemens,” he says from his office in Espoo, Finland, just outside of Helsinki. “The competitive environment in the industry at large has changed, and I sometimes struggle to define what industry we are in at the moment and what are the boundaries. But remember, I spoke in 2001 about putting the Internet in your pocket. And now consumers are realizing that these devices are not just for communicating by voice: It is all about information.”

While cell phone companies once significantly impacted how we saw the world, their new task is to take our post-cellphone worldview and re-imagine themselves for the future. That is if they’d like to stay in business.

This article is a great read. One worth sitting through to get a glimpse of a global leader finding their way in a world they’ve had a large role in influencing.

Affirmitive Action is Dead in South Africa – or is it?

Sipho Ngcobo wrote an interesting article on Money Web this last week, reflecting on the reality the African National Congress (ANC) faces around service delivery, or lack of it, in South Africa currently. He suggests that the pressure the ANC is under for 2011 local government elections and 2014 national elections will mean them compromising on affirmative action policies in favour of ensuring the right people are in the right places.

I do think he writes as more of a warning to the ANC to get it’s house in order than possibly the reality of what will actually happen. But I also do think that we need to appreciate that in emerging market economies this is a situation we’re all facing. It’s certainly not unique to South Africa.

As Ready, Conger and Hill point out in their Harvard Business Review article, ‘Winning the Race for Talent in Emerging Markets’, there is a severe lack of appropriately qualified and experienced people to fill management positions (at various levels). In the four large emerging market economies, Brazil, Russia, India and China, there simply isn’t enough supply to meet the demand. In countries like South Africa we should appreciate that if these four power-houses are struggling, then it is appropriate for us to be feeling some pain.

In the Harvard Business Review article, they set out their findings in an interesting graph that shows supply and demand for management using a scale that goes from entry level, to middle management, to country leadership, and tops out at regional leadership. Their research suggests that:

• Brazil has no supply to meet the demand from middle management upwards.
• Russia is struggling to meet the demand in all four levels
• India is battling from the first level (entry level) upwards
• China is only slightly better off, but still struggling to meet demand from entry level upwards.

One should be cautioned against assuming that academic qualification equals appropriate skills for management. I mention this because when I bring up the Harvard Business Review article people often query the number of MBA’s in India and therefore the accuracy of the data? Education is but one element that determines management ability. Those who fill management positions will certainly confirm this.

Sipho Ngcobo, in my opinion, is on the money with the challenge that the ANC faces. What the ANC does to avoid this crisis will be interesting to learn from? When the pressure is on for delivery and performance, especially in emerging markets in a world with a skills crisis, a compromise is certainly worth exploring between affirmative action policies and ensuring the right bums are in the right seats on this bus called service delivery.

88 years old and mayer for 30+ years

Today is Nelson Mandela’s birthday. An international icon.

But this is not about Madiba. He’s never been mayor. He has been President of South Africa, and leader of the African National Congress (ANC), but never Mayor.

This is a video interview worth watching about Hazel McCallion, who’s 88 years old and been mayor of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada for 30+ years. She’s been re-elected 11 times in the 6th biggest city in Canada, and runs a city that’s debt free with cash reserves of $700 000 000.

It struck me while watching, that we’re a world that’s become so ‘young people focused’, that we so easily miss and don’t appreciate the value and contribution that ‘much’ older people do make, and can make in our private and public worlds.

So happy birthday Madiba and wow Mayor McCallion. Don’t stop teaching us. May we never stop learning from everyone we meet.

Guy Kawasaki on how he Tweets

Anyone who follows @guykawasaki on Twitter assumes the man never sleeps. We’re all certain that Tweeting isn’t his main job, but he never seems to stop tweeting. So how does he do it?

Click over to ‘How to Change the World‘ for an interview with Guy, that I certainly enjoyed reading. Well actually it looks like it’s an interview with Guy by Guy?

Clearly he’s doesn’t mess around : )

“Yes, four people contribute to my tweets: Annie Colbert, Gina Ruiz, Noelle Chun, and Neenz Faleafine. This is why you will see the initials “AC, “GR,” “NC,” and “LF” at the end of some tweets. If there are no initials, then it’s me.“

The Naked Office

I’ve heard plenty of mechanisms to improve team spirit and boost office morale, but never this…

“Staff at a design and marketing company in Newcastle (UK) spent a day working together naked after being told it would improve their morale.”

And it seems most of the office went for some form of it. For those of you with access to cable channel Virgin 1 on 9 July, you can see for yourself on a once off show of the Naked Office.

Read the full article here (Telegraph online)

What’s new in MobileMe

It’s not the normal practice on this blog to be show-casing new technology, for the simple reason that it’s kewl. We rather try and focus on the people impact changes have in the areas of technology, values, demographics and institutions. Certainly this post is related to changing how we see things, but I just loved the technology and wanted to post it for those that haven’t seen it.

But a brief summary is:

Now, if you lose your iPhone, MobileMe can help you find it. MobileMe includes a new feature called Find My iPhone. Just enable Find My iPhone in MobileMe settings on your phone.* Then you can log in to me.com from any computer to access Find My iPhone and display your phone’s approximate location on a map.

As I said. Way kewl

The 100 Euro Note

Received this via e-mail today. Would anyone care to comment…..?

“It is the month of August, on the shores of the Black Sea. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town.

He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 Euro note on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one.

The hotel proprietor takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the butcher.

The Butcher takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the pig grower.

The pig grower takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel.

The supplier of feed and fuel takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the town’s prostitute that in these hard times, gave her “services”
on credit.

The hooker runs to the hotel, and pays off her debt with the 100 Euro note to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there.

The hotel proprietor then lays the 100 Euro note back on the counter so that the rich tourist will not suspect anything.

At that moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the rooms, and takes his 100 Euro note, after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town.

No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is doing business today and the main reason thatthe rest of the world is now ‘messed’ up!”

PodCast – Collaboration and Alliances

PodCast Update – Graeme Codrington interviews Dean van Leeuwen (Director of TomorrowToday UK) around his MBA thesis on collaboration and alliances.

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Will Twitter change the way we live?

There’s a lot of hype around Twitter. I hear it all the time. And there seem to be two distinct camps. Those rabidly for and those against. The against camp speak of just another fad. I say that they’re possibly correct in their thinking. To be honest though, that’s not the question. The real question is for however long Twitter is with us, will it change something about how we look at the world and each other, and therefore how we connect and interact?

Steven Johnson writes a great piece on Time (online) that gives a small insight into some of how Twitter added a new dimension to at least one conference. I like how it was used, and how it brought in a new channel for communication to add to the dialogue in the room.

The social warmth of all those stray details shouldn’t be taken lightly.

I’m really interested more in the social changes than the platforms themselves. Personally I think whether Twitter stays or goes, it will change our lives in some way going forward.

The Myth of the Rational Buyer

What if what we understood about marketing wasn’t true? This is how the article from Fast Company, The Myth of the Rational Buyer: How too much thinking can hurt your brand, begins.

The author Mark Dziersk suggests that companies spend 95% of their time fussing over the 5% that the consumer thinks about when it comes to purchasing behaviour.

And as he points out, the average hypermarket in the US, carries more than 167 000 sku’s (units), compared to 40 000 in that late 1950’s. That’s a lot of product to choose from. And we’re missing what goes into consumer behaviour, then we’d better start doing things differently.

Read the full article here.

Brrr is kewl in South Africa

Thanks to my friend Bev from SimonSays Communications for this link.

The Sunday Times announced it’s ‘Times Generation Next’ cool brands survey results on 28 May 2009.

5000 tweens, teens and young adults between the ages of 8-22 were polled on their coolest brands, and Coke came out on tops with it’s Brrrr campaign.

Bizcommunity.com covered the results, and one interesting comment relating to the attitude of this segment and the economic downturn according to Jason Levin (MD of HDI Youth Marketeers) was,

“Young South Africans, unshaken by economic downturn, are as brand conscious as ever. Although there were some interesting shifts in the top rankers in some categories, we see growing similarity in votes by region, gender, race and sometimes even age around the coolest brands.”

For the rest of the results read the full article here. Nokia, Samsung, Nike, Puma, Sun City, Edgars, SAA, Mango, D&G, Levis and others all had a mention in achieving top spots or moving down the list from previous years.

Is it wiser to hire people without meeting them?

I’ve just come across a great article from Fast Company. It’s around hiring new people. And we all know that once the economy turns, and business increases, we’re going to need new people.

This particular article focuses on how we weight interviews in the hiring process. And how we may be making some very large mistakes in the process.

With so little proof that interviews work, why do we rely on them so
much? Because we all think we’re good at it. We are Barbara Walters or
Mike Wallace, taking the measure of the person. Psychologist Richard
Nisbett calls this the “interview illusion” — our certainty that we’re
learning more in an interview than we really are.

Late last year Malcolm Gladwell released his new book ‘Outliers’. It’s a long story to go into on a blog post, but I’m of the opinion, having read the book, that you’d be better off simply choosing candidates born between January and April and ditching the rest. Quicker, cheaper, and some great odds : )

It certainly is going to be interesting to see what we learn once the re-hiring starts up?

How to cut costs and keep your employees

The million dollar question I hear you sigh as you see the subject of this blog. Let’s face it, there are no easy answers, no silver bullets and certainly no one-size-fits-all approach to cutting costs and keeping a high people-morale during an economic un-boom, such as the one we’re wading through at the moment.

But there are some stories worth hearing, if not for anything but simply to celebrate that someone may be getting it right in their context. They know their people and their culture, and they’ve successfully created a solution that snugly fits both.

Click here to read a short article of some of these stories. The one that most impacted me was the ‘Ricardo Semler‘ type approach of the opening story in the article:

Go to the people and ask them! Sounds so simple. But so very difficult to execute.

Millenials reversing the trend

It’s always difficult convincing an adult audience, that from a Generational perspective, the so-called ‘Millennials’ (Gen Y, Echo Boomers) are going to be more civic minded, more conservative (whilst being more aware), and focus on rebuilding the planet (amongst other things). Mostly because their example of a Millennial is often one of their own kids. And let’s be honest, what parent thinks their own kids are going to be some of those things? Their kids are teenagers, and generally speaking teens are going through a life stage in which pushing the boundaries and experimenting are part and parcel of what they have to do in order to develop into healthy contributing adults.

So it’s with a smile of satisfaction that I point you to some research coming out of Canada (Project Teen Canada headed up by Reginald Bibby, a University of Lethbridge sociologist) that shows that today’s Millennial Generation are reversing some trends that you probably wouldn’t expect them to. Sex, Drugs, Family Values, having children, smoking.

This reversing trend has been captured beautifully in a short video clip entitled ‘Lost Generation‘. If you’ve not seen it, it’s worth a trip to YouTube see get a first hand view.

There are some thoughts about the role parents are playing in the reversing of these trends, but the article is summed up like this:

In the end, the kids will likely follow their own instincts. While they might be taking silent cues from their parents—and might even seek help in times of crisis—they’ve little time for adult authorities who worry about their futures. Jesse Lupini, the 17-year-old from Victoria, summed up the sentiment in a recent guest column for his local paper. “Adults have generated a number of teen stereotypes,” he writes. “Teens are irresponsible, untrustworthy, rude, sexually obsessed, loud, inclined to drink to excess, take drugs, eat badly . . . ” But how about the adults who lie, drive drunk and do drugs, Lupini asks? What about the corporations run by adults that market junk food and sexualized clothing to youth? What about the parents who buy that stuff for their kids? “Frankly,” he concludes, having worked up a rather adult-sounding rant, “it’s a wonder we’re coping as well as we are.”

TomorrowToday has been researching, exploring and communicating Generational Theory through our edutaining presentation ‘Mind the Gap‘ for 7 years now. We’re still as convinced as ever that it’s a framework every organisation needs to include in the multiple frameworks it uses to understand people dynamics and interactions.

New communication channels – New rules

Throughout history, as each new medium of communication was adopted, a new set of rules grew and developed around it. Some were designed by the users as a new etiquette was introduced, and policed by the users. If you played by the rules people would listen and respond, if you didn’t, you were ignored or worse. Of course governments have also intervened where necessary to protect the greater good of society (that is the goal anyway) as well as those who could not defend themselves (eg, children).

With the advent of the Internet we’ve seen many new communication platforms emerge along with it. These have been exciting times as we witness the birth of a new way of connecting to each other, and a new set of rules being built around us.

Breaking some of the rules have few consequences. But there are a couple for which the price of breaking them have been high. Some of the rules broken were not even broken intentionally. How can you break a rule you’re not really aware of or sure of. I’m certain much surprise has been experienced in these situations. For many of these people their role will be remembered as being the mavericks, ground breakers, fire starters, etc.

Case in point is an article carried on IOLtechnology.co.za on 27 May 2009. It has to do with a South African worker who was fired for calling his boss a ’serial masturbator’ on FaceBook. For those of you following these trends, click here to read the entire article.

PodCast – Attitudes and Actions of Authentic Leaders

We’ve just uploaded a new PodCast Episode.

This recording was made in 2008, based on the article Keith Coats wrote around investigating what it means to be an Authentic Leader. Much has been written about the need for Leaders to adopt characteristics that will ensure they remain relevant in today’s changing business environment. This interview with Keith is an exploration of what these characteristics look like in action.

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Shouldn’t we all just pick another word?

I’m referring to the word ‘talent’ when I ask this question. Mostly because I’m still troubled by the complexity and lack of form the current exploration around ‘talent’ has. We still don’t know how to define it? We still don’t know how to measure it? We still don’t know what it looks like when it sits down in front of us? We don’t know how much we want of it, and we certainly aren’t sure if we really want to manage it, or have the time to do so?

So why don’t we all get together a pick another word? Malcolm Gladwell has a suggestion that I quite like, ‘Outliers’. Certainly we know what we’re talking about when we talk about those who lie outside of the norm, the average, the mean, on the edges of the bell curve we use to describe the distribution of human capability.

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