Forget creating customer loyalty and focus on building friendships with customers

I’m not talking about the glib friendships companies try to encourage by inviting their customers to be friends or fans on Facebook, but rather intimate and deep relationships that come from having a vested interest in the people that make their business possible. I recently came across a study by Michael Argyle and Monika Henderson at Oxford University on friendships. They identified a number of universal rules, which they published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. The rules included: Friends must provide support, respect privacy, share aspirations, dreams and be tolerant of other friendships. It is my belief that any company could use these rules as a framework for their customer experience and engagement framework.

You can read more of my thoughts on this issue in the white paper I wrote called Onions and Parfait: Why customer relationships no longer need to be a thing of fairytales and pirate stories.

Today I came across a great example of the third rule in action. Gwilym Davies co-owner of Prufrock Coffee at 140 Shoreditch High Street, and the current World Barista Champion, has come up with the “disloyalty card.” The idea is simple, you get a stamp on a card for visiting eight different quality focused coffee shops. After visiting the eighth “friend” (actually his competitors) He will say thank you by making you a cup of his own coffee for free. There is no catch Gwilym just wants people to try different quality coffees.

So swing by Prufrock Coffee shop grab a card, enjoy your tour of the best cafes and coffee shops around Central and East London and then go back to Prufrock for your free cup where you can compare notes with one of the best baristas in the world. Pure customer experience genius at work. Superb stuff!!

Africa’s Gift to Silicon Valley: How to Track a Crisis

A report under this title appeared in the New York Times on 12 March 2010. It’s a great example of a few things, but especially of the power of social media, and the fact that innovation (and competition) can come from anywhere these days.

Read the story of how technology developed in the aftermath of Kenya’s disputed elections was used in Haiti to track responses to the crisis there. You can read the original at the NYT website, or read an extract below. (As an aside, you’ve got to love how US journalists can always rely on the “war on terror” to grab attention).

The company states that “the Ushahidi Engine is a platform that allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline. Our goal is to create the simplest way of aggregating information from the public for use in crisis response.” The company’s website is http://www.ushahidi.com/ – check them out.

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A Radical Proposal for Executive Pay

Everyone agrees that something must be done about executive pay. One of the major contentious issues emerging out of the financial crisis is the way that senior executives and manager, especially in the financial industries, are remunerated. These days, executive pay often seems to be unrelated to the company’s performance, and in many industries it seems out of proportion to the value the company adds to society.

A century ago, executives earned anywhere between 3 and 20 times what the average worker in their factories earned. According to research by global human capital and risk management firm, Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson), in 1965, CEO pay was 26 times that of their average worker. This is looking at the total packages, rather than base salary. By 1980, this had risen to 40 times. In 1989, it was 72 times. In 1999 it had risen to 310 times, and by 2004 CEO pay had reached 500 times that of the average worker in their firm. In some companies by 2010, this had jumped to over 1,000 times. (In pure salary terms, in 2008, US executives took home 319 times more than the average worker, according to a report linked to the Guardian’s salary survey).

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The future of money

For years banks and credit card companies have held a strangle hold over the movement of money and charged exorbitant rates for doing so. Now this is changing and fast.

Michale Ivey the founder of Twitpay has devised a system, using code that PayPal made available to him, that allows people to make payments using tweets. The way it works is you include the recipients’ username in their message. For example, posting the update “@johnsmith twitpay $10 for lunch” would deliver the cash to that Twitterer’s Twitpay account. Simple and brilliant!

Hundreds of engineers and entrepreneurs are now revolutionising the payment industry, attacking the payment ecosystem and seeking out ways to pull down the stronghold the banks and credit card companies have built.

Here are some examples:

- Square, a new company founded by Twitter cocreator Jack Dorsey, lets anyone accept physical credit card payments using an attachment on their iPhone, any other a smartphone or computer by plugging in a free sugar-cube-sized device — no expensive card reader required.
- A startup called Obopay, which has received funding from Nokia, allows phone owners to transfer money to one another with nothing more than a PIN.
- Amazon.com and Google are both distributing their shopping cart technologies across the Internet, letting even the lowliest etailers process credit cards for less than the old price, cutting out middlemen, and figuring out ways to bundle payments to sidestep the credit card companies’ constant nickel-and-diming.
- Facebook appears to be building its own payment system for virtual goods purchased on its social network and on external sites.
- Apple has given iTunes developers the ability to charge subscription fees through their applications, making iTunes the gateway for an entirely new breed of transaction.

About 20 percent of all online transactions now take place over so-called alternative payment systems, according to consulting firm Javelin Strategy and Research. It expects that number to grow to nearly 30 percent in just three years.

This is going to revolutionise the way we use money eroding the monopoly that banks have. Serves them right for causing the Great Recession I’m looking forward to the day that we can all bypass banks. Zopa is another example of the new breed of talented companies that is reshaping the world of finance. Zopa is a lending and borrowing exchange where real people sidestep the banks to get a better deal. I’m going to research and write an article on innovative companies that are changing the world of finance so what this space.

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Why do corporates act like machines when dealing with clients?

I am a big fan of Lucy Kellaway, a Financial Times journalist who is on a mission to expose and expunge the stupid and idiotic practices of the corporate world. Having been doing it for many years, she now has many eyes and ears around the UK, and is constantly sent excruciating examples that she writes about in her regular FT column.

In one of her most recent columns, she talks about Deloitte UK’s staff calendar, which has instructions to staff to make connections with their customers. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but as Lucy points out, the methods and messages in the calendar are completely confused and confusing. The imagery is all wrong, the instructions seem forced and false, and the result will probably be a very artificial connection between Deloitte staff and their clients. Good intentions, but mangled by a corporate machine.

You can read Lucy’s column online here, or an extract below:

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Twitter 10 Billion – quality not quantity

In the last few hours the 10 billionth tweet was tweeted on Twitter. As one would imagine there was all kinds of hype and excitement, as Tweeps with the necesary skills attempted to predict the time it would happen, and I imagine even be ‘the one’?

My last tweet was 9999989724. Wild. Will be at 10 billion by next tweet. – @Scobleizer

… and then seconds later….

Yup, already hit 10 billion. My last tweet was 10000011727 so now we can get on with real news. – @Scobleizer

This morning when I woke up it was all over, and followed:

Twitter reaches 10 billion tweets. (2 artcles)http://bit.ly/cApU1O http://bit.ly/a7KKcD – @MelanieMinnaar

…. to find who the Tweep was and what they Tweeted?

I’ll save you the pain of going along there yourself. Drumroll, the 10 billionth tweet on Twitter….. was a protected user, so the identity of the person is not known, and secondly because of that, nobody knows what they tweeted.

A complete let down. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it felt like it should have been one of those moments. In hindsight I realise my expectations were way off the mark.

Here’s what it’s taught me….. Twitter is not about quantity. It’s all about quality. The 10 billiont tweet was a let-down because the quality was terrible. It also doesn’t matter how many people follow you, or how many you follow, if the quality is bad, the entire experience is bad.

Keith Coats, a colleague of mine, often quotes a mentor of his… “Worry not the size of the stage on which you will be called to perform, worry that you have something to say!”

Nuf Sed

When social media grows up… it will change everything

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.

Twitter recently hosted it’s billionth Tweet and Facebook had over 500 million users by the end of 2009, continuing its trend of doubling every nine months or so. It is difficult to continue to argue that social media is nothing more than a fad, and an increasing number of companies are starting to make use of these technologies.

But most of these companies are merely using social networks as a means to communicate (mainly with customers, but sometimes with staff as well) or to market their products and services. These are simple – and obvious – applications, and soon you’ll just be another voice in cacophony of online noise. Unfortunately, most “social media experts” focus only on these aspects of online social networking, and are overhyping the benefits and underemphasising the cultural shifts required for companies to truly benefit. They are missing a really important trend with huge implications for every organisation in every industry and sector.

The reason that social media has taken off so quickly is that it is more than a fad. It is, in fact, merely the technological expression of a values shift that has been taking place for a number of years. It will therefore be a shaping force in the world over the next decade. It might not be the answer to all your problems as many social media pundits are predicting. But it will definitely change everything, and more and more companies are starting to see the benefits it offers. A revolution awaits us.

You can hardly turn on a TV news channel or read a business magazine these days without being overwhelmed by requests to “follow my tweets”, “check out our blog” or “send us your videos”. Social media has gone mainstream. But most business users and organisations are treating it like a gimmick, and only gaining a fraction of the value they could. If they understood the true nature of what is happening, they’d know that social media is merely an expression of a deeper trend that has the potential to change everything. And they’d realise that the first companies to grasp this will have the opportunity to gain phenomenal competitive advantage in their industry. In fact, some companies have already started to do so.

Social Media 101

If you’ve missed this trend and are not sure what I’m talking about, here’s a quick primer: social media are the tools you can use to do social networking on the Internet. This involves connecting with other people, and sharing information with them digitally (yes, it’s just networking and connecting with others online). The most used tools are:

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20 Inspiring Women To Follow On Twitter

I’ve become a big fan of twitter. For me it is a great example of how people want to share ideas and connect, it’s a huge social triumph. Every day I find new and interesting content and connect with very interesting people. It’s a great ideas portal and I hope someone is capturing the ideas and innovations that spring from this amazing phenomenon. The trick is to find the interesting people and cut through the riff raff of people telling you what they had for breakfast! Forbes magazine’sHalle Tacco (@halletacco) has written a great article based on research undertaken by Harvard Business Review on women twitter users and lists 20 inspiring women to follow. Interestingly she says that women are less loved on twitter and that men have 15% more followes even though there are more women users on twitter (55% to 45%). Men are also twice more likely to follow another man than a women and women are 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman…Personally I’m off now to follow all these 20 inspirational women they sound great!

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Relationship without investment – the example of online dating sites

My business partner, Barrie Bramley, has come up with a fantastic phrase to describe one of the foundational principles of social networking: “Relationship without investment“.

I think he’s spot on with this. That’s why the Oxford Dictionary voted “unfriend” the word of the year for 2009. It’s easy now to become someone’s “friend” (I have over 3,000 such “friends” on Facebook and about 1,000 “followers” on Twitter). But there are no requirements for this friendship. Engage if you want to, don’t if you don’t. And if you don’t like the group you’re currently in, just start a new one, and find those people who share your precise, niche likes or dislikes.

I do not share the concerns of those people who say this is destroying community and relationships. Of course, it has the potential to. Anti-social people can be truly and fully disconnected from the “real” world. But then, they are anti-social people anyway. People who think their Facebook friends are real friends need to wake up – it takes more than just watching someone’s status updates to build a relationship with them. But surely that’s obvious to everyone.

Social networking technologies are simply that: technologies. Technically that means that they are “enablers” (there isn’t a universally accepted definition of “technology” by the way, but most agree that it defines something that enables or provides a solution to a problem). What I mean by this is that they can be used to create community and to destroy community or relationships. The choice is ours.

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Learnings around working from home

One of the emerging requests/trends in today’s business environment centers around the mystery of ‘working from home’. Many people talk with much  gravitas about the ‘ins and outs’. However, in my experience, once you dig under the surface a little, you discover how little they know. In fact how little is known, period, about this subject (again that’s my opinion).

You can understand then, why this blog post from Inc Magazine caught my attention. The entire staff decided, as an experiment, to see what they could learn about working from home. And so home they went, for one month. What a great project : )

This article is written one week in, and they give a brief summary of the learnings so far:

Remember to eat

Prepare for e-mail overload

Get out of the house

Get a comfortable chair

Video chat is your friend

Don’t forget to stop

You can actually get stuff done

In the article they unpack each of these 7 points. Worth following and reading for sure….

I don’t trust you

I don’t trust you! Well it’s not exactly that, it’s just that I trust you less, if the Edelman TrustBarometer is accurate in it’s 2010 report. As The Next Web summarises:

Mainly that the trust in global business has risen across the board. Something surprising was that trust in all forms of media went down. When it comes to information about a company, stock or industry analysis reports topped the list for credibility at 49% while social media bottomed out second to last — only above corporate advertising — at 19%.

That said, it means you trust me less as well.

Confession: I’m a bit of a Twitter addict. It’s changed my reading world, educated me, and brought more interesting thoughts into my head than I’ve had in a while. Am I wrong for trusting your tweets? Are you wrong for trusting mine? I must say, I don’t tweet anything I haven’t read first. I don’t simply retweet because a ‘trusted source’ tweeted it first. I work hard to ensure that everything that leaves whatever Twitter app I use (and I use a few) is interesting, and plausible to at least me. So do you not trust me then?

I’m not sure I’d have answered the TrustBarometer the way they suggest others have. I’m aware that there are plenty of Twits (used in the traditional sense of the word) out there who are using social media platforms to be cute and clever, but at the same time spewing a fair amount of untruth, spam and the like, but I block those babies as quickly as they pop up.

As in the conversation my colleague, Graeme Codrington, and I had around China and Google a few weeks ago, I’ve invited Graeme to weigh in on this post with some of his views, and yours if you feel like you’ve got something to say, so let me put some questions out there:

1. Are the results of this survey simply indicative of a transition we’re going through around Social Media platforms, as people learn how to filter for themselves? We’ve not really had to do this before on such a large scale. We’re used to filtering an entire newspaper. Either you liked what the entire paper stood for, or you didn’t. With individual user generated media (Social Media) you’ve got to continually make a call with each individual you come across, with very sparse personal information to go on.
2. Is business right in their unwillingness to embrace this space? Have they seen something the rest of us haven’t? Big business is panned all over the place for it’s lack of engagement in the Social Media space. Is there a collective wisdom bubbling underneath the surface evidenced by experienced communication people within business seemingly ‘not knowing how’ to engage, but possibly sensing something others haven’t?
3. Is Social Media just a fad, an experiment of sorts, or will we learn the skills to use these new channels effectively and overcome the garbage that is possibly contributing to this lack of trust the Edelman TrustBarometer speaks to?

I’ll leave it there to give Graeme, and others, some space to reflect….

‘I am the President’ doesn’t mean what it used to

Knowing What You Don’t Know is Important

Yes it’s true. I’m getting coached in ‘Social Media’. “About time” some might say but it’s not just about how to engage in the various kinds of social media available – it’s about learning how to, ‘connect the dots’. It is about understanding how to work with all the options in an integrated manner that makes professional and personal sense. I suspect many more of my ilk could do with some time with my Coach and the reality is that knowing this stuff simply isn’t optional – it’s an imperative.

W. C. Howell is credited with the model with which most of us are familiar when it comes to acquiring a skill. The model moves from a level of ‘unconscious incompetence’ to ‘conscious incompetence’ to ‘conscious competence’ to ultimately, ‘unconscious competence’.  So what does this look like when applied to my development path in the area of social media education?

Unconscious incompetence: A what? ‘c-o-m-p-u-t-e-r. Don’t only major international companies and governments have access to this kind of thing?  I’m not sure I’ll need one, but thanks anyway. The future? Yes, yes…(late 1980’s – early 1990’s)

Conscious incompetence: Wow…how do you switch this thing on? It sure takes up a lot of desk space but looks important, even impressive…where did you say I turn it on? How come there is this blue screen…and what’s that noise? Show me how you did that…that’s really cool, I need to be able to do that stuff. Hold on, not so fast…I just need to make a note of that. (mid 1990’s – early 2000’s)

Conscious competence: Sure I’m on Facebook and I even know that ‘Twitter’ isn’t a term of insult nor is it some sort of birdcall heard only in the mating season. Sure I know how to access that information, open multiple windows and load useful software. How did I ever survive without email?  I know how to solve that problem…just reboot…there see, anything else I can help you with? With some concentration and focus I can link some of my technology gadgets and to really impress fellow travelers, even produce my iPod on flights whilst banging away on my laptop keyboard. Laptop? Apple of course.  Check out that cool little Apple logo that lights up on the lid! (mid – late 2000’s)

Unconscious competence: My tweet directs people to my latest blog which drives folk to the article and website resulting in conversations, connections and further helpful information, relationships and opportunities. There, dots connected and a seamless integration of knowing the why and how behind it all. By catching up I’ve actually been able to slow down and I feel an intricate part of an amazing reality that is unfolding all around me…connections, information and well, relevance. (the future)

Knowing what you don’t know is important. It is your learning pathway into Tomorrow, and it is a journey that shouldn’t be delayed. Let me know and I will put you onto a great social media Coach…

A breakup, bowiechick, webcams and Logitech’s increased sales

I am currently at the F-Secure partners conference in Vienna, Austria, and have been listening to Richard Gatarski speak about a passion for social media. One incredible story illustrates the power that new social media forms have to influence brands, and how little many established companies (even those who sell products and services that are designed for this new world) know about this.

In March 2006, Melody, a teenager better known by her YouTube name, “Bowiechick”, was feeling pretty depressed. She had just broken up with her boyfriend. So, she decided to record a vlog (a video blog entry). In order to cheer herself up, she experimented with some cool software that came with her webcam. By the end of the 75 second video, she had had a bit of fun and was feeling better. She posted the result at YouTube (see it here). This clip has now been viewed nearly 2 million times!

As you could anticipate, a few of her friends saw it, and wrote notes to her, encouraging her to cheer up and move on. But then people started asking her about the software she used to make the video itself. More and more people asked, so she created a little video to explain how her Logitech webcam and software worked. This 2 minute video has been viewed over 3 million times. Watch it here.

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CEOs lose faith in strategic planning, they should look to yacht racing for answers

The Great Recession has made CEOs rethink strategic planning. Walt Shill, head of the North American management consulting practice for Accenture believes that: “Strategy, as we knew it, is dead…Corporate clients decided that increased flexibility and accelerated decision making are much more important than simply predicting the future.”

In my my latest presentation Brave New World which explores the realities of the new world of work and steps companies need to take to become a talented company, I compare strategic planning of today with that of yacht racing. Strategic planning of yesteryear was more like an egg and spoon race. Competitors lined up at the annual starting line, ran in a straight line from point A to point B, making minor quarterly changes (normally to budgets and not strategy!) and once in a while someone dropped the ball (in this case the boiled egg) and pandemonium ensued.

However, for the modern talented company strategic planning is like yacht racing. Talented companies have a clear destination or vision of where they want to get to. But once out of the harbour they recognise that things can change. The course you plotted may head north but you discover that competitors are heading south, do you change your plan and follow or keep track? A weather system may develop causing rough seas on your route, do you tack around the storm or hit it head on? The key for yacht racing is that strategy is emergent! As conditions around you change so do strategy and tactics. The one element that does not is your destiny (vision), how you get there depends on team work (in emergent strategy everyone understands the quest, provides input and is involved in the strategic planning process). Ultimately the skipper (as should the CEO) steers the boat and emergent strategy required bold leadership but the team is integral to the strategy as it emerges.

The days of long term strategic planning are over but that does not mean that strategic process is dead it has just changed. Strategic planning has now become emergent strategic planning.

For more information on emergent strategy and what it can do for your business please contact me.

You can read more about the latest thinking on strategic planning in the Wall Street Journal

Rethinking Marketing and the age of consumer capitalism

In this months Harvard Business Review, Roger Martin writes that “modern capitalism can be broken down into two major eras. The first, managerial capitalism, began in 1932 and was defined by the then radical notion that firms ought to have professional management. The second, shareholder value capitalism, began in 1976. Its governing premise is that the purpose of every corporation should be to maximize shareholders’ wealth. If firms pursue this goal, the thinking goes, both shareholders and society will benefit. This is a tragically flawed premise, and it is time we abandoned it and made the shift to a third era: customer-driven capitalism.

I couldn’t agree more. Information is power and information has now passed into the hands of the consumer. Never before have customers been able to find information on available products and services easier and quicker, and with the rising power of peer reviews brochure style marketing is fast becoming obsolete.

In the new world of work talented companies will rethink marketing. The role and function of marketing will change quickly. Customer experience will be placed at the top of the strategic agenda at board meetings and the CCO (Chief Customer Officer) will become as important if not more important a role as the CFO. Companies that fail to identify this shift and implement these strategic changes risk ending up on the dust pile of corporate dinosaurs.

Why you shouldn’t change your Twitter Profile Pic

There are literally thousands of articles and opinions out there spelling out the ‘laws’ of how to use Twitter. If the authors of those articles were honest, they’d admit that those ’so-called laws’ are really just opinions. Their opinions. How on earth can anyone claim, at this early stage in Twitter’s life, to have a list of irrefutable laws’?

This post falls into the opinion category then. An irrefutable opinion according to me : )

I’m on Twitter everyday. Several times a day. It’s become the biggest influence in my world when it comes to learning. I’ve come to trust the voices and thoughts of a group of people, many of whom I have never met, to share their insights in a variety of fields that interest me. Even some that don’t.

I follow aprox 400 people, and as I scroll through my Twitter feed on my iPhone (I use 4 different Twitter Apps) my most relied upon method of finding those people I really enjoy is through their Twitter Profile Pic. I imagine I should be using their usernames for this, but I don’t. I’m a picture person. I possibly should be using ‘Twitter Lists’? I don’t, I’m a picture person.

And so when someone updates their image I lose them in the noise of my stream. It sometimes can take me weeks to re-orientate myself to their new image.

And that’s my irrefutable opinion then. It’s also a plea to those interesting people I rely on everyday. Don’t change who you are. You don’t need to update your ‘image’. I’ve come to like and appreciate you just the way you are : )

P.S. While writing this I found a mildly amusing post on 10 types of Twitter Profile Avatars. Click here to see for yourself.

Are you working for a TALENTED COMPANY, or do you know of examples?

I’m on a quest to find companies that are extraordinary, companies that not only achieve good financial results but also contribute positively to society as a whole. I’m intrigued at how many companies have fallen down in the past few years because a number of very talented people have been behaving badly – think Enron, the financial crisis, Bernie Madoff, Lehman Brothers and the US motor industry to name but a few. Companies have wrongly convinced themselves that they need the best of the best, the most talented people, to succeed and they have been rewarding their “talent” excessively. This has resulted in a bonus culture that is eating away at the fabric and moral code of business.

Rather than build a business around star individuals I believe that companies need to be building talented systems processes and cultures. They need to be focusing on building the star company. I’m currently conducting research to form the basis of a new book about talented companies. if you know of or work for a company that has talented structures, organisational designs, cultures, systems and corporate DNA I’d love to hear from you.

Building values into business

Customers have changed, it’s not just the recession and current market turmoil, there has been a values shift in societies attitudes towards business, finance and consumerism. Our research undertaken in TomorrowToday’s laboratory is revealing that values-focused businesses are the way of the future. If you want your business and brand to be part of a new breed of talented companies and not to end up on the rust pile of corporate dinosaurs then your business needs to be built around connecting with people’s values. The new world of work demands that companies focus their organisation around social and personal values and not just corporate values. Corporate values are the old model traditionally involving trust, integrity, honesty and innovation. These values are now only the base level requirements. Companies in the new world need to go deeper connecting with more far-reaching personal values. People seek relationships with companies; they want a place to be heard, a place to be appreciated and a place to connect. New social technologies are allowing us to build relationships with customers previously not possible. Connecting on a personal values level can place you ahead of the competition in winning the hearts and minds of your customers. The bottom line is if you don’t align with society and you get out of step with value changes, then you’re going to destroy shareholder value.

A Conversation around Google and China

I began a brief e-mail conversation recently with my colleague in the UK, Graeme Codrington, around the China v Google story. Or Google v China, depending on who you side with : ) I thought I’d take it online with Graeme, in case there are other voices that would like to weigh in on this very interesting unfolding story?

For those who aren’t in the know, very simply, Google has accused the Chinese government of hacking into the Gmail accounts of Chinese activists to get hold of confidential information. In light of this, Google has effectively decided not to play ball with the Chinese government any longer. (Read here for a more detailed round up)

Effectively it’s a clash of two worlds, two powers, two philosophies, and two of a number of other things.

• China represents the old world. Google the new world.
• Google is the heavyweight in the virtual world. China the heavyweight in the real world.
• China subscribes to a more closed command and control philosophy. Google to a more open invite and participate philosophy.

For a really quick and easy read that pulls this sort of thinking together, read this Harvard Business Review Blog entry.

The quest for monopoly, monopsony, and control. That’s yesterday’s high ground, and China’s focused like a laser beam on it. China’s moves are the textbook stuff of b-school’s blackest arts. Through larger distribution, fiercer litigation, greater exclusivity, cheaper and faster production, a bigger cash pile, advantage is gained.

But the high ground has shifted. The new high ground is an ethical edge. It’s not about having more; it’s about doing better. It’s not about protecting exports, pressuring buyers and suppliers, price discriminating against the powerless, and programming consumers to buy, buy, buy — it’s about making people, communities, and society authentically better off. It’s not about caring less — but caring more. It’s not about ruthlessness. It’s about mindfulness.

Of course the story is in it’s infancy. Of course there’s much skepticism that surrounds it. For example Google has been here before and didn’t respond like this, so why now?  Google also derives only 2% of it’s income from China, so taking a stand that may lead to them having to pull out of China isn’t as costly, as say, Microsoft or Intel.

My fascination with the story centers mostly around the stand off of these two world powers. Each starting from a very different place, but building towards what could be a spectacular case study for all of us. I even wonder if it has the potential to shape how we relate to each other in the future?

My question is, will Google have the courage to take a firm line and keep it?  And possibly a little more complex, is this stand-off the equivalent of what the Berlin Wall was for Russia and the US? Only this time it’s a virtual wall. And if so, what are the consequences to people in China, and people outside of China?

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.

In a Web 2.0 world, business has it’s head buried firmly in the sand

I’m curious. Curious about business’ lack of engagement with Twitter  / FaceBook / Tumblr / Google and everything else Web 2.0. I would have thought that any communication channel getting the sort of traction, focus, attention and subscription that these channels are getting, would have business engaging like a love struck teenager who’d just discovered their perfect partner?

But it’s not so. So not so. So far, the majority of my experience and observation is that business has been an extremely poor performer in these spaces. Take a look at these points from Jeffbulla’s Blog:

1. 73 percent of Fortune 100 companies registered a total of 540 Twitter accounts.
2. About three-quarters (76 percent) of those accounts did not post tweets very often.
3. More than half (52 percent) were not actively engaged (This was measured by engagement metrics such as numbers of links, hashtags, references and retweets.)

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M-Pesa, Vodacom, Nedbank and Rob Shuter

Earlier this year Rob Shuter (head of Nedbank Retail) resigned from Nedbank and joined Vodacom as Financial Director. It was an exciting move from my perspective as I watch mobile phone companies (and technology in general) redefine how we do business. Not necessarily the companies, but users who adapt the technology to find innovative ways to run their businesses differently. The big question I was asking was what happens when someone with intimate retail banking knowledge and experience (especially of Shuter’s profile) gets a significant position at a mobile phone company? What happens after what comes next?

I’ve not seen anything obvious in the press, and have quite possibly missed it, but this week a couple of pieces of the puzzle dropped into place. Enter M-Pesa.

M-Pesa is an amazing Kenyan innovation, and describe themselves as:

M-PESA is a Safaricom service allowing you to transfer money using a mobile phone. Kenya is the first country in the world to use this service, which is offered in partnership between Safaricom and Vodafone. M-PESA is available to all Safaricom subscribers (Prepay and Postpay), even if you do not have a bank account. Registration is FREE and available at any M-PESA Agent countrywide. The M-PESA application is installed on your SIM card and works on all makes of handsets.

My sources suggest that M-Pesa has radically transformed the banking space in Kenya and left the banks flat-footed and out of the equation. Around 15 million people use M-Pesa to transfer money and make payments. Kenyan banks (collectively) have a third of this number as customers. M-Pesa has transformed banking access to the previously un-banked, who are found predominately in rural areas in Kenya. Areas that traditional banks have little to no access to.

The person I spoke to this week had some of the following to say about M-Pesa:

M-Pesa has made the sim card more valuable than a credit card.

M-Pesa is transforming how aid is distributed within Kenya.

M-Pesa has fundamentally re-defined the banking space.

Kenyan banks have not found an ‘anti-dote’ to M-Pesa’s presense, and possibly wont or can’t, simply because they’re unable to redefine themselves.

Maybe a little over-enthusiastic. But the hype and the numbers do confirm his thoughts.

Enter Shuter, Vodacom and Nedbank….

What if Vodacom’s next move is to bring M-Pesa to South Africa? Both Safaricom (M-Pesa’s master) and Vodacom are subsidiaries of Vodaphone. Certainly they have someone with huge retail banking experience in Shuter, and he has intimate knowledge and I imagine a solid relationship with Nedbank.

What if? Watch this space. This may be what happens after what comes next…..

The age of cheap oil

I’ve just watched a brilliant presentation by Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Movement on TED. He reminds us that the oil our world depends on is steadily running out, and proposes a unique solution to this problem — the Transition response, where we prepare ourselves for life without oil and sacrifice our luxuries to build systems and communities that are completely independent of fossil fuels. Rob makes some powerful points very eloquently and simply. Using a bottle of a litre of oil he highlights that this amazing porduct contains the energy equivalent of about five weeks of hard human manual labour; we can turn it into a dazzling array of materials – medicine, modern clothing and even laptops; we base the design of our settlements, business models and even economic growth on the basis that we will have oil in perpetuity. Yet when we look back over history at what may be called the petroleum interval, it is just a short slither in history in which we have discovered this extrodinary material and then based a whole way of life on around it. Rob suggests that we are now straddling the top of this energy mountain our degree of dependancy on oil now becomes our degree of vulnerability. For every four barrels of oil we consumer we only discover one new barrel. There are 98 oil producing countries in the world, but of that 65 have already past their peak in oil production.

The truth of the matter is that the age of cheap oil is over. in my latest presentation Brave New World I make the point that the world has changed and that there is now a new normal, and I show how over the coming years society is going to be transformed radically to the point that within ten to twenty years the society that we live in will be completely different and that businesses need to be preparing for this reality now. Of the two greatest factors influencing our world, an aging population and the end of cheap oil, are the two key factors that will force changes in the way we live and how we think about the world around us. If you would like to learn more about the Brave New World, and how you can prepare your business for it, please contact me for more information.

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

A Sandpit to Entice

Just been part of a conversation that happens all too infrequently. You know, one of those conversations that leave you buzzing, unable to sleep or concentrate on the ‘next thing to be done’. A conversation that ‘gets the juices going’ – a conversation in which you suspect the seeds of greatness sit; A conversation in which you see and sense the future. Around the table sat a person with years of experience of managing the Comrades Marathon, an Everest of event management if ever there was one. The other place at the table was taken by one of the most respected Educators in South Africa, a man who has presided over some of the best that SA schools have to offer. The subject? The need to rethink…to seriously rethink, how we go about leadership education.

The current models of leadership education are tired; they are not doing the job. There is lots of effort and endeavor but nothing much is changing. Imagination has given way to efficiency; conversation given way to curriculum; thinking given way to planning. Something is wrong but leadership education is big business and we all know that rethinking current ‘successful’ business models is not something we like to do.

This conversation will see other voices drawn into the mix. It will see a leadership ‘sandbox’ being build and just wait and watch what emerges from such a playground! The genie is out the lamp…it is going to be magic!

The World of Tomorrow (If The Internet Disappeared Today)

This is a great read (look) at what the world would look like if the internet disappeared today. A photo contest by the readers of Cracked.com. Some really fun stuff to think about how much the world has changed : )

While there’s a lot that’s funny, there is a reality check and reminder at how much has changed in our lives in such a short time. How much we take for granted because of the internet, and how much we wouldn’t have in our world if it never existed. Certainly we could do without some of it, but also how much we can do, how many people we’re in touch with, how many connections we have (meaningful and meaningless) because of the networked world we now live in.

It’s probably too large to think about, so for now, take a look and smile for a little while : )

And to be honest I don’t get the winner? If you could help me with that I’d be grateful…..

Barrie is the Jozi Town Crier

Thanks to our PR company (SimonSays Communications) I’m the Johannesburg Town Crier.

It’s been a fun and interesting role to get into. One day you’re a consultant around future trends and people and the next day you’re getting your head around what it means to be a Town Crier? Feels like a large responsibility. Especially in a ‘town’ as big and diverse as our ‘little Jozi’. What to post, where to find it, how to go about it, what to write, not write. how to be fun and interesting?

I even get rated by those that follow the feed on Twitter, and imagine if I don’t do a good job I get ‘voted’ right outta there. I’m certainly getting a feeling for public office in this new role : )

The people behind it are Happn.in and describe the service as ‘Twitter with a local focus’. In South Africa there’s currently a Town Crier for Jozi and the Mother City. And then there’s a scattering of Town Criers around the world.

Some stats around Happn.in:

Happn.in gives Twitter a local focus. For each Happn.in city, there is:

• A current list of Local Twitter Trends
• A Local Twitter Feed, in which locals can send and receive information to each other.
• A Local Town Crier, a person trusted by the community to tweet interesting, relevant information once a day.

There are approximately 283,492 people following Happn.in in 110 cities around the world.

There is also a general Twitter user, @happn_in, from which updates on the project will be sent.

And some background:

Happn.in began in early 2009 in response to the rapid growth of Twitter. We saw that Twitter was becoming a valuable source of information, but the interesting content was getting buried. We started Happn.in to pull some of this useful information out of the noise, specifically, the answer to the question ‘What’s going on near me?’

Happn.in was built with the long-term idea that localized communities can benefit from Twitter if they can find and talk to each other. We will continue to update the site with features that aid this goal.

Of course anyone can post info about Jozi by simply adding the hashtag (#hi_johan) and you can get the Twitter feed and follow here.

It’s been good for me to work at getting my head around a broader Jozi happn.in community in order to put as diverse a spread of stuff I possibly can. I’m only a few days in, and hopefully improving all the time? Time will tell and so will the votes : )

Don’t miss the 7th annual Loyalty World conference

We’re very excited to announce that TomorrowToday has teamed up with the talented team at Terrapin and Dean van Leeuwen (Co-Founder of TomorrowToday UK) has been asked to present at the prestigious 7th Annual Loyalty World Conference in London on the 4th of November. Along with a number of other distinguished speakers and industry experts including Luke Johnson Chairman of Channel 4 and Risk Capital Partners, this is a unique conference designed to assist you in understanding all the complex elements that go into designing a successful loyalty strategy. The economic crisis is forcing a change in customer attitudes and priorities. The age of consumerism is all but over and people’s buying habits are changing.

Dean will be presenting Mind The Gap – focusing on how we can use people’s values to build stronger customer relationships and hence greater loyalty. He’ll also be showing the audience why it is we don’t always understand people older or younger than ourselves and why achieving customer loyalty often feels like trying to herd cats!

For more information and to register for the event please visit the Loyalty World website

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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