Get used to the cold and blame global warming

This is just a short comment on something I can’t believe I keep hearing in the media. Well, to be honest, I only hear it from those that hold ludicrous beliefs to start with. But I have heard a few times in the last week that “so much for global warming”, or “they said global warming was a problem, hah!”.

The cause of these comments is the longest and coldest period in many decades in the UK. With temperatures in Scotland reaching a frigid -23 Celcius, and London having highs below zero for the last few days, and snow and sleet forecast for next few days, this is a real issue for the UK. It’s cold, and the government is not coping with it. They don’t have enough stock of salt and grit to clear the streets, for example.

Everyone needs to get used to colder winters. They will get more frequent. That’s what “global warming” does. It makes summers hotter and winters colder. “Global warming” does not refer to how it feels to us all year round. It refers to average temperatures over land and sea. “Climate change” is a better phrase to use to describe the problems we will actually experience. Cold winters. Hot summers.

This is not your parent’s future… This is something new. And it’s something we need to deal with. That’s what COP15 was supposed to be about. I hope the winter chills remind the politicians that we need a real, workable, lasting solution. Quickly.

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2010 will be an important – but bad – year for green business

Cop15, the global conference in Copenhagen last year, produced about as much as anyone could have expected (a lot less than was hoped) – a fudged solution that requires much further discussion and negotiation. And in the UK, the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (the renamed Carbon Reduction Commitment) initial deadline for creating baselines was pushed out a year to April 2011. It’s unlikely the USA will be able to get to a final cap and trade agreement into legislation during 2010 (the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 must still pass through the Senate). While China made positive noises before Cop15, it seems that they were really sticky in Copenhagen and were a big reason that the final agreement did not include any operational terms.

With all of these issues in mind, it seems clear that 2010 is likely to be a year of talks and discussions, but very little action. For companies involved in green industries this will be frustrating. Many of these companies are startups, gearing up for the expected demand in sustainability issues (technology, consulting, business processes, engineering, energy, and much more). But many of them won’t survive another year of waiting and delays in implementation and client demand. It seems likely they will have to.

Companies that are keen on implementing green strategies (for whatever reason) have probably started to do this already. Companies looking for an excuse to delay implementation, however, will have plenty of excuses in 2010. They’re likely to keep delaying. They’ll do so until they’re forced to change (and that’s the main reason I support emissions trading legislation!).

So, 2010 will not be a good year for those involved in the sustainability industry. But it is an important year nevertheless. It’s important to continue lobbying. It’s important to continue to search for the best solutions and the best processes that will not only produce the best outcomes, but will also be compelling for those who are not yet convinced that anything needs to be done. It’s an important year for science – more must be done to show the scientific evidence of climate change and the need for changes in our lifestyles. And it’s an important year for venture capitalists, who must try to separate out those startups that truly have something to offer from those that are just taking a chance on the bandwagon (remember the shakeup in the online IT industry just 10 years ago?).

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

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 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 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 3 to 5 years, and some questions to ask yourself and your teams as you plan to respond to them:

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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.

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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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Nike’s considered sustainability programme

Nike has some aggressive sustainability targets. Nike CEO Mark Parke believes that corporate responsibility is no longer a staff function at Nike. It’s a design function, a sourcing function, a consumer experience function, part of how we operate.

Lorrie Vogel is the general manager of Nike Considered, Nike’s in-house sustainability think tank says that the long-term vision for Considered is to design products that are fully closed loop: produced using the fewest possible materials, designed for easy disassembly while allowing them to be recycled into new product or safely returned to nature at the end of their life. By 2011, 100 percent of footwear will meet baseline Considered standards, apparel by 2015 and equipment by 2020 – creating better performing products while minimizing environmental impact by reducing waste, using environmentally preferred materials and eliminate toxins.

Wikipedia says that the “Nike Considered line utilizes materials found primarily within 200 miles (320 km) of the Nike factory which reduces the energy used for transportation, diminishing the resulting climate change impact. The manufacturing process reduces solvent use by more than 80% compared with Nike’s typical products. The leather comes from a tannery that recycles wastewater to ensure toxins are kept out of the environment, and it is colored using vegetable-based dyes. Hemp and polyester are used to make the shoe’s woven upper and shoelaces. The mid-sole is cut to lock into the outer sole, reducing the need for toxic adhesives. The shoe’s outer sole includes rubber made from recycled factory rubber waste. Considered is part of a larger effort Nike has been undertaking for several years to reduce waste, eliminate toxic substances, and otherwise lessen the environmental impact of the world’s largest athletic shoe manufacturer. The company has a publicly stated goal to “Minimize or eliminate all substances known to be harmful to the health of biological or ecological systems.”

You can read a recent interview with Lorrie on CleanTechnica’s blog and I’ve sourced an excellent MIT case study for you on how Nike is becoming more greendownload an MIT case study, alternatively contact me and I will send you the report

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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…..

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Vacation 2023 – I don’t want to go

I just read a fairly depressing forecast (from FastCompany) for the future of vacations. Specifically the year 2023. It’s based on the fuller article from ‘Forum for the Future‘ where they’ve developed four scenarios for 2023 in the tourism world (specifically the UK). A brief summary of the four from the FastCompany article:

In the “Boom and Burst” scenario, economies prosper, advances in air travel make vacations cheap and easy, and fuel efficiency has allowed the industry to stay on target with carbon emissions regulations. But there’s a catch–the massive increase in tourism leads to overcrowding in many destinations and the degradation of wilderness areas.

The more dire “Divided Disquiet” scenario imagines that a “toxic combination of devastating climate change impacts, violent wars over scarce resources and social unrest has created an unstable and fearful world. This has made traveling overseas an unattractive proposition,” so most people just stay home. In the “Price and Privilege” scenario, high oil prices make travel the exclusive domain of the rich, while the “Carbon Clampdown” scenario imagines that the government has regulated climate change and educated the public so thoroughly on the carbon price of travel that most people only want to take “ethical vacations” to volunteer or learn about other cultures.

The reality of vacationing in 2023 will probably be a combination of these scenarios, with high oil prices, disappearing wilderness, carbon quotas, and advances in air travel (i.e. biofuel-powered planes).

It does help give some perspective as to why wealthy people around the world are currently buying up coastal properties and game reserves. Simply because, in the future these investments will be worth massive amounts of money.

To download the full 2023 tourism report go here.

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Building your own healthcare community

Many years ago when I was in community development, some of the cutting edge thinkers were promoting the idea of less professionals and more community involvement in ensuring the growth, development, safety, etc of family. It was a simple but profound concept of building a care system less reliant on the ‘usual suspects’ (professionals) by involving people around a particular family who had an interest in them, who spent more time with them, and who, if integrated successfully could provide more useful and meaningful support.

There was a book I remember having to read while studying called ‘The other 23 hours’, that made the point in a residential child care environment. The book was written to encourage Child Care Workers, and to see the value and importance of their role. Social Workers in these setting often got all the glory and were seen to be the most important people in a child’s world. But as the book pointed out, a child may only see a Social Worker for 1 hour each day (and that’s a lot), there were another 23 hours in their day.

FastCompany has recently posted an article (The Future of Healthcare is social), and they’ve done a great job outlining similar thinking for healthcare, with technology as a large enabler. It makes sense in this arena as well. Our health is something that needs 24 hours of proactivity. We can’t afford or expect professionals to be available for all that time. But if we can assemble a community of people around us, who care about us, and who’ll get involved with us, and then enable it all with technology, we may find ourselves in a far healthier place than we currently are.

Even when we do our best to stay healthy, we still get sick. Coping with sickness in our already hectic lives can be challenging. In addition to looking out for her parents, Susan manages the health of her two kids, her husband, and herself, and she looks for ways to save time and money while still getting the care that they need. Recently, for example, Susan’s son woke up with a sore throat and a fever. She used an at-home strep test to rub a swab of her son’s throat culture onto a card. Within minutes, the test results confirmed her son had strep. Through an embedded RFID sensor within the card, the test results were wirelessly transmitted to her computer’s reader. On her computer, she was prompted to connect the incoming test results to her son’s personal health record. Next, she used her personal health network to book the earliest visit for her son within a 10-mile vicinity. Susan elected to electronically send her son’s strep results in advance of her appointment, allowing the receiving retail clinic to accelerate her visit by pre-issuing an e-prescription. Before leaving her computer, Susan selected her son’s classroom network, comprised of his teacher and the parents of other students, and sent out a message that her son had strep throat and would be home for the next several days.

It’s a longish read, but definitely worth it. If not just to see where health care might go, I’m fairly certain the thinking will at least change how you see other parts of your world.

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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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Two innovations that will change the world

Two technological innovations are giving me great optimism for future sustainability, reduction in our reliability on fossil fuels (and therefore hopefully less conflict in the middle east) and lower emissions of hothouse gasses. They are the exciting developments of Honda’s Clarity, a car that runs on hydrogen and emits H20 (It’s a decent looker and performer!); and a battery, developed by Peter Bruce at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, that draws on the oxygen around us providing cheaper, lighter and longer lasting batteries for mobiles and laptops.

These are probably two of the most exciting and important innovations in the past 100 years.

Honda Clarity

You can learn more about the Honda Clarity by visiting the excellent website or see the entertaining Top Gear special report hereTop Gear Honda Clarity

Air Power

You can read about the battery blow or visit The Economist

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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.

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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.”

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HBR: Why Sustainability Is Now the Key Driver of Innovation

Last week, The Harvard Business Review issued a new white paper illustrating that sustainability strategies are not a bottom line drain to business, but the most effective way to create competitive advantage moving forward. The authors, Ram Nidumolu, C.K. Prahalad and M.R. Rangaswami, are well known for their future focused views, and I think their article makes a good contribution to this field. As you would expect from HBR, there is a focus on the opportunity in sustainability, using successful corporate sustainability stories from companies such as Wal-Mart, Clorox and HP.

You can read the introduction to the study here, and get the whole study if you’re an HBR subscriber.

They come out with a five point strategy:

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Online video training on saving energy and saving money

For some years now, we’ve been tracking the issues related to climate change, global warming and the business case for sustainability. We are convinced that these issues are critical for businesses everywhere – not as a nice to have, but for very good business reasons.

We’ve put our money where our mouth is. Working together with one of our clients in the UK, Sustainable Energy Design Solutions (SEDS Ltd), and an online learning team, the 8.45 Club, we’ve developed a series of online, video-based courses designed to help your company and the people who work for you to not only understand the issues, but also do something about them.

The concept of the 8.45 Club is simple. Courses are delivered in 10 minute segments, just right for 8.45am before work gets going properly at 9am. You get an email at 8.45am, giving you the link to a video (if you don’t have access to high speed broadband, the courses can be delivered on video to you). It takes you a few minutes to watch, and a few more to go through the notes, and then you’re ready for the day. Courses typically have 10 modules, and can be done once per day over two weeks, or 2 or 3 times per week over a few months.

We’ve used this format to develop three courses aimed at helping companies to save energy. Doing this will obviously save money, and ultimately help us to secure the future of the planet and our companies. The courses are:

• How to Save Energy and Save Money: All you need to know about emissions trading, improving energy efficiency and saving money
• How to Make the Public Sector Green: All you need to know about reducing energy usage, saving money and improving public service
• The Carbon Reduction Commitment: All you need to know about emissions trading, improving energy efficiency and saving money. NOTE: In October 2009, the CRC was delayed by one year to be implemented on April 2011, and was given a new name: The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme. There are a few regulatory tweaks as well – the course is being redone to take this into account, and is now available at a new website as well: click here for details.
  

You would need to choose just one of the courses (if you don’t know which one, then the first one is for you). For just £ 47 per course, you get 13 video modules and supporting materials delivered direct to your inbox. If you have 100 or more people who’d like to do the training, we would be happy to chat about a bulk license rate.

You can see the first two modules of each course for free, before signing up. Just follow the links at the bottom of the main pages.

If you have any questions, please email Graeme Codrington.

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Nine Reasons Why You Must Improve the Environmental Performance of Your Business

Whether or not you’re convinced by science and media reports on global warming, there is no doubt that our planet is under pressure at the moment. Things must change, and the governments of the world – not to mention increasingly vocal activists – have started to put pressure on companies and individuals to reduce energy usage and become more environmentally friendly and sustainable. Yet many businesses continue to ignore these issues, relegating it to a low priority task team, or simply paying lip service to it as a PR exercise. This is short sighted and potentially damaging. And it doesn’t make business sense, either.

There are significant advantages for the companies that take energy efficiency and business sustainability seriously. You don’t have to be a do-gooder to develop processes and systems to improve the environmental performance of your business. There is a strong business case for doing so.

Here are nine reasons why you should take these issues seriously, and see business improvement as a result. Doing well by doing good is possible. And desirable!

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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.

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Getting it very, very wrong! The Spectator on Global Warming

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a fan of The Spectator magazine. I am normally quick to point out that I do not support their underlying political persuasion (which can head in the direction of Conservatism quite quickly) – this is important in the UK, where magazines and newspapers are very aligned politically, and what you read says almost more about you than what you say.

For the record, I mainly enjoy the magazine for its brilliant use of the English language, and the insightful analysis of current events (even if I don’t always agree with the application of the analysis).

But last week’s edition was a HUGE disappointment. The cover story banner read: “Relax: Global Warming is all a myth”. At first, I thought it was spoof cover – they do have a good sense of humour at The Spectator. Sadly, it was not. But that is not the issue. When a good magazine, with excellent journalists, does a lead article on any topic, it captures my attention, even if I don’t agree with them. But I was disappointed.

The lead article was a fairly facetious toned report of an interview with an Australian geologist who has written a book on cliamte change, called “Heaven and Earth”, in which argues – over 500 pages, and 2,300 footnotes – that humans are not causing climate change at all. The “tudh factor” of his book, and the look of academic scholarship in the footnotes unfortunately blinded an otherwise decent journalist. And that’s the disappointment. Thirty seconds on Google would given enough contrary evidence to alert the journalist to the possibility that “Professor Ian Plimer” (to use the full title accorded him in the story’s byline) has not quite got all his facts straight. The fact that no mention was even made of the contrary views (some of which are by the experts Plimer himself quotes to back up his version of the story) indicates that the journalist lost some journalistic integrity and did not do a good job on the story.

… Continue Reading

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Can I Clean Your Clock? Why China must wake up to clean power

Thomas Friedman is one of my favourite authors. He has a knack for a good story, and the insight to help us understand what the story means for how the world is changing. His latest column in the New York Times helps to frame the global energy crisis differently. And it’s very, very clever.

He explains how China should respond. Currently many Chinese people rightly complain that America has had 150 years to pollute the world while establishing a solid industrial base. They want the same right. But Friedman correctly points out that that is looking backwards. Looking forwards, the next revolution will be clean power. And every year China (and India, and Brazil, and Russia…) continues to look backwards, they give America a head start in the next big thing. He’s right. Not necessarily right about the economics and the detail. But he’s right that this is the type of mindset shift we need in the world right now.

Read his article at the NYT here, or below.
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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!”

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Getting Gen Y into your businesses NOW

Michael Rendell, partner and global head of human resource services at PricewaterhouseCoopers recently said the following:

“With the global economic downturn presenting organisations with serious immediate challenges, businesses need to work even harder to balance short-term pressures with long-term objectives. This means acting now to manage the demographic changes that will impact their ability to compete effectively. Eventually, in many parts of the world, fewer younger people will be working to support a significantly larger older population, making people supply a critical factor for business success and potentially changing the power dynamic between employer and employees.”

PWC’s 12th annual CEO survey, published earlier this year, highlighted the issue of Talent attraction and retention as one of the key issues facing CEOs (alongside climate change, growth and dealing with economic downturn).

Here are some highlights from the PWC survey:

• * Tomorrow’s workers expect their employers to behave responsibly, with 88% stating they will seek employers with corporate social responsibility (CSR) values that reflect their own. Among UK respondents, this figure was 71%.
• * “The millennials’ adeptness with technology brings benefits in terms of knowledge sharing, and savvy companies are already taking advantage of this by replicating Facebook-style sites in-house. But companies need to manage the reputational risks associated with this open and instant style of communication.”
• * Globally, training and development is the most highly valued benefit for millennials in the first five years of their career – with one third of respondents electing this as their first choice benefit (aside from salary).
• * Almost all respondents (98%) stated that working with strong coaches and mentors is important to personal development. Rendell said: “Most businesses only provide coaches and mentors to senior employees, but providing this kind of one-to-one development to new graduates could help ease the sometimes bumpy transition from university to the workplace, while breeding goodwill and engagement at a relatively low cost. Instead of reacting to cost pressures by cutting training budgets, organisations should ask if they are spending where it will be most appreciated and bring the greatest benefit to long-term business health.”
• * The three most popular benefits for UK respondents are training and development (46%), cash bonuses (45%) and free private healthcare (29%).

Rendell: “The millennials want many of the same things from work as the generations before them so companies do not need to tear up their people strategies to manage the new generation of workers. What is new is younger people’s ability to mobilise into another job if their expectations and ideals are not met. To manage this difference, companies need to think creatively about reward strategies, using metrics and benchmarking to segment their workforce in a similar way to how many companies segment their customer base.

“We think CEOs are struggling with millennials because they need more information about what drives them, and because they need to adapt their traditional approaches to attracting and integrating employees. This means focusing on the things that millennials really want, such as training and development. Articulating employer brand and clearly stating corporate responsibility values will also be critical.

“The millennials’ expectations bring opportunities as well as challenges – those organisations that adapt fastest will be best placed to succeed in good times and bad.”

Source: PWC – quoted in Management section of Director Finance magazine.

This is one of our core focus areas at TomorrowToday. See our presentation on Making the Most of the Millennials.

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Sustainability – how to engage employees

by Ben Kellard, 27th May 2009
Reposted extract from: Forum for the Future

How can you embed sustainability in a way that motivates employees? It’s a challenge for many leaders faced with the question of how to maintain the momentum of their sustainability strategy, especially in a recession.

The case for using sustainability to motivate employees is compelling. There’s a strong correlation between activities which come under the umbrella of corporate responsibility and employee satisfaction and engagement, according to the latest Sunday Times Best Companies survey.

And research from the Hay Group shows that highly engaged employees can improve business performance by up to 30% and that fully engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations than their “disengaged” colleagues.
…

A good example of this is property company Gentoo, which launched ‘Gentoo Green’, an internal programme to engage employees in its sustainability vision and strategy. The programme was backed by the CEO and was supported by internal communications, champions, training, and opportunities for employees to get involved. This led to over 700 suggestions from employees about how to improve Gentoo’s sustainability performance, and it’s been estimated that the programme has already delivered half a million pounds in savings to the group in its first year.
… Continue Reading

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How to reduce energy at school – world class example

I am involved with a project management company called SEDS – Sustainable Energy Design Solution. The focus of this company is to help organisations of all types to save energy, save money and secure our future. They have a very clever four step model for doing this, involving measuring current usage (and establishing targets which are widely communicated), empowering and educating people (with a view to long term, sustained behaviour change), upgrading facilities (with clear returns on investment), and reporting (both compliance reporting, assessments and audits, as well as PR, communication and triple bottom line reporting to all stakeholders).

SEDS is making a real difference – see their website (although maybe wait a few days, as they’re about to do a significant relaunch of this site).

The point of this post is to highlight one of the schools SEDS is connected to. The headmaster of Ashley Church of England Primary School in Surrey, UK is so passionate about climate change and global warming, that he has made it a focus of the school. Using an innovative product, ecoDriver, he displays the energy usage of the school live in the reception area, and encourages the pupils to reduce their usage. So successful is the scheme that the school has reduced costs of energy by half in the past year. The money saved is ploughed back into the school – and students have a say over how it is spent. This is motivational for them, and they’re fully on board with the scheme.

Even better, the whole issue is integrated into the curriculum. The ecoDriver software allows the energy usage data to be pulled onto electronic whiteboards for use in the classroom teaching, as one example.

Last week, the school was awarded the presitigour Ashden Award for Sustainability, by HRH Prince Charles. Read about it here. If you’re interested, read more about the Ashden Awards in the Guardian’s report.

Well done to Ashley CofE Primary. It shows that we CAN make a difference!

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Climate change: The biggest global-health threat of the 21st century

This is what the top flight medical journal, The Lancet, says. In the latest edition, an article entitled “Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change” makes this claim. See this article, and other similar ones here. The article is a collaboration between Lancet and University College London Institute for Global Health Commission.

It is a 41 page scholarly article, with a four page Executive summary. So I’m not going to reproduce it here – not even the Executive summary. The bottom line, though, is that we need to be taking this issue a lot more seriously than we are. With the mounting scientific evidence, I cannot understand global warming deniers.

I can sort of understand some of the denialism. It is true that human beings are not the only cause of global warming. It may be true that we are not even the primary cause of it. We’re in a natural warming cycle that has been in operation for millions of years (we have data for about 450,000 years of a oscillating hot and cold cycle). That may be true, but human activity nevertheless is a contributor to global warming. And more importantly, it is the only thing we can control. So, given that we MUST do something about it, we can only do what we can actually do (I know that sounds so simple it isn’t worth saying, but this is part of the problem – not enough people are saying it!).

We must do what we can do.

I also sort of understand the attitude that says “why bother”, especially when looking at India and China and other developing nations.

… Continue Reading

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The Meaning of the 21st Century

One of the most important books I have read in the last year is James Martin’s “The Meaning of the 21st Century” (Buy it at Amazon or Kalahari). The subtitle explains: The Megaproblems of the 21st Century.

You can hear me talking about it on a ClassicFM book review show.

I recently came across the author’s website, and found this excellent summary of his book. From James Martin’s own website:

… Continue Reading

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Keeping it Simple

Reading Gillian Tett’s excellent book, ‘Fool’s Gold: How unrestrained greed corrupted a dream, shattered global markets and unleashed a catastrophe’ (Little, Brown 2009 – buy it now at Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net) reminded me of a memorable saying of the legendary Liverpool Football Club manager, Bill Shankly.

Shanks, commenting on the Beautiful Game once said, “It is a simple game made complicated by those who ought to know better”. I suspect that wisdom reflects much of the corporate jungle that we have created. Beyond the financial practices of murkey credit derivatives there is the complex HR web that is understandable to only a select few. I recall being asked to sit-in on a review process of a large SA blue-chip company as they unveiled their ‘Talent Management Programme’. The programme had been the careful design of a specially designated group and was the culmination of over a year’s endevour. As the graphs, flow charts, spiral graphs and every manner of powerpoint graphic unfolded so the comprehension (amongst the other HR practitioners present) evaporated. It was madness, incomprehensible madness. But of course to question, critique and point out the obvious would have been akin to career suicide. Not being constrained by such concerns, I of course did question, ask and critique. Naturally I have not been invited back.

The point is we continue to make simple things complicated. This is especially true when it comes to the central issue of people within our organisation. Quantum Mechanics teaches us that, when it comes to the very essence, the very construct of our universe, ‘relationships is all there is’. Trust is the foundation, the currency, of all relationships and it was ultimately the breakdown of trust that, according to Gillian Tett led to the current economic crisis we have now. Simple things made complicated. Simple things allowed to be obscured behind elaborate processes, policies, systems and structures. Just who are we kidding? It is time to get back to the ’simple things’. It is time to realise that to make organisations work well, we don’t need the elaborate, the complex…we need to understand and do the simple things well.    

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Graeme Codrington suggests books on Classic FM

Graeme Codrington was recently interviewed on Classic FM’s “JSE Direct” show. It is a book review show, and Graeme highlighted two books he feels everyone should be reading, if they are interested in tracking key trends that will be shaping the world of work over the next 10-20 years.

They are: Ken Dytchwald, “Age Power” (Buy it at Amazon) and James Martin, “The Meaning of the 21st Century” (Buy it at Amazon or Kalahari).

Subscribe to out PodCast feed to listen to the interview:

• :: iTunes
• :: RSS

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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.

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Can advertising be too effective?

Here is a great marketing case study. Swedish Airport Coaches conducted a study and determined that a bus trip save the equivalent of 50 car trips. They built an outdoor advertising display comprising of a bus built out of 50 disused cars. The advert has been hugely successful. It touches on carbon emissions issue which is topical, but more importantly the display is cleverly put together and became such an entertainment and item of interest, that it resulted in traffic jams! This advert touches at the heart of how to connect with younger generations. Here are some marketing tips for connecting with Gen X and Millennials which this advertising campaign does well:

- entertain them
- create campaigns that make them think
- dont make the message obvious
- use juxtaposition – and make things appear not as they are
- use humour and paradox

You can watch the video here: 50 cars or 1 bus?

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