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 : )

The military needs to change

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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This is not your father’s Mail strike

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

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

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

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His finest hour

One year ago, Gordon Brown was being hailed by many as the saviour of the world’s banking system. On October 14 2008 Hank Paulson, the US Treasury secretary of the time, announced a rescue plan for America’s stricken banks. Germany, Italy, France and Spain had just done the same. All the initiatives had something in common: they looked very similar to the move announced a week earlier by the British prime minister, says George Parker of the Financial Mail.

It intrigues me that this is one of the political PR gaffs of the decade. On the face of it Gordon Brown may have saved the world for the brink of a financial catastrophe. Time will tell… Yet he has been unable to capitalise on this and be seen as a leader who acted decisively. Part of the problem is in Mr Brown’s behaviour. Finance is his natural habitat and it is even argued that, at the time of the crisis, he was more interested in settling long-term questions of financial reform than the nitty-gritty of winning a general election.

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Fly Me To The Moon

I love travel. The last 21 days has seen me board 12 flights, spend 83 hours in planes (plus 20 hours in nine different airports) and visit five countries on three Continents. That is a fair amount of travel by anyone’s standards.

The most common question: “You must be so tired?” and when it emerges that the two primary destinations were Hawaii and Rio, any trace of sympathy evaporates quicker than one can say, ‘Aloha’.

We live in a small world. One made accessible through the speed of connection, be that electronic or through travel. This can only increase with the passing of time and with it a new understanding of  ‘global citizenship’.  One of the research findings of the Education 2020 Conference (initiated and hosted by the East West Center in Honolulu) reveals societies of increasing complexity and a world where, in spite of increasing homogenization, difference matters.

Leaders and organizations that understand these emerging realities and how the rules of the game are constantly changing will be the ones that survive. Building adaptive character traits into organizations will become a primary focus for leaders and this will necessitate a shift in not only how we understand leadership, but also how we build organizations.

Leading adaptive change will demand of leaders an ability to hold lightly to past success as well as necessitate a need to be able to be comfortable with paradox. Less and less will appear to be ‘black and white’ and leading diversity in interconnected enterprises will evoke a whole new agenda for the Leader of tomorrow. It is an exciting prospect and the new agenda will challenge much of our conventional wisdom. The models of how we ‘learn leadership’ will have to change to keep pace with this new agenda and some of the current leadership educational giants in this area will be hard pressed to keep up with the change that is required.

Tired from the travel? Not at all! I have had the wonderful opportunity to see and experience different places; to engage in conversations with many smart people from all over Asia Pacific and to learn, unlearn and relearn. What a privilege, what a responsibility!

Tomorrow I will be delivering a key note address at a large conference at Sun City, South Africa  - presenting on,‘9 Global Trends Changing the Face of Business & Leadership’.  Can’t wait! This is the crux of the new agenda, a balcony view that will allow leaders to see the emerging patterns and then adapt accordingly.

There needs to be boldness in proclaiming and revealing this emerging brave new world. Some will embrace it; others will resist it; and many will remain uncertain.  As a Leader you have no choice: engagement is your only option. So what are the questions you are asking? What are you unlearning, relearning and learning? What are you reading and with whom are you conversing? What is your balcony and what is it you are seeing from this vantage point? These are just some of the important questions!

Please put your seat upright, ensure your seatbelt is fastened and tray table is stowed away…we are ready for take-off.

How the world has changed (since 1909)

Today is precisely 60 years since Mao Zedong proclaimed the formation of the People’s Republic of China, based on communist principles which were immediately applied across the country. I am sure a lot will be written today on this anniversary.

I thought I’d mark the day of looking back by going a touch further to 1909. I was recently sent this email, and thought you’d enjoy thinking about how much has changed in 100 years. (By the way, 1909 was the year that Peter Drucker was born). The picture is of a 1909 Model T – the very best car money could buy…

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VWV Red Plug on Generation 2.0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Hawaii: Four Things About Globalization

The stated goal of the East-West Center’s International Forum for Education 2020 is, ”to address the need for new paradigms in higher education that will respond to transforming economic, social and cultural changes”. The belief is that the capacity to address these dramatic changes lies in the educational system. The challenge of course is the realization that in the face on unrelenting globalization and uneven change, the response needed goes beyond simply reforming existing institutions. A deeper level of transformation is required.

Naturally, much the same could be said of business and the challenges facing big business are no less daunting. However, what got my attention in the work being done by the 2020 Forum was the identification of four characteristics of a globalized world. As much as these four characteristics are occupying some of the best educational minds in Asia Pacific, I believe they are relevant to business leaders everywhere.

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Graeme interviewed on Hard Court Lessons Radio

Graeme Codrington was recently interviewed by Audley Stephenson for an online radio show, Hard Court Lessons. You can listen to the unedited interview here. The final version will be available soon.

The interview talked about how to lead different generations in the workplace.

From Hawaii: The Real Learning for Teams

Had an insightful conversation today.

As with any education programme orientated around leadership, standard practice is to have participants work in groups, teams or in business-speak, cohorts. Where do they come up with this terminology, some of which is part of the problem but that is another subject!

There are always two main arteries to such group work: The end product (usually some sort of plenary presentation) and then the process itself – the journey towards realizing ‘the end product’.  What happens in a performance driven culture is that the end product – the presentation, becomes the total focus. The pressure to perform, to impress one’s colleagues in many cases becomes a major source of stress. While this is an important aspect to the purpose of the group work, I suspect the ‘real learning’ gets missed.

The ‘real’ learning is embedded in how the group got to the delivery point. It is in the team dynamics, the process of reaching the end goal. Questions that explore this journey seldom get asked and because of that, the very real dynamics of teamwork get ignored. For instance, questions pertaining to leadership in the group and how that evolved, participation, getting stuck and making progress, negotiating differences, handling conflict etc…provide the courageous conversations of real learning in this example.  These tough conversations and analysis this is dependent on the ability to give and receive authentic feedback, and therein sits another problem for without the anonymous forms and HR methodologies to hide behind, many simply do not know how to do this in a constructive, mature way.

My insightful conversation involved an individual who felt excluded from participating in the group process. Repeated efforts to be heard failed, resulting in the individual simply ‘going along’ in silent ‘agreement’.  The group was the poorer for this omission.

The chances of this type of exclusion occurring are significantly increased when working in a diverse or cross-cultural group. The barriers represented by generational difference, cultural differences and personal differences, to name but a few, mean that inclusive cooperation in not easily achieved.

Naturally the APLP programme cannot prevent the difficulties that emerge in doing such group work. However, unlike most executive leadership type programmes, the learning emphasis sits not in the presentation but in the process. Today, having done the presentations, we will be allowing time for unpacking how the respective groups traveled the road towards that goal. It will provide some insightful learning and certainly tee up the opportunity for the teams and individuals to grasp some deep learning. With responsibility for learning resting with the Learner, that will be their responsibility to realize.

I look forward to the session!

UK retirement age stays at 65 (for now)

For a few years now, we have been predicting that the Baby Boomer generation (born after World War II, into the 1950s and 60s) will not retire. In fact, we think we’re quite clever when we say they’ll more likely re-tyre. We’ve even developed a presentation on the topic that we called, “Prime Time”. (See all the posts on this blog in this category here).

One of our specific predictions has been that those countries that have mandatory retirement ages (such as the UK) will soon be forced to drop these laws and either move the mandatory age older, or drop it altogether. Today, the UK courts came out with a surprising ruling on this issue.

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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.

Keith’s at the APLP for 2 weeks

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

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

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

Lessons from the Titanic

“Today the balance of advantage may be shifting…Governments have been rescuing companies they consider too big to fail… The recession is squeezing out smaller and less well-connected firms” says the The Economist in their leading article this week, titled “Big is Back”, The article argues that back in the 1990’s, with the advent of the internet, big companies were under attack by smaller nimbler companies and argues that now big companies are back in the driving seat. To support this notion, the article notes that between 1974 and 1998, GDP produced by big industrial companies fell by half between from 36% to 17%. This statistic is misleading as it has less to do with big companies becoming less dominant during this period and reflects more the shift away from an industrial driven world towards the rise of the knowledge companies such as banks and IT companies. During the same period the GDP contribution from knowledge based companies increased dramatically and today the knowledge sector now contributes 75% and 79% of GDP in the UK and USA respectively.

At the moment though there is a fascination with the BIG and a massive fear of their failure. This is not surprising. Big companies provide large amounts of tax revenues, employ large numbers of people and in many instances are the source of huge national pride. So the motivations and politics behind keeping flailing big companies afloat are huge. Governments are pumping billions into propping up big companies, their investment in them now is so huge that they can’t afford for big companies to fail. The question at hand now though, is this fuelling a virtuous or a vicious cycle. How much longer can this course of action be sustained and at what price will western governments continue to protect big companies? Western governments appear to be behaving more like the captain of the Titanic before it struck an iceberg – stoking the engine to get more power out of it and racing across across an ocean they know is littered with obstacles. There is now a danger of artificially maintaining companies that have become ineffective and inefficient in the new world of work. Let’s not forget that if big is back, a notion the article seems to support as a good development, then why is it that the economies that are rebounding fastest such as China and South Korea are those dominated by small companies?

Rather than continuing to bail out big and potentially ineffective companies, governments need to be removing the burdens and barriers which prevent entrepreneurs from starting businesses and turning small companies into big effective ones. It is on this last point that I do agree with the Economist

What Microsoft’s “racism” teaches us about ourselves

The ether is alive with enraged twits, tweeting and blogging on about Microsoft’s racist blunder. If you’ve not heard the buzz, it has to do with MS photoshopping an advert as it transported it from the US (where it features a white woman, older black man, and an Asian man) to Poland (where it now features a white woman, a young white man with a black hand, and an Asian man). Outrage, disgust!

Here are the two pictures:

Microsoft is pulling the advert, and after investigation discovered that all four of the people responsible for the advert have left the company (how convenient).

I am NOT going to join the clamour of voices shouting racism, though. This is just good business (and bad photoshop), and a bad marketing decision, and a great example of the new world of work (yes, it is all of these things).

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The world is changing cell phones

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

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

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

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

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

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

Generations in Russia

I have just been alerted to a new blog site tracking research into generational theory in Russia – check it out at: http://rugenerationsfortheworld.wordpress.com/. The authors are Evgeniya Shamis and Evgeny Nikonov. I am not sure who they are, or how their research will proceed, but I am a big supporter of anyone doing proper research into generational theory in different countries around the world.

If you’re interested in generational research, or global values development, check out the site, and let them know we sent you.

How (not) to do business like Jack Welch

Since leaving GE, Jack Welch has refused to retire gracefully or quietly. He has continued to stay vocal and keep his profile in the media, especially by writing and disseminating business advice. I suppose one shouldn’t begrudge him this – after all, he was branded “Manager of the Century” by TIME magazine, after nearly a quarter century in charge of one of the world’s largest companies.

But, does he deserve to be heard so much? Especially now that the model of leadership he espoused has been shown to lead to disaster. In my mind he is an example of much of what we don’t want in the future world of work.

An article which put my thoughts into words was published a while back in The Economist. It was responding to reports that Jack Welch will be lending his name to a new online MBA course. It highlights some of the concerns I have with a “winner takes all”, “profit at any price” ruthless leadership style Jack Welch espoused at GE. It also hints at probably the biggest issue that all such leaders have – they leave no legacy. When they leave, the empire they created collapses. When Welch left GE, he was asked what his legacy would be. He said that this was a question best asked after his successor had retired. That is the right attitude for a leader to have – the long term view. Unfortunately for Welch, it currently looks as if his legacy is a bad one!

Read The Economist article at their website, or an extract below.
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A changing global landscape

The RBS Economic Unit in conjunction with The Economist have just completed a report on ‘Exploring the Changing Global Landscape for UK Companies.’ This is an independent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, providing you with insight into the latest trends and opportunities in global trade. It makes interesting reading given the current economic climate. You can download the complete report here or read the headline results below:

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A View from London – Graeme is blogging at BizCommunity

Graeme Codrington, one of the co-founders of TomorrowToday, and now based in London, has started a new blogging column at South Africa’s BizCommunity. It will only be two or three posts a month, but the content is focused on what South African business can learn from trends in London.

Why not bookmark the column now, and check back regularly (or add it to your RSS feed). It’s here.

The Bruno Movie – unhelpful cultural analysis

OK, so maybe the title of this post is a bit over the top. But the new movie from Sacha Baron-Cohen (aka Ali G, aka Borat), which portrays him as a gay Austrian television presenter, has the stated aim of providing cultural analysis. His goal is to shed light on inconsistent prejudice. Lofty goals indeed. Unfortunately, he fails to do so. In fact, he may do the opposite of his intention.

Probably the best review I have read of the movie comes from Toby Young of The Spectator. See what you think…

Status Anxiety
Toby Young
Wednesday, 8th July 2009

As funny as Bruno undoubtedly is, Baron-Cohen’s film is fundamentally dishonest

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How teenagers consume media (UK report)

How Teenagers Consume Media: the report that shook the City

This is the full copy of the research note written by Matthew Robson (aged 15 years and seven months), an intern at Morgan Stanley, which caused a stir after it was published by them. Reported in The Guardian, 13 July 2009

MY COMMENTS first, though: This report is a fascinating insight into how a 15 year old sees how his teenage cohorts see media. If you’re trying to reach teenagers with a message, then this report is helpful. But what Morgan Stanley thought it told them or their clients is another story altogether. This is part of the problem with a Twitter and Blog driven universe – that we tend to reduce things to soundbites and take the populist view, without much processing or context. This is useful information – in a limited context. It should be wisely and cautiously – within the context of that limited context. The news coverage this report generated indicates the shallowness of most mainstream media at the moment. It’s no wonder, then, that teenagers don’t reckon they need to connect with traditional media!

NOW, the report…

Most teenagers nowadays are not regular listeners to radio. They may occasionally tune in, but they do not try to listen to a program specifically. The main reason teenagers listen to the radio is for music, but now with online sites streaming music for free they do not bother, as services such as last.fm do this advert free, and users can choose the songs they want instead of listening to what the radio presenter/DJ chooses.

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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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Why my generation mourns Michael Jackson

As in life, so in death. I am watching the live broadcast of Michael Jackson’s gaudy memorial service at The Staples Center in Los Angeles, complete with golden coffin. Forgotten – for a moment at least – are the excesses and eccentricities of a very troubled individual. Today, the world mourns one of the greatest entertainers of all time.

Why is he so mourned?

The answer is simple. In a world gone mad – and global – Michael Jackson became an icon of a new generation. Born after “drugs, sex and rock n roll” had shaped the Boomer generation, the 1980s needed something new. “Generation X” came of age in a world filled with change when it was clear the old way of doing things was not sufficient for the path ahead.

Into that melting pot came a strangely asexual, non-cultural (black or white?), global icon, who created a new art form – the music video – and danced like no-one had ever danced before. “Thriller” was ground breaking in every possible way, but mainly because it created the fusion of music and visual overload that has become the staple of the MTV generation. It gave a generation not just a voice, but a moving image too. This was the first generation that needed more than a voice to express itself. Michael Jackson showed us how.

His grisly life has been a sobre reminder to my generation of what could become of us – destroyed by the things we pursue, haunted by our dreams, empty even though we own everything we want, never quite achieving what we set out for… yet, somehow, in that melancholy, able to raise a thin, clear voice to say, “Heal the world / Make it a better place / For you and for me / And the entire human race”.

He had a way of saying – and showing – what a generation was thinking.

He may have been flawed. But he was a genius. And he is mourned by a generation that is now growing older, and take this shared moment to reflect on our own legacy – and mortality.

Generational research in Africa

If you’re interested in the generations, and how intergenerational issues might look in Africa, then here’s a conference you might be interested in. I am not involved, and don’t know the researchers personally, but this looks good.

HSRC Seminar Series in collaboration with the Capacity Development Division
The following seminar will be presented in Pretoria, Cape Town and KwaZulu-Natal (See Details below).

Is it time to renegotiate an intergenerational ‘contract’? The state of intergenerational relations in South Africa.
Presented by Dr Monde Makiwane Senior Research Specialist, CYFSD, and Ms Christine Jesseman Head: Research Depaertment, South African Human Rights Council.

Venues in Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town: see below
Date: Tuesday 28 July 2009
Time: 14H15 for 14h30 – 15H30

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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!”

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.

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TIME magazine: The Future of Work

I think they do it every other year, and it makes a great cover. TIME magazine at the end of May 2009 was focused on the issue of ‘The Future of Work’. You can read it at TIME’s website, or below.

The article takes the form of ten short insights. The highlights for me are:

• Companies are going to have to become very innovative to create new types of perks, incentives and motivators for staff
• Boomers now definitely can’t – and won’t retire – as planned. We’ve been talking about this for some time, but now the reality is here. See our Prime Time presentation if you want more info.
• Gen Xers are coming into senior leadership – and it’s going to be different.
• It pays to save the planet. Again, we’ve been saying this for a while. But now it’s becoming a strategic imperative – see The Future is Now.
• We really do need to start working from home now. Enough talking about it!

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