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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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

The Internet? Bah!

Many years ago, in a South Africa finding it’s way to it’s first democratic election, a friend of mine would often say, “Don’t be a victim of your own words.” He of course was referring to saying things that might come back and bite you down the road. And in an emerging ‘New South Africa’, lots of people were saying lots of things, and plenty of them got it badly wrong.

The world of technology is another one of those ‘dramatic change spaces’ that offers up the opportunity for history to come back and bite you big time.

Here are some exerts from a Newsweek article (1995) dug up by the guys at The Next Web. Clifford Stoll, writes a piece called ‘The Internet? Bah!’. And boy does he get a whole lot wrong : ) Keep in mind that he wrote this before Google, FaceBook and Twitter.

Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

There are so many beauties contained in the article. I’m tempted to drop the whole thing in as a quote. Go and have a look for yourself : )

Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

School sport as an indicator of Talent

Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers has been one of my break-through books of 2009 in the area of ‘Talent’. If it does anything to the reader, it will surely have them asking deeper questions around what talent is and how we should be assessing for it? It did at least that for me. I’ll confess right up front that I am a Gadwell fan. Yes I have read the critiques on him, and whatever you might say of him, he does one of the best jobs taking some very complex ideas and packaging them for the less educated, complex and deep, like me (and you if you’re honest).

The Wall Street Journal blog has a great article that plays in the ‘Outliers’ space, called Economists Link Athletics to Success in School, Job Markets. Wharton economist Betsey Stevenson has drawn a link between young women entering sports in high school in the US (a law change in 1972, significantly changed the ratio’s of young women in high school sport) and an increase of female college attendance and female labour-force participation.

This article adds, in my mind, to the increasing body of evidence suggesting that how we spot ‘talent’ is more complex than a battery of psychological tests, academic results and personality profiling (no matter how sophisticated they seem). There may be many other, far more robust indicators as to someone’s future value that we don’t know how to interrogate, have forgotten about, or are just not courageous enough to explore?

Title IX’s most pronounced effect was on athletics. Girls’ participation in high school sports went from 1 in 27 in 1972 to 1 in 4 in 1978. But it’s effect wasn’t uniform because states where boys’ participation in athletics was high were forced to increase girls’ participation the most. Ms. Stevenson was able to use the variation between states to tease out the effect of girls participation in sports from other factors. That allowed her to see how playing sports affected girls’ success later in life.

Her conclusion: A 10 percentage-point rise in girls’ participation in high school sports leads to a 1 percentage point increase in female college attendance and a 1 to 2 percentage point increase in female labor-force participation.

Maybe athletics should be added to reading, writing and arithmetic.

Maybe indeed…..

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….

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…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to protect your ideas in the digital age

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

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Help! Linking Theory & Practice

I am attending a leadership symposium titled, Indigenous Knowledge and Leadership in Africa Colloquium: Leading in Africa hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Leadership Centre and Africa Ignite. Gathered here are some of the Continent’s most impressive minds when it comes to the subject of African leadership.  Academics are a strange lot. They are a unique species with their own norms and ways of interacting and engagement. They have a hard language to understand, one they use effortlessly but one that can be somewhat exclusive and act as an intimidating ‘barrier to entry’. If you want to enter, to engage…you best learn the language. Speaking simply comes a distant second to complex terminology. Perhaps this is true of all knowledge enclaves be that accountants, lawyers, the medical fraternity and yes, consultants.

The challenge is that theory needs to inform practice and one without the other creates problems. As I listen to what can only be described as ‘deep knowledge’ I am challenged by how best to ensure this is translated, applied and expressed in ‘mainline’ leadership streams. This wisdom seldom impacts the corporate reality where it is so needed. Responsibility for this failure rests with both ‘sides’ and this ‘failure’ creates a new opportunity.

On the side of academia, there is the need to work harder to connect their knowledge by way of application to ‘the real world’ from which they extract their knowledge in the first place. They need to find ways to invite greater diversity into their discourses and deliberations. They need to open the greenhouse door to others who would benefit from witnessing firsthand the growth in knowledge as it occurs. They need to work harder at the ‘so what?’ question and look to connect their deep knowledge to a pragmatic context. They need to ‘interrogate’ (a popular academic word) the process whereby their own insights and understanding finds practical expressions. And just to answer the anticipated answer already forming on the lips of academics: Publishing journals isn’t the answer. Such publications serve to fuel internal debate and form part of the peer review knowledge process but, for the most part, remain secret code hidden and inaccessible to those who need it most.

On the other side, executive leaders need to do more to become learners and to engage in a learning process through which current assumptions and paradigms can be challenged and informed. All too often corporate leaders are seduced by the operational demands they face and so choose what they know (and the area in which they feel competent) over the opportunity to learn and explore unknown terrain. The learning journey is all too threatening to many senior leaders who for the most part give lip service to the need to learn.

And so the gulf widens. The two sides view each other with suspicion and an initial sense of helplessness as to how to embrace the value and lessons embedded within each reality, gives way to a denial that one has anything worthwhile to learn from the other.

This gives rise to the ‘opportunity’ that this divide creates. The opportunity is for bridge-builders, for interpreters to step into the gap: Those capable of translating the best of both sides for the benefit of both sides. Who are these people? I am not sure but one challenge they will face is how to develop and maintain credibility with both sides. Some attempts at translation have met with distain by academia, viewed as a type of ‘commercial sell-out’. ‘ In the same way, anything ‘theoretical’ carries little weighting in the fast paced and measured pragmatic world of the corporate.

So, fancy yourself as a ‘bridge-builder’? A start might be to attend some relevant symposium should you have a large desk and corner office; on the other hand, if your office is filled with strange trinkets and ‘stuff’ – as well as piles of papers, journals and books, best try to get into a board room sometime soo

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!

Was I only dreaming?

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

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

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

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

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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Newspapers and Blogs. A great conversation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

88 years old and mayer for 30+ years

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

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

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

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

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

The author as performer

The FT (Financial Times) had a great piece recently on how authors are now using the art of dramatic storytelling to enhance the value they add when doing live presentations based on their books. Specifically focusing on Malcolm Gladwell (who seems to be living my dream life) and TED, it’s a great read if you’re interested in writing, speaking, communicating ideas and the art of the dramatic in business life.

Read it online here, or see the extract below.

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Top tips for mentoring the next generation of talent

In tough times, people matter. Ensuring your staff are passionate and focused is a critical leadership task right now. One of the most effective techniques for motivating your younger staff in particular is to provide ongoing development for them, especially providing access to senior leaders and mentoring. Here are some tips to help you make the most of such mentoring relationships.

• • Mentoring takes time. Today’s “I want it now” young people need to understand that it takes the time it takes to do properly. Make sure you do some expectation management right upfront about how often you can meet, what you think is achievable, and what you’d like to offer.
• • Be clear about the purpose and boundaries of your mentor relationship.
• • Today’s young people don’t open up immediately. They need to get to know you, and they need to know they can trust you. Persevere with them and don’t give up too easily if they make it tough for you – they’re actually just checking you’re willing to go the distance with them.
• • Consider digital mentoring as a component of the relationship. Be prepared to answer emails and text messages, and initiate some of this contact yourself. But don’t let them go totally digital – face to face time is vital for good mentoring.
• • Mentor the whole person, not just for the job description. Do some of the mentoring away from the office environment. Spend some of your time focusing on non-work related issues. Show an interest in their hobbies and non-work activities.
• • Try and include some on the job, practical content, ensuring your mentoring is not all theoretical.
• • Don’t forget to “reverse mentor” too. Young people have grown up helping their parents work out how to use the remote controls, and sorting out the household technology. Let them mentor their bosses on technology use in the office.
• • Get them to mentor each other – make sure they have a “buddy”, and not just at their own company. They have to be taught how to network effectively – it doesn’t come naturally to them.
• • Keep mentoring them, even when they leave your company. This sounds a powerful message to the remaining staff that you really care about them as people, not just as workers.
• • Never assume that the mind you’re talking to is closed. Just because young people dress or act differently from you doesn’t mean they’re not taking in what you’ve said.
• • Explain WHY. Don’t just tell them what to do, and how to do it. Tell them why it works. Knowing why makes all the difference for today’s young people.
• • Have fun.
• • Keep at it! Not every attempt to connect with young people will have immediate results.

How to get kids to look at great art (and enjoy it)

A good friend of mine recently asked me why a self-professed social liberal reads The Spectator magazine. It’s simple really – as an author, I enjoy reading great writing, and I don’t think there is better use of the English language in popular print than The Spectator. I also don’t believe you should only read things you agree with, and I enjoy – and appreciate – learning from any intelligent, intellectually coherent and passionate person; even if I disagree with their end point!

So, without apology, here is the first of two posts from last week’s Spectator magazine.

This first one relates to the content of my latest book, “Future-Proof Your Child” (get it at Amazon or Kalahari). We have failed our children by not teaching them to use their intuition and emotions – and to enjoy doing so for its own sake.

If you have children, or believe that we need to develop more emotional intelligence in the world, then you’ll enjoy this article. Read it at The Spectator, or below.

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Is Google making us Stupid?

For those of you with the time (and it needs some time) take a read of this article from The Atlantic. It’s a great read, written by Nicholas Carr, taking us on a short-ish journey of the impact of technology. From the written word to the internet and it’s impact on our thinking.

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.

I must be honest and say that I struggled to read it without jumping to another ‘thing’ to get done on my computer. I was alerted to the article by a friend who said, “I’ve just read a really interesting article entitled ‘Is Google making us stupid?’ and I thought you might enjoy it. Warning – it’s fairly long, but once you start reading it you kind of feel morally obliged to finish it, lest you add credence to the basic thesis of the article that we cannot sustain focused concentration for more than a few paragraphs.” Still I fell into the trap : )

Still, their (Google) easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.

The Future of Publishing’s History

I am not the greatest fan of the publishing industry. The first paperback book, a massive innovation in the industry, was published this week in 1935, and sometimes it seems that was the last innovation the industry has seen. As a published author, the lead times in the industry are seriously frustrating and the processes archaic. But, hey, I suppose I shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds me (well, part feeds me – in a world dominated by the increasing valuation of intellectual capital and decreasing value of manual labour and intermediation, the publishing industry, with their paltry standard 12-15% of wholesale price paid in royalties stands as a bastion of anochronism).

But, today, I read of something that inspires some hope in me that the wonderful people of the publishing industry do have an eye on the future. Faber are going to be publishing out of print books on a once-off, on-demand basis. They have started with a limited catalog, but the concept itself could (and should) easily be extended to all books everywhere. With digital printing and even e-books, it should be very little extra work to take any book anywhere and reproduce it. Check out the announcement and details here. A nice idea, and one that I hope is copied, and inspires further innovation.

Looking back to look ahead

One of our colleagues, Raymond de Villiers, is doing formal post grad work in Future Studies. He is particularly interested in future backward scenarios and alternative histories as methodologies of future planning (Google these terms if you’re interested, or contact me for more info). He got me interested in this stuff, and so my radar is always on for articles on the topic of looking backwards to look forwards.

Here is something I found in a recent edition of The Economist.

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Some wisdom from Warren Buffett

I received this in an e-mail today….

There was a one hour interview on CNBC with Warren Buffett, the second richest man who has donated $31 billion to charity Here are some very
interesting aspects of his life:

1. He bought his first share at age 11 and he now regrets that he started too late!
2. He bought a small farm at age 14 with savings from delivering newspapers.
3. He still lives in the same small 3-bedroom house in mid-town Omaha, that he bought after he got married 50 years ago. He says that he has everything he needs in that house. His house does not have a wall or a fence.
4. He drives his own car everywhere and does not have a driver or security people around him.
5. He never travels by private jet, although he owns the world’s largest private jet company.
6. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 63 companies. He writes only one letter each year to the CEOs of these companies, giving them goals  for the year. He never holds meetings or calls them on a regular basis.  He has given his CEO’s only two rules. Rule number 1: do not lose any of your share holder’s money. Rule number 2: Do not forget rule number 1.
7. He does not socialize with the high society crowd. His past time after he gets home is to make himself some pop corn and watch Television.
8. Bill Gates, the world’s richest man met him for the first time only 5 years ago. Bill Gates did not think he had anything in common with Warren Buffet. So he had scheduled his meeting only for half hour. But when Gates met him, the meeting lasted for ten hours and Bill Gates became a devotee of Warren Buffett.
9. Warren Buffett does not carry a cell phone, nor has a computer on his desk.

 
His advice to young people: “Stay away from credit cards and invest in yourself and Remember:

  A.  Money doesn’t create man but it is the man who created money.
  B.  Live your life as simple as you are.
  C.  Don’t do what others say, just listen to them, but do what you feel is good.
  D.  Don’t go on brand name; just wear those things in which u feel  comfortable.
  E.  Don’t waste your money on unnecessary things; just spend on them  who are really in need rather.
  F.  After all it’s your life then why give chance to others to rule our  life.”

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Mount Grace Country House and Spa: how NOT to manage a management change

One of our family’s favourite luxury holiday destinations has been Mount Grace. My father was a friend of the founder, and so I have known about this hotel literally since attending its opening many years ago. Before our youngest child came, Mount Grace Easter breakaways were a favourite – as children (not normally allowed at the hotel) were catered for spectacularly. This was the hotel I took my wife to on our first “parents only” night away after the birth of our first child. And, as a professional conference speaker and facilitator, I have been a day and overnight conference guest at the hotel many times. A Sunday drive was well worth it – the buffet lunch the stuff of legends. We’ve also made use of the Spa on stay overs and day trips. Sure, they know how to charge for this luxury and reputation, but it has always been well worth it. And so, it was with great anticipation that my family and I (with in-laws in tow) set off for Mount Grace Country Hotel and Spa for an Easter weekend getaway!

Our expectations were rudely shattered. Short version: we shall not be going back to Mount Grace anytime soon! What a disappointing and shocking weekend we’ve had!

You can read the gory details below, if you’re the type of person who tends to slow down to rubberneck at car crashes on the side of the highway. But, for casual readers of this blog, let me start this piece by giving you the lessons that can be learned.

• The hotel was recently taken over by a new company. They have clearly lost key staff. But when you take over an existing brand, you should be absolutely sure that systems are in place, that you know what these systems are, that you have the staff to back you up, and that you have a proper transitional process and knowledge continuity plan in place. This has clearly not happened at Mount Grace, as systems have almost entirely collapsed and staff are undertrained. What a waste of such a good brand (I shudder to think what was paid in goodwill, and how much of that payment has already been lost!)
• “The Luxury Touch” is what distinguishes the truly great from the also rans at this end of the market – see the previous blog entry for four things that must be maintained in order to ensure the luxury touch is always there.
• When a problem occurs, admit it, and ask the simple question: “what can we do to make this right?” Apologies are one thing, but when they come from a junior manager, who’s obvious role is to just stand there and take your abuse with an appropriately sad looking face, they are meaningless. When a customer indicates they’ve had a bad experience, agreeing with them, but obviously not having any intent to resolve the issue just serves to inflame the customer even more.
• It takes a team – it was obvious that there were certain staff members who knew that the systems were collapsing and were incredibly frustrated at the rest of the team who were messing things up. This is understandable, but should not be allowed to come into the client space. It showed distinct low morale amongst the competent staff. It would not surprise me if Mount Grace lost even more of its talent very soon. So sadly, as always, its likely to get worse before it gets better.
• Communication is the basis of all teamwork. The most basic error made over our weekend was a breakdown in communication between different people, and different departments. Some were actually hilarious in their magnitude – read below for some of the howlers. A lot of our frustration could have been avoided by simple communication between staff.
• Leadership required. Ultimately this was a lack of leadership/management. We left detailed written comments for management, and I will be interested to see if they respond. BREAKING NEWS: AS I WRITE THIS, I HAVE JUST RECEIVED A PHONE CALL FROM THE GENERAL MANAGER. He has said, “No apologies, we dropped the ball. We were overwhelmed, and our new team couldn’t cope.” Well, maybe that accounts for some of what you’ll read below, but not all of it. Anyway, they’ve offered my wife and I a free weekend to attempt to show that the Easter weekend was a once off slip. I suppose I can’t ask for much more, and I really, really hope that they will get it sorted, as I love the venue. When that weekend happens, I will write a follow up to this blog. For now, our story is what our story is…
• You only get one chance. In the 21st century, with so much consumer choice, your customers will only give you one chance to impress or disappoint them. There’s no need for my family to go back to Mount Grace – there are plenty of other options. And so, we won’t. It costs you about 5 times more to get new customers than it does to retain existing ones. And bad news tends to travel, especially when it comes from people who are perceived as knowledgeable in the field they’re commenting on. So, make sure you know what’s going on with your customers, and keep them in the fold!! HAVING SAID YOU GET ONLY ONE CHANCE, I suppose if you really grovel you can get just one more . This is what Mount Grace have now done, and my wife and I will give them another chance. It’s going to cost them the price of a weekend for two, but I suppose that’s ultimately cheaper than losing us forever, and living with the bad press we can create.

Simple lesson: stay away from Mount Grace – at least until they have their systems sorted.

So, now for our story…

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What’s lacking in the care of our senior citizens?

Policy makers are reassessing the way our country looks after its aged. This article looks at some of the issues demanding their attention.
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Travel and Lifelong learning – an industry growth point in the next 20 years

I have come across a website that I believe understands the market and the thinking of boomers on the verge of a change of lifestyle. Just as the younger generation uses back packing hostels when traveling, this group has identified the need for a similar style for the older generation. The site is www.elderhostel.org.

The site focuses on adventure in lifelong learning. There are more than 8000 all inclusive learning adventures in more than 90 countries around the world. These adventures focus on history, culture, nature, music, outdoor activities, skills and crafts.

Here are a few current adventures to wet your appetite:

Food and Culture of Tuscany
The Ionia Odyssey: In the footsteps of Homer
Birding the hotspots of Costa Rica
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine: A taste of Provence
Opera in Italy: A feast for the senses.

 

This article is part of the February 2007 TomorrowWisdom.biz ezine. To automatically receive it each month, visit TomorrowWisdom.biz.

We are also building up profiles of people who are close to retyring and rewiring for a new season in life. Add your profile to the list!

Downshifting – Changing the gears

Tired of the constant pressure of corporate life Bruce decided he no longer needed this kind of life. With no dependents he and his wife sold-up house and business and moved into a rustic coastal cottage they now call home. Turning to what they love, voluntarily dabbling in a variety of ventures of their choice and simplifying their lifestyle will be the new context in which they life and work.

In different shapes and forms, thousands are doing the same. And it is not only those with the financial muscle or those close to the end of their careers who are doing so!
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Baby boomers – are you leaving a legacy?

The front runners of the Baby Boomer generation are turning 60 and entering a whole new phase “life after 60�. But don’t expect them to maintain the status quo.
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Resentment in the wake of Affirmative Action

There is a unique situation in South Africa as the white Baby Boomer generation head towards retirement in the next few years.

Instead of wanting to leave a legacy behind them (which is probably the global Boomer desire), South African white Boomers just can’t wait to get the hell out of the organisations that have sidelined them over the last 15 years in the wake of Affirmative Action and Empowerment policies. This is a precarious position as businesses begin to realise that there are not enough Xers to replace them and they run the risk of losing core skills, experience and wisdom. This risk is compounded by the reluctance to engage in transferring their wisdom prior to leaving the organisation.

It was a telling moment when sitting with a client in the electricity industry yesterday who told me directly that we won’t get anything out of these guys – in terms of transferring their wisdom to younger employees – until someone from the organisation stands up and says, “Guys, we’re sorry … we’ve f&*ked this Affirmative Action thing up and messed you around”.

I wonder if the Corporate Ego will allow this to happen?

The Coming Car Crisis

There are more and more cars on the road, and the complexity of these cars is ever increasing. Who is going to service them? Who is going to fix them when they break? Already, you have to book a few weeks in advance to get your upper-end car in for its regular service. And the quality of the servicing leaves something to be desired. This is a worldwide problem, as a report in “Tire Review online” suggests. Its in the 11 Sep 2006 edition, and is entitled: “Shops in Crisis? The Tech Shortage”, by Steve LaFerre. Read the report here.

Some extracts appear below, and you will see my interest in the matter, as it relates to generational perceptions of the automotive industry, engineering and mechanics as well as the need for knowledge/wisdom continuity from the soon to retire Boomers. If this isn’t dealt with, we’re going to see a trainwreck in this industry in a few years time.

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