Airport security is a sham

My team and I travel a lot. We have literally millions of air miles between us over the past decade. And we all hate airports and airlines. We mainly hate them because they lie to you. It can’t be that difficult to keep passengers up to date with what is happening when things don’t go according to plan. And “the flight is delayed due to operational reasons” means absolutely nothing at all – and they know it! But that’s another thought for another day.

Today I want to moan about the security controls in place at airports around the world. I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, and I get paid to come up with mental frameworks that make sense of the world for other people. But airport security baffles my brain.

If you really wanted to, you can get pretty much anything onto a plane. The controls in place could be easily circumvented by anyone who travels more than once a month. If you don’t believe me, then read the wonderful article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic in which he spent a number of months showing how bad airport security actually is. Priceless stuff!

He proves what I have often thought – that airport security is much more about making people feel that “something is being done” rather than actually doing anything useful. Hugo Rifkind in a recent Spectator magazine article goes further and suggests that “airport security is a giant exercise in arse covering – and it doesn’t work, obviously” (and that’s just the title of the article!).

Well, yes. Obviously. The new short hand for this is: #fail

It would be nice if some sanity prevailed somewhere, sometime and we got back to rational and useful security sometime soon. I doubt it, unfortunately. But I do live in hope.

What you could get away with… if you were a corporation (by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show)

The Daily Show, by Jon Stewart, is one of my TV habits. It’s a satirical news show, that specialises in showing up the political and corporate establishments for their hyprocrisy. Their staple diet is to take sound bites from the day’s news, and then contrast this with archive footage from the same person a few years earlier – typically making precisely the opposite point.

While some of the humour can be puerile, underneath the veneer of Comedy Central lies Jon Stewart’s insightful and incisive depth of understanding of the political scene in the US. His interviews are genius, and some of the pieces on the show are breathtakingly brilliant in their analysis.

One of the best I’ve seen in a while was from Tuesday’s edition, in which Jon tried to help us see the depth of corruption and hubris found on Wall Street. The segment was called “In Dodd We Trust”, and you can see the 10 minute video here or below (if you’re not in the UK, that is). (Get past the first five minutes or so, to reach the truly great bits!)

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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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Lessons from Kraft shutting a Cadbury factory

Today, Kraft executives came before the British Parliament to answer queries about the closure of a Cadbury’s factory near Bristol with the loss of 400 jobs. The reporting on this by the news media is sloppy and sensation-seeking. Kraft is positioned as the “evil empire”, too arrogant to even send its CEO to the hearings.

Yes, Kraft “promised” before the Cadbury’s takeover that they would not close any factories. And, yes, it is tragic that another few hundred people will be out of work by the end of next year. But, there is no surprise here, and Kraft should not be seen as the (only) villian.

Firstly, Cadbury had already announced the closure of the factory in 2007, planning to move production to Poland. Secondly, over the past two years, Cadbury has reduced their staff count by 7,000 people (that’s halving their workforce – according to the FT). Kraft it could be argued has, in fact, stemmed the flow of retrenchments from Cadbury. Why is there no mention of this today?

Notwithstanding the talk from headline seeking journalists or nationalistic Brits who can’t stand to see American firms take over “British” companies, there is actually no surprise over the way workers are being treated by Kraft/Cadbury. Until we fundamentally change our mindsets, the relentless pursuit of profit at any price will inevitably lead to workers being treated badly, and losing their jobs.

It’s no use moaning about this unless you’re prepared for the consequences of the alternative. As we approach Easter, would you be prepared to pay more for your chocolates knowing that you were securing 400 jobs at a factory near Wales? Would you pay a premium for Cadbury chocolates? Seriously, would you? It’s easy, for example, to moan about how the greedy bankers led us into a recession with their easy credit. But if you have an interest-only mortgage, or have a “portfolio” of properties that you have financed on cheap credit with the dream of filling them with tenants and selling them when their values escalated, you are as much part of the problem as any banker was. Ditto if you drive a car you can’t really afford, but were able to finance on cheap credit.

Until we, the world’s consumers, tell companies to change their behaviour, their only rational approach is to continue to cut costs. And we send that message by what we buy. If you join in with the general indignation at Kraft in Britain today, then take a few minutes to ask yourself what you will do to make your feelings known. Otherwise, it’s all just bluster.

A Radical Proposal for Executive Pay

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

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

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Why do corporates act like machines when dealing with clients?

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

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

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

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When social media grows up… it will change everything

Download a copy of this article in PDF format – right click here. The contents of this article can be presented as a keynote or a workshop for your team. Contact our UK or South African offices to find out how.

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

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

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

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

Social Media 101

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

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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.

Relationship without investment – the example of online dating sites

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

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

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

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

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Tesco launches world’s first zero-carbon emission store

Tesco sometimes takes a few knocks in the press. Most recently for not allowing people wearing pyjamas into their stores and another for asking a father, for safety reasons, to leave a store because he was balancing his six-year old child on his shoulder. Frankly I don’t want to shop were people are running around in their old flannel pyjamas (it’s never going to be sexy French lace nighties) so I for one applaud this decision and as for the dad with his kid on his shoulders, sure it’s petty but we have a government obsessed with health and safety rules and a big brother mentality. So no need to shoot the messenger in this case the Tesco security guard.

Over the past 18 months I’ve become a fan of Tesco. As a company they have achieved incredible results in a very competitive industry. Tesco have streaked ahead of their competitors over the past 20 years because they understand what their customers want and shrewd management and marketing have kept them ahead of the competition. At the end of last year I had the privilege of being invited to do my Mind the Gap keynote presentation on generational marketing at the Tesco Marketing away day and I got further insight into Tesco, you can read about these insights here.

This week Tesco launched the world’s first “zero-carbon” emission store as part of its bid to be a carbon neutral company by 2050. The shop, in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, is timber-framed rather than steel, and uses skylights and sun pipes to cut lighting costs. It also has a combined heat and power plant powered by renewable bio-fuels, exporting extra electricity back to the national grid. In addition the refrigerators – one of the biggest blackspots for food retailers trumpeting their green credentials – have doors to save energy and harmful HFC refrigerant gases have been replaced. The new store, cost 30% more to build, but it uses 50% less energy, and with oil costs on the increase the business case sells itself.

To coincide with the Ramsey opening, the supermarket chain said it intended to spend more than £100m with green technology companies, although Leahy was unsure of the level of supermarket’s current spend on this.

Tesco has been at the forefront of the grocers’ race to be green. The UK’s biggest supermarket has provided £25m of funding for the University of Manchester to set up a sustainable consumption institute, and has a 10-point community plan, with pledges to increase local sourcing and to consult local communities in an attempt to be viewed as a good neighbour.

Marketing and product development for Boomers

Appliance makers GE and Whirlpool have been quick to recognised to economic power of the silver tsunami (or baby boomers over the age of 50!) and are making great strides in product development. The Wall Street Journal in it’s article Home Appliances to Soothe the Aches of Aging Boomers provides a few examples:

- Whirlpool now offers washing machines with large knobs that make louder-than-usual noise when they’re set. They also offer a pedestal beneath Whirlpool dryer reduces stooping when removing laundry.

- At GE’s consumer and industrial headquarters in Louisville, designers use “empathy sessions” where members of the product-development team tape their knuckles to simulate impaired dexterity. GE’s Engineers and designers have been very busy “boomerising” their products and now proudly offer:
- Ovens with easier-to-open doors and automatic shut-off burners.
- Stoves designed to prevent boil-overs.
- Stoves that you don’t have to reach far into – to prevent boomers from stooping awkwardly, losing their balance and burning themselves on the hot stove!
- Fridges with brighter LED lighting to improve visibility
- Dishwashers and washing machines that allow users to put in an entire bottle of detergent a few times a year rather than a smaller amount for every load. Supposedly the machines are designed to reduce confusion and make housework less of a chore, as GE neatly puts “particularly for older consumers”.

All of these new product designs are great for “old people” but try telling baby boomers that you are selling them a product that will remind them on a daily basis that they are OLD! I’d like to meet the marketer who is able put a positive spin on this marketing message because I don’t believe it exists.

Baby Boomers may be getting old but one of their core values is that of youth and vitality. Designing a product that reminds them they are old is not going to win you any points. Rather companies need to be developing products that enhance boomers lifestyles allow them to enjoy themselves and frees up their time to go skiing (spending their kids inheritance) GE may be taping up the fingers of their product designers but they are failing to use the “empathy sessions” to help get their designers into the heads of baby boomers so that they can understand what drives them and makes baby boomers tick.

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

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

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

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

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A banking revolution?

Accenture recently put out a report entitled, “Banking 2012: Preparing for a revolution”. How I’d love to believe they are right. The executive summary says that the banks that will succeed are those that focus on transparency, simplicity and renewed customer-centricity. Amen to that, I’d say. But there is more to this report than just those obvious statements.

The very foundations of the industry of banking have been shaken. The institution of banking is changing. The rules for success and failure have been rewritten, and legislation is now being crafted to push that even further. These are unprecedented times. This report by Accenture sheds some light on the very immediate future, and is well worth a read. Read the summary at Accenture’s own website, or right click here to download a PDF from their site. Or read extracts from it below.
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A Conversation around Google and China

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hollywood, explain this… (Avatar breaks two very different records)

In almost every country it is being shown, James Cameron’s latest movie, Avatar is breaking box office records. It has already made over $ 1 billion, and is well on its way to being the best selling movie of all time.

It is already listed in IMDB’s top 50 greatest movies of all time.

But, in its first week, it was also the most pirated movie of all time with 980,000 illegal downloads of the movie. Hollywood (and the music industry) claim that illegal downloads will destroy their industry and steal money from producers.

So, Hollywood, explain Avatar!

The problem is not with illegal downloads. The problem for you is that quality is now judged more democratically – and more brutally. Good films, and good music, will still sell well. James Cameron is proof of that! Stop whining and fix your industry.

Good leaders share the pain with their teams

This coming year is likely to see continued difficulties in most companies. Recovery is on its way, but it will be slow, and profits are likely to be low. In this environment, many companies are going to ask staff to forego salary increases (and even possibly accept decreases) and bonuses.

Unfortunately, their bosses are unlikely to do the same.

In the past two decades or so, a two-tier system of reward has emerged, where people at board level and in senior executive teams are treated differently from general staff. When cuts are made, they are asked to contribute much less. Paradoxically, this often happens precisely because the senior executives “pretend” to be treated equally. But let’s be honest: to ask someone earning £ 1,000 a month to take a 10% cut is not the same as asking someone earning £ 12,000 a month to do the same. The more you earn, the more you should be expected to cut. That would be fair.

Worse still, senior executives are not rewarded for the health of the company (which affects long-term growth), but rather for short-term results. They typically attract performance bonuses for cutting costs out of the system – and that can involve pay freezes and redundancies for general staff.

In some companies this year, the basic salaries of all staff will be frozen, including the CEO and senior Execs. But the Execs will have access to bonuses, whereas most other employees cannot look forward to the variable performance pay available to their bosses. Their rewards are not treated the same. This, too, is not fair.

I read a recent report on a particular company that is experiencing just this, and the conclusion was succinctly stated: “Equity is a quality rather like justice. Justice must be seen to be done; equity must be experienced; it must run through an organisation from top to bottom.” I’d put it this way: A good leader shares the pain with his or her followers. If you don’t, they may just stop following.

I still believe that the real people carnage of this recession lies ahead of us, not behind us. What are your thoughts?

British Airways cabin crew on strike – how to strike back!

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, I hope you’re expecting a calm analysis of yesterday’s announcement of a 12 day strike of British Airways cabin crew, effectively grounding the airline over the busy Christmas holiday season (remember schools only break up this coming Friday in the UK, so the holidays are for two weeks starting this weekend). Well, you’re going to be disappointed. As frequent travelers, all of us at TomorrowToday tend to lose our rag with airlines and airports. I am normally a calm individual, proud of being unflappable. But put me in an airport, and somehow the red mist descends…

So, here is what I can’t understand.

The cabin crew are going on strike because they’re upset. Their strike is designed is to “hurt management”, which means “to reduce company profits”. They say that they do not want to hurt customers. This is complete nonsense. If they wanted to hurt profits, they would announce a strike for at least three months in advance. There are very few people who have not already booked and paid for their flights over the next month. So, yes, BA will have to give refunds, but actually they will save money, since there will be massively reduced operational costs. The biggest losers here are not management, but the customers. And most of those are families, hard hit by the recession of the past year, who have scraped and saved up for a holiday abroad. They will lose not only their airfare, but may have to forfeit the holiday and the costs of hotels, cars, etc. And BA management will bu unhurt.

So, the cabin crews must not try that line on me. Their goal is disruption and chaos. The outcome will be heartache and pain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Updated in March 2010 (now with an added Executive summary in the PDF format)

Download a copy of this article in PDF format – right click here. The contents of this article can be presented as a keynote or a workshop for your team. Contact our UK or South African offices to find out how.

As the world slowly emerges out of recession over the next few years, it will become increasingly clear that this was more than just an economic downturn. Disruptive forces are significantly reshaping the world of work. Some of these changes have been brewing for a decade or more – and now this recession has exacerbated their influence and speeded up their effects. Companies that have survived the downturn need to shift their focus to surviving the upturn. We are not ever going to “get back to normal” – a new normal is emerging for everyone, everywhere.

Understanding the forces that are driving this disruptive change will give an organisation the insights needed to adjust their systems, structures and methods and gain a significant competitive advantage in the next 3 to 5 years. It will also set them up for longer term success in the next few decades. It is therefore essential to provide not just senior leaders, but all staff throughout your company, with a framework of thinking about this “new normal”. You want them to work together to take advantage of the opportunities that will emerge.

There are at least five key drivers of disruptive change that every organisation in every industry and sector needs to track. These are the T.I.D.E.S. of change. (It’s a corny acronym, I know, but hopefully it will help with both remembering the framework, as well as making it easy to use on a regular basis in team meetings and informal conversations throughout your organisation). Here then are the key drivers of disruptive change in the next decade, and some questions to ask yourself and your teams as you plan to respond to them:

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M-Pesa, Vodacom, Nedbank and Rob Shuter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enter Shuter, Vodacom and Nedbank….

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

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

The age of cheap oil

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

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

The Next Wave or just a ripple?

Earier this month I posted a blog titled Is the bubble set to burst again in 2010? Today in The Times is reporting that the second wave may be hitting earlier than expected. The front cover article titled Dubai in deep water as ripples from debt crisis spread informs of the £14b in value lost by UK banks yesterday as fears spread of a dangerous new phase in the economic crisis that swept around the globe yesterday as traders responded to the shock announcement that a debt-laden Dubai state corporation was unable to meet its interest bill. The latest reports are that the market has recovered some ground but fears still remain on who is exposed the most to this new crisis. Is this the AfterShock from the tsunami that hit the world financial market just over a year ago and will our markets be able to withstand the next wave? Only time will tell but one thing that this new event does reinforce is our view at TomorrowToday that even as we emerge from the longest recession in UK records, there is now a new normal and the world has changed. Only the boldest and bravest companies will survive this Brave New World. Contact us to learn more about the trends we have identified in the New World of Work.

You can read the article in The Times or read on below … Continue Reading

25 “talented” people behind the meltdown

I’m currently researching and writing an article called “Talent has given business a bad name” and came across a really good article in The Guardian In this article Guardian City editor Julia Finch picks out the individuals who led us into the current crisis. Most of these individuals were the top of their class, hand picked individuals – talent who got it wrong! People like Andy Hornby, former HBOS boss so highly respected, so admired and so clever – top of his 800-strong class at Harvard – but it was his strategy, that got HBOS in the trouble destroying billions of pounds worth of wealth and thousands of jobs. The article by Julia makes a for a compelling read and names and shames a number of high profile business people and politicians

You can read the article below or click here to read article at The Guardian
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The James Martin 21st Century School – understanding the future

I am a huge fan of James Martin. Not the celebrity chef. Nor the inventor of the aircraft ejection seat. Nor any of the other famous James Martins. I am a huge fan of James Martin the futurist and author of one of the best books of all time, “The Meaning of the 21st Century” (see a previous post about the book here).

I recently discovered that a think tank “school” has been created at Oxford university, and named in his honour. It’s the James Martin 21st century school. It seems to be a fantastic institution. You can see an 8 minute video of the Dean of the school, ex-South African, Ian Goldin, speaking recently at TED. Follow the school at Twitter/21school.

The school’s aim is to tackle the toughest challenges of the 21st century, and provide input and resources for the Oxford university community on these issues (see the list below). They aim to formulate new concepts, policies and technologies that will make the future a better place to be. Very nice!

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The Hand of God – Part 2.

I watched in horror last night has one of the world’s finest footballers, Thierry Henry cheated in order to secure his country’s participation in FIFA’s World Cup next year. His blatant handball allowed France to score the goal that broke Irish hearts and shattered the potential upset that would have dumped the previous finalist out next year’s showpiece. Simply stated: France don’t deserve to be making the trip to South Africa!

Something is wrong when this kind of act is allowed to go unpunished and the stain that it will surely be on Henry’s otherwise great career will be something he will have to live with for the rest of his days.

While his is a massive moral failure, there is another equally damning failure in this sad scenario: That of the beautiful game’s powers that be. Their obstinate refusal to allow the use of technology that would all but eliminate such unfairness and ensure that we all can sleep easy, is stupidity at best and plain arrogance at worse. Whilst other sporting codes have found ways to ensure greater fairness through employing technology, football stubbornly remains in the Dark Ages by denying what we all know could not only ensure the right decisions are made but that everyone is left in a better place for it.

If Henry gets what he deserves as a result of his indiscretion, no let’s call it what it is, his cheating, he might live to wish there had been technology available that could have ensured immediate justice was done.

Where is he now? Most likely having a consoling drink with one Diego Maradona. They deserve each other.

Cleaning up the game (ban Henry from World Cup, and boycott Gillette?)

For the last few years, there has been a lot of talk about corporate corruption. It can probably be traced back to Enron, and the spate of corporate scandals that emerged at about the same time. More recently, the economic downturn has exposed some amazingly brazen corporate scandals, topped by the grand theft masterminded by Bernie Madoff.

Quite rightly, industries and countries alike are moving to try and cut out corruption at its source. The biggest danger is not rogue individuals (you can never stop them – the best you can hope for is to catch them early). The greatest danger is that corruption and rule breaking become endemic and “the accepted way” of doing business.

I remember as a young articled clerk at KPMG being stunned to be told by audit manager that a certain client account I was looking at was “for bribes”, because this was the “cost of doing business in the homelands” (the homeland states were puppet “countries” set aside for blacks in the old South Africa). Top multinationals, with the knowledge of their auditors, were involved in bribing corrupt local officials to make sure the wheels of industry kept turning. Maybe there was no other way. Maybe it was “how things worked”, but it didn’t help Africa, did it? We need to remove the CULTURE of corruption.

And there’s only one way to do this: immediate, brutal retribution when people are caught. One strike, and you’re out!

The reason I thought about this was because I watched the World Cup Qualifier between the Republic of Ireland and France last night. Ireland looked good to beat France, and force the game to penalties. This was a monumental result for them. But, in the dying minutes, Thierry Henry received a long ball just next to the goal, controlled it with his hand, and presented it to Gallas for an easy goal. Henry obviously knew he handled it – he handled it twice. In fact, he might as well have caught the ball and thrown it into the net. See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qZJrOcgkYM (see especially at 39 seconds!).

The best that FIFA could do now would be to ban Henry from the World Cup. He clearly cheated. He did it knowingly, willfully, and has fundamentally created personal advantage at extreme loss to others. This is corruption, and football is filled with it! They should use digital referees – why they’re scared of it, I don’t know. A quick replay, after the Irish appealed would have been enough to disallow the goal – and send Henry off! But, now that it’s obvious what happened, they need to send the strongest message.

But they won’t. Because it’s France. Because it’s Henry. And so, corruption will remain. And then we are surprised when it becomes endemic. There is no surprise here at all.

Ban Henry from the World Cup. That will send the right message.

The PM’s misspelt letter – a parable of modern Britain?

Poor old Gordon Brown. The Prime Minister of Britain just can’t seem to do anything right. This past week, he did what he always does, which is to hand write a letter of condolence to a bereaved family member. Every time a British soldier dies, Gordon Brown writes a personal letter to the family. But his past week he misspelt the name of the serviceman, calling him Jamie James, instead of Jamie Janes, in a letter to his mother. He had made this same mistake when he had read Jamie’s name in Parliament a s few days earlier.

Mrs Janes was outraged, and took her story to the newspapers (The Sun – the most sensationalist national newspaper available!). She made such a noise about it that Gordon Brown phoned her to chat about it (I do not say “apologise” because he refuses to accept he made a mistake). She then recorded the conversation and provided the recording to The Sun (listen to it here, while watching a video that includes a copy of the letter). Read more about the story here.

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The future for banks and a better way to pay bankers

POSTED 10 November 2009; UPDATED 11 November 2009

One story is going to run for the next 3-5 years at least: how to fix the banking system. The big media headline grabbing story is how to regulate bankers’ pay. It appears as if bankers don’t know how much their image has been tarnished, or how important trust is in their business – at least if their announcements of monumental bonuses to be paid out at the end of 2009 is anything to go by. The spoof magazine cover in this picture is just one example of how bankers are now less trusted than estate agents! (OK, that’s unfair on agents).

Whether or not they actually go ahead with this is irrelevant – the fact that they might have is enough. Change must come to banking and financial sector. It will come in the form of greater regulations in the background (linked to Basel II and other related legislation that will be coming). But in the glaring public eye, bankers’ remuneration is a key issue that will need addressing.

The CEO of Booz & Company wrote a great piece for their latest S+B ezine. Read it online here, or an extract below. Then, they followed that up with a further article about how banks need to change – read it here or an extract below.

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1989 – a year that changed everything (everywhere)

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down.

In just a few weeks, we’ll also celebrate twenty years since the Velvet Revolution (Prague, 17 November), the execution of Nicolae Ceau?escu (Bucharest, 25 December), and the release of Nelson Mandela (Cape Town, 11 February, 1990). So far this year, we’ve seen twenty annivesaries for Tiananmen Square (Beijing, 5 June), Ayatollah Khomenei’s chaotic funeral (Tehran, 6 June) and the Baltic Way (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; 23 August) – all political revolutionary moments that changed their countries.

Add to that, the culture-defining events of Lockerbie, Hillsborough, the invention of the HTTP that forms the foundation of the Internet, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and the debut of The Simpsons, and you have quite a year! That was 1989 (and a few months on either side of it, for Lockerbie and Mandela).

In my studies of generational theory, it’s common to come across a variety of definitions of who fits into which generation. Different authors, desperate to prove their research credentials, define the start of “Generation Y” as anything from 1978 to 1996. Most go with 1984 – defined such because children born in 1984 or later graduated high school in the new millennium (hence the other name for this generation: “Millennial kids”). Yet, to me, 1989 is a much better cusp year.

The worlds before and after 1989 were very clearly different. That is why 1989 holds such an important place in my mind – it marks a real change in human history. It will be remembered forever. If you want to reminisce with me, you might like the following links:

• A detailed introduction to generational theory
• New Statesman magazine – 1989: The Year of the Crowd special edition
• Lead article from New Statesman 1989 special edition
• TIME magazine 1989 special edition
• A list of TIME magazine special edition articles – easier to access index
• Remembering 1989, The Times, UK