20 Inspiring Women To Follow On Twitter

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

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Relationship without investment – the example of online dating sites

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

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

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

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

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Role models for a new generation of young women?

I am the father of three pre-teen daughters, which is why I am very interested in the role models currently fighting for the attention of adolescent and pre-pubescent girls. So far, Miley Cyrus is a clear winner. I’m happy with that – old fashioned family values, Christian heritage, sickly sweet country-inspired music with inspiring lyrics, and seriously rocking concerts… what’s not to like?

But, on another extreme somewhere is the apparation known as Lady Gaga. So far, I’ve just tried to ignore her (but 18 million album sales says that’s not a clever strategy). But then, I read an article by an elderly editor of a conservative Catholic magazine in The Spectator, and he had a different take. Altogether different, and he gave me pause for thought. I think I need to check out what Lady Gaga is doing. It might not be that bad for my girls after all. Read for yourself…

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Connect with customers like you do friends

In my most resent article Onions or Parfait I put forward the proposition that companies should use new social media innovations to build relationships with customers akin to those of friendships. I strongly believe that customers want to engage in a open two-way relationship with companies that show a willingness and expend effort to build relationships. I just came across an example of 5 big brands that are using blogs, facebook and twitter to do just this. In a post by Attraction Marketing Starbucks, Zappos, Vitamin Water, H&M and Coke are identified as big brands that are actively using social media to build friendships and not just sell products.

I’m not surprised to see Zappos in this list. Zappos are innovators in creating connections with people inside and outside their organisation. I regularly use Zappos as a case study in my presentations and workshops. You can discover more about Zappos here:
Keeping employees motivated during a recession
Zappos hits one billion $ in sales
Zappos – delivering WOW through service

Zappos makes for an awesome case study in the corporate boardroom so if you are looking for ideas for your next meeting or proposal to your boss visit their website or email me and I’ll gladly offer my insights

You can read the article on Social Media 5 Big Brands below

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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…..

Learnings around working from home

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

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

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

Remember to eat

Prepare for e-mail overload

Get out of the house

Get a comfortable chair

Video chat is your friend

Don’t forget to stop

You can actually get stuff done

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

Best performing CEO’s in the world

Morten T. Hansen, Herminia Ibarra, and Urs Peyer have written an excellent article in the Jan-Feb 2010 edition of Harvard Business Review.

A lot of people have blamed short-term thinking for causing our current economic troubles, which has set off a debate about what time window we should use to assess a CEO’s performance. This article contains the first ranking that shows which CEOs of large public companies performed best over their entire time in office and the results cover close on 2,000 CEOs worldwide.

It may come as no shock that Steve Jobs of Apple tops the list. However, the ranking does contain a few surprises with some relatively unknown faces at the top. The inverse is also true: Some obvious candidates in terms of reputation don’t make the top 50, or even the top 100 or top 200. In fact, the list overlaps very little with lists of the most-admired or highest-paid CEOs.

Here are some of the headline findings:

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Why Gen X parents are so painful

Susan Gregory Thomas writes a great article, ‘Teachers Guide to Gen X Parents‘. Possibly the best description I’ve read as to how Gen X parents are experienced in a school context by educators and administrators, and then why they are as they are? To be honest, as a Gen X parent myself, I found myself very sheepish reading it. Having been fairly proud of my activity and involvement in my children’s school, I suddenly found myself being exposed with the possible truth behind all that ‘involvement’.

In preschool, we’re the ones anxiously arranging developmentally appropriate playdates for our Siouxsie-and-the-Banshees-T-shirt-clad three-year-olds. In kindergarten, we’re frantic that other parents’ children are starting to read cat and rat, while our Ruby and Dylan are still having trouble identifying lowercase letters. We think the gold-star system and its ilk are archaic and punitive, and we want to have a meeting to present our suggestions for alternative achievement systems.

By grade school, we’re demanding to know why the math program is not challenging enough for our child. We email our complaints about the seating chart. We openly deride the arts instruction and may rally other parents to the point of a coup d’état. By middle school, our kids have schedules and professional support staffs that resemble those of corporate lawyers. Look out, high school: We’re coming.

Thomas suggests the reason Xers as parents, are like they are, is because of their own school experience. Because we didn’t have, in our opinion, a great education experience, we’re determined not to let that happen to our own children. It’s not that we have any evidence that this is in fact what’s going on, we’re going to make sure there’s absolutely no chance it will.

We’ve been taking care of ourselves since we started going to school, and we don’t trust authority figures, because they weren’t trustworthy when we were growing up. Our parents didn’t know what was going on at school, and our teachers didn’t know what was going on at home. We’re not going to let this happen to our children — not even for a second. We’ll do whatever we have to do to make sure our kids get what they need.

One of those great articles worth reading. Be warned if you’re an Xer. It may knock you, as it did me, down a notch or two : )

Gen Y in Japan not consumerising

Interesting article from CNN Go Asia on 8 Feb 2010 about Japanese Gen Y simply not buying.

How times have changed. Japan’s Generation Y have become famous for hating to buy anything. They were first reluctant to buy cars. And now we find out that Japanese youth are also disinterested in motorbikes. Sales for 2009 were a mere 10% of the market’s peak some 23 years ago.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this younger set are different. Generational Theory suggests that each generation, based on the world they grow up in, develop a set of values that in places are different to the generations before them, and those to follow.

I guess what can be surprising is just how different they are! The challenge from a marketing and product development perspective is trying to read these trends and shifts in order to respond accordingly and quickly. Around the world, in most countries this market segment is a large segment. They’re large in number and in wallet size. Not seeing their changing needs and wants can be be detrimental to any business setting their sights on them to secure future growth and revenue.

In most developed world economies there is still a healthy baby boomer population to support short term sales and growth, but once they begin to exit the economy, business is going to have to pander to the younger set coming through. The developing world economies don’t have that luxury. They need to adapt and adjust to these young people NOW!

As this article suggests, this particular group in this particular country are not simply interested in a different colour, shape and size. They’re fundamentally different. Business is going to have to radically change how it goes about what it does, or hope and pray like crazy that they’ll change their world view. Fat chance in my opinion.

Latest TomorrowToday PodCast available

We continue to find the correct content to upload onto our PodCast. Currently we’re taking some of our blog posts and reading them, and then uploading a new one once each week.

The latest PodCast (uploaded today) is Barrie Bramley reading his post around Jacob Zuma, his latest child and what he and the ANC possibly don’t understand about how young people understand respect, in contrast to their parents?

• To subscribe automatically to our feed in iTunes, click here
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President X – a one year review

Author, Tammy Erickson, does a nice job in a Harvard Business Review post taking a look at President Obama through the filter of Generation X.

President Obama is arguably the United States’ first President who is a member of Generation X. (I say “arguably” since the boundary line between Boomers and X’ers is subject to debate. Born in 1961, in my view, he’s the vanguard of the next generation leaders.)

She does a nice job focusing on a few characteristics she suggests belong to Gen X and how these display themselves in the world of President Obama. Some of these include:

• Options thinkers
• Richly multicultural and diverse
• In general highly pragmatic
• Fiercely dedicated to being good parents

Her closing observation, is that Xer leaders can fall into the trap of having multiple options, which works in an increasingly comlex world, but this needs to be backed up with a decision for action.

In a world as complex and rapidly changing as ours, I admire the X’ers’ bent toward multiple options. I’m skeptical of anyone who argues there is only one way. But I also admire those who, after considering multiple options, present a persuasive and engaging case for the course they’ve chosen. Perhaps this is one change we will see in President Obama’s approach over the year ahead and a useful lesson for all X’er leaders.

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….

Redundant: The School Reunion: A Reminder to Leaders Everywhere

It was one of those father / son conversations that fathers are inclined to indulge in from time to time and that are usually invoked by some or other important milestone or ritual.

The ritual in question? My youngest son beginning his University career. Well let’s hope it isn’t a ‘career’ but rather a short stopover on the way to bigger things!

The parental wisdom I was freely dispensing had to do with the fact that at University he would make new friends and it was most likely that these newly acquired friends, would be the ones that would last a lifetime…unlike his school friends. “Why’s that?” he asked, somewhat puzzled.

“Well” I said, “once you exit school your generation tends to funnel into society at large and you will end up losing contact with them,” before going on to add some personal experience to the wisdom.

“But of course we’ll stay in touch…we’ve got Facebook” came the instantaneous retort in which I sensed a thinly masked tone of exasperation, maybe tolerance.

Immediately I realize the error of my ‘wisdom’ and the pitfall that had been my ‘experience’.  He’s right. His generation will stay in touch effortlessly and so, in one small matter, technology has again changed the way things will be.

How could I have been so stupid? Oh, and one last thing: be aware of ‘your experience’. In a world changing at the pace it is, experience is not all it’s made up to be.

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.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should

My colleague in the UK, Graeme Codrington, posted “3-d TV is here” a week or so back. It’s a short post about Sky News launching 3D TV.  When Graeme writes he’s normally very definite in his opinion, and he’s not scared to put it out there. If you read his 3D TV post, you’ll notice he ends with a fairly ‘limp’ conclusion around the future of 3D TV. I haven’t spoken to him about his lack of definite view, but based on his post, I share his same feelings around 3D TV. I think it’s a limp idea.

• Perhaps it’s because I haven’t seen the ‘new 3D TV’s’ needed to enhance 3D in this medium. What I have seen (my kids movies) has always left me feeling a little disappointed, experience wise.
• Then there’s the idea of 3D glasses lying around my house. We already have enough of a problem storing, not standing on, dropping, and spilling things on multiple remote controls, all sorts of Wii controls, iPod chargers, iPods, etc, etc. The thought of more paraphernalia to enhance my viewing experience far from excites me.
• While we’re on the glasses, how many are we going to need? Or will it become acceptable to ask friends to bring their own? And how silly might I look with ’sunglasses on’ when friends or family come around to watch TV?

The obvious next step from 3D is going to be  holographic TV (Holy TV?) . That’s 3D on steroids. That isn’t going to need any extra goggles to watch, and while it may mean some new equipment in the viewing area, the massive leap in expeirence from what we have now to that, will be worth whatever pain I may have to go through.

Is 3D then, simply a transitional technology between now and then? If it is, I’m guessing those that run the TV world have done their sums and figure they’re going to sell enough boxes to make the investment worth it? I’m not sure it switches me on enough to get into the game. But then again, peer pressure and great advertising may be all they need to make me a convert.

Still I do think there are times when being able to do/create/buy things doesn’t mean you’ve got to. I think this may be one of those times. Time will tell, and in the mean time I’ll go over to Graeme’s house to watch on his 3D telly : )

Will the next generation live to be 1000 years old?

Anthony Atala asks, “Can we grow organs instead of transplanting them?” His lab at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is doing just that — engineering tissues and whole organs (bladders and, soon, kidneys) using smart bio-materials and cutting-edge techniques.

Watch his amazing short video on TED MED

Learners with Disabilities

It was an interesting sign to have on the school bus I thought – ‘Learners with Disabilities’. Soon the school bus was to take another route to that of mine and then it was gone. The bus was no longer in sight but the bold sign emblazed across the back of the bus stuck with me as I continued on.

Learners with disabilities. What a pity contemporary corporate leaders don’t have that signage on their office door or perhaps on their desks: ‘CEO / Learner with Disabilities’. It wouldn’t be for a lack of space on their desk for we both know that isn’t the problem.  The real problem is, that no leader would come close to admitting a learning disability, much less advertize it. The system that has seen them make it to the corner office has long since squeezed out any doubt, questioning or openness to new learnings. Leaders aren’t expected to be ‘learners’ – they’re expected to know; they know what is best, they know what is needed and they know because, well because they have the track record to prove they know it. It is referred to as ‘experience’. As Mark twain so eloquently put it: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.  It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”

If we’re honest, often times we also want them to know for it relieves us of taking responsibility – and gives us someone to blame.  So we need to acknowledge that in part, the leader’s knowing is fueled by the expectations of others who look for certainty, answers and direction. After all, isn’t that all part of leadership?

Well this is how it works for the most part and I suspect you know this to be the case. Why just today I learnt of a CEO who used his authority to ensure that a key facilitator in a vital and delicate process concerning his executive team, would no longer be part of the process. The reason…the real reason? Well the Facilitator in question was simply too perceptive and not afraid to share her insights. Way too threatening for him is my guess. Leaders with disabilities: we meet them every day but unlike those school children, they refuse to acknowledge it.

Learning is not easy. For one thing it requires that the Learner is open to new information. Information about themselves, how they do – or don’t do things, about how things work or about alternative opinions and realities that differ from their own. Hearing such things is never easy and taking further steps toward understanding such things requires courage and conviction. It is the way of the Learner. Don’t ever be fooled into believing that the leader’s learning is inhibited by the lack of teachers – the teachers are all around him or her; rather it is the leader’s inability to recognize the teachers that surround them that is the chief inhibitor to the learning process.

This is a problem. Now more than ever we need learner leaders. In a world where the rules of the game are changing as they are; where things will not go ‘back to the way they were’; where a ‘new normal’ is emerging – in such a world, more than ever, we need leaders who are willing to learn.

And the first step? Simply admit to your learning disability. Sounds simple but it’s not. And without that first step, you’ll never get on the bus!

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.

The Silver Tsunami – Baby boomers are responsible for more than 40 percent of retail spending, companies need to pay attention to this.

Boomers control over 75% of the personal net wealth in the UK and yet most marketers and companies choose to target families and young adults. Another problem is that companies treat people over the age of 50 as one globular market segment, and they have been using similar marketing messages for the past two decades. Those that fail to recognise how much this market is changing and why are in for a shock. The main reason for changes is that baby boomers have arrived in droves. Baby boomers are those people born after WW2 and 1964. They experienced the economic boom of the 60’s and the moon landings. They are very different from the Silent Generation, those people born before the boomers, between the great depression and 1944.

Booz & Co have written an article highlighting how many companies are missing huge opportunities by not recognising these differences. Authors Richard Rawlinson and Natasha Kuznetsova also believe that “For most companies confused about how to reach older consumers, a good place to start is a cultural shake-up of the marketing organization, which should include the addition of an entirely new set of skills…In short, more gray hairs are needed among brand managers and external collaborators such as agencies, re search firms, and media planning organizations.

Employing aging marketers is a good solution our research shows that boomers respond best to marketing campaign and products when they have been designed by boomers for boomers. Another way is to train younger marketing staff to have generational empathy and to see the world through the eyes of Baby Boomers. Our Mind the Gap presentation and workshops provide this very solution. By giving marketers insights into the values and driving attitudes of people from different generations we’ve achieved fantastic results. For one client we increased total company revenues by 300%, for another we increased sales of key product line by over 70%; and for a leading bank we doubled response rates for a direct mail campaign targeting a saturated market.

You can read more about generational values and generational marketing by following these links :

Detailed introduction to Generations: written by world renown generations expert Dr Graeme Codrington
Onions & Parfait – Why customer relationships no longer need to be a thing of fairytales and pirate stories by generational marketing expert Dean van Leeuwen
Generations in crisis by Dean and Graeme

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

Knowing What You Don’t Know is Important

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Lost in Translation: The Essential Guide to Understanding the Male Species

Of course much has been said about the translation gap between the male and female of our species, why it is and what it is – including the theory that we each originate from different parts of the Universe.This is maybe so. However, bringing it all down to earth, here are some helpful translations that may assist either side, although I suspect that it will help those tasked with ‘looking after their boss’ when that means crossing this particular gender border.

Male: “Yes okay”…Translation: Absolutely nothing. It’s just a conditioned response

Male: “It would take too long to explain”…Translation: I have no idea

Male: :That’s interesting”…Translation: Why are you still talking?

Male: “It’s a guy thing”…Translation: There is no rational thought pattern evident

Male: “I can’t find the report”…Translation: It didn’t fall into my hands

Male: “Can I help with that?”…Translation: Why isn’t it already done

Hope to have helped you make better sense of it all. Lost in translation…it plagues us all both at work and at home.

Invictus The inspiration of Nelson Mandela

Although the movie Invictus is only released in cinemas this coming weekend I was fortunate to get an early viewing this past Saturday and for me the film is simply brilliant. A week ago I’d decided to read Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom, so watching Invictus after having reread the book evoked a number of emotions and I must admit there were parts where I felt very teary. My colleague Graeme Codrington wrote a post below and mentions that today, the 2nd of Feb 2010 is exactly 20 years after Madiba was released. As a South African I find this amazing. Twenty years ago SA was on the brink of a bloody civil war, there are still problems but the SA I know today is a much better place than it was back then. In Invictus, Mandela played by Mr Freeman is portrayed as a man both burdened and blessed by having become a living icon after years of political struggle. Now as a newly elected President, Mandela takes his astute wisdom, insight into people, and incredible leadership to unite a nation still fearful on one another. I still remember clearly the 1995 world cup victory, how all South Africans partied in the street rejoicing the rainbow nation. The Economist has written an excellent review of the film and you can read it below. In Invictus, Mr Freeman and Mr Eastwood to made their sunniest film yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mandela’s release is announced – 20 years ago today

1989 was a momentous year all around the world. I wrote about it last year, as each month we rolled through the “twenty years on” anniversaries of everything from Tiananmen Square (June), the Ayatollah’s funeral chaos in Iran (June), hands across the Baltic Way (August), the Berlin Wall (November), Prague’s Velvet Revolution (November), Ceaucescu trial and death (December) and the banning of the Communist Party in Russia (December).

In my home country, South Africa, it took a few extra weeks, but we added our own amazing memory to this list.

On Friday, 2 February, 1990, FW de Klerk, the State President opened Parliament for the new year. In his “State of the Nation” address he stunned the world, and all of us in South Africa, by very calmly and simply saying the following:

“People serving prison sentences merely because they were members of one of these organisations, or because they committed another offence which was merely an offence because a prohibition on one of the organisations was in force, will be identified and released.”

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What if a Board Meeting was like the State Of The Union?

Thinking About Thinking suggests that if board meetings looked like a state of the union, the agenda would play itself out like this:

“The CEO would make his way to the board room through a processional in the company’s hallways, flanked by clapping employees, shaking hands and giving thumbs up to the staff along the way.

The meeting would start with the CFO announcing the entrance of the CEO, and all board members standing and applauding.

The CEO would stand at the head of the table, with the CFO and CTO sitting in oversized chairs on a raised platform behind him.

All powerpoint slides and the projector would be replaced with a teleprompter.

When the CEO talked about cutting spending, lowering the burn and a hiring freeze, investors on both sides of the table would stand up and applause.

When the CEO talked about changing the healthcare plan to cover all employees and shareholders, the investors on the left side of the table would stand up and applause while the other investors sit stoicly.

Thereafter, the CEO would have to remind all investors that their job is to represent the shareholders, not their own partisan interests.

Rather than talking during the meeting, the CTO and CFO would convey their opinion by smirking, giggling, and giving standing ovations as the CEO spoke.

Meanwhile, outside legal counsel, sitting in the first row facing the CEO, would never applaud and would be generally expressionless throughout.

At the appropriate time, the CEO would give a carefully calculated shout out to his wife who is sitting at the outer edge of the board room next to some carefully selected key partners and customers.  She waves at the mention of her name.

The CEO closes the meeting by saying God Bless this company.”

Nice one : )

Once Upon a Time: The Power of Story to Connect

I find myself at a large hospitality group’s General Managers Conference. The group has seen a lot of change over the past tumultuous year and as a result, about 40% of those attending the conference are here for the first time. That’s a significant percentage. The exercise I have facilitated to help people connect and get to know each other is currently in full swing and is working a treat! The exercise? A basic methodology for facilitating what the Hawaiians term, ‘talk story’.

Talk Story, as its name implies, is sitting together and sharing one’s story. In this case the process is helped by the participants drawing a ‘river of life’ depicting their own journey. Magazines, glue, paper, crayons, scissors, ribbon and ‘other stuff’ are all part of the mix. It hasn’t taken long for the staid conference room to be transformed into a kindergarten type mess…along with the expected laughter, banter and general feeling of ‘having fun’.

Soon the delegates will get to share their ‘river’ and the mood will change. I know that as I have done this exercise often enough to know that when it gets to the telling, the mood gets somber. The simple reason is that for most of us, telling our story allows us to share things that we are often reluctant to share, things that don’t usually ‘come up in normal conversation’. Therein is the power of the story and it never ceases to amaze me. I have seen people get to change their perception of others based on ‘listening to their story’. I have seen attitudes soften and change; I have seen previously unlikely connections being made; I have seen understanding develop and I have witnessed both tears and laughter.

Most group start with a, ‘this will only take a few minutes’ mentality only to be surprised by how caught-up they become in their own – as well as other’s story. Every group is different but it is a wonderful way to deepen relationships, build understanding around diversity and difference and – well, do something that gives authenticity to the ‘values’ we usually have placed on the office walls. It is fun, constructive and taps into a root within all of us…the love of story.

You really need to try it sometime…and I’d be happy to assist you for each time I participate in the exercise, I leave with greater clarity about what it is our workspace is meant to be.

Rethinking Marketing and the age of consumer capitalism

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

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

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