An outlet for musings, observations and futureneering from the company helping you to transition into the connection economy
At TomorrowToday.biz, we’re convinced that the 21st century will be dominated by women - in leadership, organisational structure, marketing, etc. Read our ‘manifesto’ on the issue.
Tom Peters interviewed the authors of Don’t Think Pink (buy it online at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net) - read that here. Also read their blog, Learned on Women.
Other people who like this book include: Jack Covert, founder of 800-CEO-READ.
Read a review of it here.
There has recently been so much blogging about ‘virtual officing’ and about our connectedness that I just felt compelled to write this.
Imagine my surprise. Driving down William Nicol on Sunday on my way back from church, I see these reappearing ‘adobt-a-pole-posters’ on behalf of a leading IT company to advertise their new Virtual office product.
Very interesting, I think, and decide to go into their website and read up a bit more.
Hmmm, quite a few benefits listed, travel less, increase productivity, reduce costs, etc etc.
So, what’s new?? These were exactly the benefits they experienced while employing a full time pioneer who was busy successfully proving that their products actually worked virtually and that their corporate message was in practice. Oh, I forgot to mention, from whom they then revoked this privilege - if one can call it that at all.
I continue to read. There is an article on seven ways to help make a Virtual Office work.
Check, check, check…
Here’s an interesting one: “And train yourself to trust”. Was this not in essence the issue, the lack of trust? Definitely not in the pioneer but in their own systems & management styles.
As I continue to read once more, the answer strikes out at me. Definitely a new way of looking at trust. Can one really talk about trust if you feel compelled to “stay on their backs because you rarely seem them”.
Virtual Office success cannot be measured in terms of ‘micro management’ and its success - this is part of the old school. OUTPUT becomes the measure.
It’s as easy as that, PERFORMANCE!!!
It’s funny how something that goes wrong, actually gives a company an opportunity to score massive brownie points - depending on how they handle it. I had such an experience with Kulula and afterwards went to their website and posted a comment. This is my comment to them and their subsequent response can be found here (word document).
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The Monday 9 May 11:20 flight from CT to JHB couldn’t take off because of engine problems. I was in a terrible hurry as I had to do a critical presenation in Pretoria at 15:00. Firstly I want to commend the frankness with which the captain explained the situation to the already-seated passengers. Your values: “safety first” and “honesty” were certainly visible. Secondly, to the Kulula ground crew on CT International a warm thanks with your assistance and help to get me on a one-time flight. I was there with my wife and baby and they made it real easy. To err is normal, but the way in which you handle the subsequent crisis is what distinguishes one.
Go Kulula, go!
Can we not partner with a bank / respected financial institution to roll out a massive “understand compound interest” training movement throughout the country? We do this as part of being proud South Africans. We have contacts with financial institutions. We also have contacts with VERY good trainers (in Sotho, Zulu, English, Afrikaans and maybe more,,,). The plan is this: We streamline the business plan. We get a few financial companies into the deal. 
We appoint a programme manager who gets paid out of the overall budget. (I have someone in mind already). We get a training designer to design the learning material ( I can help with this, but Estelle Gallager will be the perfect one). We line up train-the-trainers (I can also help training them). We line up teams from the sponsoring companies to do the training themselves. We make this a buildingUP/reachingOUT angle and capitalize on the team building benefits it has. We splash it all over the media. We make a difference on all levels of society.
Listen people: There are people out there who get cash loans in order to pay off other cash loans!!! AAARRGGHHH - this really hurts me. And they live in small RDP-houses and they are supposed to support entire families. Let’s not wait for government to solve this…
The Airports Company of South Africa is really working hard to upgrade facilities to make SA’s airports worldclass. On the whole, they’re doing a great job. OK, so the lifts in the Joburg domestic terminal are tragic, but that’s a small gripe in such a great facility. They could definitely improve air traffic control, and make sure that we don’t have to spend an extra half hour circling over Heidelberg every evening we’re trying to get home to our families.
But check this out: voice activated, live flight information. For anyone wanting to check the status of a flight at any airport in SA, just phone: 086 72 77 888. Fully automated but using voice prompts. Not too exciting for Americans - they’ve had it for a while - but quite impressive that I think ACSA are the first SA company to use the technology.
This morning I took my baby to Ampath to get blood samples for the Netherland-lab. We also had an option to take him to the Pretoria Academic Hospital tomorrow for the same sample. Obviously we rather decided to go for the Ampath-option. You know - first world, private sector, blah blah blah. Anyway, the sister couldn’t even spell “Francois”, let alone obtain the blood sample. After the second prick (with a much more vicious lance-like utensil) she still couldn’t get nearly enough blood to cover the required space on the ticket. She then called two other sisters and none of them have ever done this before. So we decided to stop the circuis (baby screaming) and take the state-hospital option.
What an ironical situation. There at Pretoria Academic Hospital you will find a Dr Izel Smuts. She is a world-famous pediatric neurologist yet she has her life their on grass-roots level, so to speak. All the private pediatricians we talked to, refered us to her as a last resort - because she’s the best. She doesn’t have a secretary. Her office, the clinic where she sees patients and the ward where she does her rounds are each a few blocks apart. Her desk is smaller than a 2-man table at a coffee shop. When you walk into that clinic it really feels as if you are in middle Africa somewhere. Really. And of course she only gets a state salary.
Amazing how South Africa presents vignettes like this one. People just living out their passion - no, their calling - and not asking for anything more than being able to make a living contribution of outstanding excellence.
In an information-overloaded society who cares who blogs and why? Note that is a question and not a statement. But could it be that when one has 109 books on the ‘waiting to be read’ shelf, a pile of journals, magazines and clippings a couple of zillion meters high (Ok that’s an exaggeration but the book number isn’t)…and this is just the print media…that blogging becomes an irratating addition to an already irritating overload? Or…
Continue reading ‘Blogging…who cares?’
This was sent to me by email. I am trying to track down the URL to reference it properly, but for now, enjoy.
EDS’ Jeff Wacker: Interactive workplace scary — in a good way
POSTED:03 May 2005, SOURCE: Edmonton Journal
Gamers could rule the world when the Next Big Thing comes down the technology wires, according to futurist Jeff Wacker.
Wacker calls it autonomics, and it will have as huge an effect on our lives as the last Big Thing — the personal computer — the Texas author, lecturer and bison rancher told an audience at MacEwan College on Monday.
Autonomics is an intelligent, instinctive system that interacts with us rather than merely responding to our commands, the same as the body reacts when you start running by increasing the heartbeat and oxygen intake, Wacker said.
And interactive games are a great way to teach people how to manage this scary future, he said.
Continue reading ‘The Interactive Workplace’
Since Le Monde (see it here), Fortune and BusinessWeek ran cover stories on Blogs and business (read BusinessWeek’s here), it seems that a lot of column inches have been expended on debating whether blogging is just a fad or the “next big thing”. 
I think its the latter. Its the virtual water cooler, that allows formal and informal communication within a virtual office (which includes brick and mortar offices where people spend more time at their computers than in the corridors anyway), and extends beyond the boundaries of the company to, to virtual networking between people across companies and industries. For this reason alone, blogging is worth taking seriously - even if you just act as an observer, ready to react if required.
If you need examples of companies that weren’t ready for it all, just flip to Debbie’s Weil’s CEO blog site for info on Kensington laptop locks, Kryptonite’s bike locks, and more.
On our blog, we have a category called “The Quick and the Dead” where we tell stories of those companies who understand the connection economy, and those who don’t! There is some great reading to be done (click here for the full list so far). We usually contact the companies involved, and link them to our blog site so they can see what we’ve written - but that is a courtesy not often extended to brands by other bloggers.
In chatting to a colleague earlier today, we realised the power of this medium, and what would happen if it was turned on us. “People out there can just as easily blog about us”, he said. Quite a thought. But, then I relaxed, because if they did, we would know about it - most likely - within a day. How is this possible? Simple, we use Google Alerts. Free of charge, you put in search strings you want Google to monitor - on the web and/or in the news - and then each time Google picks something up, it sends you a link immediately (or once a day/week/month in summary format). As soon as Google knows about it, so do you. And then you can choose to act on it. I have about 20 alerts active at the moment, and takes less than 5 minutes to scan them each day, and see if there is anything of importance to respond to. If someone blogs about us, we’ll know about it, and can start the brand protection process immediately.
Blogging is important - and needs to be seriously considered. IBM has encouraged all 320,000 employees to start blogging (read about it here) - and have even posted a PDF of blogging guidelines for employees (get it here, or a summary here). BusinessWeek put out some tips for running your blog as a corporate endeavour - available below.
Continue reading ‘Ignore blogs at your brand’s peril’
Control, Alt, Delete…the dreaded key that is brought into play when your will and that of the computer march off in different directions and a reboot becomes the final option. Control, alt, delete should be what leaders reach for if they are to lead effectively into the future. The temptation for leaders to guard the tried and tested, to entrench the philosophy and methodology that has resulted in success is both understandable as it is compelling. However that is the best way to ensure failure in a context that demands we keep up with the times or perish. Leaders have to change…and the change that is required sits not at the perriferary (where it can be delayed or even ignored) but rather at the core where ignoring it is akin to turning your back on a charging bull. Tom Peters writes…
Continue reading ‘Control, Alt, Delete - the key for leaders!’
Last week I got an e-mail from one of the tech sites stating that FireFox (the browser you should be using by now) had a security flaw. No kidding on my next download, there was another mail from the same tech site, saying FireFox had released a patch, and then my FireFox browser automatically informed me of the patch to download. Wild.
Netscape (click here) released their new browser this last week. Again after shouting about it’s security, it too was found ot have a flaw, to which it very quickly responded with an update.
That’s the beauty of the world of open-source. It’s a community of people working for a greater good (ok so it’s not that idealistic) but it works.
Don’t you just love that.
It is our contention that the emerging era (we call it the “connection economy”) is forcing companies to make a massive shift from “what” they sell to “how” they sell and “who” they are as the primary competitve advantages. This means that companies must take public perception of them very seriously. This is where blogging becomes the “next big thing” - another tech weapon in the transparency war.
Disturbingly, many of the issues that companies now have to contend with have a religious underpinning. Especially in America, evangelical Christians, with their schizophrenic love of personal armament, hatred of abortion, support of the death penalty and abhorrence of euthenasia, are becoming more and more active in their activism.
Check out this article in BusinessWeek, where Microsoft flip-flopped on supporting/not supporting the civil rights of gay marriages.
Culture Wars Hit Corporate America: Increasingly, business must weigh in on hot social issues — and suffer interest groups’ slings and arrows
In this weeks Sunday Times (South Africa) on page 4 in the main section in the bottom right corner is a small piece with the title, ‘Party debates what to do about race’. In summary the question being asked by the ANC is this, in a post-apartheid South Africa, does the characterisation of race contradict the Freedom Charter which states that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white”? And a secondary question is, what is meant by ‘African’ in the context of a non-racial South Africa?
Both these questions are difficult to answer as they don’t just exist within a South African context, the answer is also complicated because South Africa and South Africans find themselves participants of a larger transition of society and generation. The ANC would be making a mistake if it did not take at least these two other transitions into account when sitting to find some answers.
Continue reading ‘What makes one African?’
A while ago one of our Blogs featured a thought on whether Mobile Phones would get more complex or more simple? What can possibly be added, or what should rather be taken away? That debate aside, it’s time we had a mechanism that allowed us to filter out Spam. If sms spam hasn’t hit your phone yet, it’s going to. Soon!
I get 2 or 3 a day. One, sometimes two from some fool asking if I’d like to be his and sometimes her friend? No! And then every now and then South Africa’s green airline sends me a special. Last week they sent one, and got their own name wrong in the spelling. Duh!
And then of course there’s the sms spam that hacks me off the most, from my own Mobile Phone Provider, Auto Page Cellular (Click here if you really want to see them). You’d think they’d get it more than anyone else? That sms is still sacred and shouldn’t be exploited just yet for spam. Well not unless you want to hack off your clients. Well done on that front. You’ve succeeded completely.
Or maybe they just figure it’s going to happen sooner than later, so they’ll be the first in? Good luck. You want my opinion….. this is one area you don’t want to be rushing to be first in.
Good to Great and its predecessor, Built to Last are two of the best selling business books of all time. Built to Last is, in my opinion, a seriously dodgy book that purports to give timeless advice for building enduring companies, by analysing the antics of seriously industrial age companies over the past 50 years. There are, of course, some good principles that emerge, but on the whole, I’d give it a skip.
Good to Great, by Jim Collins (buy it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net) (2001) is a much better aid for 21st century companies battling with the connection economy and how to build a really great company. The one enduring weakness of Collins’ work is that he only focuses on stock market returns as a measure of greatness, rather than societal contribution - but, in his defense, he has very little option given that he was trying to do an objective, scientific analysis.
There are some excellent summaries of Good to Great available online - I’d recommend this PDF document, from Executive summaries.
I have been a fan of Dan Tapscott for years. He was one of the first authors to fully grasp the implications of the Internet technology, and has been writing about its potential and impact since the early 1990s. I still think his book on how it will impact young people, especially educationally, is one of the best yet written: Growing Up Digital may be a bit dated on the tech info side, but its still a brilliant read (get it at Amazon.com). In 2003, he jumped into the arena of corporate governance, with (buy it at Kalahari.net).
Trolling through the Net, I found a book review for one of his earlier books, from 1997. It’s “The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence”, (buy it online at Amazon.com) and the review/summary is available here.
As I write this I stare across the plains of Northern KwaZulu-Natal. The closest town is 30kms away. Very few people speak anything but Zulu. Very few people had any (proper) education. My mother-in-law started a Nougat factory here and currently she employs about 160 people. All women. All Zulu. Most of them on education NQF-level 1 and ABET level 1-2. Fransie, my wife, runs a coaching and training programme with the workers. The purpose is to give them proper ABET (Adult Basic Education and Training) training and to give them the opportunity to share and work through some of their personal difficulties.
Guess what their main personal difficulty is: They receive at least R1000 per month. They need to sustain themselves, their children, their uncle’s children and pay school fees. Still they need/want to buy furniture and clothing. They get credit from Joshua Door and Jet. They don’t understand how credit works. They get in trouble meeting the repayments. They get a cash loan to pay the debt. They are stuck.
What an unethical way to do business! Making money out of people’s crises and their lack of understanding compound interest. How can someone who can hardly count understand compound interest and its devestating effects (if it works against you)? I think government should, as part of its fight against poverty, ban all loan sharks. Let them use their financial skills to make money out of the wealthy and not to squeeze the poor to death!
Me: “Hi, this is Jean Cooper speaking. I just want to point out a small administrative error: I hired a car from you at R88 per day, but you charged me R235 a day.”
Car rental company: “No, sir, it is not an admin error. You were supposed to hire the car for 6 days, but you brought it back on the 5th day.”
Me: “My flight schedule changed. Yes, I brought it back earlier but how can that constitute a 294% price increase? What harm did I cause you by bringing the car back earlier? In fact, by having the car back a day earlier you could rent it out again one day earlier…”
Car rental company: “I’m sorry sir, the contract was for 6 days, not for 5.”
Me: “Yes, but can you understand my point? I will pay for the full 6 days - you can even leave the car in your carpark for today, if you want to. I benefited you by bringing the car back early. How can you penalize me for that?”
Car rental company:“Sorry sir, our system works that way.”
Me: “Why?”
Car rental company:“Because the contract was for 6 days, not for 5.”
Me: “I know about the contract, I’m asking for some reason. Can’t you change the system?”
Car rental company:”Sir, our system works this way. We had a contract….”
Round and round we went. Their system vs. my unique situation. And it’s true - we had a contract for their 6-day winter special which I violated by bringing the car back EARLY. But I’ll never use them again. Nor will my entire family. Nor will my network.
(I’m not putting their name here as I don’t want to use the power of this blogger for my personal fights)
The Open Magazine (a weekly e-zine for Linux and Open Source computing), recently ran an article entitled “The Connection Economy” by by Geoff Cohen, Senior Consultant, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation
(read it here). It’s a nice simple, and short summary that prefers the title, the “adaptive economy” for the transition time we find ourselves in.
I have reproduced the entire piece below.
The Independent (UK) on Sunday, 15 May, (read it here - premium content) reports that Ikea is dominating a market you wouldn’t expect. They have had a wedding in a (Canadian) store, their famous in-house branded meatballs have become legendary and their restuarants have become the first choice for many couples on Valentine’s day. An estimated 10 per cent of Europeans are now conceived on the store’s beds. Elen Lewis, the book’s author, said many Ikea staff believed that the brand was good for a couple’s sex life because of its obsession with flatpack design.
The queues for the car park are enough to push many couples to breaking point. But a new book claims that a shopping trip to Ikea improves marital harmony. Great Ikea! A Brand for all People (but it online at Amazon.com).
The book attributes much of the store’s success to the fact that its self-assembly furniture allows men to reclaim their hunter-gatherer roots, and so keep their relationships healthy - by demonstrating to their wives and children that they are capable of masculine tasks. In Sweden, the aseembly of a piece of Ikea furniture has now become the standard final act of a stag night out.
This reminds me of the story (I cannot remember the details, so please remind me if you do), of the company in the 1950s (or so) that first gave us instant cake mixture. They couldn’t get it to sell, because the generation of the day needed to feel that they were actually working hard to bake. So, they changed the recipe to say “just add an egg”. They didn’t need to, but it gave the women something to do to actually bake the cake. Their sales rocketed after this.
Maybe Ikea has found the same secret with men!
A number of things coalesced for me this evening - so I can’t help myself- I should have been in bed twenty minutes ago. I got home a few hours ago, after a great presentation to about 250 parents at a school - my mind was buzzing, and as part of the relaxation technique I decided to have a long soaking bath and read a good book. Couldn’t choose which book to read, so picked up Tom Peters’s Re-Imagine! (but it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net) . I have been avoiding this book for awhile - it just looked a bit ADD to me (but that’s how I look to others, so no disrespect meant). (PS - also check out Tom’s blog site: http://www.tompeters.com (hey, Tom, get trackbacks!).
I’m not sure what the rest of the book is like, but the first 50 pages were excellent. By then my bath was lukewarm. As I got out, I noticed a large A3 poster on my bed - it turns out it’s my six-year-old daughter Amy’s first school project. Amy is in Grade 0 - a singularly badly named school year, though not as bad as her sister Hannah who is in Grade 000 (triple nought) - so this is a milestone for her, and one she obviously wants me to be involved in.
In his book, Tom Peters calls for a new vision. He imagines:
How can I help my daughter to become one of these beings? One of the ways is to heighten the entrepreneurial instinct - may be getting her to ask the question, “how can I make money out of this?” But even as I had better thought, I realised that that type of thinking is part of the old contract. To help my daughter be part of the new one, I need to get her to ask an entirely different type of question. A question I can embed in her consciousness - a question she will ask of everything she ever does. WOW!
What will the question be?
Right now, a few moments before switching off and going to bed (and possibly a few moments after my brain has switched off), I am leaning towards, “how is this adding value to other people?” So, we went to Cape Town, we took photos, we stuck them on cardboard, we’re showing you - but what value have we added? How have we improved other people’s lives? How is this adding value to the people?
I think I like that…
You’re a leader? Check.
You want to connect internally and externally with your network? Check.
You don’t feel the traditional channels are working as well as they could? Check.
You’ve heard of blogging, but it sounds scary/tough/like some school kid’s play thing? Check.
If you’re still with me, then you need to get with the programme. Blogging is fast becoming a strategic leadership tool, going way beyond fringe gimic, to the “next big thing”. There are some great resources available for getting going as a serious business blogger. Check out our own: Blogging 101 (or Blogging for Boomers) and Why We Blog.
But also check out the following:
More links coming here soon.
Here is an interesting extract (with some random commentary by me) from an address by Dr Goran Carstedt (2002), a former senior executive at Volvo and IKEA (See original here).
ORGANISATIONAL learning (OL) is the process of identification and correction of errors in organisations, in which learning takes place through individuals who act as organisational agents. This is sort of obvious, but often needs to be said. An “organisation” does not know anything. Its maximum potential knowledge is the sum of all the knowledge of all of its employees and network. Its actual organisational knowledge is the sum of the actual knowledge used by actual employees when making actual decisions. I’d guess the ratio of actual knowledge to potential knowledge is somewhere in the region of 1:100 for most organisations.
The four integral elements linked to OL are knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation and organisational memory.
Continue reading ‘Willingness to learn promotes organisational change’
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