http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1097317,00.html
“The biggest barrier to management innovation is the ego – a self that never changes�. These are the words of Jong-Yong Yun, the man accredited for taking Samsung from being a follower in the technology industry, to a leader through his management style and approach to innovation.
This in-depth article in the latest European edition of Fortune magazine describes Samsung’s focus on innovation and the success that they have achieved as designers, innovators, manufacturer, suppliers and change masters in an industry constantly watching over its shoulder.
I’m a Marcus Buckingham fan, but then I’m generally a fan of anyone that thinks the same stuff I do, so I am about to start giving away copies of the book to all my colleagues. This book should not be recommended reading, it should be compulsory reading for all managers and leaders.
The book (buy it online at Amazon.com and Kalahari.net) explores the difference between great leaders and managers, he believes that great managers and leaders are born and not made, although he acknowledges that they can learn some of the skills. He cautions leaders not to try and be managers if they are not interested in individuals but to focus on their strengths as leaders of many and cuts to the core of what successful managers and leaders need to know. Such as:
The 4 skills you must learn to “not fail� as a great manager
1. Select good people
2. Define clear expectations
3. Praise and recognise
4. Show care for your people
He defines managers as being people that are interested in the individuals and that they are not about transforming people but about realising the potential and strength of the individuals.
Continue reading ‘The one thing you need to know about Great Managing, Great Leading and Sustained Individual Success – by Marcus Buckingham’
You remember Barrie’s The Oracle of Kevin Bacon post? So just how prevalent is social networking in South Africa? (with a truly South African flavour, that is). Yahoo! Groups is a facility that some of us use, and we’re becoming pretty au fait with Skype and other IM tools, blogging is gaining momentum but is there an offering that is inclusive of all these elements? A one-stop platform for social networking?
It turns out there is…
Continue reading ‘MyCircle.co.za’
In “Who Comes First: Good to Great Marketing” at Marketing Profs, 23 August 2005, Paul A. Barsch uses Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” concept of getting the right people on the bus and applies it to the marketing function. This concept applies both to who we have in our marketing team, and as well as how we decide to sell to people. This is a perfect illustration of a phrase you’ll be familiar with if you read my stuff: Its less and less about what you’re selling, and more and more about who you are and how you sell. Both the who and the how are addressed in this excellent article.
In fact, just while I think of it, the only thing I’d add to what the author says is that actually in most cases, even before “who”, and long before “what”, you should actually first know “why”.
Continue reading ‘First “Who”, then “What”’
Edward de Bono, the famous lateral thinking guru, suggests that language is really difficult to work with, and often doesn’t convey what we actually mean, or takes too long to convey complex thoughts and emotions without being misunderstood. Although I have not heard him make the connection, I think he is even more correct in his assertions as they apply to emails, blogs, texts, SMS and other text based communications. We all know how easy it is to be misunderstood, or for incorrect emotions to be read into our words (or lack of words, as the case may be). This is even further complicated by the multiplicity of languages in use in the world these days.
de Bono suggests that we work on an encyclopedia of code phrases, probably referenced by numbers, to help us deal with complex issues quite quickly. You can read about his thinking at http://www.thinkingmanagers.com/management/management-language.php and http://www.edwarddebono.com/concept4.htm.
Emoticons were a small step in this direction, helping to put some emotional content to stark words. But I like de Bono’s idea. Maybe its too tough to make a single, global encyclopedia of codes, but within a signle company it is certainly possible, and would grow as a collaborative effort. The idea would be to use a wiki, or similar technology, to collaboratively develop a set of codes that everyone can later reference.
Continue reading ‘Language limits’
Here’s an interesting post from The Blog Herald commenting on the ‘demise of the geek blogger’ through the slow down of the ‘extrovert blogger’ to the rise of you and me, ‘the 3G blogger’.
A man died ‘in my arms’ this past weekend. After 20min of CPR on the beach we managed to get his pulse and breathing back momentarily - but it was shortlived. By the time the ambulance arrived, he’d been pulseless for too long. Just an hour before, a father, mother and daughter were enjoying some quality time on their boat - when it accidentally flipped and suddenly their whole world imploded. His tragic passing brought a simple truth to light for me again: Yes, life’s short (we’ve all heard that before) - but you never know just how short it’ll be … so do what matters.
Make that call, pay that visit - you know what’s really important … please do it.
I read this article today, written by Reg Lascaris - of Hunt Lascaris - after I had a similar conversation with a potential client, discussing the need to balance work teams, using expertise vs personatity types. I thought others may enjoy the article, especially the parts refering to the connection economy.
“CV ‘manufacture’ has become a parity market for those with some work experience and some tertiary education as many unsuccessful but well-qualified job applicants may have discovered. As in any parity market, the key for those doing the selling is to find a differentiator, a factor that sets apart Candidate A from B, C and D.
Recent developments worldwide suggest the magic ingredient is individual personality. When objective factors cancel themselves out, you are left with subjective factors like energy levels, confidence, get up and go, concern for others, enthusiasm and empathy.
This sounds wishy-washy until you consider organisational and marketing trends.
Continue reading ‘CV’s and the Connection Economy’
This newsletter was recently distributed by The Herman Group
Young Entrepreneurs Drain Labor Pool
August 24, 2005
Early indications suggest that the Millennial Generation, born after 1985, has a strong orientation toward entrepreneurship. They feel confident that they can achieve great results–at least earn a satisfactory living—by going into business for themselves. This population cohort is showing itself to be self-aware, astute, creative, and comfortable taking the risks involved with businesses.
This scenario is a good news—bad news situations.
Continue reading ‘Young Entrepreneurs Drain Labor Pool’
To read the original version of this post go to Innovation Tools - Case Study
Lights, cameras, action: Innovation ‘reality TV’ style at Quill Corporation
By Stephen Shapiro
Innovation — it’s the buzzword of the moment, and for good reason. In today’s highly volatile business environment, the need for companies to reinvent themselves repeatedly and rapidly is the only way to ensure long-term survival. Although many organizations recognize this fact, few can define what innovation means to them, let alone create a pervasive, innovative culture of their own.
The accepted notion is that sparking a culture of innovation would require hard work and a long time to produce results. I have found that sometimes the opposite is true; motivated organizations that know where they are going can move from bureaucracy to creativity with remarkable speed.
Continue reading ‘The Quillionaire - Innovation ‘Reality TV’ style’
Yesterday, Globe and Mail in their investor’s section, gave a report about Gap Inc (owner of Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy brands), indicating that analysts are nervous of its current performance. The feature was headed, “Gap Stores Trip on a Generation Gap“.
In between the information for stock analysts and a look at the company’s financials and strategy, there was a nugget of information which would make me want to buy their shares. They have realised that their three major brands have been targetting the upper income 20’s and 30’s, mainly women. For the past 20 years, this has been a great and unchanged demographic. They have two problems: firstly, this demographic doesn’t like their choice of fashions - and haven’t done so for the past few seasons (another way to see this: the buyers at Gap Inc don’t get this demographic group any more, and haven’t kept up with the changes); secondly, they have not had a strategy to connect with the 35+ women demographic - one that is increasingly important to retailers.
Continue reading ‘Gap stores don’t “Mind the Gap”’
In The Economist of 25 Aug 2005, A “Going global” feature looked at the issue of “Workers of the world attempt to unite against Wal-Mart” (login required, I think). The report is of a meeting of some of the world’s biggest trade unions, who are (not for the first time) seriously considering becoming single global unions. This is especially needed, in their opinion, to deal with massive mulit-national organisations.
“GLOBAL companies need global unions,â€? says Noel Howell, a spokesman for the Union Network International (UNI), a federation of 900 trades unions from 150 countries. It is hard to think of a single global firm that would agree. Certainly not Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer with 1.6m workers, 1.2m of them in America. It says that unionisation is not “rightâ€? for Wal-Mart, at least in America, and that unions “do not want us to succeedâ€?.
The UNI held a congress in Chicago this week with the supposed need to unionise Wal-Mart as a main theme. (Four other firms—DHL, an express delivery company, Walt Disney, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and Ikea, a Swedish furniture store—were identified as future targets.) Wal-Mart is leading a “race to the bottomâ€? in wages and benefits, the UNI claimed, and other big firms would follow by choice or necessity. According to a study last year by the University of California, Berkeley, wages at Wal-Mart were so low that taxpayers in California alone footed an $86m bill for health benefits and other assistance claimed by Wal-Mart employees.
Watch this space. This is just the beginning…
So asks John Bradfield on BizCommunity. He is thinking specifically from a PR and corporate communication’s perspective. As he says, “With the proliferation of blogs, should we take them seriously, and how will they impact PR/corporate communications? Blogging is at an early stage of development and, like the early days of the Internet, predictions about its impact need to be taken with caution. However, although websites were initially viewed skeptically, they now form part of the formal armory of integrated corporate communications tools.”
Its a great read about the dangers and potential of blogs in company communication strategies.
On BizCommunity, Louise Marsland recently looked at some key industry trends. The article is the first one at this page. Its focus is specifically aimed at the marketing community.
In her opening, she says the following: “If you are blogging regularly, have your Blackberry on order, know what 3G is (not a 3rd G-spot you have no hope of finding anyway), have Craig Native in your wardrobe, know what the Feminine Factor is (nothing to do with Fear Factor!), then you’re so up-to-date on coming trends that you might as well stop reading now. However, if you don’t even know what I’m talking about, best you resign your job right now and take up vegetable farming! Without a doubt, new technology options will have the greatest influence on media, marketing and communications options in the future, globally.”
In South Africa our tax collecting department (SARS) has made huge progress in the past 10 years or so. Collections have never been higher. Credit for this dramatic improvement is often given to the marketing campaign SARS has gone on to communicate it’s efficiency, zero tolerance approach, and most impactful of all it’s absolute power to reach into your life and turn it upside down. Nobody is above SARS. I’ve often wandered what would happen if the top dogs at SARS took over the Police Force in South Africa. I reckon they’d stamp out crime and corruption within 6 months.
But here’s the interesting part, and I have no real way of knowing, but when I talk to those I know who are in the know, they tell me SARS has never been in more chaos internally. Backlogs, systems that aren’t connected, etc, etc. I have a friend who has experienced some of this over the last 3 weeks. They just moved house and with the new laws that SARS has created, you can’t sell your house without it going through SARS. That way if you owe any money they apparently deduct it when the sale goes through and then pass on the balance to you. Luverlee. But in order for this to happen you must have a SARS number. So this year my friends wife filled a tax return (she hadn’t had to until this point) in order to get a Tax Number. She was told 21 working days till the number would be available. It’s been around 40 working days now and when you hear the story of being passed from pillar to post within SARS with no sign of a number of information on when it will be available, it makes for a comical read.
And there’s the paradox, or perhaps the power of marketing. On one front SARS appears to be a finely tuned and well oiled machine. But beneath the layer of hype and spin sits a giant that doesn’t know it’s… well you know what I’m getting at.
Nuf Sed
Is there something wrong with me if I start to look forward to the Saturday rugby game on Monday already? And now it’s Friday and I really can’t wait. And I normally don’t really even know the players that are not good enough to make the Bulls’ team. But somehow this green team is glueing me to the television….
Amazing what winning can do to your team, the individuals in the team, the supporters, customers, sponsors and brand.
Does anyone have a story of a truly magnificent, winning team he/she has been part of? Sport, business, community - doesn’t matter which kind of team - but let’s hear those stories…
I love my office. My desk is never at the same place - in fact, I can choose a different desk each time I come to office. Also, my desk is always clean - no scrap papers from yesterday or last month, no stationary-holder. And, of course - the coffee is always good. No normal office Ricoffee. But what I like most about the coffee shop business culture, is the people and the vibe.
It is now three years since the Greenfields coffee chain in Pretoria started to give free wireless access at their Hatfield branch and since then to all its other branches. You don’t have to pay a cent. Of course they hope that you will buy coffee, but they never chase you away when you just quickly want to download and go. The result - a coffee shop business hub second to none - especially in the Lynnwood Greenfields branch. They’ve put in multi-power plugs all around the shop so you’ll never be out of battery power. They are now planning to have printing and fax facilities available which they’ll just charge to your bill. The waiters also know that you are here to work, so they don’t come and ask you every two minutes (hours?) whether you want to order something else. Of course when you do need something, you need to do some waving to get attention…(not more than in other shops, though…;-)
The amazing thing, though, is the amount of networking that takes place in this shop. People know each other because they always see each other here and they take their coffee breaks together, exchange business cards and even do business right there where they see the synergies. We also watch each other’s laptops and belongings when the coffee starts to talk…
What a lovely culture to be part of. Viva Greenfields Pretoria.
The past week I learnt a lot about myself. We learnt that the final tests on our baby came out totally clean after what have been six months of anxiety and worry. What I realised, though, is that during these six months I was actually under a lot more stress than I thought. Only when I felt the immensity of the relief did I realise that I must have been under a heavy burden.
Suddenly I have the energy to do and start the things that I should have started months ago. Those creative thoughts that I get when I do my morning run. Two months a go I thought of them, but simply knew I didn’t have the energy to pursue them. In a business like ours where proactivity is the only way to survive, this is quite a disadvantage. Not only for work, but also for relationships with people that expect things from you which you simply don’t have the enegy to deliver. It’s almost as if my brain was rebooted in “safe” mode - loosing some functionality but with enough functionality to survive, at least.
Continue reading ‘My relief’
Google’s results have exceeded analysts’ expectations every quarter since their IPO on the NASDAQ exchange. In their most recent results their success was linked to the increase in brand profile,despite 50% less marketing spend than their competitors. This was in turn linked to the consistent release of new technology, and this was directly linked to their recruitment activity. Put simply, Google’s management understand that their success is linked to their recruitment. Google’s recruitment activity is some of the most creative in corporate society. It is clearly one of the reasons for their success, but arguably also their ‘Achilles heel’ toward potential failure.
Continue reading ‘Google’s recruitment - The way of the future?’
‚Sir, when looking at future trends and stuff - what should I study?‛
Being a futurist Industrial Psychologist often attracts a questions like this. It is often asked by a late teen/early twenty-something whose parents stand just that little bit too close for me not to notice the desperate grin behind the smile. But why is this question so ironic? Well, firstly, I’m a 20-something myself. And, secondly, it is the wrong question to ask. And if you ask the wrong question, you will always get the wrong answer.
Continue reading ‘Succeeding in the future workplace’
Behaviourist B.F. Skinner maintained that, ‚education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten‛. Much has been written about the need to create learning organisations and more resources than fleas on a stray dog have been spent on leadership formation within organisations. The fact that leadership formation assumes such a high priority within most organisations is fully justified but in terms of how it is done, is it money well spent? In the face of this learning avalanche, a nagging question persists: Is the effort surrounding leadership formation producing learning or education (as per Skinner’s definition)? In other words, are organisations and the individuals within them, better off for all the attention on leadership development? Are our leadership programmes really making a significant impact on the way we think, do business, and live our lives?
Continue reading ‘Are you wasting your money on leadership development?’
Margaret Wheatley in Leadership and the New Science (but it from Amazon.com or Kalahari.net) puts it this way…
“…in this day and age, when problems are increasingly complex, and there are simply no simple answers, and no longer is there simple cause and effect, I cannot imagine how stressful it is to be the leader and to pretend that you have the answer. A life-affirming leader is one who knows how to rely on and use the intelligence that exists everywhere in the community, the company, the school, or the organization. And so these leaders act as hosts, as stewards of other people’s creativity and other people’s intelligence. And when I say host, I mean a leader these days needs to be one who convenes people, who convenes diversity, who convenes all viewpoints in processes where our intelligence can come forth. So these kinds of leaders do not give us the answers, but they help gather us together so that together we can discover the answers.“
The SA Sunday Times (19 June 2005) recently reported on the latest findings from the UCT Institute of Strategic Marketing’s ongoing research into youth in South Africa. “New generation ignores race but worships money“. Sub-titled: “Who needs politics when you’re wearing the right brands?”.
The research backs up what TomorrowToday has been saying for years now: that generational characteristics are now more important than race and culture in predicting behaviour and attitudes of urban young people around the world. In different countries, communities and cultures around the world, young people seem to share similar high level value systems.
Some of the highlights of the UCT report are:
Continue reading ‘Is race a good indicator of youth culture’
Say hello to Google DS2 (Desktop v.2), and
Google Talk, both in beta format for now.
This newer version of Google Desktop includes a unique integrated sidebar, which acts as a portal to all your personalised information. It includes an Email portal, which reports directly from your mail client, a News portal that gathers info while you access news sites and posts relevant links to related stories for your convenience. If you enjoy sports, you’ll see more sports articles based on the info GD gathers regarding your personal preferences.
Wait it gets better… the Web Clips portal automatically displays new content from sites you visit, offering you the choice to add RSS / ATOM feeds as well.
There’s a Scratch Pad (simplified notepad) in which you can type notes or reminders to yourself, all of which are automatically saved. A Photo’s portal gives you quick access to all the images stored on your computer.
Quick View empowers you to prioritise your most valued links / files for quick access. What’s Hot downloads the most recent Top 10 Technorati searches for one-click access. There’s Weather Reports, Stock Exchange stats and plug-ins galore. Get it.
Then there’s Google Talk. Clearly aimed at dethroning existing IM / VoIP market leaders (watch out Skype) , Google Talk offers pretty much the same as every other IM tool, but with the power of the Googleplex behind it. Tell me what you think?
Having watched the segment on working moms (premium content, requires free login) on last Sunday’s Carte Blanche, the subject of balance touched a chord, yet again. Very aptly put by one of the interviewees, we seek the “Three C’s” in career, cash and children and many, as in my case, are ever-optimistic about balancing the three. As we move into the Connection Economy, women have huge value to add, both within a work and social context, and are becoming increasingly aware of it too. And as our talents become more valued, so the demand on them increases as does the tendency to spread ourselves as thinly as possible to keep everyone happy (yet another of our many virtues!).
So where is the balance when there is a strong need for a sense of purpose, value and independence and simultaneously a committment to nurturing and raising balanced, secure children? It’s a juggling act like no other and working flexi-time from home makes it no easier. There are many days when I reflect on the amount of times I have had to switch roles in the blink of an eye from mom to wife to businesswoman to taxi driver to daughter to friend to grocery-shopper to sister to cook to employer to cricket/soccer/tennis player to… let’s not even go there!( Sam Cowan - I’m with you on that one, girlfriend!). The psychologist in the segment points out that one has to strike a balance which works FOR YOU which is where I realised there is a 4th “C” that essentially needs to straddle the others - “choice”. This is one hurdle that seems to face many women today in that we don’t feel we have a choice in forcing the balance.
Having been blessed with amazing multi-tasking abilities but burdened with a need to prove them (and often perfectionism to complicate things further!), we take on whatever comes our way and in doing so, the balance we seek is ever-elusive. Until such time as we are prepared to make the tough choices and say “no” to those tasks and responsibilities which threaten our own personal balance, we’ll never be those imaginary perfectly in control women! On that note, I sign off to tackle my list of 101 “have to do’s” before lunch.
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