Today is another anniversay. It is 29 years since Steve Biko died in police detention in South Africa. Steve Biko was a leader who focused on helping black people in South Africa to gain self esteem. He founded the Black Consciousness movement, and talked about Black is Beautiful. Of all the lives lost during apartheid, for me personally, his is the most tragic. I really wish I could have met him. By all accounts he was a brilliant human being.
One of my favourite “memories” of him came through a re-enactment of one of his trials in the movie, “Cry Freedom“. Asked by a white judge, “Why do you call yourself black, when your skin is brown?”. He replied with, “Why do you call yourself white, when you are actually pink?”. Cheeky, self-assured, witty and correct.
But someone told me recently of another famous Biko saying, and it is in this that Biko showed his prescient genius. He apparently believed that Africa’s gift to the world would be our ability as Africans to put the humanity back into business, government and organisations. He couldn’t have been more right.
Read Aiden’s memories of Biko previously posted at this blog.
Amazing how our burdens change over time. A few years back, some of the questions you’d ask when moving around were: will there be a road, will petrol be avialable, will there be a telephone, with there be a fax machine, will there be cellphone reception and now today … will there be a plug point available to aid my ailing battery. Bump into me at any Wifi hotspot and you’ll find me appendaged to a plugpoint charging my laptop, cell phone and iPod. It’s no secret that I’m not an HP fan. Currently adding to my PC-woes is the fact that the battery life on my laptop is nearing a max of 45 minutes. Working virtually, I demand a lot from a power supply. But I do wonder if a battery that is just shy of 1 year old should detoriate as quickly as it has? So, I best make this post a quick one lest my time is cut short.
Sue Grant-Marshall, co-author with me of “Mind the Gap”, our book about the generation gap, has written a nice primer on generational attitudes to health. It was published in the Business Day on 30 August 2006 - 
In the 31 Aug 06 edition of strategy+business, Michael Schrage wrote an excellent article about using the power of Web 2.0 type thinking to involve customers in innovation processes. 
Lynda Smith, trained Retirement Coach and Wisdom Continuity expert, shares some insights into the options facing those who will reach retirement age in the next 10 years. Its fairly clear that this generation of retirees are not going to give up work completely and disappear to the coast or golf courses. But what options do they have?
Aiden Choles looks at the business critical issue of retaining talent, highlighting some of the mistakes that companies make when trying to manage their talent. He argues that a certain amount of churn is inevitable, and possibly even healthy if managed properly. But that requires a shift in perspective on what talent is.
Aloysias Maimane wonders how we can shift today’s talented young employees from a Sprint mentality to a Marathon mentality. How can we get them to stay for the long haul, and stick it out? He suggest three simple solutions that provide some of the pieces of the puzzle.
Dr Graeme Codrington suggest that traditional segmentation models aimed at understanding the youth market fall short because they fail to see the impact of generational value shifts. In fact, he goes further to suggest that by combining lifestage theory, socio-economic indicators and generational overlays, you are able to gain insights into your market that would otherwise have been hidden. Sound complex? It’s actually remarkably simple.
Eventually, you will have to manage Generation Y staff. These are people who were born after 1978, who will in time become the backbone of our labor force. It will require a real understanding on your part of what causes their behavior and what they want to get out of the workplace. Generation Y’s behavior and motivation are much different than Generation X and baby boomers.
While watching the first episode of Survivor South Africa last night, Sam and I wondered how the series would differ from the US version and whether we’d see a distinctly South African flavour come out of the tried and tested Survivor script and screenplay. At first we reckoned that we’d see how much more tolerant South Africans are of our fellow earth-inhabitants than those of our American compatriots.
Penguins represent a paradox of innovation and narrative in organisations. Penguins are considered one of the most sociable species on the planet, and often live as a flock on an iceberg or cliff. Both fear and food reside in the same place - in the water. The fish as food and the sharks as fear.So now, how do you get the first of the flock into the water? The answer: the flock pushes the pengiun closest to the edge into the water to see if it is safe. This paradox is ironically labelled as “co-operation in a competitive envirnment”. It is the same paradox we find in organisation when they have to innovate i.e. “great idea Bob, you go ahead and try it!”
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