The latest edition of Strategy+Business has a great article on a new book looking at USA, Europe and China. Here is an extract:
What can the U.S. do to maintain its competitive position against the E.U. and China? Foreign policy scholar Parag Khanna believes the answer lies right under our noses.
Only 30 years old, Parag Khanna has spent more than two years traveling to more than 100 countries, hoping to see firsthand the flash points of geopolitics and globalization. From his observations emerged a book, the recently published The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order ???????? ????? ????????(Random House, 2008), a thought-provoking look at the future of global competition. Khanna posits that the struggle for global economic and diplomatic influence over the coming decades will pit three empires — the United States, the European Union, and China — against one another on a battleground that he calls the “Second World.” This group comprises countries in five critical regions — Asia outside China, Central Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America — that hope to achieve full industrial development through economic and strategic alliances with one or more of the three major blocs.
I met Tim Keel in Uganda last year, where he and I attended a conference. It was about reconciliation, learning leadership lessons from Africa and about postmodern communities of faith. I spent some time with Tim, and really enjoyed his approach to life. At that point, he was just finishing up his latest book. It has now been released, to some acclaim.
Tim is a pastor of a church in the US. So, he writes from a faith community perspective. But his insights about leadership are universal and timely. I highly recommend his book. I have just got it, and am reading through it, so here is a review I received about his book.
Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos
Buy it at Amazon.com
Book Review By Nanette Sawyer
I’ve been hungry for a book like Tim Keel’s Intuitive Leadership . It’s the newest book just out through the emersion books line. Once I opened the book, I ate it up. Like a wonderful feast, I had to force myself to stop eating and set it aside to digest for awhile. And digestible it is. Written with beauty, nuance and a personable style, Keel makes you feel you’re sitting at table with him deeply engaged in a hopeful, passionate conversation about the activity of God in the world and our lives. His insightful accounts of biblical stories shine bright lights into the texts we think we know, but he sees more. As he tells the stories, they shine floodlights into our contemporary situation.
Continue reading ‘Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos’
Boomers are variously defined as those people born from the mid 1940s to the mid 1960s around the world. Most researchers use the end of the Second World War as a reference point, which means that as of 2006, this group of people has started to turn 60. They are not old, though. Don’t be confused about that. This demographic tidal wave will have a greater effect on institutions and businesses than the aging of any previous generation. Because of the size and spending power of the boomers, mature values and trends will dominate marketplace realities.
The Chief Marketer recently put out a list of 5 ways in which the Boomers will continue to shape the marketing and branding landscape. Here is what they said (from author, Brent Green):
Continue reading ‘Boomers Turning 60 - coming into their branding prime’
A few years ago, some of the TomorrowToday team attended a workshop by Jennifer Deal. She certainly challenged our thinking. Her contention was that all the focus on generation gaps in the workplace was obscuring the fact that there are many similarities between people of all ages. She is right, of course - and it is a good “corrective voice” for business to hear. As much as there are certain distinctive characteristics of different generations, each person in your company is nevertheless still that: a person, a human being. As such, they have certain drives, ambitions, requirements and characteristics that should not be neglected.
Jennifer Deal has now turned that research into a book. We were sent a review and summary of the book, and thought you’d be interested in reading about the 10 principles for engaging staff, young and old. This is a great book that will help you not become stuck when thinking about different generations, and not overcompensate for generational differences.
You can purchase the book at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net.
Continue reading ‘Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young & Old Can Find Common Ground, by Jennifer Deal’
The more I look, listen, read and learn, to more convinced I am that our approach to leadership education and development needs a major rethink. Rather than focusing on static ’snapshots’ leaders need to learn how to identify patters, articulate ideas and provide metaphors that enable accurate interpretation of what is happening within their personal and business networks. The temptation (and legacy) is to default to finding ‘technical solutions’ - those answers that sit within the current paradigm and which can be analyzed, measured and managed - rather than engage in the true work of leadership; that of engaging themselves and others in the necessary ‘adaptive challenges’ at hand.
‘Adaptive leadership’ according to Parks in her book ‘Leadership can be taught’ (which explores the philosophy and methodology of Harvard leadership virtuoso Ron Heifetz - purchase online at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net) involves looking beneath the surface, embracing new mindsets, new learning and new behaviour; engaging complexity - seeing the whole and challenging deeply held assumptions and values. The kind of leadership that engages both heart and mind. In a predicable world where tomorrow resembles today, the old approach to leadership can survive. However, we no longer live in such a world. We live - and have to lead - in a world that is ‘tiny’, a world that is connected, a world of bewildering paradox and one that is no standing still. This world requires a new type of leadership and those tasked with teaching leadership will find less relevance in past models and will have to themselves, learn from the future.
I don’t know if you ever finish a book and feel like something different has happened? Something different to how you feel after finishing other books? Today I finished “The life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid” by Bill Bryson. I felt something different. It’s difficult to explain what, but I felt it at a deeper level than usual. Felt it in a different place and felt a different kind of thing. And while I can’t really pin-point where or what, I do know it felt good. I finished, put the book down, and just sat, stared, tried to think, feel, ….. and when nothing really special happened, I just got up and moved onto the next thing.
It’s a clever book, and being my first Bryson book, I assume it’s clever in the way that he’s known and talked about to be clever. It’s about him growing up in the 1950’s. But it’s really about America, Des Moines, to be specific in the 1950’s. And while I’m not American in any way, shape or form, I knew enough to appreciate and connect with much of what he reflected on.
It’s also about the changes that happened in America and the world toward the end of the 1950’s and the beginning of the 1960’s.
If I had to sum the book up, it would be in a sentence Bryson ‘pens’ on page 267 of the copy I was reading. Toward the end of the book. It was a sentence that grabbed hold of me and I haven’t been able to shake it off. It possibly, probably in fact, says more about me than about the book and what Bryson was trying to say. But perhaps not? Perhaps I’m right on the button?
“We were entering a world where things were done because they offered a better return, not a better world.”
Definitely worth a read : )
I was recently sent the outline of a book, “The Ten Faces of Innovation”, by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman (Profile, 2005) - buy it online at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net. In our work on “Invitational Innovation“, we have been telling clients for a long time that just like there are different types of personality, there are different styles of innovative thinking. Not a big thought, really, but an important one, nevertheless.
This book appears to put some nice labels on different innovation types.
Continue reading ‘Ten Faces of Innovation’
In our presentation on the different generations, “Mind the Gap“, when we talk about the Millennial Generation (born 1990s and 2000s, or slightly earlier in some countries - USA defines them as born 1984 to 2000), we often say, “they’re confident; so confident, they’re almost arrogant”. When I was a youth worker in the 1980s and early 1990s, the big issue was helping young people develop self belief and self esteem. I think we overdid it. Now, a new study of US college students proves this point.
The Associated Press reports:
Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.
“We need to stop endlessly repeating ‘You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”
[The research] examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006. The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,” “I think I am a special person” and “I can live my life any way I want to.”
The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students’ NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.
Twenge is the author of “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before” (buy it at Amazon.com).
Continue reading ‘Millennial Kids: Too Confident’
The title of the book grabbed my attention: “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”. Its by Richard Louv (get it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net). I haven’t read the book, but The Economist magazine quoted it extensively in an article about young people in the US not being interested in visiting the country’s national parks.
One of the thoughts is that technology, digital entertainment, malls and other amusements have pulled young people away from the National Parks. That is probably true (see article here or below).
However, I wonder if there is another way of thinking of this. Most game parks pride themselves in being technological stone age. “Its part of the appeal” they would say. To get away “from it all”. Well, maybe Millennials don’t want to “get away from it all”. After all, most of these parks have tarred (or least well graded) roads, electricity, running water and other amenities. So why not wifi access, good mobile phone coverage and Internet cafes? Why not? Sure, you might want to have rules about being aware of others and silence, etc. But why shouldn’t you be able to stand on top of a majestic mountainpeak, watching a spectular sunset, and MMS a picture of it to your mate?
Just a thought…
Continue reading ‘Nature-Deficit Disorder in our children’
ICICI Bank has started to become an internationally watched brand, since it was featured in “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” (a book by Prahald, available at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net). It is one of the largest banks in the world, by size of customer base and branches (nearly 90,000 of them!!).
Based in India, this bank has recently launched a “green” initiative, called GoGreen. If you sign up for email statements, they will plant a tree in lieu of the savings they make by not having to send you printed paper through the mail. This is a great example of a corporate using green issues to develop a competitive advantage. Its small, but it shows commitment to the planet, not just to shareholder wealth.
Just before going on leave I picked up a couple of books to read while I was away. I’ve never read a ‘Noam Chomsky‘ (apparently he’s one of those must read human beings before you die) and found this one, “Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World“. I chose it because it’s written in conversation style (interview by David Barsamian) around issues pertaining to the US imperial ambitions for the rest of us.
“I think not only the region (Middle East) but the world in general correctly perceives the U.S. invasion as a test case, an effort to establish a new norm for the use of military force.”
It felt like it could be an easy ’slide’ into Noam, and it was. What surprised me was that it didn’t turn out to be a monster, thud-factor, academic read that I was going to have to work hard at getting my mind around. It turned out to be a straight forward, in your face, heck of an interesting read. He, in fact, spoke regularly of academics and I enjoyed his abuse of them and their role in making things more complicated than they should be.
If you’re looking for an easy to read overview of Noam Chomsky’s view of the world post-911, and haven’t read anything of his before, then I’d recommend this as a good starting place.
His book left me with a few paradoxical thoughts. One being that on one hand the voice of the average person has never counted for more and has the ability to change things; sharply contrasted with the idea that there are powerful people and governments out there, and that if they can take out an entire country, they don’t even work up a sweat when contemplating me.
“The new doctrine was not one of pre-emptive war, which arguably falls within some stretched interpretation of the UN Charter, but rather doctrine that doesn’t begin to have any grounds in international law, namely, preventative war. That is, the United States will rule the world by force, and if there is any challenge to its domination-whether it is perceived in the distance, invented, imagined, or whatever-then the United States will have the right to destroy that challenge before it becomes a threat. That’s preventative war, not pre-emptive war.”
5 Steps to fulfilling work that fuels your passion, suits your personality and fills your pocket. By Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners. ISBN 0-02-864228-7
The 5 steps of the Rewire process - a formula we have used successfully with our clients - are as follows:
- Seeing the opportunity: Retiring is a going from and rewiring is a going to.
- Identifying your “drivers�
- Linking the drivers to your activities.
- Creating your rewired vision.
- Developing your action plan.
The real workforce challenge for the future is not a shortage of workers but an abundance of older workers who would like to keep working. Don’t Retire, Rewire offers practical advice to help employers engage those workers in new ways and to help older workers understand the arrangements that best meet their needs.
I enjoyed this book. It was practical and helps a person to plot direction and create a new and exciting future.
The Economist recently had a Survey of Global Talent. It was superb. At the end of the survey, they gave a list of sources and recommended reading. Here it is for your reference purposes (PS - purchase the Economist survey online here):
Continue reading ‘Recommended reading on Talent’
I am a serious fan of the magazine, “Fast Company”. Its one of the best out there. There is a fantastic new book that is a selection of their choice of the top articles from the last ten years of the magazine. Highly, highly recommended. “Fast Company’s Greatest Hits: Ten Years of the Most Innovative Ideas in Business” (get it amazon.com or kalahari.net).
The first article is entitled, “Everything I Thought I Knew About Leadership Is Wrong”, by Mort Meyerson. Here are some important insights about leadership (pg 12 & 13):
“In a world where the lines between companies, industries, and even nations get blurred, a leader builds an effective organisation around values and work style. And the leader learnt to define success in business as both producing financial strength and a generating team of people who support and nurture each other.”
“So what is my job as a leader? The essence of leadership today is to make sure that the organisation knows itself. There are certain durable principles that underlie an organisation. The leader should embody those values. They’re fundamental. But they have nothing to do with business strategy, tactics, or market share. They have to do with human relationships and the obligation of the organisation to its individual members and its customers.”
“The second job of the leader is to pick the right people to be part of the organisation and to create an environment with those people can succeed. That means encouraging others to help develop the strategy and grow the philosophy of the company. It means more collaboration and teamwork among people at every level of the company.” It means being a coach rather than an executive.
“The third job of the leader is to be accessible. I want to be open to people in a broad range of their experiences in life if they need it, and I want to be accessible for two-way communication that’s honest, open, and direct.”
Here’s a great description of the “connection economy”:
A profound, but silent, transformation of our society is afoot. Our industrial system is generating more goods and services than at any point in history, delivered through an ever-growing number of channels. Superstores, boutiques, online retailers, and discount stores proliferate, offering thousands of distinct products and services. This product variety is overwhelming to consumers. Am Ibuying the right digital camera? Am I getting the best treatment for my chronic ulcer? Am I signing up for the right service? Simultaneously, thanks to the propagation of cellphones, web sites, and media channels, consumers haveincreased access to more information, at greater speed and lower cost, than ever before. But who has the leisure and the proficiency needed to sort through and evaluate all these products and services? The burgeoningcomplexity of offerings, as well as the associated risks and rewards, confounds and frustrates most time-starved consumers. Product variety has not necessarily resulted in better consumer experiences.
For senior management, the situation is no better. Advances in digitisation, biotechnology, and smart materials are increasing opportunities to create fundamentally new products and services and transform businesses. Major discontinuitiesin the competitive landscape - ubiquitous connectivity, globalisation, industry deregulation, and technology convergence are blurring industry boundaries and product definitions.These discontinuities are releasing worldwide flows of information, capital, products, and ideas, allowing non-traditional competitors to upend the status quo.At the same time, competition is intensifying and profit margins are shrinking. Managers can no longer focus solely on costs, product and process quality, speed, and efficiency. For profitable growth, managers must also strive for new sources of innovation and creativity.
Thus, the paradox of the 21st-century economy: Consumers have more choices that yield less satisfaction. Top management has more strategic options that yield less value. Are we on the cusp of a new industrial system with characteristics different from those we now take for granted?…. The answer, we believe, lies in a different premise centered on co-creation of value. It begins with the changing role of the consumer in the industrial system.
The most basic change has been a shift in the role of the consumer - from isolated to connected, from unaware to informed, from passive to active. The impact of the connected, informed, and active consumer is manifest in many ways.”
The Future Of Competition: co-creating a unique value with customers, by C K Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy
I found this in my archives. A great book, and important info for any business.
The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market
by Michael Treacy and Fred WiersemaAddison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1997 edition
Buy it at Amazom.com or Kalahari.net.
“The message of The Discipline of Market Leaders is that no company can succeed today by trying to be all things to all people. It must instead find the unique value that it alone can deliver to a chosen market. Why and how this is done are the two key questions the book addresses.” (p.xii)
The authors maintain that there are three different types of ‘value discipline’ that successful companies can adopt to command leadership in their markets. Which of these (if any) is taken by any particular firm depends upon the sort of product or service that they provide, and upon the organizational culture that they maintain. These three ‘value disciplines’ are summarized in the chart below:
Continue reading ‘Book Summary: The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market’
In our Mind the Gap framework we speak of how Xers cannot remember insitutionalised apartheid. I am one of them. Graeme posted earlier about the Youth Day public holiday on 16th June here in South African that commemorates the youth riots of 16th June 1976. Being a white 26 year old South African I have found the last decade and a half of transformation quite bland. This is for a few reasons. In part, I was sheltered from the news and experience of emergency state-like events of the 1980s because of propogandised media and the comfort of white suburbia. And then, as Barrie would say, a fish does not know it is wet as it has no benchmark of dryness to measure against. I grew up, and began my conscious awakening amidst the changes in South Africa, not really knowing where we had come from in terms of institutionalised apartheid.
And so, in recent years I have begun to explore my history as a South African … the history not taught to me when I was in school. I visited Soweto for the first time on June 10th this year. Feeling surprisingly safe, I drove past a sign that pointed to the Hector Pieterson Memorial. I decided then to visit the Memorial before the 16th. The Memorial requires a post of its own, but on the day I picked up a book called I write what I like by Steve Biko. In wanting to get in touch with significant characters of the past few decades, I’d heard a little about Biko and thought this book would be a nice starting point to learn about the man who headed up the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa.
Continue reading ‘I write what I like’
The modern day manager finds himself, or herself if you like, in the tumultuous torrent of demands, expectations, requirements, compliance and regulatory pressure. As a sub-text to this malaise, one finds the issues of ethics, integrity and sacrifice as additional priorities in the managers intentions to lead effectively. Managers unite in the call to take these important issues in their “stride” as a qunitessential “lines of duty” in maintaining a profitable workplace. Clarke N. Western has now published this useful handbook that provides solace, encourgaement, practical tips and affirming stories of managers who have successfully navigated the murky mire of Management.
Continue reading ‘Ethics, Integrity & Sacrifice in the Workplace’
Yes, it exists … and you thought life was tough through your mid-life crisis. The Quarterlife Crisis is an often misdiagnosed period in the life of 20- and 30-somethings when the sheer weight of lifes choices bear down on the young and threatens to render them imobile. Travel, career, relationships, marriage, identity, passion, dreams, location … these are the decisions that Quarterlifers need to address when they are just shy of 30 years of age. Generally defined, the Quarterlife Crisis is that unique crisis of modern 20- and 30-somethings who are faced with overwhelming choices and expectations regarding their future.
Joanne Jowell weaves a wonderfully smooth narrative of her Quartlife experience when she woke up one morning in Cape Town and reliased that there was no script to guide her in decisions around career, home, idenity and dreams. This is a book that many young adults will identify with - Jowell has captured succintly the nuances of becoming an adult in todays changing world. Never before have people in their 20s and 30s had to face the magnitude of life choices and decision-making that we face today.
Jowell outlines her own Quartlife crisis and offers some observations and explanatiosn that will help fellow Quartelifers address the looming crisis in their own lives. Based in futurist observations, Jowell identifies how being a new generation in this world, along with advances in technology, travel, equality and early retirement creates a crisis that many folk don’t recognise, nevermind overcome. The book provides some wonderful to our Being Talented framework.
Buy it from Kalahari or find out more at The Quarterlife.
I found an interesting article about people with skills, vision and passion ready to use their skills to help change society. To quote from the back of David Bornstein’s book called How to change the World we are challenged by ” What business entrepreneurs are to the economy, social entrepreneurs are to social change. They are, the driven creative individuals who question the staus quo, exploit new opportunities, refuse to give up and remake the world a better place. Read the article here.
I believe in all sphers of life we are going to see these passionate boomers using their skills and talents to bring about change to society. Social clubs, churches and organisations will have an overflow of willing skilled individuals wanting to stay involved and making a difference.
When we think of peer pressure, we often think of teenagers. This is the lifestage when peer pressure is apparently most obvious. But anyone who has kids at school will know that Parent Peer Pressure is just as pervasive and potentially destructive amongst adults. The pressure to conform to other people’s standards raises its heads throughout our lives, in private and professional areas of our lives, and even in our parenting.
An author, Roselind Wiseman, has written about the phenomenon of parenting pressure in a new book, Queen Bees and Kingpin Dads (get it at kalahari.net or Amazon.com).
You can read an interview with the author here.
I’m in Australia, doinga lot of generational work. I always try and pick up the latest local writing on generations, talent and management. Last time I was here, I got “What Was It All For” (see review here). This time, my eye as drawn to bright yellow cover, and in-your-face title by Ryan Heath, “Please Just F*ck Off: it’s our turn now.” This 25-year old journalist, now working and living in London, has written an impassioned appeal to his generation (born after 1970, he refuses to succomb to giving them a label).
See the book at the Publisher’s website: http://www.plutoaustralia.com/p1/default.asp?pageId=352.
Its a Millennial’s rant about Boomers in Australia, and what needs to happen get Aussie to be globally competitive. I have only just started reading it, and seems to be well written with a strong message. More on this one later. (See Publisher’s review below)
Continue reading ‘Please Just F*ck Off, It’s Our Turn Now’
Rob Millard has a great blog on Strategy. He has recently added an entire category for inter-generational issues onto his blog. Check it out here (I think there is only one entry so far, pointing to a recent post of mine, but it should grow nicely, and is worth watching).
This comes at the same time as my latest reading group is starting on TKB. I’m reading, “Getting Them to Give a Damn” by Eric Chester (buy it online at Kalahari.net and Amazon.com). You can read it with me and a group of other people by going to http://www.tomorrowknowledge.biz/Give_a_Damn.
This looks like a fantastic book from the author of “Generation Why”.
Care of Barrie Bramley’s upcoming book review of the Toyota Way:
‘Is Toyota a conservative company? Yes. Does it seem to be very plodding and slow to make changes? Yes. Is it innovative? Remarkebly so. Go slow, build on the past, and thoroughly consider all implications of decisions, yet move more aggresively to beat the competition to market with exceptional products.’ - Jeffery Liker
In 1990, Peter Senge wrote one of the most influential business books of all time. “The Fifth Discipline” revolutionised many companies’ approach to knowledge management, and introduced the business world to systems thinking in an accessible way. (Get it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net).
There is a great summary of the five core disciplines, and, in fact, the whole book, at: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm#_The_core_disciplines.
There is a high level executive summary of most of the key concepts related to “Learning Organizations” available at: http://www.skyrme.com/insights/3lrnorg.htm.
