We’ve been talking almost since the recession began about a talent exodus. Our view has been that as soon as the economy begins recovering and companies start hiring again, there is going to be a tidal wave of staff movement. We’re calling it a talent exodus.

It should be obvious why this will happen. People have been overworked, and often abused, by their employers during the downturn. Imagine, for example, what it must be like to work for BP right now, when your boss has just announced his retirement at age 53 and a £ 600,000 a year pension for the rest of his life. You will be paying for that pension out of your salary, which has not increased in two years, nor will you get a bonus this year. Most other company examples are less extreme, but the same outcome exists – people are ready to look around at other options.

Secondly, when companies begin expanding and looking for new talent, they will not favour the currently unemployed. They will prefer to hire new staff from other companies, and they will not be constrained by industry boundaries either. So, your staff will be getting head hunter calls soon, and most will be willing to take the calls.

And now, a survey confirms our instinct. According to Deloitte LLP’s fourth annual Ethics & Workplace Survey, one-third of employed Americans plan to look for a new job when the economy gets better. Of this group of respondents, 48% cite a loss of trust in their employer and 46% say that a lack of transparent communication from their company’s leadership are their reasons for looking for new employment at the end of the recession.

It’s not too late to do something about this now! But you need to start now. This issue should be top priority and the head of every management agenda for the next year! If it’s not on your leader’s radar, your company is in big trouble.

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I really enjoy clever visualisations of data (see previous blog entries on this here). So, this is the shortest of blog entries to alert you to one I just discovered. Brought to us by GE, it’s a visualisation of how various countries will age over the next few decades. See the population pyramids expand and contract, and compare two countries at a time. It’s pretty easy data, but well done as a Java Applet.

Check it out here: http://www.ge.com/visualization/aging/

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Download a copy of this article in PDF format – right click here. The contents of this article can be presented as a keynote or a workshop for your team. Contact our UK or South African offices to find out how.

My company, TomorrowToday, researches the new world of work, and focuses especially on helping our clients to understand the disruptive forces that will change the world in the next decade. We use a variety of constructs or frameworks to help people understand and respond to these issues. One of my favourites is our “TIDES of Change” framework (read an extended article on it here).

I was recently asked to simply list some of the key workforce trends of the next decade. It was an interesting exercise. So, without much explanation or detail (search this blog site for more details on each of these trends), here is a list of the most important issues we’ll be facing in the next few years in relation to our employees, leaders and teams. There are obviously some variations in different world regions, but these are fairly general trends for the next decade:

1. More older workers – Especially in the developed world, but increasingly in every market and country we will see people delaying retirement and staying longer in the workforce. This may be because governments
change retirement ages, or because those in the private sector just choose to work longer – either way it has the same effect. There will also be more older entrepreneurs. Luckily, they will also be an increasingly important older consumer market too. In 1900, the average length of retirement was 1.2 years. In 1980, it was 13.6 years. In 2010, it is 30+ years. By 2020, it will have reduced again, mainly because older people are not retiring. This will also bring age-related challenges for occupational safety and health, including limitations that come with age. But it might also be true that in developed countries (especially the USA) younger workers will face their own health issues, especially related to obesity.

2. Key skills deficits across multiple industries – For many years, the number of engineers has been declining (especially civil and mechanical engineers). The number of legal and accounting graduates has been increasing, but the number of jobs available for them has plummeted, leading to more and more young people working in careers for which they were never formally trained. They then move around regularly, building breadth but not depth in their knowledge. Over the next decade, nearly 30% of American young adults will obtain a college degree, but 60% of new jobs in the US will require a degree. Right now, in Brazil, there is a demand for about 30,000 engineering graduates every year, but less than 15,000 actually qualify. India and China are beginning to run out of qualified workers, which will put upward pressure of salaries and remove the wage differential advantage of those countries.

3. Global migration – The migration of talent now plays a much bigger role in shaping the skilled work force, especially for multinational companies and growth industries. Previously, the United States and Western Europe have benefited from skilled workers arriving to work (and thus creating ‘brain drains’ for other countries). But now the global migration of talent is happening in all directions, and the US and EU are not as attractive (or as easy to enter) as they used to be. Contributing to disruptions in the supply of talent will be the fact that the world will experience decelerating population growth – and that 95% of population growth will be in developing countries. Also to be considered is continued net migration towards cities while many rural areas will become depopulated.

4. More women in the workplace – Canada, the US and Australia have all already passed the tipping point, with more women employed than men. The UK will be there by 2012, with many European nations following suit in this decade. (By the way, in Africa and the developing world, this may already be the case if you count informal workers.) This decade will see continuing focus on not only bringing more female bodies into the workplace, but rather bringing a female influence as well. This might be the biggest change in corporate culture in a century, if more women rise up through the management ranks, and also decide not to ‘play the game’ in a testosterone fueled business world.

5. Unprecedented youth unemployment – In almost every country that releases age stratified unemployment statistics, right now there are more unemployed young people than ever before. Add to this that in many of these countries, these young people are burdened with the largest student loans ever recorded, and you have a recipe for disaster. Expect more riots in countries where young people are prone to riot (think France and any Mediterranean country, for example). But also look out for…

6. Significant entrepreneurial startups and small businesses – Both unemployed young people and an older generation looking for post-career alternative working options will fuel a new wave of startup businesses. Add to this that we expect explosive growth in many emerging markets, with the world experiencing its largest economic growth ever (probably only really kicking off from 2020 to 2030, with global real purchasing power will have quadrupled by 2050). All in all, it’ll be a good time to be a small business in the next decade (as long as banks and governments finally wake up to their specific needs).

7. Blended lifestyles and flexible working arrangements – We will continue to see the breakdown of the ‘traditional’ office, with ‘normal’ office hours. This is more than ‘work-life balance’ – it is a new way of thinking about how to arrange the puzzle pieces of a typical life. Again, this will be driven by both the young and old workers, who may work for a few months then leave that job to travel or take time off, then return to a different job for a while. They may develop ‘portfolio careers’ or have multiple consulting engagements at a time.

8. Generational conflict – For the first time, four generations are working side by side in the workplace. And their attitudes are significantly different on what a ‘normal’ workplace looks like. In society, generational conflict is likely to grow as young people realise the Baby Boomer generation is basically mortgaging the future to maintain an unsustainable lifestyle now. This will lead to conflict on issues as wide ranging as environmental concern, pensions and politics. The Social Security systems of most Western nations will be another ongoing issue for the aging work force in the coming years. They are unsustainable – particularly those that are unfunded (i.e. they rely on the income from current workers to pay for the pensions of those currently retired). Young people are going to rebel against this, especially in countries where concessions are made for older workers (see trends referred to above).

9. And, finally, to throw one wildcard into the mix… Significant job losses among office workers, knowledge workers and professionals, due to artificial intelligence automating complex but essentially repetitive/heuristically rigid jobs – the increase in computing power will continue at pace this next decade, and that will push computers ever closer to real artificial intelligence. At very least it will mean we have enough computing power to do all sorts of things we considered almost impossible – like sequencing your genome (DNA) in an hour (and at home!) and producing personalised medication. But, most significantly, with some clever software development (and clever use of the ‘minds of many’ through social networking and social computing) we will be able to automate many complex jobs that today must be done by highly trained professionals.

One example might help to make this point. When the ‘swine flu’ epidemic hit the world a few months ago, doctors in the UK were overwhelmed with patients coming in for a diagnosis and treatment. The government set up a temporary phone in help line where call centre operatives would take people through a simple checklist and diagnostic process. If you answer “yes” to question 1, then goto question 4, and so on through a flow chart that ends up telling the patient that they should either not be worried, or that they don’t have swine flu but might have something else, or that they probably have swine flu. In the latter case, this call centre was authorised to provide an antibiotic drug for the patient. The point of the story is that if you go to your doctor with some illness, what would you like your doctor to do? Would you prefer he or she goes through a very strict and deliberate diagnostic process that has been tried and trusted, or would you prefer your doctor to be creative and innovative and try something completely new on you? If you prefer the former (and 99% of people do!), then you might as well get that diagnosis from a computer system.

The same argument can be made for the standard work of structural engineers, quantity surveyors, accountants (let’s face it, when accountants try to get ‘creative’ they normally end up in jail!), lawyers, and a whole host of other professions. If it’s true for them, then it’s even more true for clerical and administrative staff, as well as call centre operatives, receptionists and the like. The computer systems can handle the processing power needed. And younger people are increasingly comfortable interacting with digital systems. This trend might be a stretch for the next decade, but it will no doubt happen in my lifetime. Just as robots and machines have replaced labourers (in factories and on farms, no matter how complex the physical tasks were), so computers will continue to replace those who only use their brains for repetitive tasks (no matter how complex those tasks might be).

There it is. Nine key workforce trends for the next decade.

How should we respond?

I am not going to try and answer that question in this article. The answer will be different for every industry and every company in every industry. It may even differ by department in your company.

But the right response is to ask yourself: How will each of these trends impact your business, your industry, your market?

You can follow some of the answers to this question at my blog site: http://www.connectioneconomy.com

Buckle your seat belts – it’s turbulent times ahead!

© 2010, Graeme Codrington, TomorrowToday

Dr Graeme Codrington is a business strategist, keynote presenter and thought leader on the future of work, and attracting, retaining and engaging talented staff and clients, across the generations. His inspiring keynote presentations and workshops get teams inspired to immediate action and long-term business improvement. Contact him at graeme@tomorrowtoday.uk.com.

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If you’re in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 19 August, this may be of interest to you…

Unique Speakers Bureau presents…
A rare opportunity to join

Dr Graeme Codrington

at a public keynote presentation of “The TIDES of Change“…

Thursday 19th August 2010, 08h30—10h00
(breakfast available from 07:30am, arrive by 08:00 to register and ensure a prompt start to the presentation at 08:30am)
Venue: The Graphite Conference Room, The Forum,
Didata Campus, 57 Sloane Street, Bryanston, Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA

R890.00 per person including finger breakfast

• Understand the forces that are shaping the new world of work
• Insights into five disruptive trends that are going to change your industry forever
• Get a jump start on your competitors as the upturn begins
• Inspire and challenge your team to think bigger, more creatively and strategically
• Discover the secrets for success in the next decade – as a company, and as an individual!

To book your seat please contact marilyn@uniquespeakerbureau.com or phone Paul +27 83 268 6057.

Download a PDF version of this page here.

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We all need to learn how to manage chaos these days. We live in turbulent times of disruptive change, and it’s not going to get any easier over the next few years.

The first step in managing chaos is to look for the patterns that provide a clue about the “organising system”. We label something ‘chaotic’ mainly because we don’t know the guiding and organising principles of the item we’re observing. For example, if you watch a sport without knowing the rules, the actions of the participants will assume to be random and senseless (or ‘chaotic’). If you observe interactions (for example, greetings) between people of another culture, their actions can appear meaningless and unusual (or ‘chaotic’).

Take a look at this video of a traffic intersection somewhere in Asia. A few years ago, my wife and I spent an idyllic 10 day holiday in Bali, Indonesia, and we learnt the rules of the road that govern this intersection. In fact, it is only one rule (with a sub rule for the motor bikes). See if you can work out the rule that governs traffic flow and right of way in this video (watch it before scrolling down – don’t cheat):

Available directly on YouTube if you can’t see the video embedded above

Now, read on to find the guiding principle of the traffic.

So, did you work it out? The guiding principle, which is actually a “rule of the road” in Bali, is “the biggest vehicle has right of way”. Go on, watch the video again and see how it works. The sub rule for motorbikes is that they have to “swarm” through the intersection in the wake of the largest vehicle moving at the time. Knowing this rule makes the scene seem a lot less chaotic, doesn’t it?

And that’s the first vital step in managing chaos. You need to look for the framework, the guiding principle, the “rules” behind the chaos. It was Einstein (in the context of talking about science, religion and God) who said that we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. That’s the point. We live in a world that is going through an evolution – a revolution even. And our current worldview needs to do the same – evolve (and maybe revolt).

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Our team of international speakers regularly speak at events that are open to the public. Some are free to the public, but others would require you to pay a small fee. We have arranged discounts with many of the conference organisers, and have made the discount codes available to you.

As presenters, we also are sometimes able to get one or two free tickets to these public events. If you’d like to see us live in action, please contact us and let us know which event you’d like to attend, and we can let you know of the availability of tickets.

You can see the details at: http://www.connectioneconomy.com/public-events/

Why not bookmark that page. We’ll be updating it regularly.

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For the first time in history (I seem to using that phrase a lot at the moment), ebooks now outsell hardcover books on Amazon (read the report here).

You can also listen to an excellent speech by Seth Godin to a publisher, in which he talks about the glorious past and the frightening future of the publishing industry. Click here for the MP3 file link.

The publishing industry provides a superb example of what is happening in almost every industry. Almost every aspect of business is being impacted by changes in technology, industry structures, demographics, environmental issues and shifting social values. This will require companies to change dramatically, or risk becoming irrelevant. The music industry is well down this path of irrelevance already. The book publishing industry is following closely behind them. And the hardcover book is probably the best example of a remnant of the old days (and the “how do we make more money by screwing over our customers” style of business).

The times, they are a-changing.

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I think we might look back on 2010 as quite an important watershed year in the world of work. Since mid 2009, our team at TomorrowToday has been saying that the global financial downturn has been more than a financial crisis. We believe that as we emerge out of recession we’ll find that a number of key forces have been accelerated by the downturn – and these forces will change the shape of the world significantly. Five or more years from now we’ll look back on 2008 through 2011 and realise that it was a turning point in corporate history.

Those who understand this fact now, can begin to strategise for what the new world of work will look like in just a few year’s time, and can get the jump on their competitors. But that’s another thought for another day (look at the ‘strategy’ and ‘future trends’ categories of this website for what we’ve already written about these issues). In this post, I’d like to just point out some of the markers of radical change we’ve experienced this year so far, and add a few we’ve seen recently accelerate with the downturn (please also read the articles I link to – there’s some important information here):

• In many countries, youth unemployment is as high as it has ever been. In the US, for example, the percentage of 16- to 24-year-olds are currently employed (46.1%) than at any time since the government began collecting such data in 1948.
• This has led to the highest number of “stay at home” young adults in recorded history. This is a trend that happens every recession (see a report here). This particular trend will most likely reverse after the recession, but the number of young people staying at home, the number of years they stay at home and their propensity to “boomerang” back home in their early thirties have all been on the increase for the past decade – and we predict that these trends will not start reversing for at least the rest of this decade.
• Last month (June 2010) US Labour Department statistics showed that for the first time in recorded history, the number of people aged over 65 in the workforce exceeded the number of people age 16 – 19. (See report and graph here). This is a combination of youth unemployment and changes in attitudes of the Baby Boomers as they head into old age, and decide not to retire.
• In the last few years, Italy, Japan, Germany and Monaco have led the trend of having more people over the age of 60 than under the age of 20. Many European countries will follow this trend soon (see a list of the percentage of people over age 65 by country).
• As the Baby Boomers hit 60 years old, they’re bringing their lifestyle choices to retirement (or re-tyre-ment, as we prefer to call it). One example of this is that every year for the last 5 years there has been an increasing record number of divorces among those 60 years and older (Read a UK report here). I think I understand the demographic and sociological stats enough to predict that after the recession, divorce rates will jump again. And I believe that this will be especially evident in the Boomer age group (age 45 to 65 in 2010). The stress of the financial downturn will push many Boomer marriages over the edge.
• In January 2010 in the US, there were officially more women in the workplace than men, for the first time in recorded history (Read a report about it here). Canada were actually the first country where this stat was true – it happened there in 2007. It will happen in many developed economies over the next few years, with the UK expected to reach this mark sometime in early 2012 (Australia has already reached this milestone). The past four recessions have seen more men retrenched than women (a recent Spectator article we blogged about on this site even went so far as to call them “mancessions”). Read The Economist’s report on this issue. This trend will probably reverse after the recession, but return again in the next few years.
• No-one knows exactly when it happened, but in the last few years we have gone past the tipping point of the number people living in cities. The world is now officially majority urbanised. (See a 2003 list by country – I believe consensus is that this “weighted average” was a bit ahead of its time. I think that 2005 is considered the year when this shift took place.)

These are markers that indicate that we live in shifting times. How are you going to respond?

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As I write this, BP have capped their gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico (although they still need to complete tests on the cap – read the news here). At last! But the crisis is, of course, nowhere near over. A longer term fix for the well is needed, and the cleanup of the Gulf will take years. So, as we enjoy this moment, it’s important to realise that we need to change the way our big industrial companies are run. We live in a fragile world at huge threat from the choices we have made and the industries we require to fuel our lifestyles.

This conversation is not made any easier by the fact that BP have bungled the handling of this issue from the start. From Tony Hayward’s ridiculous attempts to put solar panels on his house to their denial of access to dirty beaches making the “land of the free” more draconian than communist Russia used to be. President Obama has also mishandled this with his “kick ass” approach to “British Petroleum”. But at least they’ve been in the news, and had huge pressure placed on all parties to find a solution. And at least BP has admitted the mess and promised a pot of money to clean it up.

The problem is that similar environmental carnage happens all around the world every month – outside the glare of the media, and away from a rabid American public. Is it a case of different rules for rich people? For example, a report in the New York Times on “The Oil Spills We Don’t Hear About” chronicles the problem with ongoing oil spills in the Niger delta in Africa. Since oil exploration started in 1958, oil companies have spilled about 13 million barrels of oil in the Niger delta (about 50 times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster, but smaller than the estimated 150 million barrels pumped into the Gulf of Mexico in the past weeks). This has meant 50 years of ongoing pollution and environmental damage.

More worrying, though, is the lack of concern oil companies seem to have for this area. The largest operator by far is Shell (Royal Dutch Shell). It operates in 100 countries around the world, but a Greenpeace report indicated that a “staggering” 40% of its oil spills happened in Nigeria. The number of those spills doubled from 2007 to 2008, then doubled again from 2008 to 2009. Why are so few people reporting on this?

While the world has been focused on the Gulf of Mexico and BP, other oil companies have slunk into the shadows, but only to carry on their nasty habits. In areas of the world where governments are not as loud as America’s, they continue to operate in dangerous and unethical ways. They’re not governed by “standards” and “ethics”, but just by profits and what they can get away with. And worse, our team at TomorrowToday predicted something like this could happen. In 2007, I wrote about the danger BP faced by cutting out costs and chasing profits above all other considerations.

Some may argue that BP is shouldering responsibility by making payouts to people affected in America. My understanding is that in order to get access to these payouts, though, you have to sign away your rights to further and future action against BP (in other words, it’s less of a payout and more of a payoff).

And, ironically, all of this is happening in the week that a final verdict was handed down in the Union Carbide court case in India. This relates to the massive chemical spill made by the US company in Bhopal, India, 26 years ago. The court handed down a mere 2 year jail sentence and a $ 2,000 fine to seven local managers at the Bhopal plant which released a chemical cloud in 1984 that killed tens of thousands of people in a slow agonising death. The human carnage was way worse than the current BP oil spill, yet no American senators have dealt with their own country’s company in any way approaching how they have mauled BP. Why not? And no American will be indicted – and all extradition attempts have been blocked – on the Union Carbide case.

After the Bhopal disaster, Union Carbide’s CEO, Warren Anderson, was arrested and charged in India. But the Reagan administration succeeded in cutting a settlement deal with Indian authorities which resulted in all court charges being dropped, a measly $470 million paid out in compensation for all the victims (and that divided between 574,367 victims). Anderson fled to the US. Neither Anderson nor any of the American executives of Union Carbide’s parent company have ever faced prosecution.

Journalist, P. Sainath has sagely noted:

Bhopal marked the horrific beginning of a new era. One that signalled the collapse of restraint on corporate power. The ongoing BP spill in the Mexican Gulf tops off a quarter of a century where corporations could (and have) done anything in the pursuit of profit, at any human cost. Barack Obama’s ‘hard words’ on BP are mostly pre-November poll-rants…. All that Union Carbide did and got away with in Bhopal is shocking. But not, alas, surprising. In the quarter of a century since then, corporate power has only grown. Bhopals happen when societies privilege corporations over communities, and private profit over public interest.

And he reminds us that the US Supreme Court seems to favour judgements in favour of big corporations – especially American ones. For example, in 2008, the Supreme Court ruled on the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 — till then the biggest recorded (or admitted to) oil spill in history. A jury in 1994 had imposed penalties of $ 5 billion on the company. In 2006, an appeals court halved the punitive claim to $2.5 billion. And in June 2008, the Supreme Court reduced that amount by 80%, to roughly $500 million – an average of $15,000 per plaintiff. Exxon CEO Lee Raymond – who fiercely fought the damages – retired with a $400 million package.

While Bhopal is a huge reminder of a quarter century of industrial excess, I think you can track unfortunately this back even further. BP’s own history is a sordid story itself. It started back in Iran in 1908, when oil was discovered in Iran and a license was granted to William Knox D’Arcy by the Shah to mine the oil field. This became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in the 1930s. In the 1951, after a number of changes in government, the Iranian government nationalised the oil company. This led directly to President Eisenhower supporting the British government and authorising a CIA coup attempt in 1953. This led to a new Shah being installed, and changing the Constitution. The oil rights were given to a consortium of oil companies under the same name (AIOC), who agreed to share profits on a 50–50 basis with Iran, but not to open its books to Iranian auditors or to allow Iranians onto its board of directors. One commentator has called this the “biggest corporate bailout in history”. The AIOC became the British Petroleum Company in 1954. Yes, that’s how BP started. Sometimes things do carry on as they start!

So, when BP announced this week that it had spent $ 100 million buying a biofuels business, I don’t think they’re really going to change their spots. It has spent about $ 3 billion on alternative energy since 2005, that is true. But to what effect? Less than 1% of their output is alternative energy – “Beyond Petroleum”, I think not. There is a darkness at the heart of big industry. It is a darkness that can overtake us all.

Can we live without big industry? Probably not. At least, not as we live now. That much may be (sadly) true. But we should hold them to a high standard. And that standard should be universally held and applied everywhere. The future of our planet depends on it!

Let’s hope this BP oil spill helps us all to change our ways.

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I wrote recently about potential water wars. One reader got into conversation with me, and questioned my assertion that desalination was expensive and therefore not yet a viable solution to the world’s water scarcity problem. Well, I did a bit of digging and found an article in The Economist that not only provides some details, but also suggests that some scientists have come up with a potential solution.

So, the bad news is that I was right, and we have real water issues. The good news is that there are solutions being developed. You can read the article in The Economist here, or an extract below.

Cheaper desalination

Current thinking
A fresh way to take the salt out of seawater
The Economist, Oct 29th 2009

THERE is a lot of water on Earth, but more than 97% of it is salty and over half of the remainder is frozen at the poles or in glaciers. Meanwhile, around a fifth of the world’s population suffers from a shortage of drinking water and that fraction is expected to grow. One answer is desalination—but it is an expensive answer because it requires a lot of energy. Now, though, a pair of Canadian engineers have come up with an ingenious way of using the heat of the sun to drive the process. Such heat, in many places that have a shortage of fresh water, is one thing that is in abundant supply.

Ben Sparrow and Joshua Zoshi met at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, while completing their MBAs. Their company, Saltworks Technologies, has set up a test plant beside the sea in Vancouver and will open for business in November.

Existing desalination plants work in one of two ways. Some distil seawater by heating it up to evaporate part of it. They then condense the vapour—a process that requires electricity. The other plants use reverse osmosis. This employs high-pressure pumps to force the water from brine through a membrane that is impermeable to salt. That, too, needs electricity. Even the best reverse-osmosis plants require 3.7 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy to produce 1,000 litres of drinking water.

Mr Sparrow and Mr Zoshi, by contrast, reckon they can produce that much fresh water with less than 1 kWh of electricity, and no other paid-for source of power is needed. Their process is fuelled by concentration gradients of salinity between different vessels of brine. These different salinities are brought about by evaporation.

The process begins by spraying seawater into a shallow, black-bottomed pond, where it absorbs heat from the atmosphere. The resulting evaporation increases the concentration of salt in the water from its natural level of 3.5% to as much as 20%. Low-pressure pumps are then used to pipe this concentrated seawater, along with three other streams of untreated seawater, into the desalting unit. As the diagram explains, what Mr Sparrow and Mr Zoshi create by doing this is a type of electrical circuit. Instead of electrons carrying the current, though, it is carried by electrically charged atoms called ions.

Salt is made of two ions: positively charged sodium and negatively charged chloride. These flow in opposite directions around the circuit. Each of the four streams of water is connected to two neighbours by what are known as ion bridges. These are pathways made of polystyrene that has been treated so it will allow the passage of only one sort of ion—either sodium or chloride. Sodium and chloride ions pass out of the concentrated solution to the neighbouring weak ones by diffusion though these bridges (any chemical will diffuse from a high to a low concentration in this way). The trick is that as they do so, they make the low-concentration streams of water electrically charged. The one that is positive, because it has too much sodium, thus draws chloride ions from the stream that is to be purified. Meanwhile, the negative, chloride-rich stream draws in sodium ions. The result is that the fourth stream is stripped of its ions and emerges pure and fresh.

It is a simple idea that could be built equally well on a grand scale or as rooftop units the size of refrigerators. Of course, a lot of clever engineering is involved to make it work, but the low pressure of the pumps needed (in contradistinction to those employed in reverse osmosis) means the brine can be transported through plastic pipes rather than steel ones. Since brine is corrosive to steel, that is another advantage of Mr Sparrow’s and Mr Zoshi’s technology. Moreover, the only electricity needed is the small amount required to pump the streams of water through the apparatus. All the rest of the energy has come free, via the air, from the sun.

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As it’s my very first post (ever, anywhere!), I thought it would be apt to come at it from a woman’s angle. 

I have read two articles recently, both in the Times (and thus you need to pay for them – but I attach the links at the bottom of this post anyway.

The first is a piece about Generation Y Mothers (Sarah Harris, July 10).   There isn’t much in the way of hard facts, but the content rings true – that Generation Y women are less career-orientated and approaching motherhood at an earlier age than the Gen X’ers and late Boomers before them.

Tom Savigar, strategy and insight director for the Future Laboratory says “Generation Y has decided to do things differently.  Younger women have rejected the city-slicker aspirations of the previous decade and are now seeing the value of becoming a housewife as a career.”

The second piece is by Sarah Vine (July 12,) and focusses on the dilemma 35-45 year old (Cusper/Gen X) working women are now facing, with young children and careers that are taking off.   This really struck home with me as  I am one of these women and have just left my full-time career, which has been 20 years in making, to find a more flexible way of working and devote more time to my family.  Frankly, the juggling just became too much and clearly I am far from being alone.

I have been pondering the possible implications of these two articles, and assuming the trends they describe are real (and certainly the You Gov research contained within Cristina Odone’s paper “What Women Want” for the CCPC is clear that a whopping 31% of mothers would rather not work at all - then they could be far reaching and many.

My generation of women was raised to have a career.  This was something previous generations had fought hard for and we were the first fortunate generation to see as our ‘right’.  It never occurred to me or any of my contemporaries to do anything than go out and get a job.  So we have progressed through our adult lives with a strong degree of financial independence and, by and large, a relationship ‘of equals’ with our partners.

Many of us have now found we have to adjust to a reduced income and greater reliance on our partners.  I am fortunate in that ‘family income’ is seen as just that and I don’t expect my relationship with my husband to change markedly, although I have seen it happen.  We Gen X’ers should, on the whole, be able to preserve our ‘equal’ status, although, one could argue that the sacrifices to home life and fertility have been great.

The Gen Ys have seen all this and the Gen Zs are living through it now.  Our young women and daughters take their equality for granted and we bring them up to do just that.  But what if they never work?  How will this impact on the relationships between the genders in the next 50 years?  How will women preserve their equality if they do not ever have financial independence?  And how will this impact the economy?

Sarah Vine describes research by Gosta Esping-Andersen, a Danish academic, which calculates that 15 new jobs are created for every 100 women that works.  These tend to be in childcare, cleaning and other support services, so, jobs for other women.   If this is correct, then the ability for an economy to grow with women coming out of the workforce is surely hampered.

Stay-at-home mothers: ‘We don’t care about having it all’

Career or pureed carrots – the working mum’s dilemma

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Last week I posted an article around the much needed innovation and creative thinking in the pay-for-content space. One of the new additions in this space that I profiled was Flattr.

Care of Wikipedia:

Flattr is a project started by Peter Sunde and Linus Olsson. Users will be able to pay a small monthly amount and then click buttons on sites to share out the money they paid in among those sites, sort of like an Internet tip jar. The minimum users will have to pay is 2 euros per month. Sunde said, “the money you pay each month will be spread evenly among the buttons you click in a month. We want to encourage people to share money as well as content.”

I then applied for a Flattr account (invitation only) during beta phase, and this week received an invite. I’m all signed up and have Flattr’d my first person. It’s a great step, in my opinion, in the right direction. Take a look at the video below to see how it works. Get enough people to change their thinking around paying for content, and then signing up to services like Flattr, and we’re moving forward nicely.

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The concept of “managing up” is well established in management and leadership theory. As someone who reports to a boss, you need to use many different techniques to get your boss’s attention, and influence your boss to act, think and react in certain ways. This is a critical skill for people at all levels of organisations.

It is only complicated when their is a worldview divide between boss and subordinate. This can happen when the people are of different genders, religions, cultures, personality types and different generations. This last item is one I have spent many years researching and helping clients to manage (see my book on how to “Mind the Gap”, and the many white papers we have written on this issue, for example).

A brief “management tip” by Tammy Erickson in a recent online edition of the HBR reminded me of how important it is right now for Generation X (born in the 1970s and 80s) to learn how to manage up, as they deal with the Baby Boomers (born after World War II, into the 1950s and 60s) who are currently leading their organisations. Here are a few key things Gen Xers can do to more effectively manage up to Boomer bosses and bridge the generation gap in understanding what your Boomer boss wants from you:

• Communicate your preferences. Boomers often assume that Gen Xers are merely younger versions of themselves. Don’t presume your boss knows what you’re thinking or how you’d prefer to approach an issue or task. Be specific and articulate how you like to work and what your expectations are.
• Ask why. Boomers grew up in an era when subordinates (and children) just did what they were told. So, they’re used to giving tasks by telling you what to do, when it must be done by, how it should be done, and even who to do it with. But they’re not great at explaining why it needs to be done, or why doing it a particular way will be the best. As a Gen Xer, you work best when you know “why”. So ask why.
• Take initiative. Boomers admire initiative. They like it when people go ahead and do more than their job description. So don’t wait for “someone else” to do it – you “just do it”.
• Send longer emails. Xers prefer to get ten emails with one line each, and a subject line that can be used as a “to do” list item in their inbox. Boomers prefer to group their requests and messages into longer emails with multiple action items in one message. Don’t fight this. Just send fewer emails a day, with more content in each one.
• Rather don’t send emails. Actually, if you can help it, rather do face to face meetings with your boss. (And never use text messages for important information).
• Pay your dues, and earn your credits. Getting what you want or need largely depends on your ability to be viewed as a valuable contributor to the team. Working hard and showing successful completion of assigned tasks will give you credits that you can cash in later.
• Contribute. Lose the “whatever” attitude, and start expressing an opinion. Boomers can’t stand the ambivalence of Gen Xers.
• Play the politics. Boomers thrive on office politics. You need to learn to play the game – and even enjoy it. If you don’t, maybe it’s time to consider that entrepreneurial startup after all.

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“You’re getting paid for your knowledge, intelligence and skills” was the message I heard a Director share with young staff that were on a two-year entry-level management development programme. He was encouraging those present to accept responsibility for their own development and he was right to do so.

Taking personal responsibility for the development of one’s own knowledge and skill set; taking responsibility for developing one’s own intelligences – be that emotional, adaptive, social or spiritual is a personal responsibility. Expecting ‘others’ – the organization, to be responsible for such personal development is flawed thinking. Some might even label it, ‘lazy thinking’.  But what smart companies do is to ensure that they provide abundant opportunities for such development to take place. Doing this increases the odds on attracting and retaining ‘the Best’.

Responsibility for learning sits with the Learner.  The responsibility that sits with those tasked with the architecture and shape of developmental programmes and education is to simply provide the environment that will facilitate learning.  Perhaps ‘simple’ is a misnomer as doing such is anything but simple. Learning programmes have been curtailed by past models of ‘how we do it’, the unwillingness to embrace discomfort as a friend to authentic learning and the reluctance to incorporate risk and experiential practices in the art of learning. Learning has become a science that is swapped by the need to measure and control the outcomes.

Things need to change with our approach to learning within organizations and as to what the ‘learning organisation’ looks like.  And here’s a thought for companies: these new insights concerning learning might come from unlikely sources; ones that include schools, the non-profit sector and the ‘two-thirds ‘world of developing nations.

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This is the final series of four posts on how to strengthen the online customer experience for each generation.

You can read my other posts on Generation X , Baby Boomers and Generation Y by following these links.

Here are my headline top tips for delivering online customer experience for the Silent Generation:

Who are Silent Generation?

This generation were born during the Great Depression and World War 2. Called the Silent generation because kids born during this period in history were expected to be seen not heard.

Why is the Silent Generation important?

They are now in their late sixties and seventies, many of them have benefited from rising housing prices and are relatively financially better off than they ever expected to be, even after the economic crisis of the past two years. There is another reason to consider this generation when developing your online customer experience strategies. According to the National Statistics Silents are the fastest growing generational segment on the internet. Access by those aged 65 plus increased proportionally by 15 per cent, compared with an increase of 3 per cent for the 16-24 age group.

Online customer experience Top Tips:

1. What are the experts saying?: Silents respect opinions of experts
2. Celebrate your past: Highlight your past successes, Silents want to know about the awards you have received. Believe in winning – they value strength and achievement
3. Use the Queen’s English: Poor use of grammar and language is a deal breaker
4. They are concerned about the future: of their grandchildren therefore have a philanthropic approach. Highlight what are you doing to benefit the communities around you.
5. Take them on a journey explaining the benefits: They will often take a “wait and see” attitude with new products

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Everyday during the course of the World Cup I have kept a newspaper. Why? Well I’m guessing that some day down the road it will be good to review the amazing period we have just lived through. I am sure hindsight will add perspective and I’m sure we will point to this period as one that had a significant impact on our beloved country. The challenge today is of course to make sure that it does in fact impact our tomorrow for the better. More hard work is needed to translate the gains of the past month into sustainable future return.

And this is why I’m so hopping mad! Reading tonight’s Daily Mail, a number of well known people were asked to comment on the World Cup. Folk such as Desmond Tutu, Clive Barker, Shaun Pollock, Zweli Mkhize, Lucas Radebe and Mangosuthu Buthelezi were amongst those who had their say. All had positive things to say as one would expect; as would any reasonable person.

And then there is Ashwin Desai, a prominent sociologist.

Desai has nothing but negative comments with some attempts at weak humour. From the standard of the football to the opening and closing ceremonies he spills his poison. What an idiot! It speaks volumes as to the kind of  attitude that  acts as a hand-break to any change for the better. I’m so tired of negativity, something so prevalent amongst the white middle class prior to the World Cup. I often found myself as the lone voice of optimism in social circles that seemed to delight in focusing on the negative until it became a habit of mind and all they could see. I say enough! If the World Cup offers us anything it is the opportunity for new ‘mind ware’  – the chance to reboot, to choose to see the positive, the possible and the invitation to act on that belief. Individuals like Desai should go elsewhere, we don’t need him and his type here.Small spots of cancer can do untold harm if left to fester unchallenged.

A bit harsh? Maybe but look at the mood, read the signs. At the Fanfest whilst getting a beer at half-time when Bafana Bafana were 0-1 down to Uruguay, a young Zulu chap next to me, with tears streaming down his face, spontaneously turned to me and said, “we HAVE to equalize…we HAVE to score”. My initial assessment of his motivation for such passion as being attributable to him being a die-hard fan were quickly dispelled when he added, “because if we don’t I am fearful that all we have gained as a nation – things I have never experienced before, will disappear”. Well we didn’t score and yet we know that his fears weren’t realized. But the kind of negativity Desai so eloquently displays simply serves to erode the hard earned gains made. I have chosen to take a stand against that happening. Blind optimism, delusional naivety? No. On the day of the final my 22 year old daughter’s car was stolen. One she had worked so hard to buy, yet  as I watch her sense of perspective, her optimism in spite of her loss, people who should know better, people such as Desai, could learn a great deal from her attitude. She represents the future I want for our country. And so I choose optimism rather than the alternative represented by Desai.

Take your opinions elsewhere Desai, they’re not needed here.

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If you take a look at the state of business education in the world today, you’d have to conclude that we’ve never been in a better position to take our organisations forward to places we’ve only dreamed of. There’s never been more business education available than there is currently. We have more business schools, both physically and on the internet. More people are going through these formal programmes than ever before. There’s also never been more access to information informally than ever before. Almost anyone can get access to some of the greatest thinking with regards to business.

And yet there’s a shortage of people to fill key positions in most organisation I speak to, no matter the continent they find themselves on. The opportunities abound and yet there aren’t enough people to take them up. However, I contend, it’s not that there’s a shortage of educated people to fill these spaces. The problem we have is that there’s a shortage of people who have the required depth, gravitas and experience. And in my opinion, no number of business education programmes can fix this problem.

Depth, gravitas and experience are not learned in a classroom (no matter how good it is). These characteristics emerge on the job. They develop through numerous and varied experiences over time. And if this is the main process by which you aquire them, then there are some interesting modern challenges and obstacles we have to deal with:

1. The length of tenure of many young people is getting shorter and shorter, before they shift jobs, companies and industries.
2. Companies have placed significant pressure and stress on their managers and leaders by thinning head count. ‘Grey Beard’ availability to transfer knowledge and experience is becoming scarcer and scarcer.
3. More digital engagement and therefore less personal engagement. Technology doesn’t necessarily add any extra value you weren’t expecting. It does what you ask it and then moves on.
4. From a demographics perspective, the developed world, first world, northern hemisphere (I know these descriptors are weak) has an interesting challenge. Theirs is a number problem. When you look at their demographic shape you notice very quickly that there are more Baby Boomers retiring than the number of ‘replacements’ coming through in Gen X. Where do they find the extra people they need?
5. Through the same filter, the developing world, 3rd world and southern hemisphere have the inverse problem. It’s not numbers, because their demographic shape is a pyramid. More than enough people but insufficient resource to train and develop this large number. Add to that senior people being attracted to the developed world to fill their numbers problem.

Certainly in my conversations with middle and senior managers and leaders there is agreement across the board for the urgent need to build gravitas faster. How that’s done is the question. As I wrote earlier, our tried and trusted method has always been numerous and varied experiences over time. But the challenges I list above are complicating this. We need to find another way to do this?

I’d like to hear your solutions, should you agree with me, and then have any? But let me end by putting one suggestion on the table.

What if the Developed and Developing Worlds got together to solve this? It does seem like we have a neat fit with regard to our demographic challenge. Why shouldn’t South Africa (for example – but insert and developing world country here) be one of the bread-baskets to the world for medical professionals? Currently our medical people are world class and highly rated by the countries all over the planet. And the great news is that we have a large supply of young people who’d love an opportunity to qualify in this space. We just don’t have the money to build more medical schools for education and hospitals for experience. Solve this and in a few years we’ll have more than enough for most countries with a shortage.

Of course, right now, why should the Developed World come to the party? They’re already getting our medical professionals for ‘free’. They have better value-propositions as countries than we do, and so it’s a fairly simple job convincing a 35 year old doctor to move across the planet to live and work in their environment. But if business and government got together to begin to find solutions, this may not be that far-out-an-idea.

It’s also a scalable solution. Call-Centers are often seen (in theory) as great training grounds for people wanting to move into other areas of an organisation. They get fantastic exposure to many aspects of the business, and in the 1-2 years they’ve been there they’re a better starting prospect than someone equally academically qualified who hasn’t had the Call-Center experience. Often the obstacle to taking on this sort of thinking is that the Call-Center doesn’t see itself as a ‘bread-basket’ and other business-units don’t see them as that either. Imagine the Call-Center selected it’s best agents, and instead of trying (in vain) to keep them, they did a deal with a business-unit in the company. Offer the Call-Center operator a chance to move within the business if they stay an extra 12 months and receive business-unit specific training and development. Churn rates fall in the Call-Center (more gravitas is retained), the Call-Center Operator feels valued and possibly more committed, and the business-unit gets a far better candidate than if they’d gone outside of the business.

Of course all of this requires a large amount of conversation, and that takes time. And with the pressure many people in business are under, there simply isn’t enough time to be thinking medium term. It’s tough out there and the problems are enormous and immediate. But if we don’t begin to fix this one, the problems are only going to get larger and larger.

Would love to hear some of your thoughts?

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Technology advances have dominated the world of work for almost the entire lifetime of anyone reading this article.  Yet, until recently, communication technology has failed to deliver on the promises that were made.  Computers were meant to connect us, to make our lives easier and to take work away from us.  Yet, most of us have experienced the opposite.  We may be able to communicate more, but it feels as if we’re connecting less.  Buried under an avalanche of emails, voicemails and instant messages, we do not have the luxury of time to prepare considered responses.  Our hastily composed messages are often misunderstood, misinterpreted or just ignored.  Our advertising and promotional communication is equally often ignored.

It seems that information technology has made our offices (and lives) more efficient, more productive and more frenetic.  But also more sterile.  We’ve had to adjust how we want to work in order to accommodate the computer and its preferences.  This is immortalized in a running series of jokes in the UK comedy series, Little Britain: “The computer says ‘No’”, which was the answer of customer services to almost any reasonable customer request.  This is not what we had in mind when we embraced the computer’s arrival just a few decades ago.

But, just recently, things have begun to change.  Continued advances in computer hardware power and capability, bandwidth improvements and new developments in software, have combined to allow us to use technology to enhance true human connection.  People want to connect.  We want to contribute, to be involved and to engage with each other.  These are natural human drives.  And now technology is beginning to accommodate us, and become more of a tool than a driver of how we do things.

The problem is that many of us are now used to doing things the “old technology” way.  We’ve become accustomed to seeing computers and information technology in a certain way.  Having spent most of our lives learning these patterns of behaviour, we now have to unlearn them and rediscover more “human” ways of connecting and communicating, using IT as a tool to help us do so.  This is starting to have profound impact on the way we use technology in our companies.

Here are just three recent advances in technology and developments in software that you need to be aware of, and also plan to incorporate into your corporate toolkit in the next few months and years.  I hope you understand that it’s not the technology itself that is interesting, but what it enables us to do.  The technology will continue to adapt and change, but what it is allowing us to do, and the connections it is enabling us to have, are the keys to taking advantage of these new trends for your business benefit.

1. Social Media

I don’t want to bore you with another paragraph about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all the rest.  You know by now that these social media communities are more than just teenage toys and communication tools for students.  Increasingly, businesses are using social media for a variety of purposes.  The obvious uses include communication (internal and external), PR and sales promotions.  If you’re just using social media for these purposes, though, you’re missing out on the real revolution.  But I have written about this before, and you can find that information at http://tinyurl.com/socmedia2

What is critical to understand is that social media allows you to engage with people – and allows them to engage with you.  Internally or externally, you now have the computer power and software to get people to interact with you and your company, and to get involved with you.  This is the key to understanding the power social media has to enhance your business.

So, here are a few things for you to do to take advantage of this trend:

• At very least, even if you are not ready to develop a social media presence for your company, you should ensure that your company website allows users to write comments on key pages.  In fact, the absolute minimum should be to allow people to use a Facebook-like “I like this” button for rating your website.  Clicking the “I like this” button lets their entire network know about you, and is the cheapest form of advertising you’ll ever be able to do.  But you should also consider allowing people to add comments to your webpages.  I am not talking about your “Contact us” page or form – that’s how they send a letter to you.  I mean allowing them to add their thoughts, comments, questions and suggestions to the bottom of your webpages.  Why do it?  Because that gets them engaged and involved with you.  What if they write a complaint?  Well, wouldn’t you rather they write that on your website instead of on their blog or Facebook page (where you have no control over it, and possibly even don’t know about it).  And isn’t it true that the most significant customer experiences always happen when you make a mistake, they complain and you fix it well (that’s more impressive than just doing a good job every time, isn’t it)?  So, let them comment on your website.

• The second thing you should do is to use Google Alerts to track social media references to your company (http://www.google.com/alerts).  You enter any search string as you would into a Google search, but also add your email address.  Google then stores your search request.  Anytime a new website is added to the Internet matching your search, you will be sent an email alerting you to this.  It can be set up to send immediately, or once a day/week/month – it’s your choice.  This will ensure that if you are mentioned in anyone’s Facebook or Twitter status updates, you will be alerted to this fact, and can choose how (and if) to respond.  (By the way, you should also include your major clients in Google Alerts).

• Thirdly, you need to learn the “language” – the specific etiquette – of the social media networks you’re interested in using.  Each different network has its own etiquette, and if you break the unwritten ground rules, you will be ignored and even vilified by the community there.  Listen before you talk, do your homework, get advice from people in the know, and start slowly with quick feedback loops and adjustments.  In other words, do what you should do when traveling to a country with a different culture.

• Fourthly, you need to find ways to create a community – think of developing a fan base rather than a customer base.  I recently interacted with a niche insurance company selling insurance for pets.  They realized that their customers were not passionate about insurance.  But they were passionate about their pets.  For their insurance company social media strategy they’d get much better value from a social media approach that focused on pets, rather than insurance.  You create your community first, then find ways to present your products and services to them.  It sounds so simple, but so few companies understand this.

• Finally, why not consider using social media to help you in various parts of your business.  This is a new approach called crowdsourcing.  You get crowds of people to help you deal with an issue using social networks.  Companies already experimenting with this include Innocentive (crowdsource your innovation requirements to some of the world’s top thinkers, scientists and students), Idea Bounty (crowdsource your advertising and marketing requirements), Tenpages (crowdsource your book ideas and get published), Kiva (crowdsource your giving for aid and foreign investment – even just a few hundred dollars), Zopa (use social media to connect individuals who have money to invest with people who want to borrow money), and so many more examples that are emerging every single day at the moment.  If you’re not trying to find ways to do this now, you’re already falling behind in your industry.

Social media is much, much more than simply updating your status and uploading a few photos.  It is changing how we connect and how we interact and how we relate to each other.  If improving your ability to connect with people could enhance your business, then social media will help you to do this dramatically.

2.  Localised, Starred and Advanced Search

Search websites like Google, Bing and Yahoo are increasingly focusing their search results with localized search options.  Do a search for a particular location in Google Maps (for example, your company’s head office, or a favourite hotel).  Click on one of the listed items in the search results, and a window will pop up on the map showing its location, any reviews that might have been written (and the option for you to write a review), and the address and contact details of the location.  But notice a few other things.  Firstly, next to the venue’s name is small outline of a star (note that you must be logged into Google for this to work – if you don’t have an account, it’s easy to create one).  That is a favourite button, and if you click that (Google refer to it as “starring” the location) it will save this venue in your own personal list of “starred locations”.  This becomes very useful if you log into Google on your mobile phone (or smart phone), and click on the “starred venues” tab that will appear there.  All your starred venues (regardless of when or where you selected them) will appear in your mobile phone’s list of starred venues.

But also notice that you have a few other options.  You can get directions or “search nearby”.  Click on search nearby and type in another search item.  For example, search for “pizza” and it will show all the pizza outlets in the near vicinity of the first location you selected.  This is localized search, and it is the future of searching.

Do you know what is listed in your company’s Google Maps search page?  Do you know if there are any reviews, and have you responded to them (especially if there are negative ones)?

But it’s even more powerful than simply having local people find you.  This new approach to search will also change how much information we have as consumers.  My middle daughter, Hannah is turning 9 years old soon, and she’s very keen on getting her first real wristwatch.  Knowing that I was going on a business trip to Switzerland, she asked me to find a particular type of watch for her.  I went into  a watch shop, and found the watch she was looking for, and asked a salesman to come and help me.  He wasn’t ready for the new technology I was about to use.  Firstly, I asked to see the barcode on the packaging of the watch.  I took a photo of it using a bar code reader application, which then searched the Internet and returned information about the watch.  I now knew the manufacturer, the specifications, the recommended retail price and a lot more.  I also did a localized search and found a watch shop down the street that offered the same watch at a slightly cheaper price.  I indicated to the salesman that I knew the watch was about to go out of production and was end of range, and that I could get it cheaper down the road.  Being Swiss, though, he wasn’t so keen on negotiating with me, and did not offer a discount.  Unfortunately for both those Swiss watch shops, I also checked Amazon, and discovered that I could get the watch delivered to my house for free at a discount of more than 25% on what I could buy it in Switzerland.

This trend is going to change the power relationship between customers and salespeople.  Do you know how much information someone can find out about you, your products and services with an advanced Internet search?  Are your sales people equipped to deal with today’s knowledgeable, tech-savvy, advanced searching customers?  How are you going to train your front line staff to deal with these types of customer engagements?

3.  Geo-Tagging

Geo-tagging refers to a set of applications that link to your physical location.  Most modern mobile phones have GPS built in, which means your phone knows exactly where you are.  In fact, some of the very latest even have a compass built in as well, so they also know which way you’re facing.

The easiest application of geo-tagging is digital photos.  You probably know that your digital photos all have the photographic image you took, as well as additional digital data linked to the photo (at least date, time, exposure and size).  Geo-tagging adds GPS co-ordinates and even compass orientation to the data linked to your photo.  Now imagine you could upload that photo to a centralized repository of photos, and that it could be linked to all the other photos ever taken in the same place and facing the same direction you did when you took your photo.  In other words, you can instantly link your photo to every other photo ever taken at that same location.  So, now you can see what the object in your photo looks like in different seasons, at different times of the day and night and with different lighting.  By the way, that website is http://www.flickr.com, and if you want to see a video of the technology that pulls the photos together into a 3-d image, go to http://tinyurl.com/photogeotag

But, how do you use this to enhance your business?

If your business interacts with customers at physical locations, then you can use some of the emerging programs that are allowing people to log their movements and locations.  There are a few of these.  The three I use regularly are “Around Me”, “Gowalla” and “Foursquare”.

Around Me has similar functionality to Google’s localized search I mentioned above.  The only difference is that Around Me knows where you are before you start searching.

Foursquare and Gowalla allow people to “check in” at specific locations – basically they log into the program, and do a search of venues near them.  When they find the precise shop or restaurant or cinema or location they’re in, they simply indicate “I’m here”.  They can then see who else is there – or near there – now.  They can also see who has been there, and who comes there regularly.  You might wonder why people would do this.  It’s the same reason they update their social media status – to create connections with other people.  (Yes, it really is a human desire).  People can also write tips about venues (including reviews) which others can read when they check in.

It’s a bit of fun, but the business benefits are emerging quickly.  The most obvious is that you can link advertising to specific locations, and allow people to “find” these adverts.  If someone arrives at a food hall in a shopping centre, for example, and are trying to choose which restaurant to eat at, they can check in, and the geo-tagging system can alert them to specials and tips about restaurants in the near vicinity.  You can purchase these geo-tagged adverts and load them into the geo-tagging system.  It’s like putting a huge banner advert in front of all your competitors’ shops.

Really progressive companies are using these geo-tagging programs to build communities of people who congregate at their venues.  I know some pubs that have hosted events where the sole aim was to earn Swarm and Super Swarm badges in Foursquare (if you don’t know Foursquare, you earn awards for various activities – and one of the most elusive awards is earned only when a whole group of people all check in at the same venue together).  A chain of pizza shops in London offers the “Mayor” of the venue free drinks whenever they eat at the pizza shop (the “mayor” of a venue is the person who has checked into that venue the most number of times).  This is a clever way to reward frequent shoppers – and give them a reason to return with their friends and talk about you to their network.

Is This For Everyone?

Most companies are already behind these trends.  It’s probably because the decision makers tend to be older people who don’t get these trends.  In fact, even worse, they can feel overwhelmed by the amount of data that flows through all these programs (I’ll write about how to cope with the flood of data at sometime in the next few months).

Some companies still ban the use of these systems during office hours.  Unless they have a technical reason for doing this (some companies have real bandwidth restrictions), they’re just demonstrating how far out of touch with popular culture they have become.  Of course, that might not be a problem for them.  I did some work recently with a very high-end private bank for ultra-rich individuals.  Their customers tend to be much older, and so introducing these new communication technologies is probably unnecessary at the moment.  However, it won’t always be that way.  Today’s young superstars use social media and geo-tagging all the time, and will probably want to bank with an institution that they feel is in touch with their lifestyle.  Some time in the next few years, even my private banking client will find value in taking these (and other similar) systems on board.  If then, why not now?

So, yes, these are for everyone.  Maybe not now, but sometime soon every company in every industry will find value in using these communication technologies.  At very least they should get a small team to start looking at the potential, the opportunities and threats posed by new information and communication technology, and beginning a process of deciding which they are going to use and which they will ignore.

What Are You Waiting For?

When it comes to new communication technologies many companies have their default setting at “Ignore”.  Some have it on “Reject”.  Only a few have an accepting mindset, with a curiosity that leads them to investigate and consider the potential benefits.  All I really hoped to do with this paper is change your initial mindset.  The technologies I have outlined above may not suit you, and may be unhelpful in your position in your company and for your industry.  But the reason these technologies are taking hold cannot be ignored.

People are using technology differently these days – they want to connect, to interact, to engage and to contribute.  That means your staff, your customers, your business partners and anyone else you interact with are likely to be using some or all of the technologies I have outlined above.  If not, they will be using something similar.  And if not now, then they soon will be.  This is too big to ignore.  Now is the time for you to act and do something about it.

Dr Graeme Codrington is a researcher, author, keynote presenter and expert on the new world of work.  He helps his clients understand the trends that will disrupt their industries in the next decade, and shows them how to anticipate these changes and gain tomorrow’s competitive advantage today.  He can be contacted at graeme@tomorrowtoday.uk.com

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