Ten years ago who would have ever predicted the collapse of major car companies like GM and Chrysler? Who would have predicted the fall of banks and this global recession? Who would have thought that an African-American President would be elected?
Looking back life was much different in 1999. It was pre 9-11. There was less security and no wars in Afganistan or Iraq. Amazon and Google were around but still trying to figure how to earn profit. China and India, although we knew they were up and coming had still not emerged on the world scene. Facebook, Flickr, Linkedin, Twitter, Ted and thousands of social networking sites did not exist. We interacted in person, by phone, email and the Internet. Back then the Internet was mostly a place to gather information.
Fast forward to today where our lives have been turned upside down. We interact differently with our hand-held devices. Businesses are having to find innovative new ways to reach customers. The mortgage crisis and global recession have impacted the confidence of people. At the same the number of companies, ideas and innovations is evolving at breakneck speed.
The biggest change from 1999 to 2009 is the clutter of the web, technology and information which give us access to an infinite array of choices. Making sense and learning how to use the clutter to better our lives is the work most of us face today.
What will the next 10 years bring?
Who knows?
My feeling is we will start to see the beginnings of fundamental change in how we approach life. We will re-look at our careers and business models, create new habits with respect to consumerism and materialism and open up the frontiers of medicine with cures that 10 years before we would have never believed possible. Education will evolve and empowerment and leadership will be new keywords to help people grow. People will find more ways bring more balance into their lives. Quality of life will be put on a higher level.
In the overall scheme of things life is really about choice. Technology in today’s world gives us more choice than ever to make better decisions and improve our lives.
Last week I had the opportunity to hear Seth Godin at the Communitech Leadership Conference in Waterloo Ontario. His presentation called Invisible or Remarkable focused on the changes happening in our world from the way we interact to how we create wealth.
According to Seth we are living through the Industrial Revolution of our Time and this revolution will dwarf the one experienced by our ancestors in the 1700 and 1800's. Technology and new media provide us all with the tools for being part of this revolution and what's exciting is he invites us all to play an active role in what's coming.
The Old Paradigm - Interruption Marketing
He referred to the old paradigm for marketing as Interruption Marketing where companies found innovative ways to interrupt people with commercials, ads and by getting in their face.
Interruption Marketing was successful but at a cost: average products for average people. If you’re going to be successful and interrupt everyone, you better be average.
The formula for success in the old paradigm: buy ads > distract > sell more > make a profit. (And remember: be average)
This formula has fallen apart recently.
He says there is too much clutter in the old paradigm. Products are branded to death, too costly to promote and it’s getting harder for marketers to break the noise and get through to consumers. In the new paradigm customers don’t want our attention. They are not listening since they have been spammed too many times.
The question: How do you take your business above the noise?
(I like this photo)
The New Paradigm - We are in the business of spreading ideas.
The new paradigm is take something that is good enough and change it so everyone is talking about it. He uses the purple cow as an example and says nobody talks about cows, but if you create a purple cow, everybody starts talking and the spam goes away.
His Advice for Companies
You need to totally embrace new media for your business (by committing resources and time) or stay away from it completely.
Your message is too important to be left to the marketing department.
The race is for permission. The race is for tribes.
Permission Marketing
Permission Marketing is where you learn to turn strangers into friends and you earn the right to connect. He says Apple has earned this privilege and other companies are learning to do the same.
The revolution as Seth describes is direct communication with people who make and buy your services.
Tribes
Tribes are everywhere and have been around since the beginning of civilization. They are a natural part of our human desire to connect and can be found within religion, politics, corporations, everywhere... The opportunity is to build and lead tribes. It takes only 10 people to build a tribe and a person can make a great living with a committed tribe of 1000 people.
The Big Shift in Thinking
We are no longer creating Customers for Products but we are now tasked with creating Products for Customers.
Success before Commitment is now Commitment before Success.
The first point says to me that through the structure of technology and new media we now have the ability to hear what our customers want and make products and services specific for them. The second point says we need to take risks, try various approaches and commit until we succeed.
Final Thoughts & Observations
Seth Godin is an excellent presenter who provokes us with images and words to wake up and understand the real story of what’s happening in our world today. His blog is considered the most popular marketing blog in the world and with a little reading you can understand why he has earned that title.
As I personally speak to executives and business owners I am excited by how many are trying to absorb the message of new media and apply the methods to their business. The big questions today: Should I blog? Should I Twitter, use Facebook or YouTube? How do I take my product or service and rise above the noise?
Traditional business structures are changing. Marketing, PR, Sales, Product Development and overall organizational strategy are going through fundamental shifts. The next few years will require a leadership, fresh ideas and the courage to look at business in a new way.
The Industrial Revolution of our time is the Internet, new media and the infrastructure that technology provides. Adapting and thriving in this new paradigm will be our task.
The latest instalment in the Star Trek franchise is out this week and as a closet Trekkie I’ve been patiently waiting, reading and watching reviews. I began watching Star Trek in the mid 70’s with re-runs of the original series and loved watching the adventures of James T. Kirk and crew. Growing up in the mid 70’s it was fascinating to imagine what life would be like in the future. The year 2000 seemed light years away and back then I would have never imagined how much our world would change.
In Star Trek they explored far away galaxies, seeking out new life and new civilizations. Watching episodes for the first time was an adventure and I loved humor, the cheesy acting but most importantly the special effects like the aliens with wierd heads, the rock creatures and life on Vulcan. I remember being let down many years later visiting a Star Trek exhibit in Washington DC where they showed all the costumes and artifacts from the series. When I realized that the phasers and tricorders from the original series were actually made of wood it was a truth that hit hard. Thinking back it would have been better if I had never known.
Since then I’ve seen the Next Generation series, all the movies and the other iterations of the Star Trek franchise. With each phase the special effects become more interesting, there is more depth to the stories and we still have the opportunity to project our minds into the future.
We have come so far in the past 40 years and franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars and the hundreds of science fiction shows have given us potential visions of the future. Futurists, scientists, technology and the American and Russian space programs have allowed us to expand our imaginations and realize that anything is possible. Back in the 60’s and 70’s who could have ever imagined the Internet, cell phones, personal computers, satellite TV and the ability to collaborate and communicate instantly with anyone on the planet.
What will the next 40 years bring? Nanotechnology; life extension through DNA and stem cell research; poverty eradication; the ability to back up your mind, peace and global cooperation? Some are predictable but what new technologies or experiences will blow our minds that even today we could never even imagine what changes they would bring? Will we make first contact with beings from another planet? Will we have the ability to extend life indefinitely? These are difficult questions but what I do know for sure is the advances we make in the next 40 years will dwarf the advances of the last 40 years.
When I ask people what they feel is the major cause of strife in the world, I’m usually given one word: RELIGION!
Whether you’re a believer or non-believer when we look back at history, wars, genocide and conflict in the name of religion are common. Ironically at the core of most religions is a message of peace, good will or the golden rule yet with all those good intentions religion contributes to conflict or misery around the world.
Is the search for God engrained within us?
Human beings have a natural inclination to search for something beyond life. The earliest civilizations looked to the stars and heavens for answers. At some stage in our lives we all ask the question; why am I here? What happens to me when I die? Where did I come from before I was born? Etc… I’m convinced that our search for spiritual meaning is inherent within us. Even for Atheists there is a search for understanding and based on that search opinions are formed.
Our quality of life would greatly improve if we could find a way to create religious and cultural balance. Karen Armstrong is a well known author who has written a number of books on God and world religions. She spoke at one of the Ted conferences and discussed her Counsel for Compassion as a way for religios leaders to find peace.
I’ve split her talk up into 3 main areas aligning with my theme of factors that I believe would help to create more balance on a religious and cultural level.
Here are some highlights of her talk and video is included below:
A. Leadership and a Common Vision
In her travels Ms. Armstrong says religious leaders from around the world are looking for ways to find common ground, peace and understanding. She says even in places like Pakistan (where democratic freedoms are repressed) there is a yearning amongst the population to find a way to live in peace.
Looking for Common Themes
Every major faith she says, has a common idea of “compassion” or what can bring you into the presence of the divine (God). She says when bringing spiritual philosophies together looking for common themes is important and every one of the major world religions uses the idea of the Golden Rule to treat others as you want to be treated.
Hijacking Religion
She says religion today has been hijacked. Even in Christianity where Jesus taught love your enemies, Christians today around the world judge others. Teachings of Islam or Judaism that teach hate and intolerance have also been hijacked. She says there is a religious illiteracy where compassion and the golden rule are put into second place behind beliefs like, the need to be right.
Religion as a Force of Peace and Harmony
She goes on to say, religion should be made a force for harmony in the world and the golden rule should be applied globally. We should not treat other nations as we do not want to be treated ourselves. She says there is a hunger for change and the desire for change is global.
What’s needed is a coming together of leaders from all religions to find common ground.
B. Changing Fundamental Beliefs - Acceptance versus Tolerance
Ms. Armstrong says the most critical part to changing attitudes is to shift our belief from being tolerant to acceptance. These words have a power because by accepting another person or their religion it means we embrace them for who they are. This shift in attitude will require wisdom and leaders from all religious faiths to have vision to lead and show the way.
A Global Movement – A Charter for Compassion
Ms. Armstrong finished her discussion with her wish: “You would help with the creation, launch and propagation of a charter for compassion crafted by a group of inspirational thinkers from the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and based on the fundamental principle of the golden rule. We need to create a movement among all these people who want to join up in some way and regain their faith which in some way has been hijacked.”
The charter would create guidelines as to how to interpret the scriptures working together to create a document that would be signed by at least 1000 of the leaders.
She wants leaders to look at their religion, reclaim it and make religion a source of peace in the world. Organizations like the Alliance of Civilizations at the UN could help to foster this process and establish a neutral voice.
C. Technology, Communication & Community
One thing that she does not cover is the power of technology, communication and community to deliver both the message and vision of leaders from around the world. I’ve talked about this before but technology gives us the tools and makes it possible for us to establish religious and cultural balance in our lifetime.
I’ll discuss more about religious and cultural balance in future posts.
Here is a video of Barry Schwartz in a recent talk called The real crisis? We stopped being wise. This talk is a call to bring what Schwartz calls practical wisdom into our world that seems to have gone crazy with bureaucracy, rules and incentives.
Job Descriptions Reflecting Human Interaction
Schwartz sites the example of the job description of a janitor at a hospital and how not a single thing on the job description involves interaction with other human beings. Yet in the reality of a hospital setting and other jobs much of our work (including work of a janitor) involves interaction with human beings.
The Lemonade Story
He relates the story of Dad who unknowingly purchased Mike’s hard lemonade for his 7 year old son at a Detroit Tigers baseball game and the authorities ended up taking away his son. Schwartz says, although there is a place for rules that protect us, many times they prevent us from thinking and they take away our moral skill to make the right decision.
Schwartz says a wise person knows,
when and how to make the exception to every rule
how to improvise
how to use these moral skills in pursuit of the right aims
And finally, a wise person is made not born.
Undermining our Moral Will to do the Right Thing
Society is quick to use rules and incentives and they may work in the short run but Schwartz says, "they create a downward spiral that makes them worse in the long run. Moral skill is chipped away by an over reliance on rules that deprives us of the opportunity to improvise and learn from our improvisations. Moral will is undermined by an incessant appeal to incentives that destroy our desire to do the right thing.”
From a professional level incentives are a war on moral will and do the opposite instead of someone asking “what is my responsibility”, they ask “what is my interest.”
Work-Life Balance & Practical Wisdom
Work-life balance have a direct connection to practical wisdom. Although they have a place companies who get too bogged down in rules, bureaucracy and incentives generally will create an environment where moral will is compromised, competitiveness rules, creativity and teamwork stagnate and overall job satisfaction declines.
Finding innovative ways to bring practical wisdom into our work lives is one way to improve our overall work-life balance.
How do we Re-Moralize Work?
Schwartz closes by saying we need to find ways to re-moralize work and celebrate those who do the right things. Find ways to bring practical wisdom into our jobs and have less reliance on rules, bureaucracy and incentives. Create job descriptions that begin to identify the human part to our responsibilities and enable us to take action because it is right, not because it’s in the rules or if I do it I’ll get paid.
He closes with a quote from Barack Obama who said, We must ask, not just is it profitable, but is it right.
We are going through an incredible transition period within our global economy, unlike anything we have seen since World War II, the Great Depression (Video) or the Industrial Revolution (Video). Our financial system has been hit at it’s core, government spending (in America at least) out of control and American auto-makers once considered the pillars of the car industry are being propped up to prevent bankruptcy.
Even Warren Buffett the man who rarely makes investment mistakes admitted he misjudged the price of oil and his errors cost his firm Berkshire Hathaway over a billion dollars last year.
Warren Buffett usually get’s it right.
Add that this recession is global. Countries throughout the world are feeling the impact, consumers are cutting back, jobs lost and companies scrambling to keep their businesses afloat.
Unprecedented? Yes!
Necessary? Maybe!
Globalization and a Flat World
As I said on Friday our world is flattening and as Thomas Friedman mentions we are moving into a global economy where the barriers to entry have been broken. Traditional business models are being challenged at every level from outsourcing IT and call center jobs, manufacturing, media delivery right to the core of marketing and sales methods that have worked successfully for decades.
Any person or business with a computer, Internet access and a little ingenuity can join the game and in some cases compete with larger companies.
Competition in some industries has become more intense. This reality hasn’t hit every company and many will continue to succeed under the traditional models. For some the global markets have opened up and Internet provides wider reach for those who are prepared. For others their products and services are more localized and less impacted by events happening globally. However when the North American auto industry gets hit (with all the supply chains that go with it) and when our financial system tumbles you can guess that something big is going on.
Business Adapting to the Change
Corporate bonuses, greed and poor management practices are just some of the aspects of this restructuring. Our fundamental models of corporate stewardship, business practices and employer-employee relationships are gradually being put under the microscope. In the future more businesses will adapt in order to stay strong and in some cases survive. Some will not adapt well because the changes required will be too abrupt. For others adapting will create incredible rewards and opportunities.
A Rebalancing of Society at Every Level
What I see is an unfolding future of rebalancing or realigning of our society at every level. This includes how governments conduct themselves through policy, strategy, diplomacy & trade to how our business and financial systems operate. New rules around business practices, the environment, human rights and justice will be required in order to meet the needs of the larger global community.
Countries and leadership who have the wisdom to understand and align with these changes will see the greatest growth and opportunities for their citizens.
When I speak about Work-Life Balance what I see is a balancing at all levels within our society from the individual and how we live our lives, pursue our passions and be successful, to our cities & communities who create quality of life and access to services and resources, to entrepreneurs, visionaries and leaders who look find ways to create wealth, prosperity and improve the lives of people, to government leadership that brings peace, security, trade, jobs and environmental responsibility to their citizens.
In a global economy all these pieces will gradually come together to create a wider prosperity however we are still in the early stages of this change.
Over the next few days I’ll talk more about work-life balance within our communities, corporations and governments and how all these areas impact our society.
Sometime ago I wrote a post about finding my authentic voice. I’m not sure how many bloggers go through this process but I’ve certainly needed time to figure out what I want to say in a public forum. Even though I’m not a Gemini (I’m a Virgo) I must have about 12 distinct personalities all with something to say.
My Many Personalities
There is the inner reflective side of me that takes personal growth and a search for meaning and purpose to a primary level in my life. This has been prominent lately as I have been trying to figure out what I want to create with respect to my blog and also my career.
My analytical side has an interest in a wide variety of topics from history, economics, technology, current events, social issues, politics, business & government models.
My intuitive sidelikes to understand human behaviour, psychology and why we as humans do the things we do (good and bad).
And finally there's the visionary who wants to pull it all together, to understand the big picture of life, where we are today and we are going as a society, a people and planet.
For me the visionary, the analytical, the intuitive and the inner reflective personalities are one and it’s my belief that you can never really understand any one of the components without looking at them all.
So here’s where I’m taking all this.
Life Balance Project
Earlier in January I started to meditate and back then I said my interest was to talk about my experiences with meditation and personal growth in what I called the Meditation Project. What I found is meditation by itself is a limiting term and is only one factor that has contributed to my personal growth. Also I found people interpret meditation in a variety of ways (mostly good) but I found some people had a hard time relating to the term.
Instead of the Meditation Project I’ve decided to call what I’m doing the Life Balance Project. The Life Balance Project brings in a wide variety of personal growth strategies that people can use to improve the quality of their lives.
My FREE E-Book for the Life Balance Project will be available soon.
Work Balance Project
People are definitely looking for Life Balance. They are looking for more time, more peace and greater fulfillment within their relationships, careers, health and other aspects of their lives. Work and finances are part of that balance and is one major area where people have difficulty. Many of us work long hours in jobs we do not like for the sake of financial security. As a society we are out of balance within our mindset about work, some of this is self created, but much in my opinion is created by our business and economic models, our corporate structures and our traditional approaches to leadership and management.
People are looking for new ways to interact with their careers, to be part of a team, to love what they do and have a certain flexibility that allows them to balance their careers with their lives. There are some great companies today who understand this need for work balance and who have put together innovative approaches to create positive working environments for their employees.
The Work Balance Project will look at corporations, organizations, leadership models and how these can be (or are being) applied in our business world today. This discussion will be about the good news stories, companies who have innovated and who foster positive employee-employer partnerships.
If you are with a company and have a story to tell please contact me or connect with me on Twitter.
My FREE E-Book on the Work Balance Project will be available soon.
Visions for the Future
Through this discussion I plan to take the topics of Life Balance, Work Balance, technology, social media and business models and talk about how our lives are changing and offer some visions for the future. At heart I’m a futurist with keen desire to see this world become a better place and I want to make sure that I bring voice to what I see as our potential opportunities for the future. I’m most excited about these discussions.
For those of you who have joined me on my personal growth journey I appreciate all your comments and support. Although personal growth will continue to be part of my discussion I think you will be pleased with how I bring Work Balance, Life Balance and Visions for the Future together.
Thanks once again for your support and joining the conversation.
Recent Comments