Body Part Maker

Posted on January 25, 2010 by petervan

In the current economic climate, one restructuring follows the other. In my country there are some notable examples like AB Inbev, Opel (GM) Antwerp, HP, etc.

At the time of writing this post, the counter of lost jobs in Belgium since January 2009 stood at

38,296

lost jobs

And this is “only” from structured and collective redundancies. The following table comes from quality newspaper De Standaard. The visualization also represents what sectors “contribute” most to these redundancies.

It’s therefore “normal” that i see/meet/mail more and more friends and (now ex-) colleagues being hit by the recession, crisis, or whatever you prefer to call the current economic climate and resulting restructuring or transformation programs. It happens everywhere. Except at the one employer i ever had that still today shows double digit growth.

However, some of these friends were living in Golden Cages for years but were bored to hell. The shame is that they let this happen over them. Others indulged all sorts of manipulations, political maneuvers, and other techniques that did not take them for full or were just ignoring them and their ideas. Others just had the courage of sticking out there neck, but not being appreciated by the blueprint and/or differing too much with the “normal way of doing things here”.

Indeed, it seems recurring many companies that diversity in thoughts is not always welcome, despite all the window dressing about values etc. That is of course a pity, because this diversity in thoughts and ideas is fundamental to being innovative.

And it happens everywhere. Except at that one record retailer. They seem to be some kind of Tribe. Have always been since the 60’ies, with self-development programs and alike. They also continuously innovate. With green IT and own windmills etc already 10 years ago. “Cradle-To-Cradle – Remaking the Way We Make Things” applied before the book was written.

So it’s all about sustainability, made possible through R&D and Innovation in new sciences and technologies. And being part of a tribe that has innovation in its DNA. See also later in this post when we discuss the jobs and trends of the future: science and technology are at the heart of the sustainable development debate.

However, if you’re not part of such a tribe, and you get fired where you were bored, then there is light at the end of the tunnel. Getting fired could really be a fresh start of your professional life, although somebody else made the decision for you.

Have a read at “The Living Dead: Switched Off, Zoned Out – The Shocking Thruth about Office Life” by David Bolchover.

Joe read the book and here is his review:

This book is about – the millions of talented and bored to tears people rotting away in large offices, completely disconnected, disenchanted, disengaged, shuffling papers away, staring at screens, writing memos and Powerpoints, sitting in meetings deliberating in jargon that means nothing, and generating serious pretend-work….

and how our world and organizations have made this a taboo topic, refuse to recognize its existence and aggravate this problem through inadequate structure and processes (specialized business jargon, office politics, hierarchy, etc).

This is one of the most blunt books I’ve ever read – a Dilbert with the sharp facts substantiated! And you will not find one business jargon word that can qualify for a b-sh**t bingo in there.

The most interesting part is that the book is written already 5 years ago – and looking at Peter Van’s blog and the book gives a clear indication of a very alarming trend. Not for the weak-hearted! Contains some seriously ego-busting words on our Great Leaders ( the big companies CEOs) and Even Greater Gurus (the Management book writers).

What would you do if you got fired ? What would be the one thing that you would like to do for free for the next 10 years ?

Could give you a real good indication

of where your true

passion and purpose is.

But where to look first ? The report FastFuture.com report “The Shape of Jobs to Come” (Final Version January 2010, you can download the PDF here) would be a good starting point.

The report lists the 100 most likely jobs to emerge and be successful by 2030. Some of these jobs will already see the light as soon as this year 2010.

And if you have the luxury to take first take a couple of months sabbatical, then the report has in Appendix-3 an excellent time-line on what will happen when, what skills you need to master by when, and what the most probable and most looked after jobs of the future may be.

The outcome may be that you may want to follow some course on NIBC convergence technologies. (NIBC = nanotechnology-biotechnology-information technology-cognitive science) or to study Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese if you want to mean anything in the economies of growth of 2015.

Some extracts with – as usual – some personal comments.

For the longer term, the centrality of science and technology in helping to tackle the most pressing planetary challenges from poverty to clean water, environment to human health, climate change to energy supply and housing to transport are ensuring that science and technology are at the heart of the sustainable development debate

Finally they are expected to help us survive and thrive in the cyber world, whether through legal protection, counseling or management of our virtual data and ‘personal brand image‘. As a result, the survey suggests that many of these roles will be popular, well-rewarded and aspirational.

The ten key patterns of change identified in the report are:

1. Demographic Shifts

2. Economic Turbulence

3. Politics Gets Complex

4. Business 3.0 – An Expanding Agenda

5. Science and Technology go Mainstream

6. Generational Crossroads

7. Rethinking Talent, Education and Training

8. Global Expansion of Electronic Media

9. A Society in Transition

0. Natural Resource Challenges

Looks like the list we suggested for our Think Tank on Long Term Future 😉

Under “economic turbulence, we find:

Further economic turbulence and potential downturns between 2010 – 2020, followed by a more stable period to 2030 as excessive risks have been removed from the financial markets and most economies have repaired their finances

Out of the list of 100 future jobs, i personally liked very much: the body part maker, the teleportation specialist, the currency designer, the non-military defense specialist, the director of responsible investments, the mind reading specialist,

Take the Body Part Maker (possible emergence as a profession: 2020, that’s only 10 years from now !):

Due to the huge advances being made in bio-tissues, robotics and plastics, the creation of high performing body parts – from organs to limbs – will soon be possible, requiring body part makers, body part stores and body part repair shops.

While a typical organ such as a liver or kidney might be grown, other parts such as an arm would involve the complex integration of a nano-engineered skeleton, high performance robotic joints, fibre-optic nerves, artificially grown skin, synthetic flesh and muscles.

Or the Memory Augmentation Surgeon (emerging profession in 2030). It really reads like Ray Kurzweil’s “The Singularity is Near” (book written in 2005 !)

This is a new category of surgeons whose role is to add extra memory to people who want to increase their memory capacity. A key service would be helping those who have literally been overloaded with information in the course of their life and simply can no longer take on any more data – thus leading to

sensory shutdown

Although the job descriptions are somewhat funny and even “cute”, the real value of the report is in its Appendices: they hide a wealth of trends for 2030.

Truly amazing. If only 10% of this becomes true, the world in 2030 will look quite different from 2010. Especially Appendix-2 is a summary of all things you should be aware of as 2015 approaches. Appendix-3 shows a very comprehensive timeline per trend.

It is in these Appendices that you can learn for example about Generational Cross-Roads:

The challenge for employers will be to create an environment where each group can feel valued and be effective. Indeed, a Randstad USA survey found that 51% of baby boomers and 66% of the generation that preceded them reported having little to no interaction with colleagues from Generation Y.

What is your company doing to get these young generations

deeply into your workforce’s DNA ?

And about Society in Transition:

Higher ethical standards and a sense of the greater good are two of these evolving trends. Increasing expectations are concurrent with a decline in trust of key institutions.

“Higher ethical standards…” See also my previous blog post on Ethical Re-Boot.

About Evolving Technological Ecosystem, the appendices reveal that:

Handheld devices expected to become the control centre of a rapidly expanding personal ecosystem – where projection / pullout screens and keyboards could accelerate laptop replacement. Key enablers include augmented reality, intuitive interfaces, semantic computing and the increasing embedding of intelligence in a range of devices – often known as ambient intelligence or IP Everywhere.

What is your company doing to get these technologies

deeply into your innovation DNA ?

And about Quantum Cryptography that:

In “traditional cryptography” the data itself is encrypted using complicated mathematical functions. In “quantum encrypted communications”, a key is sent by beaming a string of photons, representing a code, from the source to the target. If it gets to the other end and matches what the target expects, then the data gets unencrypted. The Guardian notes that if anyone tries to intercept or break it, thanks to the laws of quantum physics, the mere act of observing the stream of photons changes it – and so it fails

If you company is doing something related to internet security

your strategy for the next 5-10 years

should have some bullets and focus on this.

And it is not always about throwing another GUI at your application. Have a look at this article that suggest that Mind and Square are NOT innovative and the true meaning of innovation in financial services lies in the plumbing, not the UI.

Remember my discourse about Innovation at the Core vs. Innovation beyond the Core ?

And then there is a section on R&D and Innovation trends. Most countries and regions seem to invest more in Innovation:

R&D Takes Centre Stage: Germany is investing EUR900M by 2010 to fund R&D projects commissioned by medium-sized business and EUR65M to expand and develop research infrastructure. Norway is set to increase its Research and Innovation Fund capital by EUR685M and create over 200 new research positions each with EUR90,000 funding. France is committing EUR731M in 2009-10 to refurbish universities and research institutions. China’s 10Tn Yuan 2009-11stimulus package includes major investments in science and technology, including "key research projects related to enlarging the domestic market.‖ (University World News).

And where is Flanders ? The Flemish Government decided to REDUCE the budgets for Innovation and R&D for the next couple of years ! And some companies plan to do the same in reaction to the economic climate.

Reducing your innovation budgets

means the beginning of the end

It means that you don’t believe

in the future

of your region, company or project.

Calling in a bus of consultants to tell you how to innovate will not work. First check out How real your Innovation is. And start from there. Especially if your company has a culture of incremental innovation.

We have to invest now. As mentioned before, i believe this requires a private (non-public) initiative. Many public – government driven – initiatives seem to lead to lots of consensus and compromise, often leading to a watered down vision, or no vision at all.

I was – and still am – hoping that our Think Tank on Long Term future can kick-start this private process.

Let’s also watch-out for the Belgian Presidency of the EU for the second half of 2010. I heard they bring on board some really smart people that can make the difference. Hopefully we get in the news because we really could make that difference, rather than through scandals about drunk MP’s.

If not, we may have to start imagining a miserable future in 2030 where we will be feeling like in 2010 without Internet (kicked into our lives around 1995 for most of us).

So, if you are/get fired, the next best thing to do is probably to look into the direction of your purpose and to surround you by the people of the right tribe. Those that make you live longer not shorter. Those that truly bind not seek conflict. Those that want you to succeed, not fail. Those that are capable of saying yes, and have not been trained to find the “no”.

For further inspiration about being mentally healthy and finding the right tribe, have a look at this TED talk by Dan Buettner on “How to live to be 100+”. With thanks to the friends in Iceland for spotting this one.

Or you may just not even make it to 2030 !

Ethical Re-boot

Posted on January 16, 2010 by petervan

UPDATE: Cool ! It seems that my site has been blocked from Myanmar 2 hours after posting this article. Now i really feel what freedom of speech means.

UPDATE-2: added some other interesting links at the end of this post.

I fully agree with Robert Scoble that Google’s threat to withdraw from China is a world changer. A huge milestone.

Image courtesy WSJ

I believe that – when we will look back some years from now – this move will be seen as the “tipping point” in Corporate Ethical Re-Boot.

In this post, is will share some of my personal views on the Google-China event, and some other ethical old game/new game type of events i observed recently in my country.

There is a tsunami of responses to Google’s position. Some good recent blogs on the subject can be found here: Wall Street Journal’s overview and clearing up the confusion/myths, Scoble’s push/pull article, Kara Swisher’s China’s Internet Behavior, and John Paczkowski U.S. State Department to complain article.

UPDATE-3: another interesting one is from Christopher Meyer “Why is Google doing Government’s Job ?”

Walter Wriston (CEO of Citicorp in the 1970s) , in his 1992 book The Twilight of Sovereignty, predicted that business institutions would take over many of the roles of the state. He had a front-row seat — maybe the whole front row — as private financial institutions became more powerful than every central bank in the world save the US Fed (until now, at least). Governments’ power in shaping world affairs wanes as access to information broadens. As another affirmation of this, Carne Ross, a former UK diplomat, now does business as an "Independent Diplomat," offering professional-class diplomacy to state and non-state actors.

A new thesis by Miranda Meyer of the University of Chicago (umm…yes, relation) asserts that non-sovereign organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah belong to a class of actors that have important impacts but are not recognized in the Political Science literature.

Miranda Meyer’s thinking is very much in line with Joshua Cooper Ramo’s book “The age of the unthinkable”

Back in 1993, Wriston’s subtitle was "How the Information Revolution is Transforming Our World." Indeed, 17 years on, who can doubt that it has? One of his favorite observations was that "information about money is more important than money itself." Google’s influence is a sign that information about information may be more powerful still.

I found two other blog posts remarkably interesting.

First there was Fred Destin’s blog on Communist China, the misbehaving superpower.

The global outcome of a fast-growing command economy has been the government-determined explosion of asset bubbles all over the world – not because China is growing, the cause assumed by most economists, but because the government is buying resources (and their future options) on the global market, forward for 5-20 years. The result: instant commodity asset bubbles, worldwide, and further destabilization for non-Chinese consumers of these commodities. Of course, if the Chinese play the bubbles wrong, they will lose even more as prices collapse.

Could the Chinese create a global catastrophe by commanding all of this leverage into the wrong assets at the wrong time, by deflating the value of high-IP goods, by forcing global competition against unsustainable cost bases, and destroying non-Chinese business infrastructure? Sure. In fact, this is almost a “when,” and not an “if,” question.

What could possibly be more

dangerous to the world than a

command economic system run

on a global scale?

This is one view, a bit driven by

FEAR

Fear is also coming into the picture when you see that US Government is starting to take position, with all it’s possible impact on the US-China relations, the world economy and the quite fragile balance in world peace (at least between the super-powers).

But there is also the view driven by the opposite of fear:

LOVE

Translated into hope for an ethical reveille, beautifully articulated in Umair Hague’s MUST READ post “Google, China, and the new High Ground of Advantage” and you start seeing a pattern:

But the high ground has shifted. The new high ground is an ethical edge. It’s not about having more; it’s about doing better. It’s not about protecting exports, pressuring buyers and suppliers, price discriminating against the powerless, and programming consumers to buy, buy, buy — it’s about making people, communities, and society authentically better off. It’s not about caring less — but caring more. It’s not about ruthlessness. It’s about mindfulness.

The 20th century high ground might let China build a few dozen Microsofts, Fords, and Gaps: industrial-era companies that make industrial-era stuff — and play by industrial-era rules. Yawn. We know how that story ends, because we’re living it: an economy, polity, society, and natural world in stagnation and decline. Dear Wen Jiabao: want fries with that Zombieconomy?

The only way to step past the industrial era’s zombified endgame is the new high ground, because only an ethical edge can do all the good stuff above. The old high ground was built for 20th century economics: sell more junk, earn more profit, "grow" — and then crash. An ethical edge operates at a higher economic level.

It is concerned with

what we sell,

how profits are earned, and

which authentic, human benefits "grow."

It’s a concept built for the economics of an interdependent world.

Ethical edge is advantage reconceived for the 21st century. It’s an institutional innovation: the institution of "advantage" rebuilt for a threadbare, fraying, global economy. It’s a radical new definition of "advantage" that blows past the stale, tired idea of competitive advantage.

For me personally, i am on the hope side, and what’s going on here is really opening the Ethical Firehose.

I have always been inspired by the work of Peter Singer, especially his books “One World” and “Writings on Ethical Life”, but had somehow lost hope due to being confronted with the sad and disappointing realities of corporate life. I guess we all got our wounds as we lived our professional lives.

Umair Hague already pointed at it: one of the cultivated behaviors in corporate life is cynicism. As i have mentioned at several occasions before, cynicism is applied by folks who have lost the ability of "opening their heart”.

The other corporate disease is “Machiavellian" behavior. I have met recently professionals who even seem to be proud of their Machiavellian “skills”.

I think it’s wrong, very wrong

I looked up in some dictionaries what Machiavellian really means.

Being or acting in accordance with the principles of government analyzed in Machiavelli’s The Prince, in which political expediency is placed above morality and the use of craft and deceit to maintain the authority and carry out the policies of a ruler is described. Characterized by subtle or unscrupulous cunning, deception, expediency, or dishonesty: He resorted to Machiavellian tactics in order to get ahead.

And in the Business Dictionary, i found:

Conduct or philosophy based on (or one who adopts) the cynical beliefs of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) whose name (in popular perception) is synonymous with deception and duplicity in management and statecraft. Born in Florence (Italy), Machiavelli was its second chancellor and (in 1531) wrote the book ‘The Prince’ that discusses ways in which the rulers of a nation state can gain and control power. Although The Prince contains some keen and practical insights into human behavior, it also displays a pessimistic view of human nature and condones opportunistic and unethical ways of manipulating people. One of its suggestions reads, "Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature."

It’s fundamentally about dishonesty and manipulation. It’s about trust (or the lack of it) . Would you be able to trust Machiavellians ? Do you trust your leaders if they don’t apply the basic ethical principles ?

Some shocking examples come from my own country.

Last week we had our Minister of Pensions Michel Daerden showing up drunk in Parliament. It even made BBC News. I am so proud of our leaders (hmmm. this is cynicism again).

Or our ex-prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene whose famous arrogant answer to journalists was usually “no comments”: he is now on the board of AB Inbev as “independent” advisor. We have in Belgium an “ethical code of conduct” called the “Code Lippens”.

The Corporate Governance Committee was established on 22 January 2004. Maurice Lippens was appointed chairman. The Committee was created at the initiative of the Banking, Finance and Insurance Commission, the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium and Euronext Brussels.The Committee issued a single reference code for listed Belgian companies. The Code is to set out principles of good governance and transparency, which will contribute to the development of companies and to the quality of their image among investors and the general public.

Guess what ? based on the information in Belgian quality newspaper De Standaard, Directors of the Board get a yearly fixed compensation of 70,000 to 80,000 EUR plus a variable compensation, let’s say a bonus. How can you be an independent advisor to the board in these circumstances ?

Who does still trust these people ?

Getting closer to the business of financial services i am working in – and the importance of trust in this new decade – there was this related article in the Confused of Calcutta titled Musing about Trust.

There’s something very human about trust. Something more related to the Age of Biology rather than the Age of Physics. We’ve seen what happens when we rely on mathematics for ratings and values and decisions. Last time round it was called the Credit Crunch. A decade earlier it was called LTCM. Whatever.

Some of us believe passionately in the power of what’s happening today, in terms of democratized tools and access and community-based approaches to many things, from home to work to government and beyond. In fact, I’m personally somewhat at a loss as to why no one has really put together the right community-based vehicle for “climate change”, built as an open and transparent platform, on open source principles and in a global inclusive manner.

Trust is about covenant relationships, not about contract relationships. In a contract you await breach and effect recourse. The question answered is “who pays?” In a covenant the question that’s answered is “how do we fix it?”

I think we’re going to spend a lot of time in 2010 learning about covenant relationships and their role in society. At home. In the community. At work. As a nation. As the world.

Which brings me to Michael Moore’s recent film “Capitalism: a love story”.

I was chatting with a colleague in Cubicle 3B23 about this.

The person’s reaction was:

I am ashamed to work

for this industry

I think i am going to watch the movie too. Because, somewhere somehow it all starts feeling wrong and not in line with my true compass.

Other related articles

Google and the ethics of the cloud, by Nick Carr

Cubicle 3B23: message from Cubicle 3B21

Posted on January 15, 2010 by petervan

On the previous post Cubicle 3B23, I got a comment that i really want to give more visibility on the front-page.

Here it goes:

Cubicle 3B21 is just across the corridor from 3B23; when both doors are open, we could see each other and talk (a bit loudly and to the annoyance of our colleagues) without getting off our chairs. 3B21 is also visited by people. Usually different people. For different reasons. They come for a joke and a laugh – look at the latest silly toy or Dilbert cartoon, or some obscure droodle on the wall – for 3B21 has a bit the kindergarten look (playful, nearly silly, messy, surprising). They come as well to talk – not to get advice but to be listen to, searching for empathy, acceptance, and a sympathetic ear.

3B21 is the office of the Happiness officer (a self-adopted title which would be well-suited to Atlas carrying the whole world on his shoulders :-)). It is also the office of Joe.

3B21 and 3B23 are connected – the yin and yang of the same thing. While one is frequented by people looking for solution, advice, inspiration the other is the place for people searching for warmth, comfort and simple human connection. Often the same people. And the subject of impact is also the center of the universe in 3B21 – but impact one person at a time in a small but personally significant (to them) way.

When I considered first writing this, I kept thinking about the ripple vs the wave that Peter mentioned: what causes one and what the other, and how are they different; do I want to make a wave or a ripple?

And they are basically the same thing – many individual molecules moving in a synchronized way. It’s quite a small imperceptible movements but because they are many it accumulates (excuse the science vulgarization – the goal is not accuracy but a visual metaphor)…

What’s different is the scale (a wave has tons more of these guys pulling all in the same direction) and the independence – how long the movement can last once the force that caused it is taken away. And as I was reading about waves and how they work, I found out that what we really want to make is a rogue wave (also know as a freak wave) – a very rare phenomenon, which happens when the energy of all the water molecules gets amplified, to an unbelievable level – a kind of resonance that creates a monster of a wave, that sucks all energy around it and piles it into a powerful wall of water. And what this is caused by is 2 factors: a force above and a force below – a strong wind and a deep current working together. That’s what cubicles 3B23 and 3B21 are about – a wind and a current stirring the murky waters of a sea and letting go, so the power of it can emerge.

And if that’s not full contact, what is?

Wonderful !

Looks like we’re building a tribe here 😉

Who joins the wave ? We need you to lead us. Send a comment. Let yourself know. Come to Cubicle 3B23 or 3B21.

Love and Hate Relationships

Posted on January 13, 2010 by petervan

A good friend of mine commented on one of the blog post. It’s a comment that cuts deep. Knowing the person, i think it was quite a step to be this open on a public blog. So first of all, congrats for coming-out !

Here is the original comment:

I have spent some time reading through this and other blogs of yours. And they make me react strongly in a very controversial way: I love them and I hate them; I agree and fully reject their contents.
And, beyond the very valid and daring points you make, I’d like to reflect about the channel: speaking one’s true mind, yet doing so hiding behind a screen and sometimes even a fake name.
My fear is having my own children communicating with me via a blog.

You make me reflect, to the point of writing this reply. So I guess we should both be content as the blog has obviously achieved its goal…
But I dont know if I should be happy or sad about it. After all, I could have also called you!

With respect to the fake name, this was to protect. Not myself, but somebody else. I really would like to know on what content you agree or reject. Contact me.

In response to the strong point you make about the communication channel, I believe we have to let the future emerge (We don’t have a choice anyway ;-). We have to be in this world and evolve and adapt to survive. Or we can disconnect and go to a monastery, which is a valid choice of course.

My and your children consider e-mail as really very old-fashioned. And blogs are really for guys with grey hairs. So here we are. It’s 2010.

Whether you like it or not, your and my children will communicate using Twitter, Facebook, Netlog, Foursquare etc or whatever will be applicable the next years. Like we used to send SMS’s, our kids will Tweet or whatever the channel will be.

One thing is inevitable. The on-line communication channels move into real-time. Nova Spivack coined this “The Stream”. See my post on World Wide Web.

I have btw another blog post in preparation about about a very related subject: privacy.

We seem to have passed the tipping point where the default is NOT privacy, but Public. It will then be up to you to indicate what about yourself you want to keep private. I struggle with that too. It has a lot with digital identity. If you’re interested in digital identity, i can really recommend the blog of Kim Cameron: www.identityblog.com

I encourage anyone to get into discussion with me on the CONTENT of this blog. Via the comment link, via phone, mail, face-to-face.

When i started this blog, i had some blog-shyness. That over now. I feel more comfortable with this channel now.

Probably 10 years later than the early adopters, but who cares !

Emotional Zombies

Posted on January 3, 2010 by petervan

Great post on “Who needs employees anyway ?”. Discovered via Fred Zimny’s Blog.

This is based on a recent “Global Workforce Survey” conducted by Towers Perrin, an HR consultancy. In an attempt to measure the extent of employee engagement around the world, the company polled more than 90,000 workers in 18 countries. The survey covered many of the key factors that determine workplace engagement, including: the ability to participate in decision-making, the encouragement given for innovative thinking, the availability of skill-enhancing job assignments and the interest shown by senior executives in employee well-being.

Barely 21%

of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would “go the extra mile” for their employer.

Nearly 38%

are mostly or entirely disengaged, while the rest are in the tepid middle.

Surprisingly, 86%

of the employees in the Towers Perrin study said they loved or liked their job.

So, next time you evaluate your yearly employee satisfaction survey, beware of the numbers saying that the majority of employees is happy. Even if you sense in every office, corridor and corner that is not true.

Anyway, why these rather shocking results ? The article suggests a number of reasons:

Ignorance

It may be that managers don’t actually realize that most of their employees are emotional zombies

Indifference

Another explanation: managers know that a lot of employees are flatlining at work, but maybe they simply don’t care

Impotence

It could be that managers do care, but can’t imagine how they could change things for the better. After all, a lot of jobs are just plain boring.

Reputation

The company’s reputation and its commitment to making a difference in the world—is this a company that deserves the best efforts of its people;

Leaders’ Trust

Are the behaviors and values of the organization’s leaders—are they people employees respect and want to follow?

Anybody who has ever read a Dilbert strip knows that cynicism and passivity are endemic in large organizations.

However – in my opinion – we too easily get away with joking about cynicism. In my opinion, it is the cancer of today’s organizations that seem great at the outside, but grim at the inside. They look like golden cages. They offer all the perks possible, but they ignore 3 basic attitudes for any human being to function well.

#1: To have an open mind. Companies/People who do not have an open mind tend to retract into highly judgmental.

#2: To have an open heart. The next level is that of the heart. People who do not have an open heart have developed cynicism as a defense. They have learned NOT to show their heart.

#3: To have an open will. Last but not least, when there is no room for open will, we become control freaks.

In today’s society, driven more and more by openness and transparency, these “tricks” of judging, being cynical and control don’t work anymore.

It all boils down to 3 fundamental needs for every human being:

People who are not able to express themselves (anymore), position themselves as “invulnerable”. In stead of being able to receive love, they compromise on getting appreciation. And in stead of giving love, the defense mechanism becomes one of taking power. As long as we have power games between the silos, the CEO can shout “change” and “innovation” as long as he wants, at the bottom of the pyramid nothing will change.

Surprisingly, the origins of these needs – and their fulfillment or not – is formed during the first 1-3 years of your life. In other words beyond the control of the organization you work for today.

But organizations should be conscious about these facts, and offer their employees probably the most interesting perk they can give: to follow a personal development program that lets the employee explore it’s true self.

Who am I ?
Who am I in a group ?
Who am I in the world ?
Finding your true passion.
Finding your true purpose in life.

And hopefully finding (or founding) a company that welcomes you respectfully as an employee, and gives you the chances to develop your true potential in line with your purpose.

It reminds me of Jim Collins and a 2003 blog post found back earlier today.

The start of the New Year is a perfect time to start a stop doing list and to make this the cornerstone of your New Year resolutions, be it for your company, your family or yourself. It also is a perfect time to clarify your three circles, mirroring at a personal level the three questions asked by Smith:

1) What are you deeply passionate about?
2) What are you are genetically encoded for — what activities do you feel just "made to do"?
3) What makes economic sense — what can you make a living at?

Those fortunate enough to find or create a practical intersection of the three circles have the basis for a great work life.

An to come back to the Global Workforce Survey:

In every industry, there are huge swathes of critical knowledge that have been commoditized—and what hasn’t yet been commoditized soon will be.
Given that, we have to wave goodbye to the “knowledge economy” and say hello to the “creative economy.”
What matters today is how fast a company can generate new insights and build new knowledge—of the sort that enhances customer value.
To escape the curse of commoditization, a company has to be a game-changer, and that requires employees who are proactive, inventive and zealous.
Problem is, you can’t command people to be enthusiastic, creative and passionate.
These critical ingredients for success in the creative economy are gifts that people will bring to work each day only if they’re truly engaged. (Eric Raymond made this point way back in 2001 when he argued that in the new economy, “enjoyment predicts productivity.”)

For passionate readers, i can recommend in this context Eric Raymond’s book The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Or a bit an older – but still very relevant book – “The Cultural Creatives”

Must be that I am some sort of +

positive guy when i turn a title like Emotional Zombies” into something positive like “The cultural creatives”

As Seth Godin was saying in his today’s blog:

One of the most common things I hear is, "I’d like to do something remarkable like that, but my xyz won’t let me." Where xyz = my boss, my publisher, my partner, my licensor, my franchisor, etc.

Well, you can fail by going along with that and not doing it, or you can do it, cause a ruckus and work things out later.

In my experience, once it’s clear you’re willing (not just willing, but itching, moving, and yes, implementing) without them, things start to happen. People are rarely willing to step up and stop you, and often just waiting to follow someone crazy enough to actually do something.

I’m going

Come along if you like

Sean Park’s Sixth Paradigm

Posted on December 30, 2009 by petervan

As preparation of 2010, i very strongly recommend to get familiar with Sean Park’s The Sixth Paradigm post of 28 Dec 2009.

I am a big fan of Sean and his site the Park Paradigm. He was the guy who made the famous AmazonBay2015 video.

That was 2006.

Since a couple of days the video of his Oct 2009 presentation at Amsterdam eComm Europe is available on his post above and also the Prezi presentation is here.

The video of his presentation is 20 min. It’s worth your time.

Two extracts of this presentation should get your attention, and incentivize you to read on:

– What is the difference between a bank and a telecom company really ?

– The difference between bank messaging and telcos is disappearing.

I believe this presentation is VERY VERY relevant to financial services and concepts such a marketplaces for financial services.

This presentation gives you an absolute macro-evolution view on why this is a bound to be happen, and why the inherent structures of our current – usually vertical integrated – behemoth companies will struggle very hard to get their arms around this if they even ever succeed it spotting this as a HUGE opportunity.

The essence of the story is that those

vertically integrated companies

will be replaced/challenged

by horizontally connected entities

offering themselves

to the marketplace

via APIs

The innovation will happen

at the edges of the marketplace.

The marketplace is not even

innovative anymore.

It’s an essential piece of

the plumbing.

A lot of Sean’s thinking is based on the work of Carlota Perez and her book “Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages”

Professor Carlota Perez is a Venezuelan scholar and expert on technology and socio-economic development most famous for her concept of Techno-Economic Paradigm Shifts and her theory of great surges, a further development of the Kondratieff waves.

Courtesy The Park Paradigm & Carlota Perez book.

Sean Park’s claim is that we are now getting into the 6th paradigm, and this is also a switching point between 2 phases.

Sean Park believes the drivers will be 3-fold:

1) Cloud computing, with EVERYTHING as a Service

2) Exchange Ubiquity. The marketplace as plumbing, i would call this

3) Digitization

The last one “Digitization” seems “obvious”, unless you push this to the limits, as Sean Park does:

He takes the example of ISBN numbers as one of the success factors of Amazon’s book shop. Sure, there is big logistical tail to the book shop, the the core of the Amazon model is digitized, i.e the ISBN is just an identifier, linked to plenty of content and metadata, that can be accessed by an eco-system through APIs.

Where it even becomes more interesting, is where Sean mixes this up with theories of complex adaptive systems. It’s basically saying that

those horizontally integrated value chains

are chains of nearly decomposable services

And please read this in the context of nearly decomposable

financial services

And (traditional) vertically integrated companies (offering financial services) will not be able to compete successfully in rate of adaptation and fitness with these horizontally integrated “engines” or “eco-systems”.

Sean asks the question:

Where is the AppStore for Financial Services ?

here is the digital platform + API’s for the financial industry ?

Where are the decomposable financial services that can thrive on such marketplace ?

Sean has some other great disruptive statements. Like this one:

Its about the shift

from

It looks like Sean’s company is looking to invest in companies that understand how to build and offer these decomposable services.

But who should invest in the marketplace,

the plumbing,

the “dumb” but highly secure pipes

for the financial industry ?

We could let every Bank behemoth have it’s chance at it. That may be great for lock in. But in the long term, we will need something that is highly interoperable.

With interoperability

built-in

into the DNA

of this Digital Platform.

That is run as a service for the community. And to be the “invisible engine” for financial services cloud computing.

It’s only a very personal opinion, but i believe SWIFT is quite uniquely positioned to play this role.

We are already in full prep for our 2010 SWIFT Innovation activities. It should be obvious from the above that we have Sean Park on our list of speakers to be contacted for our Innotribe event series, and who know at Sibos 2010 in Amsterdam ?

Avatar

Posted on December 28, 2009 by petervan

Went to see Avatar this afternoon. Here is the link to the official website, which is an experience on itself: put the audio ON please. Have also a look at the Wikipedia site about the film.

And i was lucky to see it in 3D. What an experience! First of all, it was quite some time since i ever went to the “cinéma”, and this was also my first 3D movie ever. I was absolutely surprised by the quality of it.

For me, this movie had the same impact as 1968 ! movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”

Without telling too much about the story and the plot, how i would like to fly that chopper !

And how i’d wish that the tablet PC in the movie is what Apple is going to release in Jan 2010 ! Or to have one of those fantastic displays 😉

You will also recognize music that makes you think of the final sequence of Titanic.

It’s mind-blowing. In the beginning of the film, you feel really surprised how real the characters, and the fauna and flora are. That’s ok for 5 min, but then you start realizing this goes on for about 2 hours, and the makers of the film immerse you in some semi-real environment, and you feel as being part of it, and you feel part of the story and engaged. A masterpiece.

You have to see it. Don’t compromise on a non-3D version.

And stay till the end, and have a look at the credits. An endless list of specialists that have contributed to the movie. A true 2010 Enterprise.

And to close, here is a quiz: at the end of the film, the main character Jake Sully does his last “videolog”. What is the exact date that is shown on the videolog display ?

HR and Innovation

Posted on December 28, 2009 by petervan

In my previous blog “Brand, Workforce and Innovation”, i started making a case for a leadership role for HR in Innovation.

I wrote:

I’d love to see more HR in a true leadership role. Leadership as opposite to management in its narrow definition of executing a course set out by somebody else. See also below the very important message about the role for HR in creating the eminence of our workforce.

Checkout my previous post on what is meant with “eminence of our workforce”.

I would like to mix this with some thoughts from Rowan Gibson recently on Blogging Innovation. His full posting can be found here but i will explore some key findings below. Rowan Gibson is the author of “Innovation to the Core”.

UPDATE: what a co-incidence. Just today, Rowan Gibson did a new post in essence giving a one-page summary of his book. Here is the link to “Do you have a Corporate Innovation System?”

Innovation to the core” is about putting

radical innovation in the core of

your organization

and is not to be confused with the discussing

Innovation in the core or beyond the core

of your product portfolio

UPDATE: “Beyond the Core” is a book by Chris Zook, and is based on the principle of adjacencies. It seems to be the bible for anybody not wanting to do anything beyond the core. It dates back from begin 2005, and is in my opinion completely outdated as a guide for innovation.

Rowan says in his blog:

In essence, that means developing a particular mix of resources, processes and values that makes it hard for rivals to match what the company does.

This has to do – amongst others – to create this eminence in the work-force.

But it is much more.

Lastly, i was attending one of our company meetings, and our CEO was doing a pitch on the focus of innovation in 2010. Great to have your CEO on board to get innovation rolling ! Really, it makes a big difference. But at the same time, the company runs a 2-year lean-program to build greater efficiencies in the company processes.

In French, we call this “Le grand écart”.

It’s difficult, but not impossible if you’re fit and trained.

People do not understand this, cannot digest, don’t see the big picture, as the efficiency programs are much closer to their daily lives and – most of all – their jobs.

You could see the glaze in the eyes of some folks when we were talking innovation after having explained the lean-part.

As long as we do not succeed as positioning innovation as “buying our future”, as essential to building the greatest workforce on earth and giving the people the possibility of being part of that – with reward mechanisms – we won’t succeed in those apparent conflicting objectives.

Rowan Gibson goes on:

Making innovation a systemic organizational capability is a complex and multifaceted challenge. It simply cannot be solved with some Band-Aid or silver bullet. Instead, it requires deep and enduring changes to leadership focus, performance metrics, organization charts, management processes, IT systems, training programs, incentive and reward structures, cultural environment and values.

It’s not “good enough” to have your CEO on board. You need the full buy-in of your full Executive Committee, and – in a more complex co-operative organization like SWIFT – the buy-in of your Members, represented by the Board. We still have a lot of work to do, but i believe we are getting there. Innovation is now getting at the agenda of those deciding constituencies.

What i have not yet seen is a focus on how HR can help and be instrumental for innovation.

What companies need is not merely a pro-innovation mindset, or better brainstorming techniques, or "hot teams". It’s about making innovation a new organizational way of life; something that permeates everything a company does, in every corner of its business, every single day. It’s about infusing the entire lifeblood of an organization with the tools, skills, methods and processes of radical innovation. That’s the true imperative for rethinking the role of Human Resources. As soon as we recognize the strategic value and the immense organizational transition that’s involved in building a corporate-wide innovation capability, HR automatically moves to center stage.

And what would be the role of HR in such an Innovation context ?

Who else but HR leaders would be capable of turning a company’s strategic intent with regard to innovation into tangible everyday action? Who else could make the necessary changes to executive roles and goals, political infrastructures, recruitment strategy, broad-based training, performance appraisals, awards and incentives, employee contribution and commitment, value systems, and so on? Who else could build and foster the cultural and constitutional conditions – such as a discretionary time allowance for innovation projects, maximum diversity in the composition of innovation teams, and rampant connection and conversation across the organization – that serve as catalysts for breakthrough innovation? Who else could ensure that each employee understands the link between his or her own performance (as well as compensation) and the attainment of the company’s innovation strategy?

In short, who else but HR

leaders could create a company

where everyone, everywhere,

is responsible for innovation

every day whether as an

innovator, mentor, manager, or

team member?

I have become a big believer that companies need an innovation system where

everybody in the company

becomes an innovator

It’s almost a human right of any employee in a company, i would even venture it is a moral obligation for any employee in a company to be an innovator himself. It is NOT the sole privilege of the innovation team to come up with ideas, on the contrary. See in this context my previous blog on The Holy Fire.

Rowan Gibson has a great closing in his blog post:

The sad reality is that too many CEOs overlook HR’s potential in this regard. They still think of HR solely in terms of regulatory compliance, hiring and firing, employee comfort, compensation and benefits. Notably, Jack Welch, illustrious ex-CEO of GE and arguably one of the greatest corporate leaders of our times, sees things differently. In a recent column in BusinessWeek, he writes that

"every CEO should elevate his

head of HR to the same stature

as the CFO."

Hope somebody reads this.

Need for a new currency based on abundancy

Posted on December 27, 2009 by petervan

Thanks to my subscription to Fredzimmy’s blog, I found this wonderful blog from Esko Kilpi.

I really recommend you to explore this site from A to Z.

Look at the wonderful slidedeck on Slideshare
Have a look at the Flickr photos
Have a look at the Bookmarks

MIT Media Lab Human Dynamics Group, Howard Rheingold (one of the first ever “internet”-books i ever bought,…, Barbarian Blog.

Yummy, Yummy. This is great stuff for a Sunday afternoon. So inspiring. Delicious 😉

This way, i discovered the FANTASTIC Web 2.0 Expo speech of Douglas Rushkoff about Radical Abundance.

It is a 15 min video, and worth every minute:

Not sure if the video embed worked, so in any case you can find it here by clicking the below image.

Some mind-blowing quotes (in 140 characters ;-):

The operating system for money is obsolete…
Abundance based currencies and monopoly based currencies…
Central Bank Monarch imprinted currencies are scarcity based currencies…
The money we use today was created so that rich people to stay rich by being rich (and lending) rather than doing anything…

Our economy is based on the growth of interest
The people lending money get richer, the people creating value are getting poorer
But, what happens if you get something that’s abundant ? That you can’t make scarce.
The computers and networks change the “centrality” of value creation
You are now able to exchange value directly between one another rather than through a centralized currency
Optimize human beings to technology
Technology is more compatible with the values of efficiency than with all the other human values
Now you’re open and free to Google-Ads
Web³ will be won by the power of those who can index and aggregate. Is that what we want ?
Open Source and Crowdsourcing are not the same things
This notion of “free” leads to a society of copying, to no creativity, to no originality, to DJ’ing of culture
The abundance of genuinely creative output is declining
What we need is the development of a digital culture that respects the labor of individuals
What we need is the creation of new modes of currency based on abundance rather than scarcity.
I am talking about the original PayPal dream before banks asked them to be regulated like… banks
The next BIG thing are from people who will create genuine alternative electronic currencies and P2P exchange that do not involve cash.
I am talking about primitive local currencies such as Timebanks, Itex, Superfluid’s Quids
Cash has already lost its utility value, as it has been sucked out into investment capital, in the speculative marketplace
The only real competition against a Google universe (and their ideas of openness – see last weeks Google Blog post about openness btw) would be peer to peer exchange
We are not suffering from an abundance of creativity, just from an abundance of productivity, efficiency and openness.
If Web² leads to aggregation and indexers, then genuine P2P will lead to bottom-up value creation.
The next era is not about scaling-up anymore, it’s about figuring out how to exchange value, in stead of extracting value.
We are at a crossroads: right now we have the opportunity to optimize our systems, technologies, currencies to humans in stead of optimizing humans to them.

Education, Elites and Bologna

Posted on December 27, 2009 by petervan

I was watching this morning a television program with Christine Van Den Wyngaert.

The program was in essence about her views and role in the Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, but mu attention was triggered by something she said in the introductory part of the interview.

She was referring to the dramatic decrease of the quality of our education, mainly due to the Bologna Treaty. Just have a look at the Wikipedia link or do a google on Bologna Treaty. Or have a look at the Europa site. The first sentence on that site reads:

The Bologna process aims inter alia at making divergent higher education systems converge towards a more transparent system by 2010, based on three cycles: Degree/Bachelor – Master – Doctorate.

I always get irritated when people talk about “convergence” or “consensus” or “compromise”. For me these terms have a built-in notion of quality-loss.

Indeed, Christine Van Den Wyngaert explains that “thanks” to this treaty it was not possible anymore – no, even forbidden – to offer education with the same high quality standards as we used to have.

All this in the name of democratization of education and to give everybody access to higher education.

She went on by stating that many base foundation courses of general knowledge were being reduced to the level of “kindergarten”.

And that for some professions – definitely for a judge or a lawyer – good solid foundation education about history, society, etc are quite fundamental for doing the profession.

It is getting pedantic in a sense that even talking about creating an “elite” of scientists, judges, of whatever profession starts being banned straight-away.

I do not want my child being educated in mediocrity.

It made me think of the book “The Five Minds of the Future” by Howard Gardner.

I am reading it on my Kindle as we speak.

In that book, Howard Gardner arguments that education should not only be based on memorizing lots of information, but that education (whether at school or at home) should more focus on some essential skills that will be needed in the future (of real-time, high-information-based-society).

He calls these the 5 “minds” for the future. They are:

The disciplined mind
The Synthesizing mind
The Creating mind
The Respectful mind
The Ethical mind

About these “minds”, Gardner says:

Any individual with a deep understanding of a topic or method can think about it in a variety of ways. Conversely, an individual exhibits her current limitations when she can only conceptualize her topic in a single way.

This is very similar to having a very limited palette of ways to express yourself. Sometimes you hear somebody saying “I cannot dance on this or that sort of music. If i have to dance to that music, i cannot be myself (in an authentic way")”.

That’s pretty poor, if you ask me.

The art is to expand your palette of ways of being yourself in different situations.

Having the right to (the old) high standards of education, being trained in the 5 minds of the future, learning to be authentic in many different ways: all this should be part of the educational package of any young person having some ambitions for the longer term future.

I have come to a point where i do NOT believe anymore that our politicians and the whole system of lobby groups will help us getting there.

I was making the same reflection some weeks ago, when we were having our meeting of the Think Tank on Long Term Future, when i heard my friends complaining on how bad is it is getting in Flanders with respect to getting innovation on the political or any other agenda.

The innovation and education and

cultural agenda

get drowned into a political swamp

of consensus and power games

The end result is often or nothing, or something very grey (because of the consensus), or something very Kafkaesque.

I am getting convinced we have to do it

ourselves

Bring together some smart people in our think tank, and get private funding for the innovation, education and cultural development of the Generation-M.

Because they are looking for the things that really matter.

Petervan Studios

Artistic Interventions – Interruptions – Provocations

Category Archives: Worldviews

Body Part Maker

Ethical Re-boot

Cubicle 3B23: message from Cubicle 3B21

Love and Hate Relationships

Emotional Zombies

Sean Park’s Sixth Paradigm

Avatar

HR and Innovation

Need for a new currency based on abundancy

Education, Elites and Bologna

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