Thanks Alfred E.

There was a time in Australian aviation history when we had a two airline duopoly and airfares were heading into the stratosphere with no sign of ever coming down. It was a time when $500 dollars would hardly get you interstate let alone returned. It was a time when Greyhound in its halcyon days, had people changing into pyjamas to take overnight trips interstate. It was a time when only the largest corporations afforded corporate travel and you knew most of the people in the Qantas lounge.

Today we fly in unregulated skies where competition rules and you have the choice of where you spend your money and where you risk your life. Those unregulated skies are a tribute to Alfred E Kahn who passed away recently, aged 93. It was Alfred E working under the Carter administration who courageously tackled the Civil Aeronautics Board in 1978 to deregulate the US airline industry and bring in a competitive open sky environment that eventually made its way to Australia. Under protection of the old US board, airlines were guaranteed a 12% return on flights that were 55% full. Even the worst run airlines and there were a lot, could make money under those circumstances.

The eventual deregulation in 1978 made it possible for new carriers to fly the skies and Southwest, Jetblue and much later our own LCCs Virgin Blue and Jetstar were born. Competition increased and along with providing lower fares and the birth of the budget traveller it also created financial woes for the legacy carriers operating in the open sky policy. Some airlines disappeared and many were cut down to size once the dollar ruled. Alfred E had most of them pegged right when he saw planes as "marginal costs with wings" and the shake out continues today with many legacy carriers still looking for partners to survive, as witnessed by mergers like the recent United, Continental pairing.

When carriers like Southwest and our own Compass (mark 1 & 2) decided to fly the deregulated skies they not only went after the legacy carrier passengers but also after the bus and car passengers who could not believe they could now fly interstate, for the price of a tank of petrol. The halcyon days of bus travel were over and a new niche market of traveller came into their own. Pyjamas and pillows were eventually left behind as bus passengers realised how much time they had spent sitting next to the toilet in abject darkness on long trips and that Melbourne was now only an hour away.

Without Alfred E we would still be saving up for that interstate trip or worse packing the PJs for that long overnighter.

Thanks Alfred E.

The Good Old Days.

Over the Christmas period, talk often heads in the direction of "the good old days" referring to a range of things that have been embellished with time and story telling. Eyes glaze over for anyone under 20 years for as far as they are concerned every day is a "good old day".

With everything available to everyone all the time it's hard to wonder what the "good old days" actually looked like. Things that caused problems revolved around communication and information and people feeling left in the dark and anxious about their future.

If you arrived on earth from space today, you would wonder what they were talking about as communication has exploded while information is available everywhere, all the time, on everything. So no one should feel like they are in the dark and anxious about the future, or should they?

Will the Y's and the I's talk about the good old days 20 years from now? What will they talk about? Will it be the fact that there were still mysteries to be solved and everything about everything was not known, will it be about still having privacy and not having the world know everything about you or will they just talk about what libraries used to be for? The speed of innovation and immersion in information today makes two decades equivalent to a century.

So will the next great super group pass by in 6 months and not have the decades long influence of the Beatles? Will the TV season be 4 weeks and every episode of your favorite show is streamed to your smartphone (what will that look like) every 10 minutes because your attention span has withered to 5 minutes max? Will you finally be able to teleport to London and not worry about Heathrow snow spoiling your travel plans?

No matter what era, people will always be talking and telling stories about "good old days". Details will vary but as long as the story telling doesn't stop we will retain the humanity that keeps us coming together for many Christmas' to come and that is the joy of the season.

For those interested, the research labs from Google, IBM and the world congress of libraries, along with historians and linguists have now pinpointed a specific weekend in 1962 as THE "good old days".

It was a temperate 25 degrees, Elvis was alive and the Beatles were just coming into their own, the future contained hope and people were rewarded for a hard days work. Strangers greeted you on the street, men were men and women were women and there were only four TV stations to choose from. Until 11.55pm the study also confirmed the radio was keeping us fit twisting to Chubby Checker during these two "good old days".

Messages on Hold.

I catch the Manly ferry to and from work and the trip is a wonder on one of the most beautiful harbours in the world. Recently the Sydney Ferries authority decided to put in large screen TVs to entertain the travellers. I'm a TV watcher from my early days but I have come to appreciate the times away from the box and the commercial advertising that runs rampant throughout the programming. So I'm not sure I really need to watch one more commercial while the harboor vista goes unnoticed.

Advertisers will tell you they have only the best interests of the public in mind and that they have relevant products to sell. The problem is, they believe this and thus continue to affront the public and add to the mountain of messages that overwhelm the senses. It is rare to stand out in this barrage of noise and no matter how loud they shout the analogy of the marketing people in a stadium of 100,000 people all screaming for their football team makes sure no one hears anything.

Research shows that the average person encounters about 1,000,000+ marketing messages per year, with some claiming even higher figures of up to 5,000 per day, making it 1,800,000 messages assaulting our senses. Thirty years ago Yankelovich, the company credited with coining the phrase "baby boomers", estimated that figure was below 2,000 a day, so we are probably getting the extra 3,000 before we get to work.

For people in large metropolis', according to Neilsen, this can equate to 6 hours of media attention daily and then the question is asked, how do we have time to do any work?

My golf game is not noteworthy and the enjoyment of taking the ball out of the hole should not be clouded by reading a marketing message in the cup. Nor should I be sold a product while at a bathroom stall. No one wants to annoy the customer, so it's a fine line between engagement and stalking.

So where do we draw the line? I don't think we have any idea as the channels for marketing and distribution increase daily, along with the technology to sell products to every niche market, no matter how small. The future will see interactive marketing where you will only need to touch the TV or an ad of sorts if you like the product and it will be sent to you, so I guess the ferry TV is the least of my worries. There is no marketing arena out of the question as the Pizza Hut logo attached to the Russian space craft attests.

So as I gaze out of the ferry window I'm hoping I don't see an ad sailing by because I'm full now and I have another 1000 to digest before I get to the office!

What's in a Name?

A one followed by a 1000 zeros. Single words that mean nothing. Fruit. Nouns that become verbs.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and there were no shortages of hippy, rock star, celebrity children who couldn't wait to get to 18 and change their names by deed poll. As the world population explodes, original names must be harder to come by as witnesses by the spelling craze and the creativity people use to try and make their kids and themselves stand out from the crowd. My favourite at the moment, comes from New Zealand where parents named their child "Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii" but thankfully Judge Rob Murfitt deemed it inappropriate and thought it was setting her up for social disability and handicap and ordered the parents to reconsider.

The shortage of great business names also seems to bring out the creativity that sometimes works and sometimes set you up for failure. Sure the "Bologna Boutique", "Drain Surgeons" and "Dick Wood Hardware" may get you into the funny signs on the net but what does it do for your business?

The net has spawned a million names for a million sites but few make it into the vernacular and become verbs of recognition. What means something to you means nothing to the rest of the world, so how do you come up with that magical monicker to make you stand out? The noise can be incredible and just because you shout loudly doesn't mean you'll be heard. Do you remember Whooping Goldberg and flooz.com, DigiScent iSmell, Beenz, neither do I but they had millions spent on them and their names disappeared as quickly as their companies.

Business experts concentrate on the obvious and say your name should identify you and what you do and how you do it. That works for Sam's Deli but if you offer other services than making, baking or building, the search for that hook becomes more difficult. Other experts say names need to be memorable, easy to spell, have a visual element with a positive connotation along with information on the business.

Okay then what was Google, Virgin, Bing and Apple thinking?

Whenever a new company starts and decides on a business name, marketing campaigns to grow awareness are used so people try them out but if the product does not deliver, no amount of marketing will save you. To stand out from the crowd your product has to be singularly spectacular or swimming in a blue ocean where you are the only one offering that product or service. Both difficult to achieve but even harder if you can't find that special identifying monicker.

The last word from the experts Is to remain short, so I'm thinking of copyrighting "O" for any future business ventures that may come my way, what do you think? I wonder if I copyright it in every country, will they have to take the letter out of the alphabet or even better, I get paid every time it's used.

The last word should come from our friends across the Tasman where Judge Murfitt used common sense with "Talula" but the system was okay with naming kids "Midnight Chardonnay" or worse, "Number 16 Bus Shelter".

What happened in that shelter is nobody's business.

Show Off.

You remember the peacocks in school, the drama students, the high profile jocks and the "In" crowd all vying for attention from the general population? Those not included wished for the dizzying heights of attention but had nothing to offer and no avenue to market themselves, after all we were only 12 years old. Things change and today the plethora of marketing and social avenues available to highlight your personality and mega watt smile gives everyone the chance to stand out.

An adjunct to this profile escalation has been the scope of perception about people who like to stand out, individually and in groups. Back in the school yard if someone thought of you as a show off and a drip you really only had to worry if that got into print in the school newspaper or it affected you getting a new girlfriend, as your circle of friends and influence was small. You could always move schools if the affects were too traumatic or hope that high school would give you a new opportunity to find your true self. Today that circle can easily be global without you thinking about it and perceptions of you quickly spread without you knowing about it.

So it was with interest that I read a recent survey on Facebook by research firm Mytype on perceptions of iPad users. The survey of over 20,000 Facebook users looked into the personality traits, values, demographics and interests that drive differences in opinion about the new wonder tablet.

The survey found owners to be "selfish, elitist and valuing power" and I'm wondering how I feel about that as I type this blog on my iPad? It did also go on to say they were highly educated and sophisticated so I feel somewhat vindicated about my choice of technology. The point being we have absolutely no control over what people do and don't think or say about us as a group member or individual on the net.

In other research Facebook users in general, came in for a drubbing as being self promoting narcissistic show offs who frequently update their profiles to get more friends and gain notoriety. How cool is it to finally be part of the "In" crowd?

So the school yard has gone global and shifted to online and we all get a chance to show off but the downside of negative perceptions that can result from this, don't give us the chance to change schools or hope for high school redemption because the net never forgets, so be careful what you wish for. It may affect more than getting a new girlfriend.

Oprah.

At a wedding on the weekend I overheard a conversation at the next table, where people were discussing Oprah's activities in Sydney and one girl interjected and asked whether Oprah was in the country? I looked over and she was serious and it got me wondering how it was possible the girl didn't know about the world's greatest sales woman being in Australia?

There hasn't been a media channel, no matter how trivial, that hasn't picked up on the Oprah cavalcade of stars and audience members in Australia, from watching koalas mate to climbing the bridge. Interestingly no one asked the girl but I suspect she was not interested in the daily minutiae of life, especially when it concerned the comings and goings of global celebrities. Who doesn't want to know about Oprah?

Hard to imagine not watching the news or picking up a paper, let alone surfing the web or tweeting you just saw Oprah at the corner store because we have been inundated with so many Oprah sightings that Elvis comes to mind. Oprah, still in the global top 10 of twitterers with over 4.5 million followers isn't too worried that the wedding girl didn't know about her but I was still fascinated.

The Wedding girl didn't look like a cliched hippy drop out not interested in society or its news cycle, the pearls and little black dress weren't exactly Nimbin wear, so it has to be a conscious effort to avoid either the news or gossip and sound bites. Either way it's an impressive effort on her part and I don't know if I'm not a little jealous because the detritous of the day's information cycle certainly gets in the way of real stuff like peace in the middle east and what the banks are charging for their latest fees.

So can you really avoid the media storm of information or is there special training we could take so as to listen and interact with only the most important facts, aimed at us as individuals? A colleague of mine recently had his hearing tested because he thought he was going deaf while listening to his girlfriend but not hearing everything. It turns out his hearing was perfect and his doctor suggested he just pay more attention when his girl was talking.

Maybe that was the wedding girl and she really only paid attention when it concerned her and her interests. That kind of attention span again, is impressive if you can harness it and make it work for you. At this moment in time we are probably at a global peak of media disruptions and interruptions causing us to look in every direction for what interests us the most. So if you could harness all your energy and concentration, imagine how much you could get done?

Did you hear Oprah's was just sighted on the harbour?

Now what was I just doing?

Where do you work best?

Likely the answer to that question isn't at work. Work doesn't always happen at work because we aren't tied to a manufacturing line or mindset. We have come a long way from the Ford production line, now staffed by robots, where people had to go to make things. A long time ago I worked in the steelworks in Port Kembla making steel ingots before heading off to University because I figured out real quick I wasn't suited to grime, heat and low wages, that was also the last time I made something at work. Work has changed so dramatically that it's hard to think of any friends or colleagues who make anything and that statement should tell you all you need to know about today's so called "work".

Work today is about thinking, creating, relationships and keeping the customer satisfied. The issue, not much of that occurs at work, as it's rare to find the uninterrupted time to accomplish your chosen tasks. Between meetings and management the hours in a "work" day are quickly whittled down to where you rarely get to finish that list you started in the morning.

If you ask people where they work, they will likely give you a range of locations, many away from work. Working with a morning coffee on the terrace or sailing to work on the ferry are two good options for me. Other colleagues love a laptop in the park, the time before their work doors open, the ubiquitous coffee shop and any transport that doesn't rattle them around to much. It's interesting to note how much gets done outside the so called "work" hours.

What all this goes to show is the adaption we have had to make for all the interruptions we encounter at work. The old management adage of "if I can't see you, then I don't know if you are working" has seen its day and management is slowly coming to grips with work practices for the next decade. You need your people to feel they have the freedom to create, innovate and provide solutions for your company wherever they feel the most comfortable and that may not be at "work".

A major bank building a new facility for its staff has decided it will hot desk the whole building to save on costs and because it has researched and realised that staff don't always do their best work at work. They have 6000 staff for the building but have decided to provide only 4000 hot desks knowing that one third of staff will always be away from the office doing their best work somewhere else.

Where are you working now?

Lentil Burgers.

In the 60s psychologist and LSD advocate Timothy Leary coined an oft used phrase that appealed to many trying to get away from a world moving too fast with too much innovation and change, " Turn on, Tune in, Drop out". Hippiedom became a solid movement and isolated sunny villages around the world found themselves the destination of choice for free love and children named Rainbow and Moonbeam. All those hippies eventually had to grow up and became lawyers and stock brokers but some stayed because the world kept moving at a pace they didn't want to keep up with.

It's a stretch but I think we are approaching a blip in the societal chart where once again we are moving so fast with innovation, expectations, privacy disruption and global disharmony that some people will tick the "hippy" box and opt out. Everyone talks about expectations around response, connectivity, always being available and not having any "me" time. World turmoil is encountered at every touch point with no escaping the technology steamroller chasing you.

Halcyon days of summer wine and long afternoons come to mind when people reminisce about the "good old days" before the treadmill was turned up to high speed. So is it any wonder the thought process still exists to find those places where you can open your mind and not have it filled by channels of change, disruption and people "poking" you at every opportunity.

The biggest problem to people wanting to drop out is where to go? All the good spots were taken up in the 60s and 70s and have now become established communities like Nimbin where Moonbeam is now the school principal and Rainbow is the local council member.

So if you had your choice, do you have that spot in mind where peace reigns and you can open yourself up to nature? Is it still achievable in a world expecting so much of you? Is it in your diary or in your 5 year plan? Like everything in life and business, if you don't have a plan then it won't come to fruition.

The issue being that even just dropping out requires deep thought on how to survive and live the life you dream of in that coastal shack. How do you do life's little errands like banking, communicating in case of emergency, paying for things, where do you get your smokes (yes those ones) and what else will you do for entertainment once the your friends go back to work?

Why not just take your phone? If the hippies had smart phones in the 60s they would no doubt still be happily living in the hills ordering over the phone and having the Fed Ex guy deliver. Now where is that old tie dye T shirt?

Airline bashing.

I have a late model car that works whenever I turn the key on. It has 4 tyres and lots of turning and spinning engine stuff. In fact it has so many moving parts I am in awe that it doesn't break down after every trip I take. I have become used to it's reliability but know deep down that one day not to far in the future, something will go wrong and the car won't go. Just like that, some little thing will bring it to it's knees and I won't be able to get to where I need to be. Certainly nothing unusual about that and it would be hard to find anyone who hasn't had car troubles in their lives.

I mention the above with the view that we expect things to go wrong when there are approximately 10,000 moving parts in a car all fighting each other to get you from A to B.

So why do airlines like Qantas, with who knows how many moving parts, get so much grief when they have engine or electrical troubles? Is it the 33,000 feet altitude? Is it the 500 back seat drivers? Do people really think nothing will ever break down? Or is it simply fun to poke at our national icons, especially when they are down? We are after all a country of so called larrikins making sure no one gets to the top without some hazing. Staying there is another matter altogether.

Certainly the safety aspect of pulling up on the roadside is preferable to plunging to your death at 700 kilometres an hour. Yet all the records show it is safer to fly than drive your car. So what is it that drives the emotional level so high when it comes to air safety? It's the same as rare shark attacks which are less common than death by bee stings because the sensational side of the story is more gripping than the truth.

So Qantas won't win the media war highlighting its mechanical hiccups. With over 5600 domestic and international flights a week Qantas makes my car trips insignificant and I know that my tyres at least would need replacing, not to mention having to fill the wiper fluid countless times.

To take those numbers into consideration and admit it's a staggering task keeping all that equipment running smoothly is all they ask, after all you don't write a letter of complaint to your car manufacturer every time the car has a mechanical issue. So stop the shark spotting and marvel at the accomplishment of getting those buses with wings to 33,000 feet and their final destinations.

Let's talk.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has some advice for companies worried about their online reputation, "make stuff that doesn't suck". Seems blindingly obvious and sounds easy enough but few companies are talked about consistently when discussing brand integrity and product worthiness and making stuff that doesn't suck. If you take all the things you use in your daily life and list the ones that work all the time, to your level of satisfaction, it's likely a small list.

Wales' latest venture, Wikia is all about Wikipedia-without-limits from a social perspective using polls, lists and achievement badges and receives roughly 36 million monthly visitors who like to talk. Visitors that talk about a lot of things that suck because people enjoy digging at products that really should be better before they are offered up for use.

So what are companies to do if they get caught in this or any other online forum, "make stuff that doesn't suck". Like travel sites such as Trip Advisor, the power has been ceded to the public and unlike sites such as Facebook where products can have control with their own pages, Wikia respondents have the final say.

Once again the blindingly obvious answer has Wales at the centre of making sure that his new product works and that any talk remains positive. He cites Steve Jobs having the same mindset when he told Nike CEO Mark Parker to "get rid of the crappy stuff." It's often tempting for companies to make something for everyone but the dilution of creativity and product brilliance is easily spotted and talked about.

The number of products that Apple makes can fit on a small table, smaller all the time really but their mantra of concentrating on their core and saying no to even good ideas has shown how a company can make a product that doesn't suck in any way. The pages devoted to Apple products and touted by their zealous evangelists far outweigh the negative side of online debates.

The focus on making quality products give companies an advantage in that they don't need to spend time and money on brand management. Their online fans will do that for them. If companies can continue to supply their fans with great products then fans will take care of brand management.

Has anyone talked about your product lately?

Tis the Season....

To be jolly, to be inebriated, to photocopy your naked butt and to find a new job. Yes it's that time of the year again as a little too much of everything, especially egg nog loosens lips, hips and instills in people the confidence to turn into their worst nightmare. Hey Boss about that decision to put me on the sub committee to look after the photocopy recycling!

Published this week Adecco's survey of more than a thousand American adults found that 40% of workers say they've either embarrassed themselves or know someone who has, at a work holiday party. And a shocking 23%, 1 in 4 have been reprimanded for their actions. Pink slips are almost as frequent as red faces.

Ho Ho Ho, the Christmas party where everyone gets to let their hair down, loosen their ties and drink at the company's expense and maybe look forward to some office gossip the next day. For some it's the hang over that needs to be nursed the next day while trying to work out what they said to the receptionist that keeps her bringing you the aspirin. For others it's dealing with how that mermaid tattoo with the name Lola got on their backside. The problem arises when the lines are crossed and there you are telling the boss what you really think of him or worse waking up next to him. One in ten respondents to the survey said they knew someone who had been fired for inappropriate behaviour to their colleagues or their boss.

They make movies about the office parties because it's fertile ground for ideas that come easy for people allowed to celebrate infrequently. When it's only once a year and it is for a lot of companies, then it's likely that chances are taken with feelings and emotions that have been bottled up too long. Companies need to celebrate as many milestones as they can afford, not just at Christmas.

So have a great time at the Christmas party, not too much egg nog, don't sleep with your colleagues unless you're married to them, try not to ruin any reputations, never ever put on the beer goggles and most of all try not to get fired. So go ahead spread some cheer this Christmas, you know you deserve it.

Merry Christmas.

Do you Yahoo?

That used to be a great tag line in the early years of the net until Yahoo took their eye off the ball and before they knew it, people were Googling instead of Yahooing. With a great story behind it about two young guys from college figuring out search algorithms
( I know I should have listened more in maths class) and eventually turning the company into a global behemoth, Google quickly became the front page for most net users.

How long will that last, now that Facebook is asking its members to tag it as their homepage? Okay so I'll know what my cousin is doing in Laos but how will that help me in business, searching for information and keeping up to date with global trends?

Will it be a battle between social search versus data search?

With over 550 million members worldwide, Facebook is looking to turn itself into an OS (operating system) where everything is interconnected via those 550 million (and counting) threads along with over 1 million websites already integrated. With 60% of the top 100 US websites and 50% of the top 100 global websites integrated, the workings of "likes", "shares" and ancillary Facebook interactions give this site enormous clout to share information and do business on a different platform to Google and phone technology. Interestingly Mark Zuckerberg recently released Facebook's latest attack on Google's Gmail with "Facemail" (sorry I just made that up, they still call it email).

A long time ago I owned an Elvis album with the king on the cover in a gold lame suit with the album title " A million fans can't be wrong". That was when a million seemed a big number but when compared to the Facebook traffic of 700 billion minutes spent by members per month on the site, Elvis must be shaking his head while packing groceries down at Safeway. Before you get your calculator out, 700 billion minutes equates to 1.3 million years spent on Facebook by members every month.

Everyone talks about SEO but they'll need to consider SMO (social media optimisation) as our net relationship changes and E commerce phases into F commerce for the social consumer. Facebook will integrate platforms to challenge Google Docs, Google Voice and anything else that Google throws into the fray because Facebook is convinced we want to interact with each other and not just with an algorithm.

The above gives the feeling that Facebook is doing all the right things against Google but Google made one big mistake and that was not getting Sergey and Larry a movie deal. Mark Zuckerberg, portrayed by Hollywood's favorite geek Jesse Eisenberg now has the upper hand in celebrity and social commerce and has Google in his rearview mirror or the other way around if you listen to Google.

What's Yahoo doing while the big two fight it out? Maybe there's room for one more maybe not, you get to decide.

Rent.

I used to rent, in fact I come from a long line of European heritage who rented all their lives. My grandmother still lives and rents the same apartment she has lived in for 80 years. I bring this up not from a real estate angle of houses getting so expensive no one born after 1990 will ever own one but from the view we are heading into a rental cycle for all things useful and some not so.

Consider renting as the new ideology for our future to lighten our economic load and save the planet by shrinking our carbon footprint. Aside from real estate rental, we could expand our thinking to our everyday lives and start unbundling our acquisition and collection mentality. We certainly wouldn't need the storage space we need now and the majority of what we needed to rent can be found on the net so our free time, the most precious commodity, could be increased. Live with less is the new cry for freedom from the next generation.

One of the latest battle for minds and wallets concerns e-tablets and often rages around the publishing world and who has the best E reader. A recent visit to a Borders bookstore informed me that their "Nook" reader will have the latest of everything available to buy and read. So along with the Kindle, iPad, Sony reader and countless other devices we will be marketed at, until we choose our new direction in literary indulgence. I like books and I like to occasionally recommend and lend them to friends, something difficult to do with new technology because I don't want to hand over my iPad to someone for a week while they read the latest thriller I've downloaded. So my first suggestion to the Amazons of this e-commerce rental world is why not set up a library instead and I'll rent the books online, hopefully for significantly less than the buying rate. Why have a tablet with 100s of books stored on it, especially if you aren't going to lend them or your tablet out?

We already have other areas of entertainment like DVDs where we are comfortable renting but can't we free ourselves from the trip to the store? I can't remember the last time I visited a video store (why do we still call them that, when we have been watching DVDs for years) because I rent all my movies through the mail and eventually we'll rent the latest releases via broadband (hope someone from the government is listening).

Living and working in the city we find less and less reasons to own a car except for the visits to Grandma's house. GoGet car share gives you the flexibility to have a car when you want it, even if it's for only a couple of hours to visit Grandma. Why own when you can walk around the block to a specified parking spot and swipe your way into a new car and return it to the same spot when you are finished.

There are sites in the US like Zilok and Snapgoods where people rent out everything from lawnmowers, where do you store them in your apartment, to home appliances, cameras for your holiday along with works of art to healthcare. It is a system built on trust, much like social media and asks why you should own everything when someone else can do it for you and you only need rent it for the amount of time you require it? All of sudden you have a culture of abundance because there is nothing you cannot have, at least for a period of time.

Sure there will always be items I want to own, who's going to rent out underwear but why not have the best of everything else when you need it on a rental basis? Sure cars and entertainment seem the obvious choices but the more we learn to live without, the more we have access to everything. Along with the global outsourcing trend, renting everything could be the next e-commerce wave to wash over us.

I have one more suggestion and that is to look at renting jobs. There are jobs that look interesting to me, like Donald Trump's real estate job but I don't want to spend decades getting to that position, so why not rent some Donald time and see if you like it. Wonder what his rental rates would be?

For the final word, Kevin Kelly from Wired magazine, "access is better than ownership".

Why do they still call it a phone?

There is a sentiment, an e commerce held belief that the last CD will be sold somewhere around 2015. As technology evolves we now believe that some of our "old" stuff will eventually disappear, although CDs are only 30 years old they won't be able to compete with online download technology that is taking everything we have and converting it to bytes. So when the last CD has been manufactured and sold will we care at all or will we have moved onto the next phase of communication technology without looking back?

I only ask the question, as in that short space of 30 odd years, some of us still called a CD an album because vinyl had been with us for much longer and eventually made a small resurgence among vinylophyls. So will the CD make a comeback in 20 years because we get nostalgic for the plastic cases and the round plastic discs now used as coasters?

What about the phone, will it make a comeback in 20 years when we once again want to hear people's voices or will it forever be assigned a footnote in technology history as the slow way of communicating that hung around for a long time?

I didn't know the phone call or the phone was dead but it seems that what we carry around in our pockets today are computers for digital communication not voice communication. Two years ago in 2008, text messaging topped mobile phone calling and thanks to continued access to new applications like Twitter the phone call, like the CD, will have an expiry date. No one really cared when the iPhone 4 came out with the reception issues tagged as the "grip of death" because no one was really using the smart phone to make phone calls because it was all about the "apps" and what the future looked like when it came out of your pocket.

We won't stop communicating, we just won't do it by holding an implement up to our ear anymore. Like the obsolete hand written message, the phone call will fade out unless you are over 55 and still remember vinyl. According to Neilsen data, voice usage has been in decline in every age group for the last few years, except over 55. Video conferencing, Google voicing and Skyping on the phone (we'll have to come up with a new name soon) along with texting, browsing and working "apps" will be the choice of 20 somethings who have the say when it comes to sustaining interest in technology advancements.

You know it's happening as you answer and return less phone calls and substitute a quick text to get to the heart of the matter without small talk and frivolous chit chat. The only thing we haven't decided on is a date when we'll stop talking.

I'm not there yet, so call me, I'm in the book. Book, what book?

OMG R U 4 Reel?

I pride myself on the fact that I don't have spell check on my email and that my mother could read them, if I let her. Depending on the email required, my emails sometimes run long but they never run grammatically suicidal. They don't look or read like my nieces' text messages for the next beer run or who they were tagged with on Facebook. Am I being obsessive, do I have a problem keeping up with the new language and what was wrong with the old one?

Smiley faces, emoticons, purple fonts and parenthesis used for happy or glum were bad enough when it came to business emails but the decoding required for many of today's emails send me into a dictionary spin. When did "LOL" turn into "laugh out loud"? I just thought people were being very caring when signing off on normal emails that I thought were pretty funny. The speed required by conversational email has turned the phone text into common language and intrusively pushed its way into business. You'll be pleased to know that OMG is in some US dictionaries already and it's not likely to be the last acronym to be included as Shakespeare rolls in his grave.

Efficiency is sometimes used as a blame card for bad spelling and grammatical laziness but most of that can be taken care of with software that checks your writing and sends it out correctly. What doesn't make sense is the hard work required to acronym your business emails either by coming up with new ones or smart arse bamboozling the receiver with letters that they can't decode, hence making the message worthless.

Sure we thought ourselves smart with the occasional FYI, ASAP or even FAQ but they were so infrequent that we all got used to them over time and whenever a new one come to being you wanted to be the first on the block to use it, remember BYOG and how pleased you were at the end of the week, TGIF?

WTF, IMO i2 am fighting a losing battle against the tide of alphabet soup EMs, so I'll talk 2 U L8R about how to tackle the the YAA EM syndrome. My best thinking at the moment revolves around hiring nieces and nephews with double jointed thumbs to write my messages while I dictate. 2EZ "Take a letter Maria".

NE chance that U will R8 this BLOG OK or will I have 2 W8 2 C W@ U think L8R or is this 2MI. Either way WYSIWYG

I need a fix.

I don't know what I was thinking. It's been four days now and the symptoms are getting worse. The slight tremor in my thumb and forefinger I noticed two days ago has spread and the rest of my fingers are all shaking to the extent I've had to cover up by continually giving the Hawaiian "Hang Loose" sign so no one will notice. Like a bad case of caffeine withdrawal or worse no new episodes of Keeping up with the Kardashians I'm having to put up with the worst cold turkey treatment you could expect in today's speed obsessed society, no mobile phone.

Admittedly I'm on holidays and the decision to try and go "Robinson Crusoe" on the mobile technology seemed easy in the beginning but like all decisions made under the influence of alcohol the sobering facts are not what I expected. Who knew after all these years of hanging around the "Apple" corner waiting for my next fix of technology "Apps" that the plan all along, was to get me addicted so badly that the smallest separation from my mobile friend would cause inexorable pain.

Apple has become the worst of all dealers and enablers and I'm now casting a furtive eye around the pool in case somone has left their iPhone lying unattended. I know what you're thinking, get a grip and go attend an IA (information anonymous) meeting but they don't start till tomorrow and I'm not sure I can last another day.

The guy next to me has just pulled his phone out of his beach bag and is casually chatting and texting with his friends. I wonder if I buy him an umbrella drink, will he let me hold it for a while. It's only a Nokia but it could help. The smallest touch brings back the rush and excitement of being in contact with the world. Yet the surge of power causing through my brain cells as I my fingers caress the "iglass" and slide back and forth looking for the "App" that's going to get me through the morning is an incredible feeling and one the Nokia guy will never know.

There, right there, an unattended iPhone by the pool bar. Could I be so bold, can I have sunk so low, yes I need it now as the need for a quick text overcomes my moral compass, I casually head for the bar. Too late some pimply teenager has picked it up and is maniacally texting his girlfriend or "Apple" dealer for a new plan or "App".

Will I survive two weeks in the Maui sun, will the Hula dancers be enough of a distraction or will my life spiral into a deep well of technology hell? Steve Jobs I curse the day you were born all the while knowing you are the enabler of choice for my future.

Aloha.

You never know.

I have been in the Travel industry since the early 80s and I have developed friendships and worked with many of the same colleagues for decades. These people make it worthwhile on a daily basis to come to work in the challenging landscape that travel has become. They are people of integrity who rate their credibility as one of the most important assets they posses. They judge people by their deeds and actions, not on where they work or who they work for and this is the defining benchmark that keeps relationships on a trusted level.

I am proud to know these long term friends and colleagues, who have run the gamut of different jobs, sometimes at opposition companies, all the while able to disassociate themselves from those jobs and remain true to their individual character. In the end you were not tagged by where or who you worked for but how you acted outside that sphere.

Why the rant about relationships? Because sometimes you don’t know people as well as you think and disappointment is not far behind. This disappointment was one I recently encountered as colleagues who obviously had no faith in my integrity or credibility to operate a program designed for the benefit of the Travel Industry with no other agenda asked me to leave.

It seems my moving to a new company agitated these colleagues who I thought knew me but had issues with the company I was moving to. I have to ask myself the same question, do I know everyone as well as I should? Seems you never know what people really think of you until you change work, relationships or even social networks, which bring to bear emotions not based on your thinking, but theirs.

Robin Dunbar, eminent anthropologist and evolutionary who came up with the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships being 150" seemed to have it right. Maybe we know too many people but none of them well enough.

So maybe you shouldn’t be disappointment with what people think of you if you really don’t know them. You can’t layer your thinking about yourself and your self worth onto them and expect them to understand where you are coming from.

If anything you learn to adjust your levels of trust for the outer circle and close ranks so that you always have a safety net from true friends and colleagues prepared to catch you when you fall or are pushed.

Catch me now.

Medicine Cabinet.

Venture capitalists have a saying, "sell aspirin rather than vitamins". While vitamins are healthy and we need them, aspirin make the pain go away and as such becomes a must have rather than a nice to have.

Aspirin can be seen as the panacea for many ills and good examples are found everyday from "The biggest loser" to the iPod. I didn't know I needed to carry around my entire music collection until iPod pointed that out in the most amazing way. While radio and CDs were vitamins the iPod was the aspirin as it made the pain of being individual and not being able to listen to my special music when I wanted to, possible.

So the question is, do the products you use give you everything or do you need to find an aspirin to take away the pain?

Do airlines give you everything you want and need?

If the answer is NO, as it will be, then they have an opportunity to take the pill and take some of your pain away and stand out in a commodotised industry. For many people, cheap and reliable just doesn't do it but they have been the generic multi vitamins that pander to the lowest denominator and bring airlines together in a homogenised group where no one stands out.

So what are some of the pains that airlines need to provide aspirins for? For me one would be service. With the cutbacks and the speed of transactions required for airlines to make money, I find myself Becoming a commodity within their financial cycle. My pain is not being seen as individual and commercially important within the airline thinking. Treat me with respect and empathy, find out my likes and dislikes and you'll have me for life.

Being a commodity also means we must all be the same shape and size, otherwise why would all airlines have the same style seats squeezed into the same economy fuselage? Seats with new entertainment technology are just vitamins if it is too uncomfortable to view the entertainment. No airline can truthfully say they have the most space and the most comfortable seats in economy class. One or two centimetres is not extra space just a yield manager's solution to fitting in even more passengers. Provide me with an aspirin for space. Take out some rows to provide true space and you'll have customers for life, not just this flight because it was the cheapest alternative.

While the airlines dole out vitamins in the shape of new aircraft, self checking technology and online booking sites, they all seem reluctant to swallow the pill and provde the answer to our pain. What's your pain when it comes to the airline?

Two Words.

As a small child my mother was able to take me through the crystal glasses section of our local DJs because no matter what happened, my arms were mentally glued to my sides. They were glued because the ramifications, a swift hand to the bottom or worse, no TV, were not palatable to me in any way. Interesting how manners were acquired and became ingrained with the raise of an eyebrow or the threat of what was most important at the time, Gilligan’s Island.

I write this because along with the ability to walk through the valley of crystal without breakages, I learnt other skills from my Mother and one of the most powerful concerned the use of two words, “Thank You”. With those two words I became well behaved in the eyes of others (little did they know), I became grown up while still working the cute angle and most of all I built rapport before I knew how to spell it.

The UK has a “thank you week” and the US has a “thank you day” to try and shine a light on manners that used to be a part of everyone’s day before the speed of commerce and technology made it obsolete. The fact they have to have a week or a day to bring attention to this deficit highlights how far we have travelled from the grace of good manners.

So what you say, who cares and what’s to be gained by those two words? Extensive research over 10 years, by leadership experts Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton with 200,000 managers and employees directly correlated “Thank You” to larger profits. As hard as it has become, to say thank you, because of time constraints (huh?) or sheer forgetfulness some companies do it right. Zappos has made thank you a part of their service mantra and have the bottom line to prove it.

It’s not hard really, it just requires you to be a little open and in the moment, so you mean it when you say thank you. Who doesn’t like to be thanked for a job well done, a favour or even a random act of politeness or kindness? The recognition factor of “Thank You” is incredibly important when it comes to business relationships and builds rapport from a trust platform.

Think about the last time your company went out of its way to truly thank someone? How long ago was it? Was it done well? Have opportunities to thank the right people passed without recognition?

You could be the trailblazer, you could lead in the recognition stakes and all it takes is two little words.

Thank you for reading.

Corporate Wellbeing.

Like corporate social responsibility and corporate greening, corporate fitness and wellbeing comes in cycles as companies vacillate over the benefits to their staff and their business of gym membership and running around the block or going for a well deserved beer. Both have their upside and both can lead to work disruption and production loss. Research statistics for presenteeism (showing up at work and not being productive) showing production loss of 20% for back and neck strains and just 4% for alcohol haze giving us some numbers to discuss over a beer as gyms might not be the answer.

For companies to provide fitness facilities or work time to attend gyms and fitness classes can become expensive and I wonder if the Friday drinks aren’t more conducive to staff bonding and building company culture. Are companies using the gym as an out to make their employees feel engaged and motivated by taking the easy road and spending money instead of taking time to be involved. Employee engagement has proven to reach high levels as long as employees feel the company cares about them and management stays involved. Sounds like Friday afternoon drinks to me?

So the discussions continue but maybe they need to take a lead from a much larger statistical base to form definitive conclusions. I give you France and the French population who have decided to snub their collective noses at the fitness culture and lean towards the finer things in life and use their noses to smell the roses and the wine. It seems the French look down on the fitness industry as a niche activity along the lines of boot scooting and parasailing in the Alps. According to the 94.5% of the population, who don’t belong to a gym, sweat and lycra is not a lifestyle decision that will see sitting in cafes drinking coffee and red wine while having a smoke becoming passé anytime soon.

Club Med gym has not opened a new establishment in about a decade and they face an uphill battle to persuade the French on the merits of cardio machines, sweat, strain and jogging while avoiding the pampered pooch poo. Unlike Australia who seem to produce a line of jogging, swimming, cycling politicians, the French were abhorred by pictures of President Sarkozy in running shoes after his last election win.

Olympians and celebrities in Australia hawk the fitness lifestyle from selling swimming pools to vitamin supplements but in France the celebrities are much more in tune with champagne, cheeses and another nob of butter in the cream sauce. They would rather be seen espousing the virtues of creams and potions with guaranteed slimming qualities than be associated with dripping under arms.

So what to make of that for our corporate fitness in Australia? It’s hard to go past a country with a history of great food, wine and lifestyle with not a gym in sight. They must be doing something right as France remains the most visited country on the globe by travellers looking for a great lifestyle and the French seem to live as long as anyone else.

Maybe companies should consider inviting the local French patissier or restaurateur to discuss wellbeing from a corporate standpoint. Do they have an advantage with the satisfaction of a great meal and wine over the endorphin rush of a good work out? Could staff wellbeing be as much about the good meal with management at the same table discussing important issues?

I wonder if the French syndicate that won today’s Melbourne cup are heading to the gym for a quick workout before hitting the town? Now where was that boulangerie?

What Cheeses Me Off?

I’ve discussed many things that annoy me from technology shortcomings, bad service and rudeness in business but today I’d like to look at someone else’s list of annoyances. Choice has aggregated a list of the top 32 things that annoy people the most. Like all lists this list is best discussed over a beer at the bar but we need to start somewhere so in rough sequential order I have picked out ones that interest me from the worst to the still bad.

1. Hidden fees and costs – this relates to the many financial institutions taking advantage of the consumer ignorance of contracts and legalese. Wouldn’t it be great if they took a leaf out of the Low Cost Carrier book and peeled back the onion of fees and made them all as obvious as paying for a meal or extra legroom on a plane?

3. Being on hold and not getting real people on the phone – What have companies got to lose, except customers? They should all take note of someone like Zappos and mirror their service mentality on companies that enjoy the customer relationship.

7. Door to door salespeople and telemarketers – I thought it was only Mormons who still did the door to door thing? The intrusion of telemarketers goes past the line of permission to interrupt and sell you things at the most inopportune times. Seth Godin has probably the best set of books and articles on permission marketing and the advantages of having your customers come to you. Check it out.

10. Nonchalant customer service – Captain bloody obvious and I don’t see how so many companies have forgotten the GFC so quickly. The Commonwealth Bank estimates it is 8 X the cost to replace a customer than to retain one. That’s easy maths in anyone’s language.

11. Erroneous bills – is this deliberate, as this annoyance keeps creeping up the list? Willful premeditated or just lazy data entry. Either way it’s enough reason to leave suppliers and look for alternatives. Again with the 8 X model.

15. Spam email – 90% of all emails sent globally are spam. With 247 billion emails sent daily, consider how much more efficiently your systems would run if they didn’t have to contend with that mountain of rubbish flying through your servers? Is it time to call someone like Symantec and have them take an electronic broom to your inbox?

18. Long queues at checkout lines – It bugs me too and I don’t know if supermarkets shouldn’t be shaped like a triangle with the pointy end at the deli and the fat end with endless checkouts? Is it a broken model? I’d like to add my own personal annoyance to this thinking and grizzle about the taxi lines at the airport. Under the taxi Nazi people are herded like sheep in ski lines. If there are 50 cabs and 50 people, I’m sure we can get ourselves organised and into those cabs in half the time it takes to wait for the official in orange to bequeath us a cab.

20. Poor service from airlines – how did this one end up so low on the list below number 4 tailgating and number 8 people coughing and not covering their mouth? Have we become so used to the bad service that it is now ubiquitous with airlines? No wonder Richard Branson keeps acquiring new customers.

29. Crying babies on planes – having already commented on this in a recent blog, it may be getting enough impetus for airlines to start thinking about family and single/couple aircraft.

30. Programming new electronic products – I have to believe this is only on the list for people who don’t know anyone under 15 years. After all the DNA of the iGeneration gives it special powers to not require manuals and intuitively work any electronic item built in the last 5 years.

32. Inaccurate weather forecasts – Huh? Is this from people without windows in their houses?

Interestingly, the majority of the annoyances on the list could be resolved with an increase in the level of customer service, engaging customers in a long term business relationship and listening to Tom Peters when he tells us the soft things ( decency, thoughtfulness, kindness, integrity, respect, appreciation, courtesy, listening ) are the new hard things.

For the full list go to Choice and see if what annoys you most, made it. http://bit.ly/ducuOc

What channel are you watching?

Knowledge and information has no impediments today and you can access it via a multitude of channels yet I detect a distinct lack of enthusiasm from many people who would prefer to have it all fed to them rather than experience it themselves.

What was the last book you purchased and read? It’s not a hard question and in my circle of friends and colleagues it usually elicits debate on authors and articles corresponding to their interests.

The reason I ask, I’m concerned about research coming out of the US and Australia about TV watching habits and the lack of books, fiction and nonfiction, selling. It seems we are much more involved in watching Idol and reality shows than reading a newspaper, books or even using the web to access information or read online.

At 192 minutes a day watching TV, Australia still lags behind the US at 277 minutes and the UK at 225 minutes but we are doing everything we can to catch up. The web was seen as a killer for TV but at 40% of total media consumption in Australia, TV still reign’s supreme over everything including the web at 24%. Newspapers and magazines at 3% don’t even hit the radar with books not getting a mention at all. Where do we get our opinions from if not a wide choice of media information? Not from midnight to dawn infomercials that’s for sure.

Revealing statistics in the US show that of the approximately 1.2 million books published annually, 950,000 sell less than 99 copies, 200,000 sell less than 1000 copies and only 25,000 sell more than 5,000 copies. That gives us an average of 500 copies per book published and a future dominated by reality TV and talent shows.

As Seth Godin points out in a recent blog, Hal Varian at Google reports the average web user spends less than 70 seconds reading online newspapers. Do Apple and Rupert Murdoch know this? If people are not reading on their iPads, then what are they using them for? Maybe they’re watching Idol?

Access to information is unlimited nowadays but we seem to be glued to the tube making C grade personalities reality stars and perceptually dumbing down our populace. Some people call this willful ignorance and with this the deliberately uninformed become the norm.

So it remains the domain of the few to influence the many. If you keep reading, creating, influencing and using your mind then maybe, just maybe, you have a chance to bring in some from the Idol wilderness.

Who's the Boss?

Everybody works for someone, so if you had your choice and you do, who would you work for? Is it the person you work for now? Is it someone else in the company or even another company? Are they the leader you have been looking for? Do you see yourself in that corner office?

For many people bosses come and go and generally make no difference but it’s the leaders we look to and would like to work with that could make a difference in our days. Leaders rather than a manager is the thinking often documented in employee surveys.

The old saying of “management is doing things right and leadership is doing the right things” rings a bell for many people and is often cited as a reason for people moving and looking to another to inspire them.

For those of you who remember Tony Danza sparing with his big shoulder padded blonde bombshell of a boss in the 80s sitcom and enjoying every minute of it, it comes as no surprise to see surveys rating the people you would really like to work for being other than ordinary but familiar.

Adecco posed the question to find out what people thought of their boss and who among the famous would make ideal bosses.

Without specific criteria and business skills required it came as no surprise Oprah was the top choice to work for. Who wouldn’t want to work for Oprah when your chances of walking away with a car or trip to Australia high on the bonus list? Truth be known, her business acumen cannot be slighted in any way as $50 million a year would attest.

President Obama was a close second but I’m sure people have not thought about the daily grind of politics and the hard stuff, like peace in the Middle East or deciding on pushing the big red button. Way at the bottom of the list were people like Simon Cowell of Idol, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Tony Hayward of the BP oil spill, all bosses seen as self interested with no employee empathy. CEOs as a rule did not fare as well in the survey as people we were familiar with, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who polled ahead of others like Jack Welch and his industry cohorts.

Seems people are still more interested in following the high profile boss to work for as long as they felt they knew them. So where does that leave your boss on the sliding scale of Oprah at the top and Simon at the bottom? Do you look to them for direction or avoid eye contact at all meetings? Do they inspire you or do you hardly notice them?

The option to choose your leader is yours alone. Make it for all the selfish reasons that will make your day worthwhile, everyday.

Do you make a difference?

For life and in business, that question speaks to us on many different levels. There is ego involved along with a need to be recognised, a notion of self worth for the work you provide and a feeling of having been involved in something worthwhile. So a tough question to answer honestly and often only given credence by others when you leave a place of employment.

This past week I tested the above as I accepted an offer of employment with a new company and went through the “leaving process” from my old company. The decision day was tinged with excitement and expectations for a new beginning as I accepted the new job but also involved agonising over informing my old company I was leaving. Anxiety, excitement, disappointment and relief, all rolled into one day as I roller coasted from one end of the feelings spectrum to the other.

A lot of those feelings had to do with lose ends to be tied up satisfactorily, projects to be handed over and the day to day running of my position to be given to a suitable candidate. They also had to do with whoever following doing as good a job or better and the small part of you that hopes no one can do it better than you. That becomes the crux of why so many people, me included, ride that roller coaster of emotions on leaving jobs.

Was I any good? Did I make a difference? Will they remember me? It seems it’s harder than you think to keep ego in the box and remain level and grounded.

So I was surprised a couple of days later, as I waited for the communication to be sent to all the relevant parties of my departure and still wondering about all of the above, that I had a tough reality check thrown my way. I attended the funeral of a friend and an icon in the travel industry and it quickly became apparent at how selfish I was thinking only about my “stuff” as I looked at a family who had lost their rudder in life and still found a way to move on with grace.

It was a reality interlude that put into perspective a small decision making process that happens every day as people change jobs, change houses, change partners and move on with their lives. In the end it wasn’t about me, no matter what I thought but about everyone else and how they reacted to my departure and what they perceived as my worth to them over the past few years. It’s a benchmark of worth given to you by others that you have no control over but one you need to recognise and learn from.

I will be replaced by someone who will no doubt do an even better job than I ever did and my concerns will be unfounded. Like others in the same situation, I’ll have to get over myself and look forward because if I’m honest I learn from this and work to make a difference at the new company.

Still I wonder, did I make a difference?

Irreplaceable.

Some months ago I was espousing the merits of the TIME mentoring program for the Travel Industry and lamenting the eventual loss of industry icons and leaders and how to replace their experience and worth to the industry.

On the weekend we lost a travel industry icon and today we say farewell to her. Ursula King was the consummate traveller who wanted to share her vision. She had specific ideas on how service should be delivered to the public in her inimitable style of grace and professionalism. She became a leader through always providing the best, sharing and not compromising on her strong views that became a benchmark for the rest of the travel industry.

It will be a full house today as an entire industry pays tribute to one of their own and the crowd will be regaled by many travel stories and highlights from a life well lived. Ursula may not have set out to influence an industry but the crowd today will differ from that thinking because she touched so many that her memory will linger like the soft summer breezes we all look for when travelling.

I will miss her.

Cat naps.

If I think back to my most creative afternoon periods, I have to go all the way back to Kindergarten. I remember the vivid colours of my finger painting and the austere straight lines of my Bauhaus influenced Lego constructions as visions of building brightly coloured houses danced in my head.

Why were those afternoons so creative and filled with energy?

Seems recent studies suggest that the forced naps we were made to take played a big role in those halcyon days of creativity and energy infused activity. There I thought it was all about the teachers nicking out for a coffee and a smoke.

The reality of the latest studies show that naps can be a powerful competitive advantage if companies would only buy into the restorative nature of the nap. The findings say it is not about the number of hours worked equaling value but rather the energy and creativity people bring to a company. A creativity and energy along with improved perception skills, reaction time and alertness born of naps taken strategically between 1pm and 3pm.

The evidence showing nappers out performing non nappers or “sleepy heads’ as we like to call them, has been researched from Harvard to Berkeley. The benefits of a 30 minute nap can be staff that are 2 to 3 times more productive in the afternoon than “sleepy heads”.

Richard Branson has introduced “restorative pods” into his Virgin Active gyms and they are proving popular among clients wanting a quick power nap during the day along with a spin class to keep mind and body in shape for the corporate tread mill. For someone of influence like Richard Branson and companies like Google who also employ the “pods”, to engage in the nap argument it bodes the question why not more companies?

Sleep researcher Mathew Walker of UC Berkeley finds, that at a neurocognitive level, a good nap can move you beyond where you were before you took the nap. The more hours we work the lesser our performance but companies still have difficulties in coming to terms with the Kindergarten model of a forced nap to restore performance.

I know on the odd occasion I fall asleep at my desk and wake up with a keyboard imprint on my cheek, the boss does not seem overly convinced I was doing it for the company’s benefit. Therein lays the conflict as companies take a dim view of a little shut eye on the company dollar. Until the “Nanna Nap” is introduced into contract EBAs, we’ll continue to ingest copious amounts of caffeine to keep us bright eyed and bushy tailed in the waning hours of the afternoon.

So as you grab a quick sandwich, don’t look down on a fellow corporate asleep on a park bench at lunch time, as they may be working on a performance advantage to make you look like a “sleepy head” in the afternoon meeting.

Information.

How informed do you really feel? Are you keeping up? Do you feel you need to know everything about everything because it feels like others know everything about everything?

The race to keep up with the mountains of information piling on top of you, everyday, can be challenging, can be overwhelming and can be out of control. So we end up with information about information on feeds, tweets, blogs, posts, inboxes, Bloomberg, Google, Yahoo, Bing and countless other compounding search platforms. Seems there is nothing more abundant on earth than information. I used to be amazed at guesstamets of the grains of sand on the planet but that figure pales into insignificance when talking about exabytes (1 billion GB) of knowledge and information already consumed.

At the end of 2000 UC Berkeley school of information, estimated that all the words ever spoken by human beings amounted to 5 exabytes of data. As at march 2010, 21 exabytes of data were being transferred across the internet every month. The size of the world’s digital content was approximated at 500 exabytes and expanding rapidly. By 2013 internet video will generate 18 exabytes of data per month. Who has the time to watch it all? Watch out for the next level as Zettabytes (1 billion terabytes) and Yottabytes (1 quadrillion GB) head for your suburb.

I’m sure a lot of people would be happy to put the Genie back in the bottle as they long for a time of certainty and clarity of knowledge bought on by a few experts. Change and risk is not what people look for and there are more people wanting to live in the suburbs of certainty than have the thrill of living in silicon valley.

Yet this race to deliver information is only just starting and we need to drive it responsibly. We consume facts like products and spew forth information that’s convenient, often without checking the validity. I had a laugh when a Fox poll identified that 20% of Americans thought Barack Obama was Muslim. Geez it sounds like he is, doesn’t it Billy Joe Bob? In 2008 America consumed information amounting to the entire country being covered in books stacked over two metres high.

That didn’t include Twitter! Interestingly the Library of Congress has decided to archive all Twitter posts since then for posterity. Anything you would like to detract knowing what you sent after those 10 beers?

You need to make sure that information works for you and not against you. Information overload can cause decision paralysis so the search for the ultimate source of validated information continues. Will we end up with a single meta search layer that filters and validates any information we search for? I’m sure the Googles of this world are working on it right now.

What can you do right now? Take time out to cope, reflect and gather your thoughts because you have a choice with this avalanche of information. Use it as a currency of knowledge to live better, prosper, give back, accomplish, pursue your passions and most important of all, live longer. You never know what you might learn tomorrow.

Decisions, Decisions.

We make them daily by the thousands, many without conscious thought. Your morning routine consisting of decisions borne out of routine and trial and error work to get you set for the day’s activities. Some become so ingrained that it feels uncomfortable and unnecessary to try another way, even if there was one and this is often the crutch we lean on, especially in business.

A.D.I.T.W. You’ve all heard it a million times and likely used it yourself when confronted by change and ideas not comfortable to you. We’ve “always done it this way” is the mantra of businesses that follow a long way behind the leaders. As a rule people don’t like change and a sameness everyday leads to a relaxed atmosphere in the work environment which can lead to people not making decisions at any level.

Business decisions are best made with relevant information and data appropriate to the situation, yet emotions, often illogical, play such a large part that we need to understand why we sometimes play it safe.

An interesting study of New York City cabs pointed out obvious decisions to be made for better work practices but change was not forthcoming for a number of reasons with one particular illogical emotion overriding that decision process.

Cabbies have a daily target to aim for and when they reach that target they go home. Makes sense so far. On the slow days they have to work longer hours to reach the target before they go home. On the busy days they hit the target early and go home early. Thousands of cabbies work that way and they can usually work out in the first hour or so whether they will have a slow or busy day.

Then the logical question is asked, why not work longer on the busy days or even normal hours to earn more and go home early on the slow days?

The perception or potential for loss seems to override the decision making process and logic behind better work practice decisions. They will work longer hours on the slow days to not miss out rather than extra hours on the busy days to earn more. Before you point out the clear logic consider that you likely fit into this goofy thinking in decisions you’ve made in the past.

Fear of loss, decision making has been used successfully by many companies and in travel the best examples come from frequent flyer programs. This is a prime example of where people are prepared to buy extra and sometime unnecessary trips to keep up their points balance and maintain their status rating. Fear of losing points is a powerful emotion, often stronger than the logic that says the trip you just bought was worth more than your current points balance.

Decisions based on potential loss have been ingrained since our ancestors decided to start farming and leave hunting behind, for that “bird in the hand” was worth more than the potential of ending up with no birds in the bush.

Yet great business leaders take a chance on loss because the prize or gain can be so much more fulfilling than standing still or working in that “comfort zone”. How often have you used that phrase to describe your business environment? It’s a fear of loss phrase. Get rid of it.

Some decisions are easy, toast or cereal but the big ones not so. Be motivated by gain, by accomplishments, by how much you’ve already succeeded in life. It’s never as bad as you think.

Go ahead; make your day.

Lifetime Pass.

In your business and your life you have assets of all kinds but the most important are the people that get you through the day successfully. In your business you may not have hired them all but you did hire the hirers hiring the ones, you know what I mean. So how important are they really or is this all just talk, to keep the masses quiet? In a world obsessed with technology it’s good to hear about companies willing to put all their trust in one asset, their people.

Siemans, a ginormous German electronics company has just signed a deal with its employees guaranteeing them all a job for life. That’s nearly 130,000 people who are now entrusted with good stewardship to make sure their company continues to prosper. From a management viewpoint the guarantee has just wiped out the company’s negotiating leverage with the unions and individual employees when you look at the Australian example of at will employment and layoffs.

So how does something so backward looking, remember Gramps only ever had one job in his life, and forward looking at the same time, become a reality? In an unusual twist on today’s chaotic and only focussed on bottom line landscape, both sides were willing to be reasonable, trust each other and show humility.

What a concept you say, what am I missing you say, why hasn’t my company thought of that you say.

Siemans believe that they would not be in the position they are today, 50% up since 2000, if it were not for their employees. Think about that for a moment. A lot of companies give similar platitudes but how many act on their good business results with such a startling offer for staff loyalty. After all with 130,000 employees, not everyone would fit into the perfect employee mould but Siemans have given a blanket guarantee because the whole is greater than the individual parts.

They have given their employees a chance to become totally involved and the capacity to create Siemans World with only family members involved. Where Henry Ford once asked “Bring us your hands and you can leave everything else at home”, Siemans are asking their employees to bring their whole selves to work, to justify the long term relationship.

In your strongest relationships with family and friends, where things go awry occasionally, you are always willing to be reasonable and work through the issues. For many that equates to giving a lifetime pass because without your family and friends you would not be who you are and where you are today. Siemans looks on their employees the same way and they have given them a lifetime pass for the future.

So what better way to keep 130,000 people aligned, connected, motivated under an umbrella of common sense and reason.

Am I missing something?

Manic Mondays.

Why do Mondays feel different to any other day? Is the weekend too short? Are we working too long?

All questions asked as we head out for the start of the work week, pushing and shoving our way through the public transport jungle. Well it used to be the start but I’m not so sure there is a start or finish with technology giving us the ability to take work with us where ever we go and as such blurring the lines of the old clock on, clock off mentality. So it comes as a surprise to find a recent survey by Bankwest that found we are spending less time in the office than we did 10 years ago and a lot of that has to do with technology and the freedom it has provided for communication. After all it was the communication at work via face to face or phone that tied us to a particular address and the hours required.

It seems that Gen Y are the best adapters of the new communication channels, as the survey found they are the only group working under the 40 hour week while having a better grasp on that work life seesaw. Who’da thought they’d figure it out before anyone else? So who is teaching who on work life balance? I know what you are thinking, what do they know about life but you can’t argue with the statistics. Seems the Gen Xers and the Baby Boomer examples of work till they stick you in a box did not appeal, geez how did they work that out?

As leaders in a new workforce, Gen Y has something to offer their older counterparts and maybe some of them are listening as the reclamation of nearly two weeks a year of free time against ten years ago shows. While the Ys get better at time management (wasn’t that a Boomer thing?) there are still many who work longer hours and farmers and miners are the leaders when it comes to putting in the long hours at work. Seems the technology improvements have not equated to shorter hours but greater production which sees our mining state WA as the hardest workers in the nation.

It should come as no surprise that government employees in the ACT work the fewest full time hours. No jokes about “Yes Minister” departments, as we all know our bureaucrats work hard for the money (queue Donna Summer music). Maybe they are readers of Tim Ferris’ “4 hour work week” which isn’t about working less, just a lot smarter using outsourcing facilities available via technology. And in the end that is the most important aspect of working nowadays, to find a better way and improve work life balance without having to fill 40+ hours just because the boss says so.

Giddy up.

I can’t believe that Michael O’Leary from Ryan Air hasn’t jumped into the saddle on the latest seat design by Aviointeriors. Called the Skyrider, it has designs on being something between a bar stool and amusement ride seat with a half saddle to straddle as you buckle yourself in for the ride or is that the flight? Brings new meaning to riding an airplane.

Ideas to put as many people into an alloy metal tube and hurtle them from destination to destination are not new and the Skyrider one step away from standing up, is just the latest in a long line of innovations aimed at frugal airlines. I’m not sure if Aviointeriors are looking to test it in the cowboy states and hubs out of the Rockies on short rides but I’m sure the average passenger does not want to buy an extra pair of padded bike pants for comfort on the Skyrider.



I remember a couple of cowboy bars frequented in my youth with similar stool designs but it was in theme and alcohol was supplied to numb areas of pain encountered when sitting too long in the saddle. So watch out for the next cowboy airline that wants to rope you in with cheap fares that saddle you with an uncomfortable ride.

So from standing room only to saddle seats, what else are airlines dreaming up in their quest to sardine passengers?

A 2000 initiative from the global logistics company Fed Ex did not receive the attention it deserved as airlines struggled in the ensuing years after 911. The “overnight peoplepak”, a shipping envelope scientifically designed to protect “human cargo” to ship passengers for $100 a flight globally was a revelation in out of the box thinking.

The light framed envelope was like a sleeping bag concept with some ribbing protection to prevent injury from over stacking or the occasional drop by the baggage handlers. It came in 3 classes to give choice to the flyers or “packees” as they referred to themselves. The economy envelope still guaranteed next day delivery but came with no extra benefits, sound familiar? The premium economy envelope was supplied with a small heating pack and a bag of peanuts to get you through the longer flights. The business envelope had it all from a reading light, storage pouch, juice box and most importantly a porta pottie.



The head of Fed Ex at the time knew he would come up against harsh airline reactions; after all he was looking to take significant market share in passenger numbers. The FAA was sure to come around eventually as the idea had merit according to Fed Ex scientists. A few people exploding during decompression tests were just wrinkles to iron out as far as the scientists were concerned.

Jokes aside, the airlines and aviation companies won’t stop looking for ways to sardine passengers and I look forward to the next laugh in comfort and passenger innovation as they go way outside the box.

Captain Kirk had the right idea, beam me up Scotty.

Short but not so sweet.

On a recent flight I sat next to a twit. Not in the politically incorrect way but in the social media way. Twitterer sounds just as goofy so either should fit as a singular title and before anyone takes a swipe at me; yes I have tweeted and will tweet again, when I have something to say. It’s not a rare occurrence with 100’s of millions of twits tweeting daily. What I noticed was that they were sending out messages of frustration about being delayed again. No it’s not hard to read over someone’s shoulder in the confine of a small canister waiting to hurtle through the sky. Privacy after all, now seems over rated.

It used to be that passengers were held hostage without a voice but today it takes a mille second to send out a message to your followers and anyone else willing to listen that you not satisfied with a service delivery or product. At this stage most airlines shut down communications on takeoff but the demand to stay connected will push them all to include internet access at 35,000 feet throughout a flight. Then the airlines and their flight crew will really have to be on their toes as passengers communicate with each other and the rest of the world online. Imagine 400 passengers experiencing a terrible service level on a flight and sending live messages to their friends, the airline and sites such as Trip Advisor.

From fees that passengers feel are unfair, to food that is inedible through to staff complaints, airlines will have to tighten up their chain of efficiency and up their service levels. Levels that most airlines can’t see through the fog of AV gas and with ageing fleets and staff alike, it will be grist for the twits.

Not that everything that will be tweeted should be taken seriously, after all alcohol at 35,000 feet will be responsible for many a rant. Still the challenge for the airlines will be trawling through the millions of messages and reacting and responding accordingly. I can see call centres of social media staff employed by the airlines working to keep a lid on issues, pacifying passengers and having a laugh when bad things happen to airlines other than their own.

Where airlines are using social media to their advantage for making flights via sites such as Facebook, commercial communications and engaging customers to buy their product via sites such as United’s Twares Tweets, they have yet to figure out how to cover a mass cloud (what do you call a lot of tweets) of complaints and frustration should it occur.

Occur it will because like most industries airlines are stretched thin in the people department and eventually one will fall over and be snowed under so many tweets that a pound full of St Bernards won’t be able to dig them out.

The current trend for twitter centres around celebrity and personality updates but just like Facebook it will mature into communication and business applications to stay relevant. Will your company be affected or will you need a direct line to the pound?

Boomers or bust?

Five million Australians, one quarter of the population has over 50% of the wealth of this nation and many industries including travel are still not tapping into the possibilities they present for sustained growth. It was only a few years ago that the first Boomers turned 60 and all discussion was around how to turn all that so called retirement and retirement money into profits for industries like travel. Well before anyone got into serious discussion the GFC took a bite out of that money stashed in ineffective superannuation funds and people forgot about the possibilities.

Fortunately or unfortunately time marches on for the Boomers and things improve and once again the discussion is how to engage them and pry the money from their wrinkly grasp. Well that’s the first mistake industries can make, because they will never be seen as wrinkly (especially the ones prone to needles and chemicals), they see themselves as an indiscriminate age somewhere between early years and just before their best years finish, whenever that might be. As cloudy as that sounds remember Peter Pan was written for this generation and if industries don’t recognise that, then they have no chance of being engaged with a pot of gold.

To spend their hard earned cash with you, they have certain expectations. They want you to engage their curiosity and to pamper and spoil them. They want you to know they are young at heart and to credit them with a lot of intelligence, after all how else did they end up with all the money on the Monopoly board? They want you to re relevant in your approach and to celebrate their optimism in the future, a future that for many is a good couple of decades longer than any generation have ever lived.

A current ANZ survey found that 92% want to travel around Australia and 70% want to travel overseas in the next few years. That’s a lot of people for any industry and for travel it has certain challenges with the main one being, there is no defined Boomer market approach. Interestingly we can discuss the youth market in terms of backpackers and gap years with defined strategies from companies like Contiki yet where are the Boomer alternatives? The challenge is the market is so big that no one has come up with a defined plan to tackle the wide interests of the Boomers.

So most current strategies are defined around niche market sectors for the Boomers but that in itself is a problem because niche refers to specific segments of interests and not the broader population. I remember years ago a high profile coach touring company coming up with dedicated brochures marketed under the “Autumn Years” to try and attract the so called Boomer money. Of course it was not patronised and was quickly taken down from the shelves as Boomers do not want their relaxed years ahead referred to as Autumn.

Social technology is seen as a panacea for many in travel when it comes to reaching more of the Boomers but they need to be careful as Twitter and Facebook et al are more the regime of the next generation and although Boomers can be found there, they are not the most engaged of the social media population. The appearance of human contact via the net is not enough for the Boomers and to push social media as human contact is seen as poor substitution for customer service.

Like the lure of selling something successfully to a small portion of the Chinese, Boomers are the pot of gold for travel if only someone could come up with the right strategy to attract them all. Will you be the first?

I only read it for the articles.

Corporate travel has policies to decide how to make use of suppliers and contracts to provide best practice procedures and give travellers, company guidelines to help make decisions easier. Most times policies work but sometimes they are open for ridicule as in the recent case in the US. A Minnesota county recently considered a bill that would ban county employees from staying in hotels with porn on their pay per view TV systems. The employees would not be reimbursed for their expenses if the hotel offered pornography but it wasn’t made clear how the employees were to figure out whether or not hotels did or did not offer this service.

It’s hard to find a hotel nowadays without the ubiquitous adult movie channel and after all, until Facebook came along, wasn’t porn the number one revenue earner on the net, showing it had a certain following, that hoteliers couldn’t disregard. So the poor Minnesota road warriors now have to contend with a company censorship policy that could trip them up if they happen to book the wrong hotel or if the only hotel available for 100 miles has an adult movie channel. Will the company provide tents in that case ? Can you book a hotel that sells magazines you buy only for the articles (wink, wink) but has no adult channel? Can you stay in a hotel without the adult channel but hookers on the street outside? The traps to no reimbursement are endless.

Seems there are some exceptions to the policy and Minnesota county employees can stay at a hotel with adult TV channels if it also happens to be the official hotel for a conference. Who booked that hotel? Frank has just become the office legend.

Or they have the option of staying at a sin palace if the porn free hotel is 15% more expensive to stay at. The last point is interesting in that the county has now put a price on porn, so it’s not so much about shielding the traveller but more about the bottom line, get it bottom.

Gotta work on my delivery.

Either way it leaves the policy open to misinterpretation and isn’t that the reason policies are brought in, so that the company can give clear directions to make employee decisions easier. What do your policies look like?

I love polls.

No not the nice folks just to the right of Germany but opinion polls. Often they are a slice of life, a moment, as people react to questions and situations, sometimes not thinking before they reply and sometimes replying with thoughts they wouldn’t normally share but are happy to hide behind an anonymous pollster.

Recent polls from Skyscanner give an insight into people’s psyche when travelling out of their comfort zone. A poll result suggesting that there should be demarcations between families with small children ( noisy ) and childless passengers raises the old chestnut of what people expect for their money and a comfortable and quiet flight is not that much to ask for. Family only sections on board planes has been suggested but like the old smoking areas of old, what happens if you are in the first row of seats in front of that family section? Just as it was difficult to stop the smoke wafting across the aisle or seat in front, noisy kids can still be heard 6 rows away. A recent uproar on a Qantas flight where a woman claimed a screaming baby made her ears bleed will no doubt keep this topic on the boil and maybe airlines are thinking of premium adults only flights for which they could charge an excess.

If the price was right I’m sure there would be customers for this type of service, think Concorde, but perhaps a better solution comes from the small percentage of poll respondents who would prefer children fly in the hold. Now there’s a suggestion made under anonymous polling.

Still on planes and on new products, 13% of people polled have said they were prepared to share a sky couch with a stranger on board Air New Zealand’s new seating configuration. The new lie down seats that can be transformed from 3 economy seats into a bed require two seats to be booked and paid for, with the third seat sold at a discount to make up the couch.

So how do those 13% of passengers think this will be accomplished? I hark back to my ski days and standing in line shouting single, hoping to attract another single skier to share the T Bar. All very common and accepted but then you are also wearing a lot of clothes and not deciding who will be the spooner, spoonee in the onboard situation. Will the check in staff have special match making training to help facilitate passenger requests or will the airline add their online flight bookings to sites such as RSVP to find a new revenue stream?

For both the above issues of zoning and seating, there are revenue opportunities for the airlines that could persuade even more people to use their services, hopefully with their clothes on in the case of Air New Zealand.

Caustic thoughts aside, from a business viewpoint surveys, straw polls and feedback results from your clients and potential clients should be taken seriously and actioned accordingly. If people are prepared to take the time to answer polls and surveys for you, then make sure you reach a solution satisfactory to their responses.

Grace under fire.

What is the best asset you offer your customers? What is the best way to keep your customers? If you answered your staff on both accounts, you are correct. If you answered your technology, your product or even yourself, you are missing the point completely.

All recent surveys show the difficulty in attracting and keeping staff post GFC and yet companies continue to abuse the most important relationship they have. My staff give great service is a real throwaway line, unless you can show your customer absolute return on their money using great staff to accomplish this.

It’s hard enough to find great employees, let alone hang onto them and once you have, to imbue them with a sense of the culture you want to showcase to your customers. This is something that needs to come from the top down and the bottom up so there is a true meeting in the middle and agreement on the service excellence your company intends to provide. Without staff engagement of your brand and culture you have nothing to offer.

Your front line staff is under constant pressure to deliver your message, your culture, your product and your service levels all to the highest standards achievable. All to try and keep your customer for a lifetime. A lifetime that is not a fixed value but a moving target that can increase the more you create a positive engagement and emotional interaction between your employees and your customer. As Brad Miller of Litmus Group says, “everyone wants a relationship with their customer because this is the mythical thing that can make sure that we stay in business”.

The only way the above, will happen is via your employees. Do your people tell your story, your brand or do you look to outsource your most prized asset and only work on bottom line?

Seth Godin says, “That companies that race to the bottom in terms of the skill or cost of their labour end up with nothing but low margins. The few companies that are able to race to the top, that can challenge workers to bring their whole selves, their human selves, to work, on the other hand, can earn stability and growth and margins”. As it gets more difficult to find staff aligned to your thinking and objectives, it becomes imperative employers do all they can to hang onto staff and not take them for granted in any way.

If you can do that, then your staff will bring grace, skill and motivation everyday and you might even make some money.