Would You Believe?

Who didn't like Get Smart? Who didn't want to be Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, fighting the forces of KAOS with all that technology built by the mad scientists from Control? Who thought that any of it would come true? Maybe Mel Brookes was a technology innovator disguised as a comedy genius. After all how far away are we from talking into our watches? How far away are we from carrying around music in a special gadget in our pocket? How far away are we from having a camera and voice recorder hidden in everyday objects?

Not far at all, in fact all are present and working in some form or another from MP3 players to smart phones and beyond. Apart from being a very smart comedy, Get Smart used imagination and foresight to play around with everyday objects and project them 50 years into the future. It was a time when we could still imagine what might be or what could be and nothing seemed too far fetched, although the "cheese sandwich phone" and the "tomahawk phone" and not to mention the "shoe phone" from the early episodes are still to take off.

So it is with interest that I see the latest smart watch by Meta Watch looking to reinvigorate the arm band scene. Under 30 and you are likely not to wear a watch but get all your information from your mobile phone. The issue is, that quite often it's hidden in your bag or briefcase and as you fumble through your possessions the ringing stops. Or you really really want to look at a message during a meeting or conversation but can't make the obvious movement of reaching into your pocket or bag and turning on your phone to view it. As the smart phones get smarter, they seem to be putting on a bit of weight around the middle and that's another reason to consider the smart watch.

It's always handy dangling there at the end of your wrist and if you can do everything the same as a smart phone, then it becomes a consideration and if you really do need more, then combine it with a tablet in your bag. Rolex, Tag and Omega all subscribe to the old adage of "you don't buy a watch to tell the time" focusing on the brand equity of having one of their products on your wrist. The Meta Watch subscribes to the same adage but for reasons that include carrying around your music, photos, a camera and a myriad of apps to make your life easier.

I'm surprised that Apple hasn't fully utilised their Nano with the touch screen, making it smaller and putting it on a wrist band. It already does a power of work with music and photos, so why not adapt the iPad thinking and fill it with suitable apps? Regardless of what the new smart watches will look like, they will need to have smooth touch screen technology and no one does that better than the team at Apple.

Think about the possibilities, you could carry around a full payment facility and impress your secret agent friends by waving your wrist over the NFC device and paying for the coffees whenever you hunker down under that cone of silence. You could take those secretive photos and record spy goings on. All the while bopping along to your favourite tunes. Who needs to tell the time?

Max never had it so good.

Quality vs Price.

It's the age old argument, dating back to the first transactions from the stone age where BC (old cartoon for those of us that remember) could argue his dinosaur necklace was worth more because he risked his life to personally extract the teeth from the T Rex as opposed to finding some bleached teeth from a dead dinosaur. They were newer teeth, more exclusive and as such should command a premium price on the dinosaur necklace market. Not much has changed since then and companies are still risking their reputations and brands by trying to pry lose those elusive dinosaur teeth.

Commoditisation has made many products irrelevant in the quality versus price argument as generic and low cost equivalents of originals become the norm. Baked beans are baked beans and the shelves are full of generically wrapped cans. Cars are cars and the lots are full of low cost 4 door 4 wheel vehicles that have no purpose other than transport from A to B. Even airlines, which used to have the elegance and romance of travel as their calling card, have commoditised their wares to an extent where it is difficult to tell the difference between them, except on price.

All of that is true and yet people still buy a Mercedes as opposed to a cookie cutter version of a car that only has two things in common, 4 doors and 4 wheels. Yes it's important to get from A to B but how and when you get there can be just as important. Certainly no one expects the cookie cutter car to be as expensive as the Mercedes, after all, luxury ride, engineering excellence and technology should cost more.

So things that are manufactured have the constant challenge of quality versus price but the truly exceptional or exclusive will always command a premium. Rolex versus the petrol station watch, Apple tablets versus anything in the market and German engineering versus Chinese generics are all areas where a premium can be counted on to bring quality and price into alignment. Just the way you could command a premium if your service was outstanding and your exclusivity gave your clients the peace of mind that the quality was beyond reproach.

In service industries, where everyone says they are the best, they are the most successful at what they do and they should be the ones looking after you and your dollars, the quality versus price challenge leaves most contenders on the mat. How do you differentiate yourself from the pack? The easiest way is to work with your zealots, those people willing to follow you anywhere and use their loyalty as the beacon to attract others.

It's always a pleasure for me to recommend colleagues I know, that provide exceptional service as the thank you notes come back to me as well as the service provider. Everyone loves to be able to opine on the subject of quality versus price and who they deal with. You only need a small group who today have the power of the net to bring you business but woe be tide if the scale of quality tips low because then price will trip you up so badly that recovery is often untenable.

Do you deliver quality or are you running with the pack? Without it you'll be driving the cookie cutter car forever, and who wants that?

So Sue Me.

I've never been sued and I've never sued anyone but I've heard it's not a pleasant experience on any level, especially if your name or brand is involved. The net has opened up a landscape compared to the wild frontier when discussing libel and defamation and has given people the opportunity and a voice that is getting many into trouble. Freedom of speech is that inalienable right for all, especially if you watch American movies with heroes standing behind the free speech door pointing out their right to say anything and then print it. If it ever gets to libel and defamation then there was always a payout and retraction, maybe even an editorial apology. The thing with print media, compared to today's communication avenues, is that it ended up at the bottom of the bird cage, was used as wrapping paper for university kids moving house or as land fill and as a consequence seemed to disappear, eventually.

Today's communication however, is here forever, and that fact has caused great consternation for many in the legal game who suggest that libel cases from online posts at social networks, tweets and web attacks have doubled in the last year. Seems the very nature of open content and anonymous contributors is creating a whole new branch of the legal system as lawyers expert in "online law", still to be agreed upon by many nations, are now as common as the "social media expert".

Two countries at extreme ends of legal doctrine are the US and the UK. In the US articles are true until proven otherwise, whereas in the UK they need to go through all sorts of regulatory tests to prove their authenticity before they can be published. Both sides contain great complexity as the truth can be glazed over, hidden and generally disregarded depending on how you research as in the UK case and how forthright you want to be in the US case.

The UK has gone to the extremes of providing "super injunctions" that enable people to in effect gag publishers from printing what they might consider defamatory content. The US continues with its freedom of speech platform but being the litigious country it is, there will no doubt be online laws before we know it.

Many consider a quick remedy to be stricter controlling of the tools used, ie, the web platforms. The open nature, especially of the social platforms, is so large that is seems an impossible task when people can now find unlimited ways to "slag" someone, a company or even an event. Anonymity is the greatest challenge and it's unlikely that this will be solved as trust and honesty take a back seat to people using the online forums to say what they don't have the fortitude to say face to face. Blaming the tools does not diminish the integrity required whenever someone posts an opinion or viewpoint.

It may not be resolved until some of the big players like Facebook, Google or Twitter face prosecution for defamatory and libelous content. With all the money in the universe behind these players such a scenario could take decades in court, all the while the mores or society become less about privacy and more about an openess where individuals will have to fend for themselves. Looks like we might all need law degrees or at least know a good online lawyer. Maybe we can do an online course for online law?

In a Perfect World.

In a perfect world, you would wake up to the dulcet tones of water lapping against your yacht as it bobs in the azure waters off Monaco. You would ring a bell and breakfast would appear on a tray carried by the last two Miss Universe winners or the equivalent in the best looking man in the universe category and regardless of how much bacon you ate, your cholesterol would never rise. The sun would not stop shining and you would have Internet access where ever you sailed on the globe. You and George Clooney would then spot up across the gambling tables and enjoy a good hearted round of banter as you win a truck load of money from the casino.

In a perfect world, no one needs to work and no one wants to work. It's retirement heaven and in reality only a dream, unless you win the lottery.

So what does the perfect world for most people look like? For most it would be a place where they garner respect for the work they do, have a lifestyle balance that gives them opportunity to create and be close to the ones they care about and to have the chance to leave a legacy of sorts. Sounds like yours, mine and our lives right now, doesn't it?

If it doesn't, then what do you need to change? What have you got influence over that will enhance your life's experience? What can you change tomorrow that will make your life better?

In a perfect world I would get up in the morning, eat something tasty but still good for me, surf the local break, create some meaningful dialogue with people all over the world, have ideas accepted as intelligent and insightful all the while continuing a relevant career that gives back all I have learnt. As coaching icon, John Wooden used to say, "You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you." That's starting to sound more like it and for most people has elements of being achievable.

The trick has always been what is possible and what you think is possible. For this, people need to admit to themselves what they are really good at and then decide if that's enough or do they require help to get to that next level to live in that perfect world. So "in a perfect world" ends up being more about how you live your life and what decisions make the most sense to you rather than where you work. After all jobs come and go across your lifetime and if asked, most people would not consider their employment to be part of a perfect world, unless they were working on their passion in life.

So if the daily commute is getting you down and work isn't giving you what you need, think about what your perfect world might look like and decide one way or the other to fix it. Nobody ever said life was easy, they just promised that it would be worth it and in spite of the cost of living, it’s still popular. So let's not hear about what doesn't float your boat but rather what does and then go sailing.

I Don't Share.

That's not true at all anymore, especially if you consider what has happened over the last 5 to 10 years with the Internet and the amount of content shared every minute. In fact we have become such a sharing world, it's a wonder there is anything left to share. Before the web it was books, newspapers along with pens and paper and long telephone conversations that shared information, stories and gossip with people we either knew, or wanted to know. It was a way for culture and history to be passed on

A New York Times study tried to make sense of why people shared and what motivated them to open up and to share information and content with strangers. The study ended up splitting the sharers into 6 online engagers being, altruists, careerists, hipsters, boomerangs, connecters and selectives. All of them shared for different reasons and used different channels but mostly it was for recognition of some kind.

No doubt you fit into one or more of the above as you share for entertainment, causes, selling, relationships and finding ways for self fulfillment. From the helpful altruist, the Linked In careerist, the Twittering hipster, the Facebooking boomerang, the creative connector saving you money and the selective knowing that whatever you post is there forever, they all look to share.

The one thing they all have in common is they all want to be "on shared". For everyone gets a kick out of having their thoughts, opinions and findings validated by someone sharing them with someone else, who with any luck will share it with someone else. This is the way stories used to carry through cultures by way of the troubadour, the story teller and the village elder. Nowadays everyone has the opportunity to be the village elder, especially if they are part of an online tribe.

Those village tribes are now global and have names like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Facebook villagers create a million photos a minute and share updates and wall posts enough to fill all the libraries in the world. The Twitter village shares 125,000 tweets a minute with most of it falling into the inane and useless gossip about people caught with their pants down but has replaced the tom toms whenever quick news is required. The most creative of villages is the You Tube village, which has just announced its villagers upload 48 hours of video every minute. To give you an idea of how much they are sharing, if you watched nothing but You Tube your entire life, you would get through about 10 days worth of uploads.

So sharing has taken on monumental numbers and doesn't look like slowing down any time soon but villagers are challenged by the sheer volume of information and content and this could lead to some forming smaller tribes. Smaller tribes for greater recognition, smaller tribes for less information over load and smaller tribes because we want to know each other. We may laugh and pick on larger tribes but our tribe needs to be "where everybody knows your name" because whenever you share, the highest recognition is always from your peers, colleagues and friends, not from the unknowns of the other tribes.

Working 9 to 5.

"Working nine to five, what a way to make a living
Barely getting by, it's all taking and no giving"

The song, certainly the concept of 9 to 5 and even Dolly Parton all sound a bit cute and dated in today's frenzied work environment. It' s a concept remembered with fondness for those who still remember what the 6 o'clock news looked like. I know a lot of people would like to tie up their boss, ala Dolly and her co workers, and change the office environment but the whole 9 to 5 concept is coming under pressure without rope and duct tape.

Flex time, job sharing, shifts and freelancing are all putting pressure on a traditional model that required attendance for certain periods of the day to make the company and the boss feel comfortable that work had taken place. The issue is that work doesn't necessarily happen at work and if you can avoid the meeting and interruption cycle, endemic at most places of employment, you might just get some business done. Hours have always been a way to measure productivity but mobility has put paid to that concept with work being anywhere and work hours being anytime.

The trick is that unstructured work is not for everyone and without strict parameters many people feel under duress to complete tasks when is there is no finish time or finish line. If the environment can be turned into a results oriented work place, then the opportunity to restructure that mindset can be integrated into the work place. Flexibility can also have an impact on lifestyle and we know that blurred lines regarding work times can lead to the scenario of, if you can work anytime, then you can work all the time. So the added stress of imposing your own work hours can lead many to stay and feel comfortable in a 9 to 5 environment, even if neither of those times are relevant to the hours they actually work.

So different skills are required when adapting to the new order, along with personal learnings on what people can accomplish by themselves outside of the walls. Many home offices started as a small desk in the bedroom but have had to evolve into a proper work space with WiFi, printers and no working in pajamas and fluffy slippers. Sometimes it's the little things like work attire at home, that enable people to feel they are still in the office environment and in control.

Along with personal changes, company perceptions and measurements need to be aligned so people working outside the system feel they have the backing from management as well as the people who stay in the office. Backing that they are still considered part of the group, the team and the company when it comes to celebrating milestones and achievements.

So Dolly can untie her boss in the knowledge he gets it and understands that although 9 to 5 may still be his domain, his employees have moved on and are much more empowered by the flexibility of today's new work environment.

Follow Me.

"I have a dream", "We shall fight them on the beaches", "Ich bin ein Berliner" are all excerpts from stirring and inspirational speeches aimed at rallying people for a cause, okay the last one is about a jam donut, but Kennedy didn't let that distract him from inspiring the people of West Berlin. The 2011 World of Work report by HR specialist Ranstad found that any employers who can inspire and rally their employees have a greater chance of keeping them, along with engaging them on the company vision and then leading to greater productivity.

The report found more than 30% of employees found their senior management lacking in the skills required to inspire and lead with words. Since the GFC, a change has taken place, where the bunkering down and getting on with surviving the global conditions is taking second place to managers and CEOs having to work to motivate through vision and aspirational speech. Randstand CEO Fred van der Tang says the results signaled a break from the recent past, with the ability to react well during periods of economic instability no longer being foremost on the minds of employees.

Big picture thinking and not the minutiae of the day, is what people are looking for from their leadership teams. Big picture in a way, that give them reasons to feel good about their company, come to work motivated and be a single working unit engaged for the betterment of the company. Some employees noted that the vision of a leader within the company, was the only reason they came to work.
 
So it behoves leaders to work on their profile and feel comfortable about visionary talks because they can have a profound effect upon employees looking for more than doing the end of month reports. Employees want to feel they are contributing to the company vision and that it aligns with their picture of the world with them in it. There are enough distractions in the world that absorb motivation and inspiration, in fact work against them on all fronts, that employers need to think beyond the next quarter results.

Whereas employees are looking to be engaged by powerful words and deeds, employers think their biggest challenges are performance and productivity along with filling vacancies caused by increasing turn over. Interesting to note how the two can be so far apart and all management has to do, is improve one aspect of their style and they could solve two future challenges. A company vision articulated with elegance and credibility could reap rewards if employers have the courage to open up and inspire rather than rely on bottom line adherence.

Are you following a leader at work willing you to a better place or are you just clocking in and doing the uninspired requisite to get you through the day? A tough question and I believe there is a dearth of people willing to stand up and be beacons to their employees.

Ask yourself, are senior management anything like the below?

“I want to put a ding in the universe" - Steve Jobs Apple.

“When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts.” 
- Larry Ellison Oracle.

“Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. But make sure you don’t make the same mistake twice.” - Akio Morita Sony

"Management is nothing more than motivating other people" - Lee Iacocca Chrysler Corporation.

“Take risks. Ask big questions. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; if you don’t make mistakes, you’re not reaching far enough.” - David Packard Hewlett Packard.

C'mon Get Happy.

David Cassidy and The Partridge Family had it right in the 70s, when all you had to do was sing about happiness and it happened for you. The problem is, most of us can't drive around in a colourful bus singing for our supper. Most of us have to go to work and with that, taking up a lot of our life, it needs to fit into the happiness spectrum, somewhere.

Surveys have shown that occupations with a lot of giving back or serving people in need provide the highest happiness return. Firefighters, Clergy, Physical Therapists and Authors rank high in the happiness work scale, while Clothing Apparel Salespeople, Grocery Packers, Roofers and Cashiers head the list in not being happy at work. Tom Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago indicated, after interviewing more than 27,000 people about job satisfaction and general happiness, that the level of job contentment affected people's overall sense of happiness.

With work occupying so much of people's lives, it can become the social and mental focal point of who they are and how they are defined by others and as such have enormous influence on the levels of happiness in the rest of their lives. Without job satisfaction, many people find it hard to equate happiness in their lives outside of work.
Even that extra raise in pay may not be enough to influence happiness as a survey in the UK foundm that managers, bankers and lawyers were the most discontented with their work days, while hair dressers were the most content and happy to come to work every day. So money really can't buy you happiness, according to the managerial ranks.

Chris Humphries, director general at City & Guilds, said: "It may come as a surprise to some that financial reward doesn't always mean a happier working environment for an employee. A quarter of all UK workers have left, or would leave, a position because of a lack of training and the survey results clearly demonstrate that some of the happiest workers are those who feel they have a lot of opportunities for professional development." Companies, take note of the last time you cut the training development program and maybe check that against the number of employees who left the company.

Even sunshine and location have an effect on happiness as indicated by workers in the north-east of England, especially those in Newcastle, being the happiest while staff in Scotland are the unhappiest, according to the UK report. I wonder what would happen if those workers were transported here, to take in our sunshine? Oh yes, that's been done and it created the happiest convicts that founded the happiest place on earth, sorry Walt.

If you are in a position, where you can affect change and give back, then likely your happy demeanor becomes infectious to the rest of the staff and you are more important than the company realises. On the other hand, if you are sitting behind the cash register or laying those roof tiles, the chances of giving back and making a difference are slim, so consider a change because regardless of what the surveys say, no one else is responsible for your happiness, only you. As Shirley Partridge used to say, "you're not here forever, so c'mon get happy".

Details Schmetails.

"God is in the details", yes God, so let's get the facts right once and for all. The quote we use in all variants has generally been attributed to German born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and even his obituary in the New York Times attributed the quote to him. The problem, a lot of people thought details were painful so a quick switch to the Devil made for a better excuse when missing the finer points or the little things not noticed on first go around. Interestingly, German pop musician Blixa Bargeld has been attributed with the Devil quote and I quickly ask, what is it about those Germans and details?

Guess you don't come up with the engineering marvels we drive around in, along with the Siemens', Bosch', BASFs, insurance companies like Alliance and banks that dominate Europe without having an eye for detail. In 2004, Germany was the market leader in twenty-one out of thirty-one branches of the entire world’s engineering industry! At the time it represented a quarter of the entire world market.

So here I am, German born and did that gene skip past me on its way to Gustav now designing the latest Porsche? I sometimes find myself at odds with colleagues and friends over details I think are not relevant or worse, insignificant. Yet thankfully I'm not alone and there seems to be a reasonable spread of details people surrounded by ideas people, or as the details people call them, no hopers. For me it's more about what could be, what might happen if, how do we change that and who can help make a difference. Some would no doubt suggest that to make a difference, do the little bits all the time but then, when would the big stuff get done?

This is no doubt the situation many people find themselves in, as they figure out how best to use their skills effectively within the constraints of whatever employment landscape they work in. The trick is to find that path you are comfortable to walk, that satisfies the work requirements but still gives you freedom to create, think and make a difference.

I'm in awe of engineers and developers I come across, who work in a world of dots and numbers encached in lines of script that eventually turn into a technology innovation. I couldn't do without my accountant, timetables keeping me on time, people behind the scenes making our daily lives better and I certainly couldn't get by without my travel agent who takes my dreams of a holiday and turns it into reality making sure all the details are correct and that nothing goes wrong on those precious weeks of escape.

So in the end, this is an ode to everyone doing the little things that count more than you think. The little things, that if they break down cause more concern than the big ideas that come and go. The little things really do count and they should be recognised. Maybe I do have some of that German DNA after all?