Neuroscience.

In the good old days of James Bond, neuroscience was called mind control. It customarily involved someone captured by the bad guys, usually Russians, brainwashed by some machine or lots of torture, who then went out and tried to kill the Queen or Prime Minister, before James was able to tackle them in the nick of time. Today that brainwashing takes the shape of neuro-scientific research done by boffins in white coats who love nothing better than attaching electrodes to our brains. Marketing companies and brand agencies are then looking to this inquisition to find out what makes us tick and pick, one product over another. The holy grail of consumer choice has long been the jurisdiction of the marketing department as they throw one campaign after another, at a public looking to make educated choices.

Neuroscience studies the psychology of choice via areas of the prefrontal cortex and other bits of the brain too difficult to spell. It frequently finds that a particular part of the brain affected by marketing is directly attached to a point in the hip pocket, or more direct at a credit card burning hot in our wallets. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one type of brain measure used to test what we buy, when we choose and how we come to decisions. If marketers can affect the right parts of the brain, dealing with decisions and accord, they have a chance of differentiating their product or brand from the mire of determination required to get that loaf of bread off the shelf. If James had an MRI machine handy he would have worked out the killer's motive early in the movie giving him more time for martinis and bond girls.

Predicting out comes has become a science and marketing firms are jumping on the neuroscience band wagon to give their clients irrefutable evidence that the tag line, the colour or even the scent of their particular product is important for the brain to be influenced enough to chose brand A over brand B. That need for prediction led to neuro-marketing, coined by Ale Smidts in 2002 and now commonly used as global brands look to affect neural activity associated with prognosis based on expected rewards to lock consumers into loyalty. Studies have found particular brands can engender reward feelings in loyal customers whose brain activity is triggered by emotion and memory retrieval leading to repeat purchasing. The brain remembers positive and negative outcomes from previous choices to make predictions of reward and this is the area the marketing department is now playing in.

Brand loyalty and product choices are now the realms of scientists using MRIs and theoretical learning algorithms, who then on sell their findings to marketers to ensure the desired outcome for products that you and I thought we chose ourselves. Harnessing neuroscience gives marketing experts the ability to cache lasting and affirmative impressions on the consumer. Seems you and I have no more control than the abject prisoner of the Russians when it comes to making choices about tomato sauce or breakfast cereals.

Infobesity.

Alvin Toffler popularised this term way back in his 1970 best seller, Future Shock. It referred to difficulties in making decisions with too much data to process, information overload. It is a subject I have opined on in the past and analysis paralysis, complication of data multiplication and decision indigestion brought on by saturation of data has increased to the extent, we don't decide on anything without checking all the known facts in the Universe before attempting an answer. We have all subscribed to the alerts, tweets, forums and professional amphitheatres of knowledge, hoping they will give us peace of mind in the decision making process. More information equals smarter decisions, is the catch cry of online inhabitants shackled to search algorithms.

Recent studies have brought forward other complications when trying to find answers with data missing and how that affects our decision making process. Princeton and Stanford have raised the question whether our appetite for knowledge reduces the validity of our decisions. The "pursuit and misuse of useless information" study, had the Universities test participants with a scenario linking the seduction of data to decisions made.

Two groups were given the same scenario referring to a mortgage applicant with a well paying job. After some credit checking one group was told the applicant had been tardy in paying a credit card debt of $5000, while the other group was given conflicting information that implied it could be $5000 or $25000. The second group were given the choice of waiting on updates regarding the contrary information until the issue was cleared up, not surprising they chose to wait.

The results of decisions made, became interesting when the second group were told it was $5000 the client had defaulted on, just as in the first group. Interest amongst the researchers piqued, when 71% of the first group rejected the applicants claim while only 21% of the second group rejected the claim. As humans we hate uncertainly and when we find information gaps our radar points to it being important because we were adapted to a time when that radar was all about survival.

The problem today, we overestimate the value of data and think if we are spend extra time finding out, it must be essential. The second group's attention was on whether the debt was $5000 or $25000 and they missed the big picture of a history of default. The minor detail of the small debt seduced them into thinking it was better than they had anticipated and as such gave the applicant the benefit of the doubt and gave him the loan. They had been seduced by thinking the data they were waiting on was more important than the overall picture they were given at the beginning.

The addiction to data that drives most companies, sees decisions made and not made as one more analysis is called for before committing. We know more now than we ever did, we have access to more now than we ever did but the thousands of years prior to the last decade of technology, saw us make decisions with the information at hand and we made some pretty good decisions. So next time you need to make a decision, consider the information you already know and deliberate accordingly. You might be surprised how often you get it right, without expending extra resources on useless information.

Movin' On.

I was 13, I was tall for my age, I could cook a mean lasagne to feed myself, I knew my way around a tough neighbourhood and I was ready to leave home. Okay I only had a few dollars of pocket money saved that wouldn't get me far but the thought of leaving home was instilled at a young age. It didn't go away through the high school and university days that saw me lie about my age and pack shelves at Woolies when I was 14, until I finally left home to never return. It was all about moving out and growing up but I wish I had been born a little later because I'd much prefer today's trend of staying home and never growing up.

Things are different today as 30 has become the new 18 and the question popping up about why kids are not leaving home has caused many a Dad more grey hairs than they care to admit. The failure to launch, the boomerang kids, the lack of seasoning and the fear of the outside world has seen either an elongated departure period or a mass migration back to Mum and Dad that sees kids not growing up till their third decade or not at all. Where we might have had issues bringing work home while Mum made the bed and ironed the shirts, today the luxury lifestyle of having old servants looks after you is becoming de rigueur.

The Boomers may have joked that growing old was mandatory but growing up was optional, while they started work early to amass the world's fortune to now find they are reinvesting that cash into their adult children at home. No one is sure what impact this will have on the kids staying or the parents doling out the funds but the trend is affecting what was thought to be the traditional cycle as young people avoid commitment, compete with siblings for the upper bunk at age 30 and avert any beginning of adult life.

A recent New York Times article pointed out the five traditional tenants of adulthood, completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying, and having kids have been pushed back by the Millenials who are happy to continue to share the remote control with Dad. The average of seven jobs in their 20s, huge student loans and not having disposable income if they actually moved out, has opened the eyes of the squatters in the next room. So why not stay home and party, go to school forever, have your mates over for dinner, get your Mum to drive you to the pub and do your laundry, what is the worst that can happen?

I'm packing my bags, I'm going home, I'm sure Mum will be happy to see me drive up and she'll have the kettle on in no time. Then it's off to work in crisp shirts, a cut lunch, pocket money for a quick pint after work and maybe Dad will have the footy on when I get home. Sounds good to me, why go anywhere else?

Let the celebrations begin.

We have just seen two weeks of celebrations at the Olympics. It's where we celebrate the coming together of the world, we celebrate the athletes and we celebrate the city hosting the games. It is such an enormous task, taking so long to construct and devise that we only do it every four years, even though the after glow is something we would like to feel all the time. Work can sometimes feel the same, as projects, initiatives and the daily grind take time to develop to a successful end. The end celebration of the project, if there is one, becomes a milestone worth aiming for but what if the project takes 6 months or a year to complete and then you jump onto the next undertaking, how do you keep up the motivation and engagement of the players?

Celebrate more often is the catch cry of many in the corporate landscape as they struggle with long implementations, long projects and long times between drinks. It's an absolute necessity to celebrate achievements within organisations but it is even more important to develop a culture that understands how to celebrate success and why it's important to do so more often. More often is the clue and here you need to segment your work load into achievable successes to keep your people stimulated and galvanise them into a team capable of continuing lengthy activity.

Celebrations needn't be the closing ceremony, or the opening for that matter but thoughtful collaborations that don't need the formality of the above and bring forth camaraderie to amplify the good work done so far. So far, is the guiding principle, as work continues unabated but can be refocused with milestone celebrations. Where milestones used to be just that, the distance marked over a journey, those markers today, have work connotations that require acclamation and attention as the spadework continues. Work is a challenge for everyone nowadays and people need more reasons to come to work

The more reasons you can find to celebrate success, no matter how small, the more chance you have of maintaining your workforce, giving your staff a reason to come to work and cultivating the right aptitude for continuing accomplishment. Sometimes it can be as small as celebrating the mere fact of getting this far in the business year and as no lesser light in business success Oprah Winfrey points out, "the more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate."

The more reasons you can find to celebrate, the more reasons you have to market and communicate with your customers, for they are just as important in the cycle of achievement. Set criteria for celebrating so that people can focus on attainable targets, make sure the right people are celebrated and honour them and their achievements accordingly. Often that needs to be more than a mention in the Friday office dispatch, so use imagination that includes upper management involvement, parties, photos, videos, lunch, vouchers, newsletters, customer involvement, music and if necessary, dancing girls. Leave no stone unturned in the search for a reason to celebrate.

When was the last time your work celebrated?

Out of the box.

I love it when companies decide to branch out into the unknown. Who knew a small German soda factory would get me through my teens via cassette tapes and then turn into the world's largest diversified chemical company called BASF. I look at the initiatives of the Petters Group Worldwide who decided to branch out and turn their company into a Ponzi scheme and lose the money of over 3,000 employees and investors. Some stay within their core product like Qantas who successfully launched low cost carrier Jetstar, so well they now over shadow the parent. The success ratio really depends on the skill set within management and how far from the mainstay mission of the company they decide to stray.

I mention the above because next time I travel to Europe, I intend to take some basic tools to build a more homely environment where ever I stay. Screw driver, hammer and drill will be my friends as I move from town to town sampling the best of the new economy hotels by Ikea. We have all juggled the flat packs of furniture bought home, attacking them with zest and only a small allen key to get us through the weekend of carpentry hell. Seems the simple designs and modular set up of Ikea furniture will be the centre piece of their new low cost design hotels to be built throughout Europe, with the first one slated for Germany. Visions of having to construct my bed before I can sleep in it or quickly putting the kitchen cabinetry in before I can eat breakfast bring forth more concerns than just your room is ready sir, here's you allen key.

Looking to open up 100 hotels, Ikea is angling for an established hotelier, no doubt one with handyman skills, to run the new conglomerate. Inter Ikea, the parent company will over see the construction and no doubt add insightful nuances to differentiate their product, Swedish meatballs on the menu might be one of those insights? No doubt this belief in their ability to branch out into accommodation started after they built a hostel next door to an Ikea warehouse, so that shoppers who needed to spend more than one day roaming the aisles could spend the night and get an early start on the next day's shopping. Ikea is so motivated on this project that they have gone one step further and branched into city planning, designing a self contained neighbourhood to be constructed in 2013 in London, called Strand East. Occupants will no doubt require carpentry skills along with a keen eye to finding all those little widgets that come with every purchase.

Either way, hotels are a long way from flat packs, balsa lamp shades and modular book shelves and the accommodation industry will be watching with interest, to see if the new apprentice has more than just interior design skills. Moving away from what you do best can certainly broaden your horizon but too far away and it's a long swim back to shore. I'm not expecting Apple Airlines to take off any time soon.

Hoard.

A long time ago I had a garage. It was my garage, a guy's garage, a man cave where I put the mighty Ford to bed every night. I filled it with sporting equipment, tools, bits of furniture that were destined for the tip but just maybe, had one more move left in them, plus an array of items passed their use by date but happily ensconced in my cave. It didn't take long before the car was parked in the driveway and the garage was a wall to wall treasure trove of useless abundance. I give an insight into my past bowerbird tendencies because UCLA has just finished an anthropological study on the middle class dual income families in Los Angeles and the findings closely mirror our own proclivity for collection to the extreme.

The presumption of too much stuff easily identified through photographic evidence, showed all manner of useless accumulation stuffed into every corner of the house, the garage, storage facilities and any spare room at Mum's place. So much proliferation that 75% of families had stopped using their garage to park the car, had acquired a second fridge to cover all manner of natural disasters that would require ten dozen cans of beer, two dozen frozen hamburger patties and an assortment of frozen food from the previous decade, along with the requisite TV for every room. Nothing was thrown away because it never got a chance to become old as planned obsolescence ensured new and shiny replacements pushed yesterday's purchase to the garage .

From the study, I was able to avoid one downfall, children, due to forgetfulness or expense, I can't remember but noted each child added another 30% more possessions to the household, putting even more strain on the confines of the family abode. It wasn't a study on those crazy hoarders you see on current affairs program's but normal families living and breathing the consumer culture of today. The ampleness of acquisitions caused stress levels to rise in mothers as they spent hours cleaning, tidying, rearranging and finding house hold items to get everyone through the day.

Time was the most precious item lost within the cacophony of clutter as no one really knew where the scissors were, what had happened to the good pair of socks or how come the Bon Jovi CD was in the Rihanna cover? With so much stuff it becomes over whelming and the justification of picking up 50 items or 5 becomes easy territory to do the least and suffer the consequences. Following our American cousins, we have taken on one of the worst offending catalysts, the big box stores such as Costco et al and we now fill the boot with 24 rolls of paper towels, trays of baked beans and a plentiful bounty of frozen pizzas, all to be stored and admired in the second or third fridge.

He who dies with the most toys wins, is an anachronistic term penned in the over abundant 80's and has no place in today's busy world where we only need to accrue one thing. You'll be pleased to know I have broken the yoke of aggressive accumulation and now park my car in a spot under our apartment with no recourse for boxing any sale items, under threat from the body corporate. The less is more mantra has become all consuming as I become the beneficiary of more time accrued. Now that's worth hoarding.

World's favourite pastime.

The world's first department store, Bon Marche established in Paris in 1838 predates the giant American Macys, Wanamakers department store which started operation in the 1860s and both predate the first self serve grocery super market, Piggly Wiggly which opened in Memphis in 1916. I give you these interesting facts as the world of shopping takes another step into the future. We have all become accustomed to online shopping for our favourite products and nothing seems out of reach to consumers with access to the net. The department stores have certainly felt the effect of online consumerism but the grocery super markets have had only a slight online dent in the weekly shopping cycle. Seems we still like to squeeze the rock melons and wait in endless lines with our trolleys laden.

Two years ago, UK chain Tesco was trying to penetrate the Korean grocery market where the general population spent a lot of time at work and commuting and as such shopped locally. Their decision, to try and keep up with the local grocery brand on every corner by building hundreds of stores or come up with an alternative. Tesco came up with the virtual super market by buying all the subway wall space they could lay their hands on, covering those walls with pictures of grocery filled shelves that commuters could shop from via their smart phones. By simply taking a picture of the QR code attached to the item you want to buy and adding it to your virtual cart, paying with your virtual wallet, you will have those items home delivered before you get off the train. The logistics of building warehouses and the distribution system was much cheaper than constructing a grocery store on every corner and sees Tesco as the leading super market in Korea with an increase in profits of 130%.

Mobile analysts indicate 90% of all phones in the developed world will be smart phones by 2016, leading Tesco to surmise their Korean experiment has legs, which segues to the opening of the same virtual style grocery store at Gatwick Airport. No longer will you have to be concerned if there is fresh milk for a cuppa when you get home from a trip, just take a picture and it will be waiting for you when you get home on the date you select.

While we have gotten used to eBay, Amazon and all manner of online department stores, the green grocer, the butcher, the baker who long ago were rolled into the super markets still seemed ubiquitous to our cycle of life around touching, smelling and tasting the wares as the squeaky wheeled trolleys were pushed around the aisles. Will this next online avenue of convenience see Woolies walls on the unadorned tunnels of Central station, will we see Coles plastering pictures of grocery specials on the sides of buildings and will the next generations care? After all the one thing we are all aiming for with the new modes of convenience shopping, is gaining more time in our lives to do the important things, like shopping!

Watch the Birdie.

It's all our fault, the sun shone for two weeks, the public transport system didn't break down, no one got eaten by a shark and we put on the perfect Olympics. The best for decades, after the Munich kidnappings, the Moscow boycott and the Atlanta bombings, gave us pause for thinking the spirit of the games was but a hazy memory. No matter where athletes finished in Sydney, they smiled, they hugged, they competed the right way and all seemed right with the world for two weeks. The ambiance captured in Sydney was replicated over the next couple of Olympics and they became shining examples of doing the right thing, the distillation of the Olympic objectives. Even the most obscure sports were given the spot light for just a second and enjoyed their moment in the sun, no matter who was casting doubt on the sporting prowess of the competitors.

London looked like it would follow our lead but for all that London had to offer and had accomplished, it will always be remembered for the one tarnish, from here on in to be known as "Birdgate". The entire world of Badminton was turned upside down by winners not wanting to win, not wanting to win within a rules system in need of an update and never once playing within the spirit of the games and doing the right thing. Not since the Christmas BBQ incident, known as Uncle Harry's fall from grace, where he lightly tapped his partner, cousin Jean, on the bum with his racket after her astonishing return of aunt May's underhand service, has the badminton world seen such controversy. Like the badminton disciplinary committee's quick action against the offending teams, uncle Harry was banished to the BBQ pit, to preserve the integrity and credibility of the sport and to give aunt May recourse for a good talking to later on. Uncle Harry was able to redeem himself later on the day with a winning run at Monopoly and has the opportunity for more gold moments at the next family gathering, something the Chinese and Koreans will miss out on.

Comedic analogies aside, the defining moment was all about not doing the right thing and trying to gain advantage bypassing the paradigm of what the Olympics stand for. Having played sports my whole life I often try and bring the same motivation and correlations aligned to winning within a team environment to business and examples like "Birdgate" certainly become good bench marks for how not do business, even if you can avail yourself of a murky situation to gain advantage. Like sports, business runs best when a sense of the right way to do things is espoused by top management, not inherently different to the Olympic oath, where the athletes declare to compete "in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honour of our teams" Learning how to gain magnanimity after not achieving the result you promised yourself and others, learning other competitors aren't the enemy but someone to bring out the best in you

There are always business lessons to be learnt from sports on a big stage and maybe London delivered more than we expected after all.

Insouciance.

You know the scene, laying by the pool, sand between your toes, being fanned by a super model, drinking an ice cold beer watching your team on the big screen, all the while contemplating the night's festivities to come. Then someone in the 10 o'clock meeting asks you a question and you are right back where you started, bored at work. You try as hard as you can but nothing sways you from turning off and sitting zombie like in your cubicle, your office or the lunch room. Depending on which report you read, 25% to 80% of people are bored at work too much of the time, bored with their job and bored bored bored. Even at the low end of those statistics, a lot of people are being paid for just showing up and no one, least of all the bordee, the apathetic, benumbed, detached, moribund, jaded, stultified, torpid and hebetudinous( who knew, so many words for
bored )is making any effort to change the situation. Who's responsible, who's accountable, who's answerable, who cares?

The many reasons for being bored at work, including environment and work practice not being challenging enough, you are a pirate born two hundred years too late, through to repetition of tasks that numb the brain all have antidotes, maybe not the pirate. No one disagrees that patches of boredom creep into every job, even rock stars get bored of the money and girls being thrown at them? Okay, certainly the finance departments get bored with the same old receipts and reconciliations.

Taking a lead from the experts, clearing that lingering inbox, decluttering your desk and work area, straightening your tie and then getting on with the job at hand, after all it's a job not a hobby, gives rise to push back from people wanting more in their work day. The problem today being the majority of people work in office confines in artificial environments without a lot of stimuli to keep them active, motivated and challenged beyond their job description. That is of course, unless you work for the Google like companies looking to continually stimulate and galvanise their staff for greater success.

So step outside of those confines when that Tse Tse fly of boredom comes buzzing around and create your own Google complex with new endeavours to keep you energised, like meditation, drama lessons over the phone to give you that radio announcer voice you've always wanted, sit ups to start your new fitness regime, use the powers of restorative healing and take a nap, play Sudoku, read a blog (hint), write the great Australian novel or just gravitate to things you do well and do them even better. If all of that fails why not look for a new job, it certainly couldn't hurt.

Everyone has a choice not to be bored to death at work and as Norman Mailer pointed out,
"The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war", it can be sole destroying, so don't battle it out in the trenches, get creative, go crazy, stay alive, not bored to death.