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.