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?

Did the Earth Move?

Never one to trivialise events or personalities (yeah right) the US West Coast had great fun with the recent East Coast earthquake. The tweetosphere was awash with barbs aimed at what the LA crowd called over reaction by the citizens of Washington and surrounds to an everyday event in California. Facebook pages and blogs were crammed with pictures of lawn furniture tipped over and captioned with hysterical statements of disaster. Even Letterman, the consummate New Yorker took the West Coast cue and described it as the most terrifying 2 seconds of his life.

As always the event (in California everything is an event) went to show the difference between the coasts in all things people related, business related and media related. California, generally the butt of East Coast jokes pertaining to anything empty and vacuous took advantage of this event but have a way to go, in regards to the number of jokes thrown at them over the years by the good people of the East.

Yet one thing they all agreed on was the extensive use of social media and its communication effectiveness in alerting danger and averting injury in catastrophes and disasters. All jokes aside, the use of Facebook and communication sites like Twitter have shown how people can help themselves and others much more effectively. The American Red Cross survey has found that 74% of people expect response agencies to answer social media calls for help, within an hour. They expect first response units to be listening to social media but that begs the question, how many sites or which sites are the ones they should have open?

“The social web is creating a fundamental shift in disaster response, one that will ask emergency managers, government agencies and aid organisations to mix time-honored expertise with real-time input from the public,” said Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern. "We need to work together to better respond to that shift.”

She also noted that among web users, "social media sites are the fourth most popular source for emergency information, just behind television news, radio and online news sites. More web users say they get their emergency information from social media than from a NOAA weather radio, government website or emergency text message system. One in five social media users also report posting eyewitness accounts of emergency events to their accounts".

As hurricane Irene creates havoc on the East Coast, Facebook is alive with pages denoting all things emergency from the Homeland Security page, Disaster Relief pages, Weather and forecast pages along with pages from the FBI and of course the Red Cross. Twitter has the @Irene site for all things hurricane related along with others including @NYMayorsoffice and @humanesociety. Between those two sites, the emergency response teams have access to people on a direct channel, who can give them updated information on the ground as well as directing emergency units with pin point accuracy. Irene will align both coasts via Social Media and deaths and injuries will be averted like no time before.

Crisis management is not something Mark Zuckerberg had in mind all those years ago while trying to impress the girls at Harvard, but thankfully the flexibility and innovation behind such media sites allow them to bend between Letterman and the Red Cross.

Tomorrow never comes.

I try and say yes a lot. Why, and this is where you insert the word sucker, because it feels good to help and if I can make a difference it gives me relevance whether that be work situations or external social situations. Having said that, saying yes gives me a full diary of future meetings, seminars, strategy sessions, BBQs, morning teas with my Mother and a sundry list of appointments too trivial to mention. Like that long distance appointment that seems such a good idea today and quite doable, come the time I find ways to not attend.

It's been pointed out to me, by people of higher intelligence, that this is just a hidden version of procrastination. The good news, is there is now a name for this and I'm not just being lazy not wanting to do the meetings and appointments. Seems the future is a good place to put things that we want to put off and ultimately not want to do at all. What happens in the future seems to have less bearing on our daily decisions as we under value the future and this thinking is called hyperbolic discounting.

Many studies have been done on hyperbolic discounting with monetary rewards, where a small amount of cash is offered today versus a larger one tomorrow. The obvious choice is to take tomorrow's cash but as the time difference increases, the importance put on the larger cash amount diminishes and people end up taking the today cash. So hyperbolic discounting affects our decision making and anything too far into the future loses relevance to today. This disregard of the future affects decisions needed today but if put off to a time to be determined, no decisions need to be made at all. One of the most obvious examples of this is retirement and the lack of preparation and planning done by most people because it is hard to focus that far ahead in your life and today gets in the way, every day.

It is also the reasoning behind a lot of short term business decisions and happiness today decisions because our hard wired brain knows that we may not be around later, dam those saber tooth tigers. So now I know why I commit to those long term meetings and schedule disasters taking over my valuable business hours, I don't have any intention of actually attending them. I'm feeling bad now but maybe if I push those meetings out even further, the feeling will pass?

Taking all of that into account I should be smart enough to figure out if I made the decision today, it's likely I won't have to attend all of those meetings and appointments in the future. Yet today I'm dealing with the meetings and appointments I made long ago in the past and I don't have time, so I best set up more meetings and appointments for the future.

Yes I'm under valuing the future and it's a fine line between carpe diem and where I'll be in 10 or 20 years. Do I think I'll die tomorrow, of course not but the future remains a fuzzy picture and until I get a clear vision it feels more comfortable to push that meeting I don't want to attend today to to tomorrow or at least the day after. Next month would be even better.

It's Personal.

It's easy for an artist to say that his work is his life. It's easy for the entrepreneur to say that his work is his passion. It's easy for those starting out to be infused with purpose and direction. As a whole the above probably covers about .0001% of the working population but it shouldn't. Work used to be something you went to for a certain period of the day and most likely you built or produced something of tangible interest to a buying public. It no doubt, gave you a sense of satisfaction to see your end product and milestones were met and celebrated accordingly. There was something of you in the product and that made it personal, from your side and the company's side

At a recent conference of 500 people, a few weeks back, it was no surprise to find not one person in the auditorium made anything. It was a corporate travel conference and as such belonged to the service industry segment. A segment that encompasses the majority of people I know, I associate with and who I have a vague acquaintance with. I know I have asked the question before about how many people do you know, who actually make something tangible but I have a feeling in Australia that side of the work force is getting smaller by the day. Thus making it more difficult for people to come together over a finished product and feel a personal sense of achievement.

Over the weekend I checked and had trouble finding anything in my home that was made locally or in Australia. Aside from some bits of furniture I had commissioned, the dearth of local products made me feel confused because I don't know when and how all this happened but I find myself the owner of a bunch of globalised products marketed well.

The above rambling is to point out how much more difficult it is today for work to feel personal when you don't have anything to point at, that is yours. If we aren't making anything then we need to find other ways to make work personal, considering the amount of time people spend at work with the help of technology. It's all very well to have an office to sit in but what are you getting out of it, if there is nothing to show for at the end of the week. Work has to be about personal and it has to love you back in some way other than a wage packet at the end of the week.

From a service industry viewpoint the one thing that makes it personal is the relationships you build to perform your role. These relationships are often the reason you come to work no matter the hurdles, weather, sickness or bad public transport. These relationships give you a sense of purpose because you have people depending on you to provide, not necessarily a product, but a service where you give of yourself and together you build something substantial, trust and credibility.

So the next time you find reasons to not go to work, think about the people who couldn't get through their day without you and celebrate what you have built. After all, it's personal.

What If?

The recent buy of Motorola by Google caught many in the tech world by surprise and certainly shows a shift in mindset by the Internet giant so long dependent on advertising. It's a jump from writing algorithms to making mobile phones but with their Android software it's a synergy that Google sees as profitable. I'm sure the folks at Nokia, RIM and other phone manufacturers are busy looking at their 5 years plans, now that they have another "Apple" style competitor, even though they use the Android software. The fact that Google bought the company outright with a great big cheque just shows the reserves that some of the big internet players have to change the landscape.

So is Nokia quietly chatting with Facebook, who have talked about a phone scenario recently. Will Samsung discuss options with LinkedIn? What about LG and Microsoft? The "what ifs" and synergistic connections on a global scale are endless. Seems the software gang are thinking there is still life in the manufacturing world as long as they have the total distribution rights and that is accomplished by buying the manufacturers.

No doubt Google saw the success that Apple is having with its own closed circle of providing the software to its own distribution tool, the iPhone. The distribution model has been around for a long time in other industries from car manufacturers owning rental car companies to airlines owning holiday wholesale companies. Yet many of those examples have ended up going back to core product after many years of finding out the small margins in manufacturing and the logistical issues were too much and just because you have a lot of spare cash does not mean you need to spend it.

The plight of the US debt and the government's cash problems have highlighted some interesting facts, with one being, Apple now has more money in the bank than the US Government. Aside from an astounding fact and that companies are becoming the new countries, everyone is asking Apple what they intend to do with all that cash.

They already own a phone company, a computer company, a music company and a software company and all of those seem the quickest way to print money nowadays. So what's missing? I remember reading that Steve Jobs wanted to turn the whole world into a WiFi free zone so that everyone could communicate from anywhere they carry a phone or tablet. Not too far fetched when you think about the next step that Apple could take in their globalisation and turning everything into "iWorld".

What if Apple has enough money to buy a global telecommunications network? How much do those satellites cost? Surely the US Government could use some cash as they no doubt have satellites to sell. What about Europe? What if Apple could solve the debt crisis of many EU countries by buying their communication networks? What if Apple then closed the system and all the world's iPhones ran on one network?

Would you buy an iPhone if the calls were free? How many phones and Apps could Apple sell if that were the case? It seems far fetched but 10 years ago none of what we are talking about seemed remotely possible.

So if everyone had access to free calls on iPhones only, the $12.5 Billion Google just spent on Motorola could be just the first stage of acquisitions for them, that may need to include a global network.

What if?