Everything I need to know about leadership I learnt from the kids
‘Everything I really need to know about leadership I learnt from the kids’ is a book in progress. A process that my partners note somewhat wirily is proving to be as long as the title! But kids, like wine and good leadership, take time to mature I constantly...
Minding the gap – Introduction to the generations
Why is Thabo Mbeki a PR's nightmare? Why can't you get your teenagers motivated to take on new business opportunities? Why does your father still wear a suit and tie everywhere? Why do today's young people feel the need to pierce every part of their body? The answer...
Hunting Season
One of the big debates in Britain at the moment (overshadowed recently by the Hutton Enquiry and Iraq) is whether or not to ban fox hunting. New legislation is progressing through Parliament to outlaw this ancient activity in rural England. I have personally never...
A few trends that will shape our future
Corporate strategy is always focused on the realities of the future, yet when strategic planning sessions get underway, the mindsets are still mired in the past. A fundamental break with the past is required, as the most important lessons we can learn in the next...
Converge: Beyond the technological paradigm
Contemporary thinking regarding the Internet is currently founded firmly in the client-server paradigm. The current-server paradigm can be defined as the reigning mindset where the World Wide Web and access to it via Internet Browsers, is seen as the mainstay of...
Learning from the fairies of the magic hill – A leadership challenge
The magic spoken of, lies in the hill itself. It is an innocuous enough looking hill, seemingly no different from the many that precede it and not distinguished in any remarkable manner from the many that would follow. It lies silently in wait for the unsuspecting...
A glimpse into the future – Good news / Bad news for leaders
We are heading towards a ‘relational economy’. But the smart leaders already know this and it is reflected in the way they think about the world and in particular, the way they lead and do business. Alvin Toffler once said that, ‚The illiterate of the 21st...
The rocket science of leadership
In the current series of Survivor one of the participants has the unenviable career description of being a 'rocket scientist'. 'No really' must be something he is quite used to saying having had to repeatedly answer the stock question we all get asked, 'So what line...
Change has changed
One of the major reasons that interventions, training and change processes don't work as effectively as we would like them to, is that we fail to take the time to create the necessary framework of understanding at the start of these processes. Simply put, we do not...
Best beats good every time – Something smart leaders know
It was Peter Drucker who first coined the expression, ‘knowledge worker’ � and that was back in the 1960’s! Today it has become a cliche to talk about business as being in the ‘knowledge era’ and that the greatest knowledge available in any business, is...
The channel that changes everything
The news that has dominated South African newspapers in recent weeks has been the reports about a hacker who has targeted a number of people in the Western Cape area of Bellville. The hacker has been able to access and remove funds using these people’s Internet...
Inviting your customer in: the next level of customer service
Over the last few days I heard two stories about customer service in the car industry. These two stories have highlighted for me the fact that customer service is no longer just about providing a quality product - its about inviting our customers to join with our...
Learning from the poison chalice – Understanding leadership in an information age
Physicist, John Wheeler suggests that information may be the basic ingredient of the universe itself. In an 'information age' it certainly becomes a key indicator for both organisations and leadership alike. Recently there have been a few high profile stories reported...
The death of an agent
The following article has received thebiggest response of the articles we've written so far. The style of the article is forthright and challenging, and its possibly the style, rather the content that has got people hot under the collar. We encourage you to read the...
Thirteen things smart leaders know – How to thrive in a relational economy
Leadership is about who you are. It is about character. It is about looking inwards in order to lead outwards. The best leaders are those know themselves, know their strengths and play to those strengths. They understand something of the connected, relational and...
I can see clearly now
In a relational economy (and that is where are heading!) transactions are less important than relationships. Businesses are arriving, albeit in drips and drabs, at the understanding that pushing around notes and coins is less useful than developing and sustaining...
In search of the marketing holy grail – Generations and Advertising literacy
Many models (gender, income, cultural groupings, age) do a great job. Each has a place and each describes an important aspect of the market. But is there room for yet another model or framework that significantly adds to our understanding of the market from an...
Signposts for success – Learning from the journeys of others
During 2002, Keith Coats, of TomorrowToday.biz, wrote briefly about the merits of a Concept Caf� in business today.(http://www.tomorrowtoday.biz/article/article_003.htm) He suggested that it could be used to, ‘discuss leadership and some of the more personal /...
Leadership for tomorrow
It is hard enough coping with the current demands of leadership so why worry about tomorrow? At first glance this seems like a reasonable question and may well get several heads nodding in agreement‌including yours. The notion that today’s leaders are under...
A lesson in spam
We hear that the world is changing all the time, and yet often we don’t see any significant shifts taking place. Well let me tell you about one that rocked my world for a day or two. It happened to us at TomorrowToday.biz, and it can easily happen to you....