Equal opportunities please…not equal outcomes
“People are confusing equal opportunities with equal outcomes” Is this sense at last?? I was blown away at the weekend by this quote from Catherine Hakim, a sociologist at the London School of Economics. She has concluded, in a report to be published next year, that...
How big are the BRICs? by Sir Jeremy Greenstock
We are delighted that Sir Jeremy Greenstock of Gatehouse Advisory Partners has agreed to be a contributor to this blog. We highly recommend Sir Jeremy and his associates for anyone looking for deep understanding of global political issues and for strategic advice on...
What does the British media not understand about the Coalition government?
The British media are giving Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats a hard time at the moment. Today it is specifically about the Parliamentary vote about increasing university fees which took place this afternoon. What does the media not understand about how the...
UK and US Baby Boomers are not the same so please stop generalising generations!
The theory of generations has proven to be extremely popular in the mainstream media and with pop psychologists who have picked up on labels like Baby Boomers, Generation X and Gen Y as convenient ‘sound bites.’ Of course, common sense tells us that we live in a...
Mind the Gap: Generations @ Work
This is the original submission as published as the Keynote feature in the Journal for Convergence (ISSN 1606-6162), Vol 5 No 4. "We can't seem to keep our bright young things". This is the common complaint of businesses around the world these days. Talented...
Nine key workforce trends for the next decade
How the next few years will shape the future of the workplace in unprecedented and astounding ways. I was recently asked to contribute to a discussion about the most important forces that will shape the next decade of work. I think the following nine trends are going...
Boosting productivity in the new world of work
One of the defining features and challenges of the new world of work is the lack of engagement companies receive from their knowledge workers. This is a theme that we regularly speak and research about in order to identify ways in which leaders can boost productivity....
Women and the New World of Work
I have read two articles recently, both in the Times (and thus you need to pay for them - but I attach the links at the bottom of this post anyway. The first is a piece about Generation Y Mothers (Sarah Harris, July 10). There isn't much in the way of hard facts,...
Improve your business by deliberately creating chance encounters
Jim Dator, a professor in the Futures Department of the University of Hawaii shared an interesting model with a colleague of mine (Keith Coats) recently. It's about where futurists go to develop their scenarios for what is shaping the world of work. Up until a few...
Vital Leadership Skills for the 21st Century: A Global Mindset
The world is not really flat. Not yet, anyway. In his best-selling book about globalisation in the 21st century, Thomas Friedman suggested that it was. He argued that massive advances in telecommunications and ten converging trends had “flattened” the world and...
Men your time is up!
I came across a very interesting and well written article in The Atlantic which examines the world in which women have now emerged as the majority workforce for the first time in US history. This is an incredible milestone and here are a few of the facts driving this...
Men your time is up!
I came across a very interesting and well written article in The Atlantic which examines the world in which women have now emerged as the majority workforce for the first time in US history. This is an incredible milestone and here are a few of the facts driving this...
Nine key workforce trends for the next decade
Download a copy of this article in PDF format - right click here. The contents of this article can be presented as a keynote or a workshop for your team. Contact our UK or South African offices to find out how. My company, TomorrowToday, researches the new world of...
Markers of change in US Labor Statistics – 2010 is turning out to be quite historic
I think we might look back on 2010 as quite an important watershed year in the world of work. Since mid 2009, our team at TomorrowToday has been saying that the global financial downturn has been more than a financial crisis. We believe that as we emerge out of...
America reinvented – as a hub nation
The American response to the BP catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is a sad sign that the promise of the Obama presidency is unlikely to be fulfilled. Obama promised change - specifically he promised that he would change how America governed itself and how it related...
Change, Change, Change…Context, Context, Context!
At the Global Leaders Conference I listened to an American professor speak on change. It was his first trip to China. What I heard, which at face value made good sense, was your typical ‘change theory’ proposition. There were two obvious problems with what I heard....
Some (more) gems from our archives – valuable reading!
This blog has been running since 2003, and has nearly 2,000 individual entries. At one level it is a living library of the "new world of work", captured as it emerges around us. I have recently taken some time to troll through the archives, from day one, and...
Some hidden gems from our archives – valuable reading!
This blog has been running since 2003, and has nearly 2,000 individual entries. At one level it is a living library of the "new world of work", captured as it emerges around us. I have recently taken some time to troll through the archives, from day one, and...
Personal Details – Are we opening up or locking down?
I've come accross a couple of interesting articles in the last week. They've not all focussed exclusively on 'privacy', but they've mentioned it somewhere. What has me interested is that they're not all saying the same thing. In fact they're saying some very different...
The 2nd and 3rd billion consumers
There are roughly one billion consumers in the world. That's one billion people who have some money left over at the end of the month for discretionary spending. They can afford (or have access to finance for) motor vehicles and houses, electronic appliances and some...