Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?
The famous lyric from the Beatles song of 1967 has moved from an individual plea to a loved one, to a more general appeal to society. A lot has happened between 1967 and now: man has landed on the moon, the Communist Soviet Union has disintegrated, almost everyone...
Where Senior Leaders Should Focus Their Attention
As a team, we are often privileged to be asked to sit through senior leadership meetings at our clients. Right up to Board level, these peepholes into our clients' workings provide valuable insights into the operations of our clients, but also (and most importantly)...
African Leadership for Africa’s Future in a Globalised World
For Africa to be successful it needs to find models, methods and approaches that are uniquely suited to the continent and its needs. As one of the world’s best travelled speakers and researchers (he visited 26 countries just last year), Graeme Codrington has some...
30 ways technology will change education between now and 2030
While doing some reading to prepare for a workshop with a group of head teachers last week, I came across this very well researched and presented future timeline of potential educational changes we can expect technology to bring in the next two decades. I don't agree...
Can we really predict the future?
This is the question a British journalist asked me today. Specifically, he wanted to know if it was possible to predict industry trends thirty years into the future. Here is the gist of my brief reply: Looking thirty years into the future is notoriously hard to do,...
Women @ Work
It is the first work day of September, which means it is officially the end of 'Woman's Month'. However, I hope this does not mean that questions around how we can best maximise the benefits that the women inside our businesses bring to the workplace have been put...
7 Stats that change everything: What to be thinking about as a Leader.
Benjamin Disraeli once said, “There are three types of lies – lies, damn lies, and statistics”. Of course we know that statistics can be used to support multiple sides of an argument and as Mark Twain once observed, “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are...
Dear CEO, You have to be in it to win it (I’m talking social media, you dinosaur)
You'll lose 100% of the shots you don't take. You'll find this pithy advice in almost every motivational book. But being a cliche doesn't mean it isn't true. You have to be in it to win it. In the business world, this maxim is applied when companies look seriously at...
Why graduates remain unemployed (and what to do about it)
Yesterday, I presented our team's most requested presentation, "The TIDES of Change" to a group of top business leaders in Sandton. During the Q&A, someone asked a simple but profound question: "What makes you most nervous?" When thinking of the next decade, my...
The Future is leaving: how not to get left behind
By 2014, the percentage of companies that generate at least 30% of global revenue from emerging markets will increase by 82%. The key to that statement is, ‘from emerging markets’. The global economic epicentre is shifting and the future looks nothing like the...
Video: Four levels of institutional change
A brief overview of our team's view of Institutional Change, one part of our TIDES model of the five disruptive forces shaping our world right now: This video of Graeme Codrington was recorded by our good friends at Your Business Channel as part of their...
The Most Profound Tool For Growing Your Human Capital
Most businesses, organizations and institutions today recognize that necessity and benefit of harnessing their human capital. Due to the fact that the world has changed so much and because we are in a constant state of change, managers have to find ways to maximise...
Things People Can Still Do Better Than Computers
Over the last hundred years, we've learnt the hard way that modern technologies both improve our world and destroy our jobs. Today it is computers (in the form of smart devices), the internet and social media that are both revolutionising how we live and transforming...
Video: Technology replacing professionals in 10 years
If you had told a farmer a century ago that he would not need labourers, and would be able to harvest and manage his farm using machines he would have laughed at you. If you had told factory bosses the same thing about sixty years ago, they would have been equally...
The Factory in Your Garage: A review of 3d printing options and implications
A few weeks ago, I bought a 3d printer for use in my home. On the day I installed it, I recorded a video for our team's Signpost's YouTube channel (it's available here or at the bottom of this post). Since then, many people have asked me a lot of questions about it,...
Bitcoin has the power to disrupt the most powerful institutions
"It is clear that policymakers and those who advise them do not have a satisfactory conceptual framework for dealing with [this] disruptive impact" says Alec Ross the former senior adviser on innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and; Jonathan Luff a former...
All that’s wrong with the media today: A ridiculous example
It sounds like something out of one of those cringeworthy, self-written high school plays. But in reality it is a genuine news report from a Fox affiliate TV station in the United States. And although it is a single anecdote, it does shine a spotlight on the mess that...
Will you still have a job in 2025? The alarming rate at which jobs are being disrupted
A recent MIT Technology Review reveals an alarming trend. Since the early 2000's and increasingly since the financial crisis of 2008, the levels of employment have decreased even though productivity has increased over the same period. Erik Brynjolfsson And Andrew...
Learning is changing – and businesses will need to change too
There is a pattern to the disruption of industries – change happens slowly, with a few early-adopters taking a technology and innovating, but not always in the optimum way. Then it happens quickly - and a whole industry can come tumbling down. Take digital music,...
The Future is China; The Future is Now.
China is like a large building site. Well in truth, China is a large building site. Any visit to a Chinese city (and sometimes not even a city) there is evidence of building activity. From my hotel window in Guangzhou I counted 38 cranes and a building that was still...