Day 40: Proximity blindness

Kobus’ mom arranges an interesting charity for the local kids in Paternoster. This remote little village on the South African west coast still functions as an active fishing community. Over the summer school holidays the local kids are left pretty much to their own devices on the dusty streets and sandy outcrops of the bay. What serves as a lovely retreat for the B&B crowd in search of isolation and the quiet coastal tug of the southwester, is a stimulus desert for the young minds. With no parents or planned activities, drug use and teenage pregnancy is rife.

Sanna van der Merwe started the West Coast Kids charity which is set up to provide a framework for the kids during their summer holiday. The majority of the salaries and projects are funded by sales from her shop. Tonight we had a long conversation about the difficulties she had in engaging the local community in the program. Paternoster has a lot of successful tourist and travel based businesses. The bed & breakfasts, hotel, shops and various restaurants all earn a living by trading off the unfettered charm of the local fishing community. When it came to funding the kids program they all turned a blind eye. The tourists who come to Sanna's shop were the ones to buy vouchers and tokens to fund kids meals and christmas presents. It seems that charity does not begin at home, or perhaps familiarity is the source of this contempt.

Sanna's daughter tells me that when you give the little kids a small gift of a sweet or drink there will often be a fight. When one of the kids however comes in with a little bit of money to buy a sweet they will go to great lengths to share, demonstrating their largesse. I wonder if we shouldn't think of the local businesses as gifts, a setting and sense of belonging given by the less fortunate fishermen to the property entrepreneurs. And like the kids they now jealously guard this precious thing. How could one change the paradigm so that they understand that the essence of what they provide is an earned privilege. Crime free nights with streets free from beggars is an interest earned. It takes a community to make ends meet.

Day 39: Rose tinted revelations

On this trip I have been wearing sunglasses with rose colored lenses. The landscapes, sunsets and nuances of desert sands have taken on a new beauty as the contrasts and colors spring to unnatural life. Clouds that look flat and white through the naked eye take on a drama and new emotion when viewed through these rose tinted spectacles.

Today Colin accused me of seeing South Africa's current economic climate through rose tinted lenses too. This is in spite of The Economist's interesting focus on Africa Rising in the latest edition. With consistent growth, and not all of it from oil, there are legitimate reasons to have hope about Africa's emergence. On this trip I have been constantly amazed by the strength of vision in the creative arts and business. Perhaps I have been offered a rose tinted tour and to see the best version of events. I keep being reminded by 'in the know' tourists and locals alike that corruption will spoil the party. Somehow I think they forget that corruption is endemic in all societies. Isn't that what OWS is all about?

The rose tinted sunglasses have however shown me just how useful it can be to use an unusual lens when viewing the landscape. By increasing the contrast between green and brown I am able to see all kinds of little plants and fresh growth, ordinarily obscured by the glare of the desert sun. The Kalahari literally comes alive. My memories and experiences of the landscape are just as valid as the ones I would have had without this filter, just far more emotional, rich and colorful.

We often think of people with rose tinted lenses as naive or not in touch with reality. Perhaps we should pay more attention to their ability to spot opportunity that others can't see. In nature different animals use different parts of the light spectrum to identify exactly when their favorite food is just ripe. Applied at the right moment, corporate optical shift can show new routes through the undergrowth. A photoshop filter for excel, to reveal buds and blossoms hiding in plain sight. A redirection of the management might spectrum could create just enough refraction to reveal otherwise invisible ideas.

Day 38: The space of things

As Julene, the owner of Namies Namakwa Retreat informed me today, Northern Cape has the biggest land mass of all South Africa's provinces, but the smallest population. This places bigger distances between things. According to her this has two benefits; lower crime and and a greater appreciation for friendships. When you live in such remote isolation a friendly cup of coffee with a neighbor, who lives 50km away, takes on a whole new meaning.

The distance between people is not the only thing that is vast. This arid moon landscape can go years without rain too. Today I had the privilege of driving through a rainstorm. With such a gift I could not sit isolated in my little steel and glass cocoon, so I drove about 100km with the windows open. The smell of the African desert drinking up the rain is intoxicating. The excitement as life instantaneously springs up from the desert floor to greedily capture every little drop for growth, pores through your senses on every dimension.

There is an old chinese parable of a great leader asking his generals how one makes the strongest cart wheel. Some insisted that their blacksmiths made the strongest steel, which surely made the tough rims needed for strength. Others boasted of their ancient forests with hard wood, needed for the tough, flexible core. The general who got to lead all others answered: "the strength of the wheel comes from the empty spaces, between the spokes. The master craftsman knows how to space them just right."

The space between things is one of the most powerful elements of a team and company's design. In this age of digital connection and instant access, how much time do we spend on deliberately creating space? Space to reflect and appreciate each other. Space to bring about a new form of listening that invigorates all the senses. The joy of reconnection and surprising friendships evaporates like lost raindrops on baking stones when we spend our time in the burning light of our screen-terface.

Day 37: The self help solocide

Driving through the Kalahari today the car got stuck in thick red sand. It took me two hours to dig the car out again, which gave me a lot of time to reflect on the self help movement.

California is seen as the birth place for the human potential movement. This mindset has progressively attached itself to more and more aspects of people's lives. The objective being a self reliant soul that is at peace with its needs and can achieve anything it sets its sights on. Everything from parenting to politics can now be viewed through the Aquarian enlightenment. I wonder if all this focus on the self is not somehow leading to a kind of organizational solocide - death of potential due to excessive focus on self confidence. With a generation of managers fed on a diet of "believe in yourself" I wonder how much room they leave for others.

Even though one often hears noises about "we are all one" in these circles, it strikes me that the net effect is a self indulgent one. After all, you mostly just hear about people working on themselves.
On this journey the one thought that has returned to me again and again is how we might find ways to change the focus from self perception to collaborative envisioning. Most of the executive function in business revolves around how a group of leaders convinces itself and its shareholders of the new strategy. Like self help groups there seems to be the pervasive belief that if we believe in ourselves enough, this plan will come to pass.

But how about a different lens? What would happen if instead of asking: "what is the size of the potential market?" we ask instead "how many people want to see us succeed?" What is the reflective image of our ambition?

By shifting the focus to an external perspective we completely change not only our potential risk and revenue model, we also open new ways to co-pete. By shifting the discussion from our 'narrowsistic' set of interests we set the basis for more robust discussions about a business constituency.

Just imagine the difference between: "how many people want to see us succeed with new widget x" (the answer: only us and that is why we spend so much money convincing everyone else)
and "how many people want to see us succeed in eradicating childhood obesity through sport/food/community programs." This is similar to the old marketing myopia discussion, about focussing on benefits versus features, however the twitter nation makes it possible to scope the debate in new ways. Who you engage and how you engage with them makes all the difference in focussing on the right problem to fix.

Companies should be engaging with the people who want to see them succeed to avoid the slow inward spiral of over confidence that gets you stuck in the sand.

Day 36: The 0.2 Percent

A very close friend of mine is a deeply dedicated marathon runner. Today he missed his target time by 30 seconds. In his mind the 30 seconds define the race as a failure. The goal he set is so naggingly close which makes it even more frustrating. Which hill could he have run up faster, where did he spend too much time enjoying the view? Every moment of the race is now tainted by the way in which it conspired to rob him of his goal. The tiny moments, in this case 0,2%, define the whole.

Over the past almost 40 days I have met up with old friends every single day. In some cases it was the first time in 20 years that we saw each other. Yet, on every single occasion we walked straight back into the passionate and inspiring conversations we had always had. We connect back to a defining moment we shared, by which we will always be able to navigate our dialogue. What is the quality of such a defining moment, one that stays fixed for ever as the key to someone else's personality? Tragedies, divorces and deaths do not take away the magic of the defining moments that tells us who this person really is.

If you could choose 30 seconds from your life to share, 30 seconds that will give someone that quintessential insight into your being, which 30 seconds would they be? Yesterday I saw Alistair set aside a carafe of juice for the children at the party. It was not something that was expected of him. The children did not really need it but by making this effort he elevated their experience by making them feel cared for and included. This tiny gesture expressed his deep compassion and presence of mind around the wellbeing of the people around him in immaculate detail. In these small moments we often see far more than grand deliberate gestures try to conceal.

Downtown Johannesburg is littered with corporate grand gestures. Edifices that in their time aspired to being the titans of industry's defining moments. Grand works and symbolic gestures to anchor and cement their dominance on Main street. But if you looked closer I am sure you would have seen the 30 seconds that revealed the cracks in the ceiling. The way coffee was served perhaps, or who was allowed to speak during a board room meeting. As with with our attempts to divine happiness, we seem to gravitate towards exactly the wrong indicators for defining corporate character. We look at spreadsheet, org charts or even the resume's of 'talent.' But what do you look at when you are building the kind of relationship that will still be strong, productive and inspiring in 20 years' time? As with the 30 seconds of my friend's marathon, perhaps the 0,2% really does define success or failure.

Day 35: Speed vs. Resolutions

As a student we used to take day trips from Pretoria to Rosebank to see the foreign films with restricted distribution. The two hour drive meant that we would often see five films back to back in order to get the best from our student savings fuel fund. Today I took a trip on the Gautrain, which now connects the heart of the Campus in Pretoria to the shopping complex in Johannesburg in under 40 minutes. Going to Johannesburg is now easier and faster than going to downtown Pretoria, bringing about a complete reversal of not only the shopping patterns but also the demographics in these centers.

The speed at which we travel has a huge impact on what we see. David Byrne's bicycle diaries expose the cities that most people's auto-capsules obscure. The dirty grittiness and creative resurrection of fringe zones go unnoticed as fly-overs and high speed connections cut off focus attention on the dotted directional dividers of the 'free-way.' The bit-rate of the human mind bombarded at 300km/h in a bombardier body, hurtling through empty tunnels and across elevated fly-overs. At this speed, the resolution of our observation suffers. We don't see individual buildings, people or ideas with the same depth or with the same appreciation. Serendipity stumbles at speed.

Recently the UK debate about high speed rail raised the interesting argument that high speed hubs lead to greater economic concentration. In the UK, London will be the big winner and the rest of England will be reduced to simplified and standardized satellite status. Speed of access, be it through the internet, jet airliners or high speed rail ultimately has a homogenizing effect. Being confronted by the same stimuli, people generally begin to have the same thoughts and expectations.

The tension in business though, is always for greater differentiation. Cementing the just noticeable difference between you and your industry foes, through innovation. In essence, seeing what the competition does not. But how can you see or find these sources of differentiation if you are moving at the same speed or in the same vehicles as they are (or hiring against the same profile for that matter)? How can you build in foot paths and alleyways to deliberately divert attention away from the beaten track? The quality of new year's resolutions in your business plan can benefit from slowing down.


   

Day 34: Preparing for the unpredictable

In 1994 Iaan and I spent many hours developing a game called "Malbal" (Literally mad ball). Similar to bowls the objective is to place eleven balls next to the "sun" before your opponent does. There are many rituals around how one achieves this but the real stars are the balls. Iaan has turned beautiful balls made from various wood varieties. The madness in the balls comes from their lack of symmetry and lead weights sunk below the surface. It is entirely impossible to accurately predict how a ball will roll. Over the year we ascribed personalities to the various degrees of madness, or unpredictability and ultimately risk inherent in each ball. Tonight we had our first international championship. Iaan was the winner with a final score of 11:9:6:3 after 5 hours and 28 rounds.

The fascinating thing about malbal though is how it confronts you with randomness. How you make every effort to prepare for it by holding the ball in a certain way, using zen like focus to control your arm, wrist, hand, posture and all manner of mental machinations. How in the end the balls decide where they want to go and who to reward. Make no mistake, the game demands a huge degree of skill because everyone is dealing with the same degree of unexpected trajectory. Tapping into their 'flow.'

When Brian Eno played the game with Iaan in 1998 they discussed using it for developing strategies in music. The outcomes can be codified and tabulated to reveal all kinds of patterns that say far more about our patterns creating ability than the randomness my imply. This is the closest thing I have seen to a tool for revealing Black Swans.

What mechanisms do strategy modeling tools apply to develop the personality traits needed in leaders to deal with random and unexpected events? As with the individual balls, can we ascribe personality types to different levels of risk? What does the debt swap derivative ball look like and how do we invite others to play with it, so that we may discover new ways of dealing with a particular risk?

In malbal some players throw the balls through the air, reducing the impact of crazy patterns to a smaller impact surface. Others give the same ball a specific spin, using the flywheel effect to contain its camber. Ultimately all these things reveal elements of a player's identity (or as Iaan calls them 'Id'-entities) more than they say about the balls themselves. How long will it be before the value of play is recognized in the boardroom (or is this the real purpose of golf)? Not only to release creativity and develop new outcomes, but also to reveal the deeper nature of the leadership personalities who are responding to and shaping the risk of a corporate strategy.

Day 33: The death of influence

This morning I paid a visit to the graveyard where my grandmother was buried. She was a very eccentric woman to say the least and insisted on living in her home until the very end. I remember paying her a visit when she was already in the advanced stages of dementia, unable to recognize my father. She was perfectly capable of holding up a conversation but unable to recognize any of us. She lies buried in the Mountain rise cemetery, just outside Pietermaritzburg. Being buried so far away from her family, the grave depends on the local infrastructure and caretakers for its upkeep. I could not find her grave in the end. The whole cemetery is overgrown and the markings are impossible to find. In the end I chose to spend the time quietly with the knowledge of her, if not the physical demarcation of a grave. In some sense this is more reflective of her subtle and pervasive impact through her writing, charity work and call in contributions to home remedy shows. Ultimately, in Africa, all influence is ultimately subsumed into the red soil.

The fading influence of Japan in Africa was such a reminder of the transience of good intentions and influence.  The delegation, in their hyper formalized and impenetrable PowerPoints, dragged the audience through three hours of unintelligible English being red from templatized tracts. The fact is, Japan with its fascinating technology has invested beautifully in ecological good. The problem is though that their proposition is impenetrable.
For western minds, trained on finding the objective and idea as quickly as possible, the endless slides on context and organizational charts (before getting to the meat of their solutions) is tiresome. We are less interested in who endorses the idea that who will do it.

Fantastic technology that can turn plastic bags back into oil, pin point maps of rainfall, agriculture and population growth go unused because the messenger confounds the message. METI's patent on active carbon is still only used in a fraction of the solutions it could bring to health and climate clean up. Their "3L for Africa" investment plan will most likely under deliver because it simply comes across as self interest. They focus almost entirely on the technology they supply without giving real examples of how it will uplift communities.
In stead of burning eyes, passionate about the idea I have bleeding eyes from pixel overload. I feel angry and disappointed at the consequences of this disconnect. But who is to blame? And how does one design for this constraint? Is this any different from inarticulate employees in your company who struggle to bring good ideas to bare. How many times have you personally been frustrated by an inability to connect another mind with the content of your idea? To co-municate.

On the flip side, how many bad ideas have people latched on to just because they are articulately laid out in a dashing display of charisma? As Osama Bin Laden called it: "following the strong horse," which does not mean following the good horse!

As in the graveyard, thickets and wild growth clutter our access to  what we hold dear. How do we move beyond the morass without wielding a blunt machete that could end up doing more harm than good?

Day 32: The sandwich remains the same

Sitting through the International Union of Architects' (UIA) COP 17 session on design for climate change, I was struck by the sandwich buffet. Why are these platters always the same, no matter where you go, you are greeted by the cheerless little triangles of tuna, cold cuts and the occasional vegetarian delight. Will there be a climate crisis for conferences, forcing innovation of the environment for intellectual exchange? The conference provided a lot of food for though but today I'll only write about the architects of change.

The group structured the panel discussion around David Holmgrem's Four Scenarios. By viewing peak oil and climate challenge as the key parameters defining the future, the architects were able to dive into specific scenarios. The panel discussion focussed on their role in responding to and shaping societal safety. The key word of the day was "capacity."

Is "sustainable living" the new "progress?" A concept forced upon an unsuspecting and somehow inferior populace who are just not smart enough to be considered as part of the solution? Just like Gropius and van der Rohe, today's architects seem intent on solving climate change in spite of the humans who inhabit and apply their structures. How do we make the human interaction the smartest part of a smart grid? How do we avoid the unintended decay of pristine utopian visions sprung from individual genius minds, and the social devastation they leave in their wake?

Even though there were some lovely examples of integrated design, using biomimicry and local engagement to build Richard Palmer's "Democratic Space" in Niarobi for instance, the general tenor was that of Mr. Fixit. Only one of the panelists challenged the architectural paradigm. He felt that no one is going back to ask the fundamental questions. Instead of asking "how do we reduce the impact of cars and commuting?" we should be asking "why do we need cars and commenting in the first place?" Solving problems at source.

The sandwich buffet played nicely to the example of Peter Menzel's hungry planet project that was shared. I wonder what the mental diet of change conferences would look like if you compare them over time. It seems that as far as big conventions go, the songs and sideshows may change but how we are being fed, both physically and mentally, remains the same. How do we develop an intellectual exchange that does not inadvertently, through its very nature become stale. Perhaps biomimicry can give us some hints on how to make better mind sandwiches.

Day 31: Three waves of resistance

The shores of the East Coast are ruggedly beautiful and I found myself staring at the breaking waves for a very long time today. The ageless battle between the ocean and the land with constantly shifting frontiers. When I was 12 years old there used to be a family of about 20 dolphins that would patrol up and down the coast every day. Watching them play in the waves before going to school made the whole day feel different. Three or four dolphins would challenge each other in surfing contests, testing each other to see who tumbled out of the breaking wave last. Today that family came by and now has about 250 members. Their playful patrol seems to have netted a following.

Watching the waves made me think about transformation in organizations. For the first three months of this year I worked with a group of nurses, physicians and support staff to transform the patient experience at a maternity unit. Transforming any organization can feel like the battle between the sea and the shifting sands of a shoreline. Organizational entropy can out wait even the most enthusiastic tsunami of consultants.

It seems though that one always faces the same three waves of resistance. At first the resistance is driven by the question: "Who are you?" Without trust and demonstrating a true empathetic connection with the people who make up an organization it is very hard to even get through the door. Gossip, rumors and general conversation on the corridors very quickly set the tone, determining if you will get to see inside the kimono. Without this trust you are just listening to PR.

The second wave is typified by the question: "Why this solution?" When theoretical principles and frameworks start turning into real action, the art of doing, the questions become more focussed on the content of change. I wonder if in this phase, it is not easier to introduce radical change, where there is little or no precedent anchoring commitment to old ways. As Eugene Marais noted, when ant colonies shift from one home to a new one, almost a third of the ants are engaged in carrying stuff back to their old home.

The way in which solutions are derived is more important than the actual solutions though. In this particular case we quickly shifted the mood in the unit by prototyping and introducing an idea from one of the cleaning staff. As a unionized worker who had been at the hospital for over 20 years she would officially be viewed as low in status. In reality her opinions and endorsement was key in shifting informal support for the solutions. The fact that the organization was willing to listen to even the lowest ranking staff meant that the staff were more willing to listen, and take risks for the organization. The "who" trumps the "what."

The third and most subtle wave of resistance usually comes after most transformation engagements end and I am convinced it is the reason most transformation fails. The wave is driven by the question: "Why don't other people understand?"

Once the emotions of the core team have shifted to a new place it is very hard to imagine a mind that does not understand and has not shifted. "This is obvious? Why are they so stupid?" I can't remember who said this but the mind is an infinitely flexible thing however once it has been stretched by an idea it cannot return to its original shape. Very few transformation projects prepare the change team for the resistance they will encounter from the rest of the business. In this particular engagement I don't think I would have realized just how hard this new task is if we hadn't committed to an 8 week stewardship role.

Most transformation projects focus on defining the organizational shape and expected behaviors. The skills people learn are in service of this functional shift, but how many people are building the specific skills needed to overcome internal resistance? The first and most probably most important skill is in my opinion to overcome the division in thought, there is no "us the enlightened" and "them the great unwashed." Sustaining unity of purpose through transition is a very special talent which is most probably why the shape of organizations hang so slowly in the face of transformation.

Turning the playful family of dolphins from 20 to 250 could be an instructive metaphor for dealing with the waves of change. Prototyping playful new behaviors early on establishes norms that make it easier for people to feel natural in their new organizational environment.

Day 30: Oral sex

The best thing about a long road trip is that you get to catch up on all the gossip and scandal. Like the story of a CEO and a business colleague who were in Los Angeles on a buying trip. Seeing a sign for “Oral Sex, $15” they could not resists a bargain. Two beautiful woman led them into little booths where they proceeded to talk them through a questionnaire about sex. 15 Minutes later, and highly embarrassed about their mistake the two men zipped up their ego’s and hot tailed it out of there.
A week later when he got home the CEO was in bed with his wife when she burst into a fit of laughter. Reading through the LA Times he had brought with him she came across an article about how two college girls were making a killing by selling their take on oral sex. “Can you believe it” she says to her husband, “men are so gullible!”

So on the topic of turning talk into dollars, Thomas has spent the last couple of years criss crossing the African continent, consulting to MTN. One of the global leaders in the mobile industry, they have transformed economies and small business industries with their mobile payment systems. Thomas explained to me that MTN regularly maintains up to a 30% margin in the markets where it competes. The key to their success is how they serve the market, outperforming others intent on a quick, cheap fix.

As a mobile network provider, the cost of infrastructure is a key shaping element in the business model and fundamentally affects strategy. Their competition usually looks at a map through the eyes of electricity and infrastructure supply. This makes it a lot cheaper to erect base stations, pumping the megawatts of power needed to drive phone reception and transmission straight off the grid. MTN looks at where people are most likely to talk, and erects masts there. In Africa this often means putting a generator with an armed guard next to the mobile phone mast. This has paid off and when South Africa suffered rolling black outs over the past years, MTN was able to turn this redundancy into a real competitive advantage when their masts kept transmitting.

It cannot have been an easy conversation with the CFO when they rolled out their coverage in this highly robust way. Would your CFO have approved such redundancy if your competition are using an established infrastructure at a fraction of the cost? Going it alone is risky and the financial markets would not look kindly upon companies that take long bets against infrastructure partners. But in Africa you have to go to where the market is, not the grid. Like the two ladies in Los Angeles, MTN has shown that risky business is not always what it seems when you turn talk into cash.

Day 29: Doughnut democracy

As always, seeing Hannelie was pure inspiration. Kindness and breadth of insight have rarely been combined more elegantly with that sharp refreshing lemon flavored wit. Thinking that she was prompting me to read Gary Larson I actually stumbled across the way in which Fromm's thinking on "the fear of freedom" has been ignored. And how well it summarizes some of the key challenges we as a society face right now.
Fromm's insistence that every "freedom from" needs to be synthesized with a "freedom to" is a real siren call. The spontaneity to share an authentic self is mostly absent today, not just in a work context but also in the way we view our lives in general. As Hannelie put it so elegantly: "you are not born a woman, you become one." The freedom from wrinkles, hairy legs and curly hair does not give you freedom to be anything but a preconceived identity, determined by advertising and social convention. The googled-wiki-wisdom that we have access to is nothing but a massive dose of "common sense", shaping pre defined ways of acting and thinking about reality.

She makes an interesting case that men and women will converge in the way they look, because there is more money to be made in manufactured manliness, modeled on the formula that industry knows so well with women. Already you see how gillette is promoting the manscape, and everything from facial creams to foot spas are peddling a new insecurity about being simply you.
Fromm, in analysing deeply the drivers of a mass acceptance of National Socialism, echoed Alex de Tocqueville: "It is vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity." Following their style icons slavishly it becomes an act of futility to ask consumers to make a real choice on style when they are confronted by something that has not been endorsed. In 2005 I commissioned a research project that saw consumers making statements about five identical garments labelled differently. Every single attribute, from quality, stylishness to price expectation was entirely driven by the label. You could show someone two identical products together and they would find a difference, because they have been told to expect one.

Now, next and known

How does one reduce the stress that thinking for yourself and being authentic generates. As I sit here I am thinking of all the workshops and creative get-aways I have led over the years. Thinking back at the burning eyes and expectations I wonder how much fear there was actually in the room. It is not simply a fear of stepping into the unknown, it is a fear of acknowledging the non-accepted "known." There is a need for synthesis, where the steps of "free from" and "free to" are blended into a new condition. How does one do this when the mechanisms for generating the "free to" state are fundamentally corrupted by pervasive precondition? The illusion of democracy is actually a hollow doughnut, where the core has been filled by a nagging emptiness. Can someone hand me the jelly and vanilla cream?

Day 28: The shark spotter of Chapman's Peak

Shark spotter's perspective

When you drive through Chapman's Peak, one of the most stunningly beautiful drives in the world (as recognized by the 60 Porsche enthusiasts screaming past us today), you may notice a white, blah or green flag on one of the corners. Here sits the shark spotter. Every day, rain or shine. He doesn't have an office or even a shelter from the elements. Sitting in the sun (or in winter amongst the bushes) he serves as the human early warning system to the surfers who congregate in the frothy left break below.

George the shark spotter talked us through all the challenges and tasks of a shark spotter. How the water visibility is measured and what differences occur in the habits of seals and whales alike when the storm winds come in. I asked if he gets bored and he told me, only with the questions he gets asked by tourists (to which he always gives the same random and unrelated answers). The job gives him lots of time to think, he says. Most interesting for me though was how he has shared this spot for the last six years with a cobra. Early on he established some rules in the relationship, saying to the snake: "I am working hard here to feed my children, and to protect the surfers. You cannot be distracting me too much."

Shorefront perspective

How often do you have a conversation with a shark spotter? What are the mechanisms for measuring risk visibility for your business and the markets you are in? Sitting high above the fray, the shark spotter sees deep into the water and can tell us a lot about the things that look normal on the surface. Who has that perspective on your business? The task takes dedication, you can't be a part time shark spotter even when the snakes are curling around your ankles.

Day 27: Artificial Intelligence

100% artist proof

Kenau is known as one of the best people in the world for manufacturing fake strawberries. It seems that if you are looking for that extra pop in your ice cream photo shoot, she can fake it better than most.
Why is it that we have gravitated towards selecting products and people based on an artificial projection of what they intended to be, rather than developing the skills to select something on what it actually is? I am as guilty as the next person. The beauty shoot Kristian did for us at speedo ultimately was a composite of six different photos and, as with all fashion photos, was stretched by 15% to make the model appear longer and slimmer.

Dove's campaign for real beauty was a valiant attempt (which ultimately failed) to deprogram our intelligence of the artificial; the heart felt belief that the best thing for us, is a thing that does not exist. The UK's stand on manipulated images in advertising is encouraging yet the tsunami of reality TV keeps pushing consumerism to new levels of artifice.

Is this what is needed to prepare mankind for life in an information age, the anthropocene mind? Perhaps the ability to navigate fake is the most important skill that our children and the next generation need to learn. As the cultural nuance necessary for 'fitness' becomes more and more refined, our abilities need to evolve along with capabilities to modulate reality. The challenge though is that most people are not seeing the difference and like the boiled frog become consumed by the desire to consume. One billion obese people meet one billion starving people in a world of manufactured intent.

Last week I asked the question if there is an alternative to the hockey curve growth model in business planning. This week I ask if there needs to be a go-to-market strategy that delivers truth? Do businesses who try and out-compete each other for the most desirable fake, ultimately hollow out their ability to innovate on core value? With all their efforts focussed on engineering "engagement" shifting attention and resources away from creating post transactional purpose. Can we bring intelligent integrity to this artificial EQ?

Day 26: Through the eye of a fly

Ubuntu is an essential African philosophy. A human is only a human through other humans. Identity and existence is a relative reality. Another African proverb says that a single finger cannot lift a grain of rice. This struck a particular cord earlier this week when I met with Mat. The Design Council has placed a lot of emphasis on having consortia pitch ideas for social good. We spoke at length about the checks and balances that such a project structure brings, built-in.

In a group where everyone thinks alike, not much thinking happens. Even though the pitfalls of groupthink are well known, most companies still rely heavily on their internal dialogue to define the truth of their future. How many boards do you know of actually conduct peer review on the 5 year plans? Sure, oversight committees and non-executive board members bring in some perspective but are generally too removed form the operations to share their insight with middle management, whose judgement ultimate decides how the plan is executed.

Operationally I also struggle with the concept of a brief and how it often leads to a very narrow solution to a particular project. At a point in every project you face the question: "do we proceed with the right solution to the challenge, or do we proceed with the right solution for this company?" This is a very real trade off. The company's limited resources or lack of skills in certain areas will often prevent them from implementing a more holistic, and ultimately robust solution. The budget owner wants to see a solution that is tightly constrained by their remit and resources. Faced with this choice you are often forced to suggest a scoped down solution that does not deliver either the differentiation or disruption expected. This limitation for me is inherently proscribed by the concept of a single company issuing a brief to a single agent or supplier.

By asking consortia, including the whole value chain and consumer groups to work together on 'challenges', the design council is lifting the debate. Yes it is more challenging and time consuming to coordinate disparate and often conflicting interests. Herding cats towards one solution is not easy but in an idea launched through this approach, they will reduce the impact of emergency unit violence. That is right, upset patients and disoriented caregivers freaking out in the A&E costs £69 million a year. The cost of this complex issue is about the same as the salaries of 4800 nurses. The multi-facetted design solution is a wonderful example of how smart, inclusive design can counter cost pressures of the failing health system.

How could this consortia thinking become more prevalent in the way companies define company strategy and go to market initiatives? NGO's and charities have the engagement but not the scale or commitment that business can deliver. A blended approach should deliver more integrity, thinking of a constituency of solution seekers rather than the limited "stakeholder management". This multi-facetted approach can then deliver the stunning sight of a fly's compound eye.

Day 25: Be Long

Cape Town is as confused about the weather as it always is. Walking on the beach with scarfs and jackets in November. Yesterday it was 40 degrees Celsius. After leaving South Africa 16 years ago the city greets me with questions of heritage, history and kinship. On this trip I have been consistently struck by the deep of happiness one senses when talking to people who are settled in their communities. Having lived their whole live in a village, the world makes sense and everything knows where it belongs.
This sense of certainty releases a deeper sense of calm. Things are predictable, they fit. When you goto the local nursery you have long conversations with the owner about the pros and conns of opening a coffee shop.

Action for Happiness place a lot of emphasis on the importance of community in providing happiness. Being part of a community though means spending time together. The rituals and sharing weave shared commitments and understandings. Your investment can’t be short if you want to belong.

In the 70’s anthropologists made the ‘shocking’ discovery that a lot of what they learnt from communities was distorted. When researchers went into communities the people most keen on speaking to them were the outcasts, the outliers. Not being aligned with the rest of the group they were keenest on the newcomers and provided their fringe perspectives freely. The core of the communities would observe the interaction with the ‘newcomers’ to get a sense of where they would end up inside the social structure. A kind of social early warning system.

Very few companies make the investment to go long and be long in communities. The snapshot trajectory of ‘insight’ built through focus groups serve as truth for their multi-million dollar investments. Social listening experiments are often run by interns or younger staff who “get twitter.” But taking dipstick measures and sounding out the market can’t serve to provide the real sense of where the deeper concerns lie. Like the outsider anthropologists of the 70’s companies need to understand that their perspective is eccentric. Being ‘in sync’ is a longitudinal sympathy that understands the beats and underlying rhythms driving the community’s sense of self. As the african proverb has it: “to go fast, go alone, to go far, go together.” Be long.

Day 23: 100 Heifers run dry

The last three days gave me the opportunity to experience the workings of a dairy farm. In the farmhouse they converted 2 rooms into a bed & breakfast. A very basic B&B as could be evidenced from this photo of their information booklet (compiled and last touched in 1992!).
Here we have two businesses running as one. The 100 heifers produce organic milk and cream to all the local tourist destinations (Chatsworth and Kedlestone hall visitors can enjoy extra thick scrumpy cream scones, thanks to my Foster family). The farm house B&B provides a warm bed and dry heat for weary travelers and explorers. It is clear that they feel very differently about the two businesses.
The £2000 needed to buy a new heifer focuses their attention on caring for the beasts in a way that guests in the bed & breakfast don't. The dairy has a new pasteurizer, capital investment plan and sustainability strategy. The bed and breakfast still uses the same beds and bedding it did 30 years ago. The guests, most probably driven by the low room rate, do not seem to get the same attention that the cash cows do.
I suppose this is a classic tale of excess capacity being used to harvest some value from capital investments (ironically, keeping this 'dog' from cash cow status). It does point to the different standards and measures that companies use to define success for business.

What is the real opportunity cost tied up in ideas that get killed or suffer because they are not supported with the same attention and standards as the core, supported strategies? Two years ago I had a client who were very keen to bring a massively disruptive model to workplace wellbeing. The new ideas would have a massive impact on general workplace engagement and the energy levels of employees (modulated through better diets). The problem was though that it would not deliver the margins needed to qualify against the internal investment hurdle to build it. The new idea was competing against a 150 year old business with entrenched efficiencies of scale and the established sales channels to drive it. The fact that this new idea was essential to differentiate this commodity business and protect it from new global entrants was besides the point. On a narrow measure, the cash the company has would deliver a higher return when invested in the established business model. The irony is that this way of measuring opportunity cost (against the existing profit margin) leads to investments only when the existing business crashes and the hurdle becomes low enough to pass. This has become pervasive in the pharma industry where a lot of life saving drugs don't see the life of day because they don't compete against the "blockbuster" model. As trendy as the idea of "disrupt yourself before others do" is, have you had that conversation with a CFO?
How could we level the playing field for new ideas to unlock their real value? How do we get businesses to migrate before their 100 heifers run dry?

Day 22: Intentionally empty

I don't want to revisit the great job 'Shopping' did in showing the ridiculous wasted expanse of retail space, but when a two block walk down the main street of a town delivers 7 empty shop fronts you have to take note.
Like Bruce Mau (and the #OWS peeps) I prefer to see "empty" as an opportunity. Perhaps even an opportunity to increase happiness as they recently did with "the-buro-of-doing-something-about-it."

Day 21: Gifts

I’ll use the occasion of Fabian’s birthday to say thank you for all the inspiration and gifts I have enjoyed on this trip. In chronological order, thank you to: Sven, Iaan, Claude, Johan, Colin, Sonja, Pontus, Ivo, Rene and the rest of the Spiegelberger stiftung, Aritake, Aritake’s dad, Ludwig Museum and Picasso, Sara, Martin, Karl-Heinz, Nicola, Peter, Matt, Tom, Uta, Georgia, Elke, Pernilla, Fredrik, Siri (not the apple kind), the Pope (in graffiti form), Kentridge, Turner, Twombly, Susanne, Leon, Veronica, Volker, Dana, Anton, Louisa, Alexandra, Suzanne, two nameless people in Dingolfing, Hannah, anonymous follower from Sri Lanka, Sven (again), Julianne, Lisz, David, Andreas, Simon, Desire B., Cato, Scott, Roelie, Peter, Thomas, Pam, the two Oxford students who spoke to me about tradition, Milan and Fabian. And to the cities of London, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Munich (as always Munich), Dingolfing, Arzberg, Falkenstein, Berlin, Middle Aston, Oxford and Duffield.

And while we are on the topic of gifts; I was really struck by the following statistic that underpinned the free lunch in London yesterday. Roughly a third of all produce is rejected from retail because of aesthetic reasons (wonky looking carrots and such). If we were able to channel only a quarter of this aesthetic waste, it would be enough to feed the 1 billion hungry people in the world! Currently the majority of these products end up in landfill.

To my American friends: Happy Thanksgiving.

Day 20: Trade-ition

Many years ago I watched 5 minutes of the TV that had a profound effect on me. It was a discussion between an anthropologist and a tribesman in New Guinea. The tribe had only recently been exposed to western civilization for the first time. The anthropologist was interested in understanding the universal habits that humans as a species had adopted to prosper. A smile and the ability to dance are really, deeply, hard wired into our human condition.
After a few minutes the tribesman made up his mind and asked: "do you want to trade?"
This wasn't a request for a specific thing. It wasn't about: "wow, I could really do with one of those flashy sharp gizmos you have that cuts through butter like a hot .... mmm palm leave." It was simply a request to trade. The interaction where two people give something of themselves. As an ancient tribe I suppose you had to quickly decide on which side of the fence a new person you came across was. Someone who shares food or sends sharp objects your way. Interaction between people lubricates a sense of safety and belonging. Once we have traded the chances we'll fight is a lot less. We have crossed a barrier a moved beyond the isolation of ownership. Between us now exists a bond, the beginnings of a shared culture with anticipated traditions.

Positive psychology also places emphasis on this act of sharing. More important than the thing of mine that lives with you after we have traded, is the sense of me that lingers on. Sharing is an essential part of feeling good, and raising "happiness." This is most probably why poorer communities feel happier, they share more and thus connect with people and things.

The word "company" has its roots in sharing. Theatre troupes who worked for food and lodging in the middle ages would sit down together and share the day's bread (pane in italian). Everyone who belongs in the sharing circle would be the "com-pane." You know the person you share bread with in a way you don't know the person at the end of a pink slip.
As money reduced trade to transactions this human need for connecting with the person beyond the product has somehow been ignored. The "thing of you" lives with me, but I don't have a sense of you... Social media has now brought the concept of the transparency back into vogue, but somehow the emptiness created by accepting products with invented legacies into our homes, leaves a nagging doubt about this non-symbiotic shuffle.
How can we break out of this cycle to once again build shared "trade-itions?"

Day 19: Shopper keeper

Retail is where, for most companies, the brand rubber hits the customer experience road. Today I had my first Chinese brand experience (if you don’t count all the proxy Li & Fung brands) at Globetrotter and was reminded of the different strategies retailers and brands have for understanding their cash voting constituencies.
Decathlon have for years lived their business intimately. All administrative, product design and development functions are based in, or on their shop premises. Every employee is constantly reminded of the till stubs that turn into their pay checks.  A couple of years ago I even got to experience first hand how, by building a store in Biarritz, the swimwear, surfing and diving team had both the sales and product usage moments in front of their noses (joking that the salt water ocean was in front of the store and the sweet water harbor behind it).
This approach has clearly paid off, with merchandisers and isle managers able to prototype new constellations and get feedback in real time. The space becomes an evolving organism, tuned to the real time tally of transactions that promotes growth in one direction, and kills off unprofitable lines in another. As a brand marketing director, I had never had such tough merchandising discussions.

Globetrotter uses a different strategy. The retail space is more about expectations than transactions. There is a giant pool in which to try out kayaks. An installation with tents and desert sand, reporting on travels to the Sahara. The shopper can sit and watch videos or vicariously follow along with a community of contemporary explorers. You don’t get the feeling that you are being channeled into a selling system and the sales isles are not the focussed tubes and tunnels that Decathelon’s model has so sharply refined. None of this is new. Ever since Paco Underhill reported that Homebase could reach new customers by selling stories and solutions, the battle in retail has been between function (volume) and fantasy (margin).

What inspired me about Globetrotter though is how this experience is drawn through into product development. They have invested heavily in testing and development facilities in Costa Rica. Replanting thousands of acres of rain forrest, which will not only serve as a testing ground for outdoor kit, it will also offset the carbon footprint of the supply chain. This feels like the beginnings of the “values proposition” I am looking to define. A holistic expression of business behavior, symbiotically evolving from an intimate dialogue between its stakeholders. Collect insights where they will be experienced, not just in the shop front. Build and sustain the communities, not just the myths, that makes the real world environment your R&D lab.

Capitalism grew by building the consumer base that fed it. For a long time the car and white goods industries were supplying the middle class that bought the products they themselves were producing. Understanding, caring for and sustaining the meaning (in other words the values, not just the value) of this relationship seems more important than ever before as Walmart, Trader Joes and others have discovered. They have moved beyond the cellophane wrapped carousel of consumption to become slightly more benevolent keepers of their shoppers.

Addendum: Sven tells me that the Globetrotter in Berlin also offers an immunization station. This means you can be completely prepared for your trip and get engaged in local health issues on the spot. With all of the charity and donations work they do it really adds another dimension to building the communities that are their real world R&D lab

Day 18: Presence pirates

According to Die Zeit, the average German owns 10000 things. This asks a very fundamental question which is simply, just how many things can one person own?
The basis of capitalism, and why it has aways done so well at lifting communities from poverty, is that assumption that growth is endless and can be found everywhere. Every business plan, and every funding model relies on growth. "If I can't earn more on my money next year than this, I won't lend it to you."
As basic needs were met, production could only keep growing by building redundancy. The 6th pair of shoes you don't wear, the 38 books you never read. According to Die Zeit, human nature kicked in. Perhaps somewhere between 7000 and 8000 things, who knows?

At some point in the past couple of years the rate of new consumption has started to steadily go down. Sure the passion for new smartphones and apps is unabated but something has met a saturation point and growth slowed. Not by much, but just enough to tear holes in the financial markets rapacious need for double digit growth. Like a super saturated solution, a little bump crystalized into rapid, rigid resistance. The Occupy movement, in my mind, is simply the diffuse expression of a saturated society. There is no one galvanizing point or hero. We are dis-eased by the saturated condition.

Is there a way to make capitalism survive on a non-growth model? Economists fear deflation more than the devil. Good luck getting funding for a new business if you don't include at least one or two hockey stick charts. But just like the singularity I wrote about yesterday, there is a theoretical point beyond which people simply cannot consume. Keyenes knew this and he predicted that our generation would meet that saturation point. Advertising and media has done a great job distracting us from realizing that we have actually satisfied basic needs. Production capacity is at a level that could feed the world. There is more than enough clothing, hot and cold running water to keep just about everyone safe and happy.

The fact is though that cash flows are best lubricated by dissatisfaction, not satisfaction. Just as heartbreak is the poet's most productive muse, unsatisfied needs are the marketing man's mantra. The distraction into a world of discontent and inadequacy circles us on Facebook, twitter, the TV, our bank statement. The potential joy of simply being, and being content, is a bounty that presence pirates cannot leave unmolested!

As a business though, there must be an annuity model that is simply content and doesn't demand the destabilization of desires. Consumers are turning redundancy into a tradable good, not requiring new production to satisfy a need. Sven's landlord has set up a social network for the tenants to share drills, ladders and any other things they have laying about. I love Engin's new business idea called "itemology" (Facebook meets amazon marketplace). As businesses figure out how to deal with satisfied, engaged people (rather than "consumers") new definitions and spaces for value will emerge.

Day 17: Listening to fish

Aquariums are a popular destination for new parents to take their kids. The rich confusion of life, expressed in exotic colors and crazy forms excites the conversation with the little ones. Parents and 2 year olds alike can stare in amazement as sea horses and jelly fish perform exotic dances. At some deep level we are reminded of how wonderful the world we live in really is. And isn't it fun to be reminded just how drab and boring we are compared to clown fish and corals?

When companies seek inspiration they often resort to the same strategy, seeking out exotic life forms and strange behaviors to inspire new ways of seeing their options. The glassed in research lens distorts and exaggerates little anomalies in the same way the fish tanks do. Managers and staff stare in wonder at apple (as they used to at GE, toyota, zara etc.) and how it has produced the latest sea change, as if by magic.

Quite often though I think they spend too much time looking at the fish and not enough time learning from the water or the tank. It's easy to forget how the laws of gravity are suspended, how depth and light change opportunities to hunt and harvest when you stand in front of a well lit slice of paradise. After all, products are only the archeological evidence of a corporate culture. What are the organizational patterns that would sustain your company in an exotic environment? and what are the patterns expressed by the exotic little pisceans that could actually be useful in the earth bound trudgery of your business?

Ray Kurzweil and his crew are actually thinking about the fish tank. In the work they have done around building the Singularity University, the focus is all about what kind of species we need to be when everything we think we know, changes. I wonder if it is just intellectual arrogance or survival fear that makes us hope that we can predict a post singularity future any better than we predicted the advent of the PC. The important thing though is that they are trying to sense the patterns of thought and new ideas that will become prevalent in our tech-symbiosis.

As I was walking through the aquarium I came across a boy with his ear tightly pressed against the glass, intensely listening to the water and the sound of the fish tank. I think he gets it.

Day 16: Acquired identities

In Frankfurt I had a conversation with a woman who once worked as a massage therapist in a brothel. She told me that there is a very subtle yet powerful competition amongst prostitutes expressed as ostentatious consumption. It seems that the more expensive the things you can buy, the more appealing you are as a product. And the more appealing you are as a product, the more expensive the things you can buy. This self perpetuating cycle will see women sleeping with upwards of ten men a day, securing that Gucci with that coochie.

Iaan, in his infinite wisdom once captured this succinctly: "the better you look, the more you'll see." (and the age old cliche: "don't dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want")
These purchased identities, that allow acceptance and access to desirable clubs, social groups and that promotion you so desperately need to pay your credit card debt, come at a very steep price. By modulating what we think others see as desirable, we often destroy what is authentic and unique; paradoxically killing the thing that makes us stand out and get attention. The catch is, by demonstrating that we are up to date with current trends we also show that we have social currency. Being 'in the know' denotes a social status that aligns a person with what is vital and dynamic. In the clubby world of CEO's, not being in on the latest fad is tantamount to social castration. But honestly, what is the price of the CEO d**k measuring contest (I have more twitter followers than you)?

In the large companies I worked for it was a bit of a game to see how quickly the new memes spread through the company (blue ocean, black swan and LOHA's none the less). A buzzword that the CEO stumbled upon in the latest HBR (or the golf course) could be seen in division head presentations within weeks... the country managers needed about a month or two to assimilate the new code. None of this of course has anything to do with the real behavior of the company or the resultant "real" strategy (action on the battlefield) that consumers experience as the "brand". The socialization of the memes simply demonstrates how well the structure and culture transmits information. What is the churn rate of jargon in your company?

The real question though is, like the prostitutes, what are these companies doing to themselves in the blind process of devouring the latest trends, fads and management 'wisdom'.  Authenticity actually carries far more value in the long run but as the oldest profession teaches, you just don't see as much action in play. Is there a way of re-expressing the value of integrity without it becoming a fad?