Dr Graeme Codrington

The PM’s misspelt letter – a parable of modern Britain?

The first few entries of this blog have focused on trying to understand the future by tracking the trends that are shaping the world around us. This is something I do everyday - watching the world, and looking for the defining moments and shaping stories. One such story from the world of British politics, military and the media caught my eye this week.

Poor old Gordon Brown. The prime minister of Britain just can't seem to do anything right. This past week, he did what he always does, which was to handwrite a letter of condolence to a bereaved family member. In fact, every time a British soldier dies, Gordon Brown writes a personal letter to the family. But this past week he misspelt the name of the serviceman, calling him Jamie James, instead of Jamie Janes, in a letter to his mother. He had made this same mistake when he had read Jamie's name in Parliament a few days earlier.

Mrs Janes was outraged, and took her story to the newspapers (The Sun - the most sensationalist national newspaper around). She made such a noise about it that Gordon Brown phoned her to chat about it (I do not say "apologise" because he refuses to accept he made a mistake). She then recorded the conversation and provided the recording to The Sun.

You can listen to it here, while watching a video that includes a copy of the letter.

Or read more about the story here.

In the phone call, Mrs Janes accuses Mr Brown of 25 spelling mistakes in the letter. That doesn't seem true. To be fair, Mr Brown has horrific handwriting, but it doesn't seem that he made any mistakes except calling her son Jamie James instead of Jamie Janes. If you want to know about the story, just Google it. I'd prefer not to add to the column inches on this story.

For me, this story provides an unsettling parable of modern Britain. A political leader trying to do the right thing just cannot admit he made a mistake, and looks for any possible explanation for what is obvious to everyone else. Just say you're sorry, and move on.

But Gordon Brown - and almost every other British politician - just cannot do that. On any issue. But, then Mrs Janes can't act completely surprised, can she? Is this really the first time her son's surname has been incorrectly listed as "James"? If your surname is Janes and you name your son James, are you not bringing that on yourself?

I do not want to be insensitive to her loss. I served in the forces during a war, and saw more than my fair share of funerals. There is nothing glorious about it at all. But I also can't believe I am the only one who thinks that this was a very easy error to make. That doesn't excuse it - prime ministers should be more careful (or at least should have aides who are). But, it's still an easy mistake to make in this case, is it not?

And so the parable also points to a culture that is too easily offended and insulted. People so easily feel their "rights" have been infringed and their sensibilities affronted. This is no way to live. And it's often done in a "reality TV" way. The role models are hopeless - Jordan and Peter Andre split up and act horrified when their "private lives" are splashed across newspapers. These would be the same newspapers and magazines that they took money from in exchange for opening up their lives to the public. The irony seems lost on them.

So, it's no wonder that the "average" person feels they also have the right to splash their stories across the media. Mrs Janes' outrage seems slightly stage-managed, and has certainly been gobbled up by the media.

And so the final character in this tragic pantomime is a media that has largely abandoned proper journalism in exchange for the sensational. I have written about this before, especially critical of the 24-hour news channels. This story has done nothing to change my mind.

This episode provokes a sense of sadness in me. Yes, I am sad that another young life has been snatched away by a senseless war. But I am sadder that this is possibly a parable of modern Britain. Hopefully this parable will end with some great denouement, as the fools are shown to be foolish, and the good finally prevails.

How to forecast the future: pitfalls to avoid 2

As I elaborated on in my last post, individuals with a good grasp of the world and a strong sense of adventure might be able to predict some major world trends; however, if we want to predict the future effectively, we need to steer clear of attempting specific predictions.

I'm going to continue to point out some of the other major pitfalls that many forecasters seem to jump towards and then, suggest how circumvent these errors.

Disproving examples

This issue has different names, but really comes down to the basic foundations of scientific proofs. You need to know how you would disprove a hypothesis before you can submit it as a truly scientific theory. So, when you think you've spotted a trend, then look for disproving examples.

In other words, look for the exceptions.

Contrary to the much-stated, "The exception proves the rule" (what does that mean anyway?), the exception typically destroys the rule. Or, at least, changes the rule you think you found.

My favourite example of this issue is the fabulous disproving example of manager-less teams. Thousands of litres of ink are spilled every year on management textbooks, fuelling everything from the MBA industry to self-help leadership development. Yet, recent research is showing that maybe the whole lot of them are barking up the wrong tree - maybe our entire approach to management is wrong.

As Peter Drucker was fond of saying: "There is nothing as futile as trying to do better that which should not be done at all". Maybe the whole tribe of management experts have it wrong - maybe the very concept of modern management is fatally flawed, and no-one has noticed.

The disproving example here is recent research that shows that teams that have had lost their managers for a period of time (through extended illness, personnel policies that have left positions unfilled, or a variety of other reasons) have actually functioned better than when they had managers.

This is obviously not true in every instance - and the research is still trying to work out which situations get value from manager-less teams and which do not. But enough data is in to say that we can seriously consider removing managers in a vast number of our organisations and teams.

To say that "good management is essential for good organisations" might therefore be missing a very important issue. Maybe "good management is essential for good organisations, but no management is better in great organisations. More work is needed on this, but the disproving examples should make us pause to consider whether we have truly understood trends or not.

Defining the limits/challenging the "rules"

Lastly, a more conceptual issue. Key to working out what might happen in the future is to understand limits.

There are natural limits to certain trends and behaviours. There are also limitations to our conceptual frameworks. These frameworks are the mental models we have about the world around us. We limit our own thinking because we come to think that the world "as it is" is the world "as it must be". In order to think about the future, we must challenge our assumptions, and the unwritten "rules" we take for granted.

For example, I did some work with the motor retail industry a few years ago. The mental model most people in this industry have is that men buy cars. The reality is that women buy - or have the greatest influence over the purchase - of most cars.

Natural limits are also important to think about. For example, companies are looking for competitive advantage. The question is: where is this advantage to be found? For most of the 1980s, it was found in increased efficiencies, which improved the speed and price of getting the product or service to the market. Those efficiencies have now largely been found (although CEOs who were managers back then have not yet worked this out, and continue to demand more and more from less and less).

There are natural limits to efficiency gains. Better technology can change this, but simply asking for more effort from people cannot. I think the most demoralising thing to hear your boss say at a press event is "we will improve profit next year by finding more efficiencies and getting our people to work smarter, not harder". Since you're working as smart as you know how, you just know what your boss really meant is that you'd be working harder and longer hours. And then they increase profits by firing 10% of your colleagues, and asking you to pick up the slack. Not only demoralising, but insulting, too!

Another example of natural limits can be found in the war for talent. Around the world, salaries for people considered critical in various industries have been skyrocketing (from software programmers in Silicon Valley to traders on Wall Street and from football stars in the Premier League to call centre operators in Bangalore). It might not seem like it in some industries, but there is most certainly a limit to how effective this behaviour will remain.

It's not only the absolute limit that's important, but also the relative limit, too. If everyone in your industry pays exorbitant salaries, then although you have to do so to be in the game, this has become a necessary but not sufficient criteria for competitive advantage. In other words, you have to do it just to be in the game, but it won't help you win. And that means that salary increases on their own will not help you attract and retain talented staff (again, many companies have not yet understood this, and continue to be surprised that talented people want more than just a good salary).

Avoiding the pitfalls

So, how do you avoid these (and other) pitfalls? It's not always that easy, but here a few ways to make sure you're doing all you can:

Be aware of the pitfalls, and constantly check yourself against them.
Have someone on your team who has formally studied logic, fallacy and statistical analysis (yes, a nerdy philosopher) - and listen to them!
Listen to the outlier voices. De Bono referred to this as the "black hat". Belbin team analysis refers to this person as the monitor evaluator. In the Enneagram personality profile, this is often the 8 (the need to confront) or the 4 (the need to be unique). Most people just call them irritating! Make sure you have them on your team, and give them both permission and encouragement to test your assumptions.
Don't drink the Kool-aid (this strange phrase entered American cultural usage after a well- known cult committed mass suicide by poisoning the Kool-aid cooldrinks of all the adults and children in their compound). This means: don't allow your team to convince itself that you're definitely doing the right things. Be careful when everyone in your team is saying the same thing.
Don't believe your own PR. Don't think you've found the ultimate solution or that you are really as good as you say you are. Keep looking for ways to test what you do, to break what you've built and to change the rules you think constrain you.

How to predict the future: pitfalls to avoid

If we were to transport ourselves back a century to 1909, would we have been able to predict what would happen over the next century? Highly unlikely! Yet, someone with a good grasp of the world and a strong sense of adventure might have predicted some of the trends: the transportation and communication would get faster and cheaper, that the world would continue to urbanise, globalise and move to service based economies, that wars would continue and get more violent and destructive, and that medicine would help us live longer, healthier lives. All of these should have been fairly obvious.

As I suggested in my previous post on this blog, if we want to predict the future effectively, we need to steer clear of attempting specific predictions, and look instead for trends. In other words, using travel as an analogy, the art of predicting the future is more about a focus on direction and speed, rather than looking for specific milestones along the way.

In the next post, I'll outline some specific techniques that can become your habits as you develop your ability to track trends properly. But now, I need to warn you of some common mistakes people make when looking at trends.

We must be careful to avoid some significant pitfalls. For all those of you who studied statistics or logic at university, this is your moment to have flashbacks. I obviously can't reproduce the full textbook of possible errors you might make in a short blog post, but let me try and point out two or three of most common pitfalls you should avoid when tracking trends.

Correlation vs causation

Probably the biggest mistake made in trend tracking is to confuse correlation with causation. Correlation is when two things - possibly unrelated and independent - happen at the same time. Causation is when one thing happens and then causes another thing to happen. Too many people see two things happening, and assume that one causes the other. Let me illustrate this with some examples.

Research recently showed in the UK that men live longer if they marry women 20 years younger than them. The research suggested that the act of marrying a younger woman causes the man to live longer - and there was all sorts of the typically British "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" sexual innuendo in the report. Other research has shown that people also live longer in certain suburbs and cities than in other areas of the world. It is assumed that certain parts of the world are better for your health than others.

While there may be some truth in these claims, it is much more likely that the cause of the longer life is the wealth of the individuals in question. Wealthy men can "afford" (or are more attractive to) younger women, and wealthy people typically live in proximity to each other in "wealthy suburbs". Because they are rich, they can afford better healthcare, have better access to medicines and healthy diets, and therefore are likely to live longer.

There is a correlation between long life and marrying younger women or living in certain suburbs. There is a causative link, however, between wealth and long life.

Another example might bring this closer to home for companies in the current economic downturn. Two years ago or so, many HR departments were working furiously on retention programmes. In 2009, many of those same HR people were bragging about how brilliant their retention rates are now. The assumption they have made is that the retention programmes and plans they put in place had the desired effect, and that they deserve the credit for the improvement in staff turnover rates.

When the data is actually examined, however, at many organisations workers feel no happier, no more engaged, and are actually more motivated to leave their current role sometime soon. What changed (as I am sure you noticed) was the economy. With unemployment rising every where, and daily news stories about recession - even a Depression - the current workforce as a whole is less likely to want to leave.

In this case fear is the causation. HR strategies are just a correlation. A quick test of this statement would be to analyse the turnover of your 10% of performers and see if this has reduced in line with the rest of your staff. My observation is that your top talent is still almost as mobile as ever - thus telling you that your strategy is not as good as you thought it was.

Fluke vs planning

The second issue is related to the issue of correlation vs causation. You might not find this one in your stats textbooks as I have stated it (it might be more technically defined as the problem of medians and outliers), but I think it's hugely important.

Let's say you were asked to guess the height of a random person. Go on - guess how tall I am? I can safely assume that your guess is within 1m of the actual answer (I am 6'3'', or 192cm tall to be precise). The reason you were within 1m of being correct is that the range of possibilities is quite narrowly defined (how many adults do you know who are over 3m or under 92cms tall?).

Now try to guess how many copies of my books have been sold. This is tougher, is it not? Since I am not a world-famous author, you'd be right to guess on the lower side, but the range of possible answers is from three (I have three books, and you can be sure at least my mother would buy a copy of each) to multiple millions. (The actual answer is somewhere around 40 000.) You'd be much luckier to get close to the actual number in this example.

When tracking trends, most of the issues we're watching fall into the latter category: there are many, many possible futures and outcomes, and most of them have a wide range of possibilities. Even when we look backwards, we might fool ourselves into thinking that we've spotted an obvious trend, when in fact, we've simply spotted something that happened by chance.

A good example of this might be found in Jim Collins' work on "Good to Great". I've lost count of the number of conferences I've spoken at that have used this phrase as their theme, and how many companies have used it as a mantra. They've dipped into Collins' book, and cherry-picked some (never all) of the principles he outlines ("Level 5 Leadership", "Get the right people on the bus", "The Hedgehog principle" and others). And now they're confident in their ability to go from good to great.

Yet, recent research into how the 10 companies he researched have fared during the last year's economic downturn should be sobering. You can read more detail and see a graph here , but the sad reality is that two of them went bust, and the others have performed worse (on average) than the badly performing S&P 500 index on the NYSE! Good to great to gone?

In some analyses I have seen, there is a strong argument that these companies were not in fact "great", but rather they were lucky. They were not necessarily headed by brilliant leaders, just lucky leaders. This is a form of the causality issue I spoke about above, but it's even more dangerous, because we actually define the wrong thing as the cause of the outcome, and therefore end up looking at the wrong trend altogether.

How to predict the future - looking back to look ahead

In a turbulent world, it is more necessary than ever to have some means of anticipating what the future will be. Anticipating - and responding to - future customer demand, industry competition, legislative constraints, resource availability, labour supply, and all manner of other changes, is an absolutely critical task for every organisation everywhere.

Disruptive change is now more common than ever - this is change that changes the rules of the game, and can threaten your very existence. The task of attempting to describe - and possibly even define - the future, is no longer a luxury. It's a necessity.

I count myself fortunate to spend most of my time thinking about the future. It's my job - clients pay me to help them figure out what is likely to happen in their industries and in society in the near future. There are many words for what I do: futurist, scenario planner, strategist, forecaster, futureneer. Whatever you call it, that's what I do professionally.

More than just doing it, though, I believe it's important to help people do it for themselves - it's a critical skill for everyone to have these days. Even as a parent, when your children ask, "What must I do when I grow up?" you're being asked to forecast the future.

It's not good enough to rely on one or two individuals to do this in your company - however sentient they may think they are. In the turbulent world in which we live, the more people involved in this process in your organisation, the better the outcomes of the process will be.

So, with the goal of helping everyone become something of a "futureneer", here is part one in a series of brief insights into how I, and my colleagues at TomorrowToday, go about predicting the future.

How I get my ideas

We do not have a crystal ball, and claim no special wisdom. We don't hear voices, either. Our method is a reasonable mixture of science and art, and has served us quite well, even if it is imperfect. There are two key steps.

Step 1:

The first is to understand the past and how it has shaped the present. This is the basis of trend analysis and often features highly in scenario planning, too.

Underneath the disorder of history, the task is to see the order. In doing so, your worldview always guides what you look for, and the assumptions you make. I'll talk about this more in my next post.

My personal assumptions are that people desire freedom and fulfillment, and that the world is growing (or evolving) towards greater complexity, increased connections and more autonomy (I am a student of both spiral dynamics and systems theory, and believe we're living at a time of history where we're about to take a cultural leap forward).

Since companies try and respond to the desires of their customers, and politicians attempt to stay aligned to the demands of their constituents, in most parts of the world, what individuals are striving for will ultimately emerge, one way or another. Our first task is to identify how this has been happening, and how the flow of history has brought us to where we are today. This will give us a sense of direction and momentum.

A common tool used in the business world to achieve this first step is a PESTLE analysis (grouping the defining forces as: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental). I believe you need to go a step further than a typical PESTLE analysis, which simply lists the factors shaping current reality. You also need to ask WHY. Why did these trends emerge, and why did they have such an influence?

So, for example, from as early as mid 2007, I was predicting that Barack Obama would win the US presidential election. This was not the most controversial of predictions, of course - he had a fairly good chance, if only he could beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

The key here was to look at direction and momentum. In almost every country that had recently had elections, the incumbent government had been handed a resounding defeat - the democratic world wanted change. Why? Technology was helping people around the world to feel connected with other elections, and momentum for change was building; socially, people were tired of conservative governments and wanted a change; and people were disillusioned by the American led global "war on terror". So, it was likely the Republicans would not just lose, but would lose convincingly (I am sure that McCain was not their best candidate, but was rather a sacrificial lamb - no Republican stood a chance).

But why Obama over Clinton? Well, Clinton could only win if she projected an image of change - a break with the past. I wasn't certain she could do that with Bill in the background. And her ticket was then to say she had more Washington experience - she misread America's mood. Obama got it right: "Change: Yes we can."

Was America more ready for a black or a female? Tough call, but I guessed they'd prefer a (half) black man, to a (fairly scary) woman. Misunderstanding this, the Republican fate was sealed when it selected Palin as vice presidential candidate, assuming that a "hockey mom" ditzy woman was the type of woman people wanted. (One of the key trends we're currently tracking is how hard it is for women to find the right public positioning - not too hard and not too soft).

Another key indicator was Obama's ability to communicate and through soaring rhetoric to connect and inspire. The momentum of history is always with inspirational leaders, and current direction is with leaders who connect.

In Obama's case, he also had the best online strategy of any presidential candidate in history.

The clincher for me, though, was age. The Baby Boomers (born after World War II and into the 1960s) do not want an old person leading them. They want someone from their own generation. Obama is actually a touch young, and I predict will be the youngest president for many years to come; but for 2008, he was the only guy ever going to be elected as president. And so it turned out.

Step one then is to track the trends that have shaped the present, and understand the direction and momentum these trends indicate.

Step 2:

The second key step is to understand the critical levers that are emerging in the present and will influence the future. The future will almost certainly NOT be a simple extension of the past. To counter this problem, many forecasters use the technique of scenario planning.

Ten years ago last week, a famous Business Week article highlighted the role of scenario planning (of course, South Africa's Clem Sunter has been one of the world's great exponents of this since the 1980s): "Forecasters who extrapolate from today inevitably get tomorrow wrong... [but] by pitting multiple scenarios of the future against one another and leaving many different doors open, you can prepare yourself for a future that is inherently unpredictable. Brainstorming pays off. And the more possibilities you can entertain, the less likely you are to be blindsided." Peter Coy and Neil Gross, Business Week, 30 August 1999.

This may be true, but it is also often entirely unhelpful. You might create numerous future scenarios, but how do you prepare for each of them?

I think it's possible to refine our list of likely possible futures by identifying a few factors that are most likely to be the shapers of the future. What we're looking for is a few key factors that we can track. While these may be different in different industries, I'd like to suggest four general categories of factors that have the most influence today: technology, changing demographics, institutional upheaval and shifting societal values. I will speak more of these in the next blog post.

For now, it's enough to say that you need to sit down and work out what factors, if they were to change, would change everything in your industry. For banks, right now, for example, it's the legislative environment in which they work. No-one can predict what banking legislation will emerge over the next few years, but we know for certain that new laws will emerge. Banks therefore need to create scenarios to help them start preparing for what might happen.

Stan Davis, a famed futurist and author, wrote: "Focus on discovery and eschew invention... The thing discovered already exists; you simply see it before most others do... So, find a direction things are moving in and spell out the ultimate logic or conclusion. If you are right there will be early examples of the thing already around." Lessons from the Future, 2001.

That's what we're looking for - early examples of the things that are about to change the world - or our part of it - forever. These may have been some of the trends we've been tracking historically, but equally, they may be the turning points - tipping points - of new, disruptive change.

Later, I'll provide more details - and point out some of the most common pitfalls when forecasting the future. The goal is not to predict specific events, but rather to transmit a sense of the future. Maybe it's best to say that we're not trying to forecast, but rather attempting to foresee. The distinction is important. I, or anyone else, am unlikely to get the details of the future right.

Predicting what the gold price will be this time next year, or who will be the next President of France, would be impossible and a guess at best. But predicting the general trend of resource prices over the next year is far more scientific a process. And judging the mood of the French electorate is probably fairly easy right now - we know they're becoming more nationalistic, more conservative and more demanding of an economic recovery and job creation. The party that taps into this mood now will win the next election. We can foresee the trends, and build scenarios for the specific probable events.

So, does it work?

Of course, the real problem with doing all this is that there are so many factors impacting one's ability to get it spot on - and most clients expect you to get it perfect. That's impossible, of course. Even if you can predict what will happen, you will be very lucky to be right about the timing on a regular basis.

For example, in 2000, I wrote a book, Mind Over Money, in which I looked at how different generations of people were managing their personal finances (and helped them to do it better). In that book, I wrote that the Baby Boomers, who were heading towards retirement, were creating a real problem for themselves and for all other generations by being addicted to debt.

I predicted that it would all end in tears for them and for everyone else. Was this a prediction of the credit crunch that hit a year ago? In one sense, yes (and I am happy to claim it). But, could I have told you that it would happen in September 2008? Unlikely (although I did sell all of the shares I held in late 2007, anticipating that the bubble could not last too much longer).

If you step back now, you'll see it was fairly easy to predict the credit crunch. In fact, Trevor Manuel and Tito Mboweni, South Africa's Minister of Finance and Central Banker respectively, did. As early as 2001, they began imposing tough financial controls on the economy, and on the banking industry specifically. In so doing, they have largely protected South Africa from the worst of the global downturn.

As is typical with futurists, they have not received the credit they deserve for taking the tough actions their predictions suggested they should. It should have been easy, yet so few people did it. This is because they lost sight of history (step 1) and were blinded by their worldview (step 2). They failed to recognise the natural rhythm of the business cycle, and they did not see that changes in banking regulations in the early 21st century had fundamentally changed the risk factors associated with credit and investment banking.

But most importantly, even when the first signs of a crisis emerged (in the UK, there was a run on Northern Rock in late 2007!), they failed to do anything about it.

And this, ultimately, is the point of predictions. We need to act on them. For years, for example, many predictions have been made about what talented employees will demand from their employers, yet very few companies have implemented true flexibility, work-from-home options, and some companies actively discourage any use of social technologies that could assist with this process.

It's not enough to have an intellectual exercise in foreseeing the future. One also has to have the guts to react to what you find when you see tomorrow's world today.

Next time: common mistakes forecasters make, and how to avoid them...

Survivor China: the Great Wall of SABC ruin

It was all hands-on-deck for the three-hour Survivor finale last night, as fans across South Africa tuned in to watch the final plays and last minute wheeling and dealing from the contestants to see who would be crowned the winner of Survivor China. It's the moment we've all been waiting for. The reason we've spent the last few months glued to our screens, watching the contestants battle the elements and each other, vying for our favourites as they scheme, back-stab and connive their way through to make it to the final four.

Unfortunately, I tuned in a little late as I must have missed the one ad SABC3 flighted mentioning a start time of half an hour earlier. Fortunately, the first 15 minutes was just a recap so no real loss there.

Skip through the first hour and we're down to the final three: Amanda, Courtney and Todd. Fast forward a little more and we've arrived at the last tribal council: the final nail-biting moments were the contestants get to plead their case, followed by my favourite part: the jury questions, where the folks that were booted off by their team members get to have their last b*tching session and grill the remaining members with squirm-worthy questions. It's the culmination of 39 days spent in tropical "hell", and I'm loving every minute of it.

Amanda, Courtney and Todd have just finished telling the jury why they're the most worthy and should get the million dollars. Cut to ad break, which displays SABC3's line-up for the next couple of hours. Survivor @ 9pm, news @ 10pm and football @ 10.15pm.

Cut back to the opening Survivor intro and music we've come to know so well. Cut to Jeff Probst saying something along the lines of "Welcome to the reunion show..." Cue blank stare. "...With our winner Todd!"

Cue jaw-drop and disbelief. WTF?! Where's the island? Where's the jury?! WHERE'S THE GRILLING AND B*TCHING AND SQUIRM-WORTHY QUESTIONS?!?! WHERE'S THE *BLEEPING* VOTE?!?!?!

Cue yelling, screaming and a mass of expletives not fit for even a Tarantino flick. I almost phone them then and there, but decide I won't be the only one and don't want to rack up my cellphone bill waiting on hold for those idiots. I almost open a Twitter account just so I could fume more publicly than I just did on Facebook. [And oh boy was Twitter awash with cursing, invective and foul language! - assistant editor]

Is it just a monumental ****-up? Or was there some dimwitted inept jack*** who decided that in order to fit everything into their scheduled timeslot, they had to cut the last half hour of the final episode, the episode that everyone has waited months to see?!?! "Oh, they announce the winner in the first 15 seconds of the reunion show so at least they'll know who won." Is this the logic? Are you frigging serious?!

I'm disgusted. I'm horrified. I'm p****ed off beyond comprehension. I phone my mother, who's at the airport fetching a friend and is taping the show. Fortunately it sounds like she was too distracted to pay any real attention to what I'm spewing. But I'm pretty sure the neighbours can hear me from across the two open lots.

I try to watch the reunion show with some enthusiasm... but dinner's ready and I can't be bothered with the end.

This morning, I Google "Survivor China" and hit upon a number of posts from other suitably POed viewers. Of course, it turns out that someone over at the SABC eventually woke up to the deluge of irate calls and eventually screened the final half hour of the show, presumably sometime after midnight. I don't know. I'd turned off by then.

But how could they? How dare they?! After all that!! I want blood. Whoever is responsible should be taken into the street and shot. Ok, maybe not with real bullets - a few hundred of those rubber ones should do nicely. But someone needs to pay and I want first dibs. Who's with me?

PS: SABC3 has released its pitiful excuse for an apology here: www.sabc3.com/news/5896

...complete with the cellphone number of spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago... I suspect he's already very sorry that line was given out... or perhaps it's just another SABC balls-up?

Lessons in an urn: leadership lessons from an Ashes series

Every other year, Australia and England play a cricket test match series against each other known as the Ashes, competing for the smallest - but arguably most revered - trophy in international sport. This series gets top billing on sports shows, and is hyped beyond belief. And yesterday, Sunday, 23 August, it ended for 2009.

England won the series, with a comprehensive outplaying of the Aussies at the Oval, leaving them 2-1 winners. It was not a great series, with few memorable moments, and, to be honest, with England and Australia now ranked fifth and fourth best test teams in the world, it probably was never going to be good cricket.

But there are a few lessons I think we can learn about leadership. If you're not a cricket fan, then maybe just skip this post - I'll be back to talking about future trends later this week.

If you're still with me, I first made the connection between cricket and leadership a few months ago on my own blog, where I predicted that Ricky Ponting would go down in history as a very bad leader. I called him lucky, at best.

Luck ran out

Yesterday, as he became the first Australian cricket captain to lose two Ashes series, his luck ran out.

Ponting, like many business leaders over the past two years, has found that it was not their own genius that created success, but rather the luck of circumstances. Ponting inherited one of the greatest cricket teams of all time, with the likes of Hayden, Warne, Gilchrist, Lee and McGrath all in their prime. He was (and remains) one of the finest batsmen to ever play the game. But, as a cricket captain he lacks finesse.

His choices are often wrong (like his decision to not bowl a spinner at the Oval test match this past week). His on field tactics lack imagination. And he does not seem to be able to motivate his team, especially when they are down.

This is similarly true of many business leaders today. They inherited, rather than earned, their success. Most of the world's CEOs have risen up either through the finance department, or through engineering/operations. Neither of these options are natural crucibles for the development of innovative, self aware, emotionally intelligent leaders.

Flying

From 2001 to 2007, the world's economy was flying, credit was flowing, and only the very inept (or the very unlucky) failed to be successful, regardless of their actual leadership abilities. Almost every industry was experiencing a boom. In fact, the British Chancellor (now PM), Gordon Brown famously proclaimed in September 2000 that the business cycle of "boom and bust has been abolished", and an endless boom lay ahead (read his infamous speech). Ridiculous when you think about it, but that was the general feeling throughout almost every industry.

I remember, for example, speaking at the annual South African motor industry banquet in 2005, when they were talking about how to handle double digit growth for a sustained period of the next 10 years or more! (Only the superbly sage senior statesman of the industry, Brand Pretorius, disagreed, and put his projections much lower over the medium term.) Banks, estate agents, mines, insurers, retailers, and professionals of every ilk, were looking forward to a glorious future.

It wasn't that difficult to be a "leader" in this environment. Just do more of the same. Seriously, innovation has not really happened over the past decade. Be honest - how much true innovation (game-changing stuff) has really happened in your industry in the last 10 years? But, then the credit crunch hit.

The bottom fell out of most markets, credit dried up almost instantly this time last year, and leaders found out that "more of the same" wasn't good enough. But many leaders do not have the ability to reinvent, rethink and reconfigure their companies in the midst of a foundation-shaking crisis. They don't have the interpersonal skills to pull their teams together in tough times. They issue decrees from on high, become more dictatorial, cut costs (mainly by cutting people), try and do more of what used to make them successful, and strike fear (and sometimes loathing) through their organisations.

Not all like this

Of course, not all leaders are like this. And I'm overstating it in order to make my point. But I do think that Warren Buffett was right: "When the tide of growth goes out, you get to see who was swimming naked". I truly hope this recession brings with it a new understanding of the type of leadership that long-term successful (and fulfilling) companies need.

England won this cricket series without any great players, and (except Broad's bowling spell on the second day of the last test) without any truly great performances.

It was a team effort, without ego (witness the humble interview by captain Andrew Strauss, and cringe even as you think what would have been said had Kevin Pietersen still been in charge), without bluster (compare this to Ponting's frequent outbursts and whines during this series - a performance that drew almost constant boos from the normally sporting English cricket crowds), and without fanfare (the coach, Andy Flower, has been almost anonymous throughout the series, but surely deserves a lot of the credit for such a unified team). England cricket has been in crisis.

They have needed a leader who would lead from the front, walk the talk, remove the egos from the dressing room, and humbly develop a team to deal with the situation in which England found themselves. Strauss is also probably lucky that he met a rudderless Australian unit, in the midst of a meltdown of note. I think he will discover a different story when he plays South Africa later this year.

Today's lesson

But for today, the lesson is this:

You should not promote your best tactician to leadership - the skills to be good on the front line differ markedly from the skills required to lead a team. This is even more critical during a crisis. Businesses might have to make the same tough choice that now faces the Australian selectors: do you leave a clearly underperforming - and underskilled - leader on the job? Or do you admit that tough times call for tough choices, and change your leader to someone who can pull the team together, envisage a new future, and humbly lead from the front?

I know what I would do.

And I am immensely proud of what South Africa's cricket leader, Graeme Smith, has learnt over the past few years. He is that kind of leader. Roll on the southern hemisphere summer - the cricket's going to be great!

Hopefully, as the economy begins a slow recovery, our businesses will get great leaders too.

[Review] Terrific and disturbing – District 9 is a hit

Last week’s media preview of District 9, the new South African sci-fi film, left most of us quite shattered. Not expecting such a performance or to be so engrossed, the film may draw on recognised genres but it delivers the shock and uncomfortable recognition that Paul Verhoeven used to deliver. [video]

The film is deservedly gaining credit internationally but in South Africa it may well be greeted with uncomfortable reactions - the film unashamedly draws on our past and current view of species different to our perception of what is human and how we treat them.

The plot seems simple enough: an alien force landed in Johannesburg 20 years ago and, producing neither useful technology nor annihilation, has camped on the outskirts of the city, forming eventually a slum. The Multi-National United (MNU), a private corporation, runs the slum and now has been charged with removing all the aliens to a new camp much further from the city.

Most unlikely hero

Enter the most unlikely hero - picture your average small bank branch manager and you have Wikus van der Merwe (portrayed by Sharlto Copley).

His job is to knock on doors and get the aliens to sign an agreement to be evicted. Some of the ‘prawns,' as they are so charmingly called, refuse, some get violent and some clearly don't understand but he works his way through the camp like a true bureaucrat, until he meets Christopher Johnson and his son little CJ, aliens who have assumed human names as required to fit into the society in which they find themselves. Wikus is accidently sprayed with a contaminant and then during an exchange with an alien, injured as well.

Now infected with alien DNA, he holds the key to MNU's need to make alien technology work and, faced with no mercy from humans or MNU forces, he flees into District 9 as the only place where he can try to survive and make sense of his calamity. His disintegration from a happy family man into a hunted outcast and his integration into violence is a moving experience and the introduction of Nigerian gangsters and psychotic MNU enforcers makes it all too real.

The film is presented often as a newsreel or documentary footage and, by interspersing actual SABC footage, adds to the horribly real feeling of the film. This is far truer as to the way humans would deal with aliens - no cute ET moments or Independence Day mayhem - just grim township life on the edge of a dump.

South-African born director

Neill Blomkamp, the South African-born director, has spent many years in Canada as a visual effects artist and director of award winning ads, short films and was recognised as one of the Top 5 Directors to Watch at the First Board Awards, featured in the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase at Cannes.

The producer, Peter Jackson, is world-renowned for his directing of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and he is quoted as saying, "Neill Blomkamp is a terrifically exciting young director. We were considering a production of Halo based on the video game. That movie never happened but we loved working with Neill so much that when he pitched us District 9, we decide it would be fun to turn his idea into a feature film."

Allegedly, according to YouTube, this a short film from Neill Blomkamp, which the movie District 9 is based off of.

Following its international launch late last week, it opens in South Africa on 28 August 2009. Ster-Kinekor is hosting a Red Carpet Premiere at The Zone@Rosebank, Johannesburg, on Wednesday, 19 September 2009, for Ster-Kinekor Movie Club Card Holders at normal ticket prices.

For more:

Official website: www.sonypictures.net/movies/district9/
Twitter Search: #District 9 [District 9 has been trending on Twitter recently]
RottenTomatoes.com: District 9
Google News: District 9
Official international movie site: www.district9movie.com
Official local movie site: www.district9.co.za
Article: District 9 premieres in Joburg, welcomes ‘aliens'
Galleries: [Video] District 9 premiere, plus interviews with cast and crew, District 9 premiere comes to Joburg and Build up to District 9 premiere by Ster-Kinekor
Article: District 9 lands in SA
Blog: [Review] Terrific and disturbing - District 9 is a hit
Twitter Search: District 9 premiere

I’m an alien!

"I'm an alien. I'm a legal alien. I'm an Englishman in New York". The lyrics of Sting's popular rendition fill my thoughts as I contemplate the similarities and differences between my life and the song. In my case I am not in New York nor am I am Englishman either. But I am effectively an alien living in another world: I'm a South African in London.

As a strategy consultant, entrepreneur, author, and professional speaker now living in one of the world's foremost global cities alongside New York, I am uniquely positioned to offer insights into the changing trends that are shaping the world we live in and the way we work. Tracking these trends is my passion and one of the lucky few; I'm immensely privileged to earn money by living out my passion.

Eye to the future

With this in mind I have assumed the role of London eye with an eye on the future. For the next couple of months at least, I am Bizcommunity's appointed foreign correspondent, during which time I'll be posting blog entries with diverse perspectives on the new world of work from a London viewpoint.

It all began just under a year ago, when I packed up my house, and my wife and three young daughters, and moved to Wimbledon, London. TomorrowToday.biz, my business in South Africa, was going really well and together with my business partners we had picked up a lot of international clients and needed to bolster our growing UK team. My wife is British, so it fell to me to make the move. As a proud South African, I have been quick to point out that this is a business decision, and hopefully a temporary stay away from my beloved birthplace.

We arrived in August last year, and after a few weeks of getting settled into a new house and getting our girls into their new school, one Monday morning I put on my best suit and bought a train ticket for Canary Wharf, the sexy new location for London business. I work from home, and only had one potential client in Canary Wharf, so the act of going there was more symbolic of a new start in a new city. That was 15 September 2008. For those with good memories, you'll be laughing, because yes, that was the day Lehman Brothers went bust. As I was going in, thousands of tearful workers clutching boxes of their possessions were leaving.

The contracts that had lured me to London were all cancelled within a few weeks as almost all companies reacted with whiplash speed. Directives were issued from on high - no conferences; no travel; no consultants; no training! This sort of knee-jerk reaction may have seemed necessary for short-term survival - but I doubt it really made a difference. In fact, I am guessing it hurt companies more than it helped them. When you try and cut fat with a hacking carving knife, you invariably cut out some muscle too.

Harsh start

Regardless, it was a harsh start for a new arrival. And London has remained at the centre of the economic storm ever since. Countries like South Africa seem to have weathered the financial crisis much better than expected. But London still feels beaten up.

So, here I am. Committed to a three-year stay in the vibrantly diverse financial hub of London, lecturing at London Business School (on talent management), speaking at conferences and events around Europe and the Middle East (on the new world of work and multigenerational workplaces), writing my next book (on the megatrends shaping the world of work and what the landscape will look like after the recession), and enjoying more "work-life balance" than I had expected (it may take the full three years to stop feeling like a tourist in one of the world's great tourist destinations!).

My next blog entry will be on the four trend areas everyone should be tracking. The one after that will be a comment on the recent government scandals in the UK and what they can teach us about what happens when government loses touch with the people (this is going to be a positive spin on SA government).

So stay tuned if you are one of those who'd like a small insight into what happens after comes next - a view from an African in London.