TAKING AN OVERVIEW

Take a view of global activity.

How many executives flying to how many meetings?

How many decisions made by jet lagged brains?

How many ulcers?

How much fuel consumed?

How much carbon emitted?

How much food eaten?

The most comforting thing is that we can look at it from our dispassionate cloud and smile.

So if you have a minute take a look.

Our Skies...

This is a 24 hour observation of all of the large aircraft flights in the world, (recorded by the 'plane flight transponders, via Geo-stationary orbital satellites), patched together and condensed down to about a minute. (viz. what you see is 24 hrs duration compressed into 1 minute).

From space we look like a beehive of activity. You could tell it was summer time in the north by the sun's footprint over the planet. You could see that it didn't quite set in the extreme north and it didn't quite rise in the extreme south.

We are taught about the Earth's tilt and how it causes summer and winter and have had to imagine just what is going on, now the "tilt" is visible.

With this 24 hour observation of aircraft travel on the earth's surface we get to see the daylight pattern move as well across the face of the planet.

SPEND YOUR MONEY ON COACHING YOUR PEOPLE

JWT have just published, as ever from that excellent agency, a beautifully crafted paper on why you should spend money on advertising in a recession.

I don’t get the “spend-your-way-out-of-disaster” argument that JWT and Gordon Brown are putting about.

I prefer the McKinsey argument which simply says – whatever else you do survive; this is not a time for dogma; it’s a time for do-what-it-takes and looking after the cash.

And I should add to this looking after your customers – present, past and potential so as to avoid massive revenue fall-off.

Simply coach your people to be brilliant at customer service.

Make people feel good about you and your product.

There’s never been a more important time to coach your own people to help you survive.