SOME MORE IDEAS WORTH SPREADING

TED has transformed the world of presenting. Presenters now learn their presentations - no scripts, barely any notes. They line up with their stories and they practise, boy, do they practise.

The 2017 London Business School TEDx event was on Friday; the standard was higher than ever. But there’s a problem. In a world of virtually universal competence and consistency little stands out unless it’s exceptional.  Here were some highlights from the day’s insights and entertainment during which some ideas worth spreading were spread.

We had  presentations on the importance of dance, on radical developments in reading for the blind - “seeking the holy braille,” on how bilingualism is like having two eyes whilst we monolinguists are one-eyed unfortunates, on finding whose live saving heart tissue was donated to you and the emotions this stirred, on narcissism, on colonising Mars and much, much more.

Here are a few “aha!” observations:

Sangeeta Bhatia who talked about nano-sized cameras - in effect tiny particles that can roam your body seeking cancer cells and which are flushed out in your urine.

She said:
“OK where are we going with this?”

I love that - where we are going is early cancer detection and longer lives…is that a dream? Not much longer…anyway

“We all need dreams to help us keep pushing forwards”

***

Lucy Kellaway who has given up her cushy job writing for the Financial Times and writing so well that she is probably the foremost management writer of our times constantly pricking the pomposity of the corporate world. On being asked how she would make Maths (which she’ll be teaching) more fun she retorted:
“Fun? Why should Maths be fun? I want to make it clearer.”

***

Rafe Offer who set up Sofar Sounds abandoned a career in global marketing with companies like Diageo. Sofar organises intimate, secret and small musical gigs for people who want to listen and savour quietly. It’s gone global and is operating in 300 cities worldwide. You only get to hear what’s happening, and where, the day before they happen. Inevitably (this is the London Business School hosting this TEDx event after all)

Rafe was asked:

“How do you scale this?” to which he replied
“We scale it by staying small.”

Interesting and right. The root of Sofar’s success is its intimacy and lack of big scale concert-venue paraphernalia. These are not events; they are “happenings.” Too many brands betray their original magic in the quest to grow. I don’t see Rafe making that mistake.

***

Renier Zeldenrust is in the construction business in complex environments. Like Mars. Why go to Mars and beyond? The silica rich earth on Mars and the precious metals like titanium and nickel in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter that’s why. There’s a gold rush into space about to happen.


We need to have more radical, important and inspiring conversations like these more often. We just need to think and debate more deeply.

LET'S START ALL OVER AGAIN

The morning sun is shining on the Royal Geographical Society, London Business School MBA students are smiling as they meet the torrent of delegates to the 2016 TED x event they’re hosting here. The event is called “CntrlAltDel”. There are sixteen speakers TED style - 18 minutes each. It’s day of reflection, a day of “Alt”. A day of “Ant” too…. Anticipation…

There were some interesting insights and thoughts. Here are my top six:

• Don’t be frightened of AI …the quicker it grows the smarter we’ll get because that’s what human beings do; they improve as the bar is raised. Watch out for chess standards going up.
• We tend to be in conflict denial (in case we make things worse and have a row). The energy from conflict is a bonus. So embrace conflict - work with it.
• Two models. Aviation and Medicine. In aviation every mistake is admitted to, analysed and learnt from. Result: continually improving safety record. In Medicine there’s cover up, denial and blame on luck not human error.
• We talk about leadership. How about “followership”? How about creative, reactive followership as in Tango dancing? How can I (follower) respond to their (leader) moves to build on and enhance their directions?
  

• Innovation? Forget blue-sky thinking. How about, instead, a programme to stop doing those stupid things which have settled into the default behaviour of an organisation?
• How about a new way of creating imagery in sexual education. Instead of, as in Baseball…”pitcher, catcher, getting to first, second, third base, home-run, striking out”, how about instead of that scenario a Pizza metaphor? Sharing, having the usual (or being more adventurous) or simply asking what someone wants?

It’s Pizza and Tango that have most stayed in my mind. In creative thinking (not just sex) it’s Pizza that wins as it is interrogative. It’s not about command and control. You can do it anywhere and you don’t need to dress up.

“Shall we?
What would you like?
Shall we share?
How about a Take-Away?”

The Tango model is even more intriguing. It’s also described as “partner dancing”. (And incidentally a therapeutic version was created a decade ago called Tangolates - derived from the core position strengthening concepts of Pilates.) The three stage process that speaker Sue Cox described as “embrace> connect> collaborate” sounds like a useful way to start working together and a better model than “the leader tells and the rest obey” model.

Was the day worthwhile? Of course. Entertaining, refreshing and thought-provoking.

By the way I wonder if TED as a format isn’t a bit TIRED…speeches, many too long for our shortening attention spans…all a bit too self-important?

In today’s world everyone is a competent speaker. Presenting is uniformly good. Note free, relaxed and articulate. This brings its own challenges. You have to be really exceptional to stand out.
But as an experience my conclusion is this. Prolonged listening and thinking is good for our weary brains.

WE'RE GOING TO LIVE TO A HUNDRED

Do you remember the 1980 TV series “Fame”? It was about the New York School of Performing Arts. This week I remembered one of the songs in it.
“Fame …. I’m going to live forever
Baby, remember my name”

It was no surprise to hear at the London Business School this week that we had moved into an era where there was a fair certainty most would live to a hundred. Hurray… that’ll keep King William pretty busy. 80 million telegrams….or will they do it the other way round - send e-mails to the families of those whose members miss the century - “hard luck!”

The thesis is this. Governments and Corporations don’t know what to do with the oldies. But we can’t afford to support people for 35 years after retirement. Pensions used to pay out for only 5 or so years and then “aagghh!”

So we’ll have to work to 80….and the question is doing what exactly? Bricklaying, digging, riot policing?

The plan on paper looks fine - we learn up to 22 then hone that learning into practical, high earning work for 20 years then take a new learning sabbatical and emerge to do good work but much less well paid and at age 65 - 70 pause before embarking on a decade or so of creative mentoring before, aged 80, heading for Southampton for the cruise ships.

Talking about an abrupt change to pension arrangements is not something governments will ever do - suicide is something they tend to try and avoid.

Do you remember the film 1976 Logan’s Run which depicts a dystopian future society in which population and the consumption of resources are maintained in equilibrium by killing everyone who reaches the age of thirty thereby preventing overpopulation? Thought not.

Nature will use its cocktail of plague, pestilence and natural disaster to control population growth but what are those who make it through this going to do? The alarming data from a US University who’ve conducted research into MBA graduate aspirations over 20 years is that the new cohort is a bit different.

• 1/3 say they won’t have children
• 1/3 say their work is all
• 1/s say they’d negotiate equal work rights in marriage (if they got married…. If!!!)

We are considering the intractable problem of irreversibility. If you marry at 20 and make a mistake it’s an 80 year error or worse - it could turn out to be 4 errors of  20 years each with a devastating impact on your wealth.

But don’t despair.

The solutions are threefold:

• Grandchildren
• Technology
• Creative thinking

It’s seriously time to stop thinking about WORK but to see work as life and creative and fun and carry on doing it as long as we can disguising our visible age by technology and cosmetics.

After all did anyone know the genius PD James was 90 odd when she died still writing? Oh and Melvyn Bragg above is 80.

OUT OF AFRICA

At the TEDx Conference run by the London Business School at the Royal Geographical Society on April 24th there was one stand out presentation.

Gareth Cliff at 37 is regarded as a stalwart broadcaster in South Africa. He is the founder of the Cliff Central radio station which has the slogan - “Uncensored. Unscripted. Unradio”.

Cliff is a contrarian who has created a show which he describes as follows:-

“real conversation about everything in the news, guests, edgy material and a healthy dose of inspiration and intelligence. Without limits... there will be entertainment, provocative content and unhinged reality.”

His talk was inspiringly positive. No doubt he ridicules the absurd and has rows with politicians but in modern Africa he can. His thesis was about the new found freedom of speech and the explosive effect on the continent’s growth this would bring.

Digital is the new voice of Africa with over 900,000 mobile subscriptions. Now everyone is a broadcaster. By 2018 Africa will have overtaken the USA for smart phone ownership.

The story of democratisation was novel in the context of an African narrative of Ebola, Boko Haram, Somalian piracy and 91 year old Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Cliff talked about this old man to whom something happened recently which went viral.

Mugabe fell awkwardly on some stairs after addressing supporters in Harare. The blameless bodyguards have all been fired albeit not executed. Now in the past this minor incident would have been censored but this is 2015 and not only did it get full coverage but the satirists have got to work. The web was full of Mugabe in action from breakdancing to football and more. Cliff mildly observed that personally he had no reason to make fun of a very old man but wasn’t it great that everyone out there thought it was safe now to take a pop at this long serving dictator.

Cliff’s vision of Africa was impressive. It may be far from perfect in pockets, for instance he and the South African President Jacob Zuma are unlikely to be bosom buddies after Cliff posted a piece to him explaining what a crap job Zuma was doing.

Recently Cliff questioned the cost and need for a very expensive public funeral for a footballer called Senzo. Imagine a state funeral for a Wayne Rooney. There was an explosion of outrage from people calling him racist to which he responded in his blog:

“I was called every kind of vulgar thing by a horde of the least eloquent, most furious, marauding lunatics I didn’t know, and who couldn’t have all known Senzo either.”

Hurray! They are out there in the open talking, shouting and even laughing.  Democracy and free speech works.

Postscript to the BT Soap Opera.

To conclude it’s not working at BT.  The engineer due to fix up the TV (three weeks after we’d moved house) was about to go to our old address and said he was unable to come to the right address for “health and safety reasons”. Aaagghh!!!!!

MAGICAL YES; MAGIC I'M NOT SO SURE

There are words that get into the management lexicon like empowerment, disruption and magic. Magic has migrated from football commentary. It has a connotation of achieving the impossible. The old mantra of the Saatchi Brothers “nothing is impossible” has been reborn.

Now I’m gravely suspicious of magicians and confidence tricksters. I don’t believe the impossible becomes possible by sleight of hand or deception.

But I love stories of the quirky and learning things I didn’t know. The first this week is about powdered alcohol. It’s called Palcohol and is said (ho, ho) to give new meaning to “Dry Martini”. You can spike up food, drink surreptitiously at an alcohol-free event or quickly get blind drunk by snorting it (best used probably when listening to your chairman).

The second I learned on Friday. It’s how to do brilliant research if you’re a pick pocket. Erect a sign which says “Pick pockets operate in this area” and just watch everyone who, as they pass, will furtively touch the pocket in which they keep their wallet letting you know which pocket to pick.

This was at a TEDx conference in London put on by the London Business School. This story was told by Paul Craven who’s a behavioural economist. Paul is also a magician and worked at Goldman Sachs.  Sorry it’s the same thing.

The conference theme was “magic” although most of the speakers only loosely referred to it. One made me laugh when talking about corporate transparency she said that “if we’re going to be naked we’d better look good.” Not magic but funny and true.

My concern about magic in business is that the practice of magic focuses on our gullibility and how easily our senses are led astray. Our eyes are juddering, low resolution cameras creating low grade film. Our short term memories are frail. We are vulnerable to shysters.

So when another speaker spoke enthusiastically in praise of the magic of brands overruling facts she left us wondering if branded snake oil was worth more than unbranded snake oil because of marketing skill or consumer credulity or simply because at least we know it’s always going to be reliable snake oil.

We may be vulnerable but there’s more to it. Human beings enjoy fun, like surprises, like nice presentation, like good news but we are not stupid. We can sniff out a phoney and a magician.
There is one thing that we want and that’s “authenticity”. We like brands and tend to trust them because we know where they come from and we know the owners have skin in the game. Magical (the adjective) is fine but leave magic (the act) for the stage. It doesn’t fit with the new transparent world where Warren Buffett predicting the comeuppance of crooks in finance said: “you only know who’s bathing naked when the tide goes out.”

Let’s hope whoever it is at least they look good because we like nice people and nice presentation.

WE NEED TO DISRUPT THE WAY WE THINK

You’ll have heard of TED (Technology Entertainment Design) which is the 18 minute speech-bite business of the great, good and not-so-good sharing their ideas with an audience of millions. Biggest thing since pastrami. And more addictive. Check it out.

They came to London and together with the London Business School ran a day with 24 slots. The broad topic was disruption and now I’m knackered but inspired. Nine hours of iconoclasm has that effect. For the longer write-up watch this space. But just for now settle for Andy.

Andy Stefanovich. With a name like that you have an unfair start in life. His biog describes him thus:

“As Chief Curator and Provocateur at Prophet, Andy has earned a reputation as one of the most disruptive and effective advisors in business.”

Imagine a bespectacled, curly headed man of medium height seemingly on ecstasy, tequila and who’s been trained by Tom Peters to do it like him but louder, faster and without pause.

Andy spoke about business just being an excuse for him because it was his way of filling himself up with thoughts and inspiration much like people who go into a museum and in awe of what they see are transformed into a state of museum-mentality which is what we all aspire to since the admission fee to life is our life and with stakes that high not being inspired the whole time is crazy and this applies to holidays too which he takes with his family a month at a time in New York in a kind of erratical-sabbatical soaking up and distilling of that Soho energy and then getting back to disrupting lazy businesses with a storm of ideas and demolition and inspiring people to a better world which they’ll create by inspiring each other through delight demand and design and you try saying all this without taking one single breath no I swear not one and regarding the full stop like the condemned man regards a bullet namely to be at all costs if possible avoided thank you

Andy was brilliant.

Life is uncertain but too full of possibilities for us not to try and make it even better which means disrupting ourselves from comfort to new discoveries.

See. It’s catching.

THE HELICOPTER WORLD OF MONETISATION

The occasion: The London Business School Summit on Technology and Media 25/02/11
The speaker: Dr. Bobby Rao, ex Vodafone Marketing Director, now founding partner in Hermes Venture Partners.

We’ve all had that moment. One of sheer unbridled hatred of the cleverest boy in the school. Who gets all the prizes; who gets all the girls. That’s Bobby. The coolest and most suave presenter I’ve seen.

1. We are living in the midst of a game where we are all asking “where’s the ball?” Because there’s been a collision of three markets: the internet; media; consumer electronics - between them worth $3 trillion.  And the legs of each has been kicked away.
   
2. Historically media has thrived on scarcity – now through digitisation, high speed Broadband and the low price of storage, scarcity is over.
   
3. You can fight scarcity by focusing on live events. Or you can go for quality (iPad and iPhone). Or you can monetise the new usage occasions there are.
   
4. But recognise this is a new personal market meaning advertisers must really understand individual people. So who has got the best information? That’s why Facebook is valued at c. $70 billion.
   
5. Yes that’s what Bobby used to see what was going on in Egypt via live video in Tahrir Square as it happened. BBC didn’t have a chance against what they now call “pro-sumers” (producers and consumers.)
   
6. To monetise all this  we must charge people in the right way and the right amount. It’s not about how many eyeballs any more it’s about whose eyeballs and what’s going on behind those eyeballs.
   
7. Yet marketers - an “avoid-failure”, in-transit-between-jobs bunch - are conservative and lagging behind the changes that have happened already.
   
8. And of course we are living in the middle of a valuation bubble (what was later described by James Bromley CEO of Mail Online as descending from the “peak of inflated expectation” phase into the “trough of disillusionment”).
   
9. But be aware that this $3 billion game will not be played on the small market Euro stage (let alone the tiny market UK stage.) It’ll be played out between Asia and the USA.
   
10. It’s about customer knowledge, customer experience and a scale of population big enough to pay for the weaponry the big guys need. It’s a good time to be a customer and a spectator watching them - Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Omnicom and WPP. But remember - no one knows where the ball is yet.

Thank you LBS.

I’m off to look for that ball.