46 posts from 2008

10 Things that made my 2008 remarkable

Keep on rocking in the free market
Keep on rocking in the free market
  1. Becoming a parent (Large enough to fill all ten spaces and more thereto)
  2. Getting a publishing deal (The book is out in September 2009 - I will set up a separate site for it sometime in April).
  3. Playing to more clients in more places than ever before (Istanbul, Moscow, The Maldives, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, London, Johannesburg, Bucharest, New York and all over Scandinavia!)
  4. Meeting Richard Branson
  5. Seeing Peter Fisk get hundreds of people dancing to "Crazy Nights" by Kiss with the message that "We live in Crazy Times!"
  6. Working with the good people of Identity Works
  7. Seeing how people react in the face of drastic change (bar the odd columnist and populistic firebrand, I'm optimistic about our resiliency)
  8. Discovering EconTalk and KCRW's The Treatment. Two wonderful podcasts that have made walking the kids blissful even when the rain is pouring.
  9. Discovering Apple Keynote (Always the laggard)
  10. Getting Abba's Björn Ulvaeus to respond to my analysis of his song "Du är min man"
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Here's to Future Days

Earlier this year, I recorded a video about present and future trends. My New Year's gift is to share this with the world in the hope that it will inspire us to make things better in 2009. And blog more!

Nine Trends for 2009

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The Season of Good Intentions

So, it's that time of the year again when people and companies compete in gift-giving. A few decades ago, this litterally meant "keeping up with the Joneses" in a race where the computer games should be funkier than your neighbours' and the jewels should shimmer more. Nowadays, the race is on to give clean water, books, cereal, venture capital, crops, goats, syringes and medicine to the place recently referred to as "The Third World". In a modern version of Medieval indulgences, people want to ensure that their halo shines the brightest this holiday season. There are a number of problems with this trend. Before I go into them, a small recap of how we got there might be in order.

Once upon a time, foreign aid was handled by government agencies. Large, faceless organizations who, supposedly, doled out money left and right. The rumour then was that most of the money was wasted. Who cared if the rumour was true? It sounded plausible. After all, governments have wasted tax money in many other cases. Looming in the wings were the NGO's. The real NGO's. The Red Cross. Amnesty International. Greenpeace. And so on. Their weapon of choice became the media. "Look at this image of a starving child - now, do something!". Then came the rock stars. Band Aid. Live Aid. USA for Africa. From another direction came three simple letters. C. S. R. Originally an American concept designed for an American tax system wherein companies pay less tax but are expected to "contribute" more to the society in which they operate, Corporate Social Responsibility quickly gained traction in Europe. Having seemingly forgotten that the higher tax rates of Europe are designed to outsource "contributions" to the government, everyone started raving about the importance of CSR. Few knew what it meant. Or rather, most people had their own definition of what these three letters really meant. Many consultants and conference organizers later, we seemed to have an answer. CSR meant that everyone should "contribute". In his or her own way. Instead of putting pressure on government aid agencies, we should all chip in a few dollars every now and then on top of our tax bill. Whom to give it to is a personal choice reflecting our media habits and our personality. People in the know pick arcane causes and countries. The default choice is something agricultural to someone in Africa. This is where the problems occur. Many larger NGO's and Aid Agenices today face a much more fragmented climate wherein large-scale, coordinated operations are increasingly harder to undertake. In some cases, the tsunami disaster of 2004, there is too much ear-marked money lying around with nobody to give it to. In other, more frequent, cases, there is neither money nor infrastructure since the project hasn't been "hip" enough to sponsor and/or generated the media attention needed. 
For all the goats and syringes we give away this Christmas, it would have been better to shop away and made sure the money entered the tax system as VAT, profit tax and employee salaries. At least in Europe. That way, the funds would have reached the necessary knowledge, experience and contacts to create real, long-term change.
Or we should abolish the "benevolent" side of government all togheter. Or make contributions tax-deductable. 

Whatever you think, have a Happy Holiday season! 

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Strange and exciting times

My friend Bruno Guissani quit blogging. He cites time issues and the fact that the blog "not the right tool to develop and explore" some of his new ideas. I understand him. I love the concept of a blog and I urge all my clients to start one yet I find myself more and more challenged to post regularly. This past month has been dominated by bookwriting (my book, tentatively called "Invisible Trends", is out in September 2009 on Cyan Communications), parenting and lots of travelling: Düsseldorf, Moscow, The Maldives and Istanbul. Here are some quick insights from the last three locations:

Ex-communist minister ranting
Ex-communist minister ranting
Moscow: I spoke at a large agricultural exhibition and shared the stage with an ex-communist minister of agricultural machinery. He made the point that Russian agricultural production volumes are way down from the peak in 1970 and that this is a bad thing. He got wild cheers. As did I every time I mentioned the "financial crisis" (go figure...).

The Maldives: Spread across 1400 kilometres and thousands of archipelagoes, The Maldives is most people's idea of paradise. It's in fact really, really dull. Unless you enjoy watching couples holding hands or being in a hand-holding couple yourself. I had a great session with the people of PADI so I had an excuse. 

Istanbul: It was time for the annual Marketing Conference again and this time I was the chairman. We had Chan Kim (of Blue Ocean Strategy fame), Don Sull and many others in the house. Despite the sluggish economy, we had a full house for both days. 

Thank you to Mikael and SXL for making very interesting posts. Surely a lot of people will agree with you at the moment. The times we live in are as strange as anything I've ever seen. However, any hopes/dreams/thoughts/opinions about the demise of capitalism is a gross overestimation of what we're going through.  Bubbles have always popped. I counted at least 18 severe downturns in the global economy in the past century (if we include milder ones, the figure shoots up to over 50). Every single time, a number of newspapers, thinkers, writers and politicians talked about the demise of "the free market" or of "capitalism and its cronies". Every time, they returned. Often stronger than ever. The secret, I believe, lies in aging. Two decades from now, when we're due for another go-around in the crisis carousel, most of today's top managers and politicians will be long gone. They'll be sitting somewhere remote saying "I told you so" while a new cadre of people have entered the stage for whom the current downturn, however sharp it may be, will be a distant memory. Many people are also forgetting that even in the most severe downturn, most people keep their jobs and a majority of firms keep on doing well. The decomposition of the GDP and the stock market index reveals the many upsides of turbulence. 

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When descriptions and predictions fail

In his renowned "Blink", Malcolm Gladwell describes how many top athletes have a complete inability to accurately describe how and why they're successful at what they do. To do and to describe are two completely different talents.

An incredibly funny (in a funny-sad kind of way) example of this is Iceland's president Olafur Ragnar Grimsson at the Walbrook Club in London back in 2005 explaining the "Icelandic Miracle". Some reasons for Iceland's success, according to Grimsson, include:
  • "A strong work ethic"
  • "Focusing on the results rather than the process"
  • "Icelanders are risktakers"
Read the whole speech here. 

Post Script:
Many will read Grimsson's speech and ridicule his recipe for success now that the Icelandic soufflé has collapsed. That is tragic. Because what the world needs now more than ever is risktakers willing to try new things, new ideas and new ways and risktaking sometimes ends in failure, otherwise it wouldn't be called "risk". 

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Two truly remarkable booksbr

One of the perks of being a TED member is being a part of their book club. Let me rephrase that. One of the TED perks is supposed to be their book club but for some strange reason I seem to get only about 1-2 mailings per year and not the promised 3-4. Furthermore, in more than half of the mailings I get, the books are...not my taste, to put it diplomatically. Last mailing brought an exception.

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society
True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society
Farhad Manjoo
Farjhad Manjoo's True Enough is a book I wish I wrote myself. It deals with the fragmentization of the media and how that process, in turn, increases relativism and an increasingly cavalier attitude towards previously firm concepts like truth and fact. The books takes a highly American perspective but Manjoo's accessible and inclusive style of writing means that even the most oblivious reader will be engaged by his anecdotes and examples. This book will shake your belief in impartiality.
The Post-American World
The Post-American World
Fareed Zakaria
The second book was even better. Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World sounds like an anti-US rant but is an insightful, cautious tale about the rise of previous empire and the state of the world in the early 2000's with two empires rising - India and China - and one seemingly crumbling or, at least, shaking. What makes Zakaria's book so enjoyable is the ease with which he deals with centuries of development in just one paragraph and his sober perspective on China and India. This is not another uncritical appraisal of these complicated and often overestimated giants but rather a highly readable portrait of a geo-political playing field that is about to change drastically. 
Other non-TED books that have flown by me lately are:
I really should dislike Thomas Friedman. His often simplistic soundbite-driven rhetoric gets on my nerves but he somehow manages to be liked. Not just by me, of course. His latest book was originally entitled "Green is the new Red, White and Blue". I can only imagine that his publisher told him that he has an international brand name and following to take care of and the book was swiftly renamed to capitalize on his 2005 book "The World is Flat". That's a shame. The book is a US-centric call to arms about the climate issue. Friedman is a master of personal anecdotes and hyperbole and this books is no exception ("Change your leaders, not your lightbulbs") but all his conclusions are concerned with America's future role in the world and Friedman telling US leaders to make a greener society the number one objective. This is probably important but is bound to leave many readers, like me, disengaged.

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Ten reasons the Financial Collapse makes me depressed

  1. House prices drop and, all of a sudden, a lot of people that were previously barred from entry to the stratospheric real estate market can buy their first apartment or house. Boo-hoo!
  2. Investment bankers lose their jobs and may be force to address the difficult question: What should I really do with my life? Poor souls.
  3. Banks are forced to abandon super-complex financial products with unpronounceable names and focus on long-term customer value instead. The horror!
  4. Wall Street becomes just another street and not some symbol of "The Ultimate Power". Sad, sad, sad.
  5. Pubs and bars around financial districts won't be full of cocky, arrogant, young male MBA's bragging about bonuses and BMW's. I'll miss you guys!
  6. People will be forced to save to make large purchases instead of getting them right now through fast, cheap credit.   Unfair, I say.
  7. Old, well established financial brands go bankrupt and are lost forever. All they did wrong was...well, everything. But c'mon a large marketplace should be open to the mediocre too, right? At least if they're American.
  8. New, small companies with new ideas about how finance should be done will enter the market. Imagine that - amateurs* taking over the market.
  9. People will realize that risk does not alway equal reward...which it should.
  10. The financial system might actually have to return to being part of society, not just exist in its own little microcosm. Like taking Michael Jordan and forcing him to play in a team - as a team.

* Amateur comes from the Latin word for love, "amare". Love has no place in money markets, dammit!
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The Genius of Piers Fawkes and The Tragedy in Sarajevo

On Thursday, I had the great pleasure of having Piers Fawkes of PSFK.com as a guest lecturer in my class, Trendspotting and Future Thinking. The talk focused on the shift toward a world where a community of creators are striving to make things better. The argument wasn't necessarily new but what made it such a delight to listen to was Fawkes' use of specific examples (mixing the pure fun grassroots creationism of Sleeveface with Nike's Considered project). If you get a chance to listen to his message in the coming year, don't miss it. A video of the talk will be published on SSES.com shortly.

On a much sadder note, Sarajevo's first gay festival had to close early because of hooligan attacks on the participants. It's not the first time it's happened. Coward attacks on Pride festivals have struck Poland, Russia, Sweden and other places. What makes this particularly tragic, however, is the vulnerability of Sarajevo. As many readers of this blog are aware, I got married in Sarajevo. The city hosted the Olympics the same year Los Angeles did. It used to be a melting pot of nationalities, culture and ideas. U2 played there. 99% of all people I meet and see when I am there are progressive, modern and well-educated. Few cling to the atrocities of the early 1990's. They host one of the best film festivals in the world every year in August. But the city is also in quite poor shape economically and needs all the positive promotion it can get, just like many other cities in the former Yugoslavia. That's why headlines about attacks on gay parades are catastrophic. Sarajevo will not be of particular economic significance in the coming decades but it could become a haven of "soft power" and return to the ideas of mixing people, ideas and cultures. The only obstacle is narrow-minded fundamentalism - nationalist or religious.  
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Return to civilization

For the past few weeks, I have escaped the medial doom-mongering following the woes of the financial world, and stayed on a remote island far away from civlization. The sole company has been my family (including in-laws) and my trusty laptop where I've embarked on my third attempt in a year to write a book. The first to attempts managed to land me a book deal so I must have done something right. The book is now schuled for Europe-wide publication in the autmumn of 2009. 

Here are some other thoughts that hit me during the 14-day hiatus:
  • No, the world is not ending and the collapse of several banks is not a "sign that the financial markets aren't working" as some suggest. Quite the contrary. Financial firms have for too long dabbled in products and services far too complex for their own good. This has generated windfall profits and with that came arrogance and smugness and a general feeling that nobody else gets it. That's right, we didn't. And now we have to bail you out. Financial firms should refocus on good old customer value and work strenuously to simplify their products in the next decade. 
  • I hope more airlines follow in Alitalia's footsteps. We tried to fly some guests down to our wedding in Sarajeco using Alitalia a few years ago. Big mistake. Five days before the big event, they cancelled their flight between Milan and Sarajevo and offered to fly the guests there a week later. No apologies. No refunds. State-owned, nationalist anachronisms like Alitalia and SAS have no place in a modernized, globalized world with high demands for service and quality. I would much rather fly Singapore airlines between Stockholm and London than the shabby SAS MD-80's currently populating that route. (This was my Tyler Brule-moment. Sorry about that).
  • Too many trendspotters (me included) act like birdwatchers who have spotted extremely rare birds and now try to describe them to a gawking world ("Look how amazing this is!" or "Just imagine when..."). This may be amusing but won't generate any real change in how individuals or organizations act. It's as if a personal trainer started to juggle with a 200 lbs weight and told you to do the same...it probably wouldn't happen (at least not in my case). What I will try to focus more on in my trendspotting sessions are the implications for our "mental software". What skills and mental capabilities do we need to acquire in the emerging landscape? 
  • I f**king rock! Check out my showreel. Thanks to Brendan of Speakers for Business and Rob at Fifth Frame!
Magnus Lindkvist Showreel
  • Finally, a section from my book that I've already edited out:

Atlantis, Eldorado, Outer Space and The Future

"Everyone has a vested interest in the future.  Not just an interest - a rampant passion. I have noticed it in the unique selling power of the word “future” used in seminar topics or on invitations. The reason is that we will never actually see the future. This is not some doomsday scenario but a simple fact. As soon as the future reaches us, it’s transformed into the more mundane present and then quickly passes into the oblivion of the past. Hence, the future becomes this bright shining mysterious place not unlike other mystical places like Atlantis, Eldorado or Outer Space. What will be? How will we live? What will humanity be like? Questions resembling eternal riddles like “Is there life in outer space?” This makes the future a source for contention. Whose vision and ideas are more worthy? Whose future is better or scarier? Rulers, politicians, management gurus and witch doctors have always hi-jacked the future with their own, superior vision of tomorrow and in so doing forced the powers that be, above or below, into submission. You could say that the entire political discourse is in reality one large battle for the future and the resources needed to get there. "


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Feelbad doesn't work

I've had two experiences in the past week where I've reconfirmed something I realized a few years back: feelbad stories don't work. At least not in a speaking context.

When I started speaking publicly in 2001, I spent a few years scarmbling to find my message and my way of delivering it. This was a process that entailed making lots of mistakes and delivering many lacklustre performances. I apologize if any of my "clients" from back then (few paid me) are reading this right now.
One of the things I tried was to get personal and tell people about bad experiences I've had (no more and no less than the next person) and how they tied together with things we see in society today.
The result of these anecdotes became painfully predictable. They always bombed. They killed the energy in the room. They landed with a thud like a damp cloth over the audience and I had to spend the rest of the session trying to get back to zero.
As if by some subconsciously self-destructive force, I tried this again last week. Twice!
I spoke to a bank on Tuesday and opened by drawing a parallel between some recent bad exepriences I've had and the credit crunch. Thud! Damp cloth!
On Saturday, I spoke to car dealers and disclosed my disastrous experience when buying a Volvo last year. Pffft! Deflation! Zero energy left in the room.
Jill Bolte Taylor's famous TED talk, however, is a masterpiece in transforming personal pain into optimism and energy. I will stay well clear of that territory from now on. She takes feelbad and makes it feelgood.

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