Mike Hohnen

Coaching for personal growth, change and development

General

As the complexity increases… the medium is the problem

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Nielsen Media: even on cellphones, voice spending has been trending downward, with text spending expected to surpass it within three years.

Think about it. Marshall McLuhan noted that the more complex the message the more complex the media you need to use in order to convey that message.
The simplest media form we have is txt messaging ( the most complex is of course f2f ). So here we are in a world of ever rising complexity, trending to ever more simplistic communication forms – no wonder it gets harder and harder to work out solutions.

Hotel room of the future…in your dreams

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When guests need to stay in hotels in 2030, they will still want a good night’s sleep in comfortable surroundings. The key difference is that the experience will be personalised to their individual needs and taste via virtually invisible technology. This technology will monitor and anticipate physical, emotional and mental needs and desires for a healthier and happier state of being.

Almost any surface or fabric in the 2030 hotel room will be capable of electronic enhancement, whether it is scent production, acting as a visual display or speaker, or as a source of ambient sound.

Read the full article her

Find that magic spot

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Ken Robinson on Passion from The School of Life on Vimeo.

Ken Robinson believes that everyone is born with extraordinary capability. So what happens to all that talent as we bump through life, getting by, but never realizing our true potential?

For most of us the problem isn’t that we aim too high and fail – it’s just the opposite – we aim too low and succeed.

We need to find that magic spot where our natural talent meets our personal passion. This means we need to know ourselves better. Whilst we content ourselves with doing what we’re competent at, but don’t truly love, we’ll never excel. And, according to Ken, finding purpose in our work is essentially to knowing who we really are.

Get ready to unleash your inner fervor as Ken takes to our pulpit to inspire you to follow your passion.

Sir Ken Robinson is a leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources, working with governments and the world’s leading cultural organizations. Born in Liverpool, he was Director of The Arts Project (1985-89), and is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Warwick. He was knighted in 2003 for his contribution to education and the arts. Recent publications include Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative (2001) and The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything (2009).

This secular sermon took place at Conway Hall on Sunday 13 March 2011

Succeed Through Service

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“Ritz-Carlton residences and destination clubs, take part in Succeed Through Service partnering with local schools and youth organizations worldwide, many of which work closely with children facing economic, social or personal challenges. After just two years, The Ritz-Carlton has helped over 6,000 youngsters around the world. “Succeed Through Service focuses on giving young people a bright future through life-skills training, career exploration, and service-learning projects,” says Sue Stephenson, vice president, community footprints. “As the name suggests, Succeed Through Service is all about helping young people thrive and inspiring them do their best.”

Read the full article here

CEO -> Chief Emotions Officer

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Chip Conly writes in the Huffington Post:

In this knowledge era, execution is all about people: how to harness and inspire the potential of those we work with. And, at the heart of people are our emotions, the mysterious internal weather that either propels or penalizes us. After 24 years of being a CEO, I’ve come to realize that the best amongst us are truly Chief Emotions Officers as we are the “emotional thermostats” for our organizations with studies showing that a typical leader has 50-70% influence over the work climate of their team.

Read the full post here

Perfection or Differentiation?

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These two graphs may look quite harmless, but actually together they illustrate a dilemma that faces many hospitality and service companies today.

Diminishing returns


The blue curve illustrates the phenomenon know as diminishing returns. Well known in the sports world but also observed in the business world. In short it is the experience you have when you start out on something and relatively quickly get a sense of progress – but once you have dealt with the ‘low hanging fruit’ it gets harder and harder and you need to put in more and more effort but at the same time you are getting less and less in return.
Shaving 1/10 of a second off the world record takes a lot of work

In a big picture perspective my experience is that the service industries in general went through significant innovation and improvements up through the 90‘s but that in the 00’s we have by and large, mainly seen incremental improvements. Slightly better versions of already well known ideas. In a sense several service sectors are finding them selves in a ‘cul-de-sac’ conceptually.

Speed of Change


Opposite this, is the red curve. A model that especially Ray Kurzweil has used to draw our attention to the fact that change is not linear, slow and orderly. But change is occurring around us at an exponential speed. And if you listen to the futurists we ain’t seen noting yet. We are just at the being of this curve, on our way into the steep climb. (If you are not sure that the speed of change is exponential, try and locate a mobile phone that is 5 years old and compare it to the one you have now)

You can see a great clip with Kurzweil explaining all this here

You may even feel that you are not experiencing big changes in your own company just now – but that you are doing things in more or less the same way that you have done for a while – well then there is all the more cause for alarm because you can be sure that your clients are experiencing exponential changes in their lives – and you will not be part of their stakeholder map very soon if you do not realize that.

If you feel that things are under control – you are probably not going fast enough”
Mario Andretti (World champion racing driver)

Where is your focus?


When we look at these two graphs together – it suddenly becomes very clear that the way forward is not to put a huge effort into becoming perfect. I.e working very hard on what we already do in order to get just a little bitt better. Firstly the effort invested will probably not produce more than the famous incremental improvements, but the real danger is that after all that effort we risk getting really good at something that is no longer needed!

So ask your self: What is your focus: Perfection or Differentiation?

This post was very much inspired by this post by Seth Godin