Trends

D’Espresso – New York

June 26, 2016By Mike Hohnen

From the coolhunter:

The new D’Espresso on Madison Avenue (at 42nd) in New York has received more media attention than is generally awarded to a tiny coffee shop in this world of millions of new coffee shops.

The reason for the attention is the fun design by the Manhattan-based nemaworkshop, a team of designers and architects that has created numerous cool retail and hospitality concepts. Founder Anurag Nema took the idea of a coffee shop that looks like a library – giving a nod to the nearby New York Public Library’s Bryant park branch – and turned it on its side. The walls are not lined with books but the floors and ceiling are. Except that it is all an illusion, a life-size image of books printed on custom tiles. Pendant lighting does not hang from the ceiling; it sticks out from the walls.

See the photos here D’Espresso

Purpose goes mainstream…

April 14, 2022By Mike Hohnen

There is a certain interesting buzz in the air.

Maybe it is more than a buzz – maybe it is a fundamental shift..

It started out some years back as just a murmur or a slight rumbling from the initiated. But lately is has slowly risen in volume and my prediction is that before too long it will have gathered further momentum to become an unavoidable roar.

The shift is the call for ‘Purpose’

In a world with limited natural resources, huge inequality, and financial scandals galore, it is no longer comme il faut to do stuff just for money. That applies not just to companies that produce goods and services but is increasingly demanded by individuals as well – a job is no longer just for the money.

A new generation is emerging (see the generation M manifesto). They demand that we do stuff for a reason and it better be a good one – and just in case you are in doubt money is an outcome not a purpose.

The first time this was brought to my attention was 4 years a go sitting on a tree stump in the Rocky Mountains with my friend Lothar Friis. We were having a profound talk about life, business, gigs and all that. And Lothar said “you know in the end it all boils down to one thing: Purpose. If you have a clear purpose you will almost always bee successful in what you do.” That chat stayed with me rumbling around in my subconscious and I started becoming more aware of purpose as a concept.

The next time I noticed purpose was reading Fred Kofmans book Conscious Business.

A conscious business seeks to promote the intelligent pursuit of happiness in all its stakeholders. It produces sustainable, exceptional performance through the solidarity of its community and the dignity of each member.

In the book he says: “People do not consider Business an area to demonstrate their values .. Why not?”. Kofman asks you to think about a person you admire. Why do you admire that person? List the traits on a pice of paper (try it now by the way) What are the values on that list – probably words like integrity, honesty, caring, love, selfishness, you go on… Is that how business and work relations are run – probably not in most cases. Why not ?

He has a point why can’t we run our business with the same set of values that we would like to see in our local community. Well, five year ago you would be told that that is not the best way to maximize profits, but now it seem it just may turnout to be the only way to maximize profits – read on.

Then I read Peter Block’s “The answer to how is Yes” This opened my eyes to the need to ask ‘why’ before we ask ‘how’. The penny dropped. When we ask ‘Why’ we are looking at purpose (If you have not read it please do – it is a very important book.)

“We too often ask “How?” which focuses too closely on the practical way of getting something done and is actually a subconscious expression of society’s emphasis on control of people, time, and cost. Instead, our concentration should be focused on “Why?”. In other words, we need to pay attention to what really matters to us personally, from heart-felt commitments in our private lives to the creation of projects in the workplace. To be able to act on what matters, explains Block, we must reclaim specific qualities, such as intimacy and idealism. Then we can tackle purposeful work as if we were social architects seeking engagement and change.” (Amazon.com)

In 2006 Nikos Mourkogiannis published the book ‘Purpose – the starting point of great companies’ – a book that according to himself influenced John Mackey in his thinking and contributed to the creation of a new ‘movement’ called Conscious Capitalism that now holds thoughtful, exclusive by-invitation-only gatherings (Introduction to Conscious Capitalism).

FOLLOW YOUR HEART – John Mackey

In 2007 the book Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose is published – a book that was later adopted as the foundation for The Conscious Capitalism Institute (CCI)

“Conscious Capitalism is defined to have three elements; that companies should have a purpose transcending profit maximization, are managed for the benefit of all stakeholders and led by evolved, conscious servant leaders.”

By and by purpose has come out of the shadows of idealism and is going mainstream – obviously the financial meltdown of 2007/2008 has help this thinking a lot and contributed to more people have asking the crucial question: Why do we do what we do?

At TED 2010 Simon Sinek presented his ‘Golden Circle’ and showed that the way to the consumers heart starts with ‘why’ and not ‘how’.- Not as new a concept as he would like us to think but he deliveries the message in a very elegant and convincing way. Sinek has also written a great book on this called ‘Start With WHY’ that I can highly recommend.

SIMON SINEK

Then this spring Umair Haque made the case on his Harvard Business Review blog that doing good is not just good per see – it is just better business. The better Business Manifesto and Why Betterness Is Good Business

Clayton M. Christensen, the Author of The Innovators Dilemma, (also on a HBR blog) then shows us all how important purpose is on a personal level. How Will You Measure Your Life?

“Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success”

And finally this summer Dave Ulrich – not exactly a tree hugger – is out with a new book: The why of Work. Arguing in essence that if your employees don’t understand what you greater purpose is and how they can contribute to that they will be less motivated.

This morning in Fast Company we can read : Alex Bogusky Tells All: He Left the World’s Hottest Agency to Find His Soul

“Alex Bogusky, advertising Dadaist, postmodern media manipulator, pop-culture Houdini, daddy of 21st-century advertising, and now a seeker of meaning on the dirt path of life “ .. “ I guess I just don’t aspire to corporate legacy. I’m convinced that the greatness that matters more is the greatness people achieve through helping each other, through collaborating, more than the greatness that’s achieved by grabbing all you can or getting all you can or building all you can”

If you haven’t heard the cry for purpose – you are not listening – and very soon your customers (and your potential employees) are going to be asking you: “What is your purpose by the way?”. And if you don’t have a compelling answer, they will find someone else who does…

Is Forbes asking the wrong question?

May 21, 2016By Mike Hohnen

FORBES INSIGHTS asks the question:

Can webconferences, videoconferences and other virtual meetings really take the place of face-to-face contact?
With travel budgets slashed in the wake of recessionary belt-tightening, companies are increasingly turning to technology as a substitute for in-person contact. Yet business executives overwhelmingly agree that face-to-face meetings are not just preferable but necessary for building deeper, more profitable bonds with clients and business partners and maintaining productive relationships with co-workers.

Predictably the answer to their own survey is that 84% prefer F2F meetings.

But is that the right question to ask if you are trying to understand what is happening in the meeting industry?

Not in my mind it isn’t!

This is the kind of question Kodak asked photographers 5-8 years back: Do you think that digital photos will replace film based photography? No way they all hollered.
This is the question big newspaper publishers asked thier readers 3-4 years ago: “Can you imagine not having a daily morning news paper in print form” Since then a large number of them no longer exist.
This is the question publishing houses where asked 24 months ago “Will the eReader replace books?” – that was before Amazon sold 2 million Kindel’s in 6 months. Now they are not so sure. More on eReaders here

But the reality is this:

This is borne out in Forbes Insights survey, where 58% of respondents said they were travelling for business less today than they were at the beginning of the recession in January 2008, with more than a third (34%) indicating they were travelling much less frequently.

This is my point, it may not be what they prefer – but this is what they do – not because it is better but because it is cheaper, and more convenient.

Surevy: would you prefer to fly Business or Turist?… No brainer right?
But why is tourist class then jam packed and Business reduced to 2 rows that are half empty on many European flights? It is not what we would prefer. It is what we do.

The big danger is that we in the industry stick our heads in the sand as a result of surveys like this – pat each other on the back and knowingly nod to each other: “f2f meeting are better – we know that – they know that. All will return to normal soon, you just wait and see….”

I don’t think so

That is what KODAK thought

The question we should be asking is : Is the market broken? – see this by Seth Godin: “What every mass marketer needs to learn from Groucho Marx”

Read the Forbes Insight survey here

What do you think?

Are you in a broken market?

January 9, 2010By Mike Hohnen

This beautiful comment from Seth Godin struck a raw nerve with me.

In the ongoing discussion that I have been having on this blog and with clients about the meeting market we also need to ask that question: is it a broken market?

Read this and tell me what you think:

What every mass marketer needs to learn from Groucho Marx

Perhaps the most plaintive complaint I hear from organizations goes something like this, “We worked really hard to get very good at xyz. We’re well regarded, we’re talented and now, all the market cares about is price. How can we get large groups of people to value our craft and buy from us again?”

Apparently, the bulk of your market no longer wants to buy your top of the line furniture, lawn care services, accounting services, tailoring services, consulting… all they want is the cheapest. The masses don’t want a better PC laptop. They just want the one with the right specs at the right price. It’s not because people are selfish (though they are) or shortsighted (though they are). It’s because in this market, right now, they’re not listening. They’ve been seduced into believing that all options are the same, and they’re only seeing price. In terms of educating the masses to differentiate yourself, the market is broken.

Fixing this is almost always a losing battle. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean the market cares any longer.

The Marx Brothers were great at vaudeville. Live comedy in a theatre. And then the market for vaudeville was killed by the movies. Groucho didn’t complain about this or argue that people should respect the hard work he and his brothers had put in. No, they went into the movies.

Then the market for movies like the Marx Brothers were making dried up. Groucho didn’t start trying to fix the market. Instead, he saw a new medium and went there. His TV work was among his best (and certainly most lucrative).

It’s extremely difficult to repair the market.

It’s a lot easier to find a market that will respect and pay for the work you can do. Technology companies have been running this race for years. Now, all of us must.

If Wal-Mart or some cultural shift has turned what you do into a commodity, don’t argue. Find a new place before the competition does. It’s not easy or fair, but it’s true. You bet your life.

[Please note that nothing I wrote above applies to niche businesses. In fact, exactly the opposite does. You can make a good living selling bespoke PC laptops or doing vaudeville today, even though the mass of the market couldn’t care a bit. How he got in my pajamas, I’ll never know…]

Blatantly copied from one of my favorite blogs Seth Godin – read more here

Is the meeting industry doomed?

April 14, 2022By Mike Hohnen

Kodak did not loose the market for paper film because of Fuji or Agfa. The market for film was replaced by digital cameras. British Airways need not worry to much about Lufthansa or SAS – Ryan Air is a problem and so on.

In these examples what has happened is that competition has come from where it was least expected and in both cases this competition was initially ignored as not significant – “they are not delivering the kind of quality that we do” – and bam! One day we wake up and Ryan Air is a huge airline business and we all have digital cameras in our pockets – even the pro’s

This has happened in industry after industry ever since the buggy whip business was exterminated by automobiles. Why and how this happens is well documented by Clayton Christensen in his wonderful book : The Innovators Dilemma

The same shift in client behavior is now occurring in the meeting and conference industry. The competition is not from other regular players in the market but from a combination of events that together have created a perfect storm. Once the storm is over the market will never be the same again.

The elements that are causing this are:

1. The financial crisis has forced business to be more careful how they spend their money so they question the value of every thing – if it is not adding value why are we doing it? ROI i now a key requirement – see more here

2. CSR – The realization that we need to curb our Co2 emissions and one of the big sinners in this is of course travel. (It is also a convenient excuse to cut travel cost)

3. Time pressure on every one means that we are are all looking for ways to cram more into the same 24h/7d week /360d year frame – there is now mores stuff to do, read, see than we have ever experienced before and that means prioritizing. Asking one self hard questions like: is this worth the effort ( travel, money, another night away from home etc).

4. Web 2.0 the big shift from web 1.0 is the ability to interact – real time two way communication on the web. Virtual classrooms, breakout rooms – web casts etc. There is a whole new industry that is growing rapidly and that sees a huge opportunity to replace the traditional meeting environment with a virtual environments. Brush up on Web 2.0 and learning here

Points one 1-3 are the problems we would all like to see solved and point 4 seems to be a possible solution. Not perfect but it works and is easy ( Just like digital cameras)

“At IKEA Virtual Meetings should always be first choice”

Progressive business are responding fast. IKEA has a campaign running called Meet More Travel Less

Tandberg, TNT and Vodaphone are others also working on this.

TANDBERG – 100 000 video calls per month – 2500 flights avoided, 2,5M$ saved on business trips (30M$per year) – 17500 man-hour saved per month – 275 tons of CO2 saved per month

TNT – On track to save nearly11,5 $ in 4 years by replacing travels with videoconferencing – ROI:71%

VODAFONE – 25% reduction in business trips in 2 years – Resulting in double digit millions of cost savings

The response from the meeting industry is ahh.. no need to worry, virtual meetings will never be as good as f2f meetings.

Perhaps not but that is exactly what Kodak said about digital cameras, What BA said about the zero service concept from Ryan Air and what the vinyl record producers said about music on CD’s.

So is there no hope for the meeting industry – yes there is but we need to understand how to deliver value. Class rooms and serial power point monologue are not the solution.

The problem with creating value in the traditional meeting and conference set up is that it is very limited – there is often a short term entertainment value, the odd aha experience – but that’s it.

In a situation where we are all under pressure. Supply, by far, outstrips demand in virtually all industries and services – most business’ create meetings and conferences in order to help participants change – but as any one who has tried to get a teenager to clean up their room by telling them to do so, will recognize, we do not change because someone tells us to do so ( there would be no smokers left in the world if that where the case) Telling does not work.

We change when we arrive at our own conclusions. ( if you do not believe me read Change or Die that will help you reach your own conclusion)

So having one or even worse a series of speakers stand up and tell us what to do, think or feel in order to cope with change is relatively useless – the ROI is negligible – and in that connection the speakers fee is not the main cost, it is the time and travel of the participants.

In order to create real change we need to gather people in order for them to interact. Change requires learning and learning is collaborative – no I do not mean 10 min of ‘networking at the coffee break – but real meaningful conversations – deep dialog.

Only through dialog will you get people to reach their own conclusions and then hopefully act on them. Yes we can have inspirational input if it is short, sweet and to the point AND gets people thinking and talking.

But this will require the meeting industry to radically change their formats,( venues, room, seating,speaking formats, tools, etc) those that do will survive those that don’t will join the buggy whip business as interesting business cases for future students to smile at.

This one is for restaurants – and their guests…

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

Presented by Online Education

Getting to grips with the Big Shift

April 21, 2016By Mike Hohnen

[lang_en]For a while now I have been talking to friends and colleagues about this gut feeling that I have, that what we talk about as the economic crisis or downturn is possibly not a traditional crisis and/or downturn in the sense that once it is over things will return to normal.

I have this very clear feeling that a fundamental shift in many of the ways that we have been used to conducting business and interacting with each other is underway. (see also my previous post are you a frog in the pot) And that when the dust settles things will not return to what we have known previously as normal but will have undergone a clear shift. This is not a passing storm but fundamental climate change.

In pursuit of that theme I have been hunting for signs that would support this gut feeling.

This has led me to The 2009 Shift Index published by Deloite and presented on the Harvard publishing website.

Her you will find the following resume of key findings:

The 2009 Shift Index reveals a disquieting performance paradox in the US corporate sector. On the one hand, labor productivity has nearly doubled since 1965. During those same years, however, US companies’ Return on Assets (ROA) progressively dropped 75 percent from their 1965 level.

How can firms be getting lower returns even as they’re becoming more efficient? The answer resides in the heightened competition among firms. Competitive intensity nearly doubled between 1965 and 2008, forcing firms to compete away the benefits of productivity gains, which were instead captured by creative talent in the form of higher compensation and numbers of consumers through increasing performance/price ratios and wider choice.

It’s little surprise to find also that the highest-performing companies are struggling to maintain their ROA rates and are increasingly losing market leadership positions. Taken as a whole, the findings portray a U.S. corporate sector in which long-term forces of change are undercutting normal sources of economic value. “Normal” may in fact be a thing of the past: even after the economy resumes growing, companies’ returns will remain under pressure.

To respond to this performance challenge, U.S. companies will need to let go of industrial- era organizational structures (and the reporting relationships, incentive systems, and managerial processes that go with them) and operational practices in favor of the new institutional architectures and business practices needed to create and capture economic value in the era of the Big Shift.

Companies must move beyond their fixation on getting bigger and more cost-effective to make the institutional innovations necessary to accelerate performance improvement as they add participants to their ecosystems, expanding learning and innovation in collaboration curves and creation spaces. Companies must move, in other words, from scalable efficiency to scalable learning and performance. Only then will they make the most of our new era’s fast-moving digital infrastructure.

So what does this Big Shift entail in pratical terms?

John Hagel one of the co-authors of the 2009 Big Shift index does a superb job summarizing what he essentially sees as a shift from push to pull on his blog Edge Perspectives

What obviously caught my atention was this:

From knowledge transfer to knowledge creation
Most companies today will acknowledge the importance of knowledge flows, but they tend to focus on transferring knowledge more efficiently, especially within corporate boundaries. While useful, this is ultimately a diminishing returns game on multiple levels. The greatest economic value will come from finding ways to connecting relevant yet diverse people, both within the firm and outside it, to create new knowledge. They do this best by addressing challenging performance requirements that motivate them to get out of their comfort zone and come up with creative new approaches that generate more value with fewer resources.

This correlates well with the experiences that we have using action learning as our primary developmental tool in helping managers and organizations tackle the changes that they are in. It is not our job to teach but to help them learn – and that is a very different story.

But I urge you to read the full unfolding of this thinking here under the following headlines:

From knowledge stocks to knowledge flows.

From knowledge transfer to knowledge creation.

From explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge.

From transactions to relationships.

From zero sum to positive sum mindsets.

From push programs to pull platforms.

From stable environments to dynamic environments.

Lots of food for thought, and now I realize that my gut was telling me something important and I shall continue to pursue this investigation.[/lang_en]