The Second Cycle

I just learned that only two out of the Fortune 100 CEO’s have a Twitter account (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/top-ceos-leave-social-media-to-the-plebs/). Once again this illustrates how outdated our current top management mindset is. Here are five reasons for a CEO to have a Twitter account and to use it:

1. Twitter allows the CEO to stay in touch with staff on a daily basis - a dream opportunity for a CEO that understands the importance of connecting with his or her staff. And it takes only a few minutes per day.
2. Twitter allows the CEO to communicate with customers in a most cost-efficient way on a daily basis. It builds up invaluable social capital.
3. Twitter can serve as a link to suppliers that are interested in developing a closer link to the business.
4. Twitter offers a golden opportunity for the CEO to comment briefly on current affairs; e.g. to highlight good initiatives or to refer followers to the company’s website for further information.
5. Twitter gives the CEO - and in tern the company - a human face. If the CEO understands how to use Twitter, he or she may create goodwill for the company among followers.

It’s all about building social capital. Want to join me at www.twitter.com? Search for @kolind and become a follower!

Let me have your comments!

Here is an interesting example of creating social capital for the benefit of people and sociaty. Take a look at www.shareandgrow.com. Here can people in Central San Francisco share babysitters, boats, cars and other resources. Great idea.

Could you mention other examples of sharing schemes that you would like to share with us?

In crisis times, most companies react by downsizing staff, projects, benefits – everything. No surprise: They attended the same business schools, they read the same books and they grew up in times where productivity was king.

If your ambition is to do better than the crowd, I suggest you consider this list of things you can do to turn crisis into an opportunity for more innovation and future growth. I attended Future Next in Copenhagen – a highly innovative and interactive work camp in Copenhagen in June to inspire business in Denmark to choose the path of innovation in response to the crisis. www.futurenext.dk. Here is my list of the best ideas that were discussed:

1. Make customer complaints an asset. Respond promptly, understand the customer’s problem, solve it and create a database of customer complaints to serve as inspiration for product and service innovation. Turn complaints into assets!
2. Involve customers to support each other. You know everything about your product, but customers know everything about how products are used. Form a community of customers to share knowledge about how they use your products and help them support each other in case of problems. Your customers will benefit more from your products; you will learn more from them and your hotline support will be complemented by customers with real-time experience.
3. Invite customers to tell you both good and bad stories. Create a community (social network) of customers. Show them that you appreciate their stories, good and bad. Share good stories widely and add a happy ending to bad stories by dealing with the problems promptly and efficiently. Use the knowledge about customer experiences as input to your innovation process.
4. Invite customers to innovate with you. They will gladly tell you how you could make your products more valuable and attractive to them. Show that you are responsive by sharing good stories with everybody.
5. Drop Focus groups – make everybody your focus group. Why only base your product and marketing decisions on a few focus groups of, say, 10 people each? Why not involve everybody by posting your ideas in your customer community and asking for reactions.
6. Invite suppliers to innovate products and processes. Conventional thinking is that you specify your needs towards suppliers, looking for the best supplier to deliver exactly what you want. Why not invite suppliers to innovate with you by suggesting how they could contribute to making your products better, more efficient, cheaper or more reliable?
7. Invite suppliers to help sell your products. They sell more to you if you sell more to your customers. Invite them to partner with you, using their ideas, resources and contacts.
8. Make former employees ambassadors for your company. If you fire people, they will normally be somewhat negative about your company and each has a network that will also be negative. Why not turn it around, making former employees your ambassadors? Create an alumni network of all former employees. Help them connect with former colleagues, give them interesting news stories, post new jobs in the network before they are advertised externally, invite their feedback and keep a positive relation.
9. Involve colleagues in finding job opportunities. If you are forced to fire 10 % of staff, involve the 90 % that are still with you, to help their colleagues find new work. If everybody uses his network, former colleagues will get back to work much quicker, thus saving severance pay and other termination costs.
10. Break the negative cycle. Cutting staff, projects and benefits in a crisis tends to take away happiness at work. Don’t let the negative mood take over. Celebrate small successes, praise good work and share reactions from happy customers.

Do you have other ideas? Write a comment!

This is what every ambassador should do: Write a blog about the two countries by a person that knows both. Here is one that does exactly that: Ambassador Thomas Lund-Sørensen, Ambassador of Denmark to Jordan. His blog is interesting because it comes from a person that knows both countries at depth. The latest blogpost is about the recent survey of which countries are the most peaceful places to live. Denmark come no. 2 after new Zealand: No violence - everything works. Jordan comes no. 64 and the ambassador reflects on why.
Great!

I am frequently asked how I manage all the jobs I have. Frankly speaking, I have a hard time for the moment, but here are 7 things I try to do to manage my time better:

1. I rarely watch TV. Instead I read news via reader.google.com where I aggregate news feeds from the best Danish and International media, including weblogs. It takes me 5-10 minutes a day.
2. I go by train and drive less. It often takes a little longer, but time is not wasted. I read, write and watch podcasts.
3. I check mails once a day in order not to be interrupted all the time. And I turn off the phone if I need to concentrate.
4. I rarely attend conferences and training courses. Instead I watch great videos at www.ted.com while I travel.
5. I throw away papers once I have read them. Most are store electronically anyway and I read most documents directly on the screan. This saves filing and retrieval time. One of my best recent investments has been a large high definition flat screan.
6. I decline meetings, events and tasks that are not important or fun. Even when I have no other appointments that day.
7. I read most things quickly in two stages. First I try to grasp the main points and to find out where the beef is. Then I focus on the beef.

I am far from a superman and once in a while I just don’t have enough time. The the seven strategies above help a lot. What are your comments and how do you avoid wasting time?

We teach children language, math, science, nature, music and sports. Why don’t we offer them an opportunity to learn to think? Thinking is one of the most fundamental aspects of being a human being and indeed relevant in a knowledge society.
I am not an expert in thinking and the function of the brain; others will be much better qualified to put the right content into this new subject. but here is my input:
Different types of thinking, creative, critical, evaluating etc. Why not teach the use of de Bono’s thinking hats?
How to find new solutions, i.e. creative thinking. Creativity is a skill - not a gift for the few.. Learn different techniques.
Thinking in narrow vs broad contexts. Cars or transport systems?
Values and thinking about values. Many people miss a language about values. Why not learn that at school?
Logic: roads and offroads in argumentation. Demagogics, spin and populism: How to spot it and how to counter it.
Mental models; what they are, how they are mapped and how they can be redesigned.
Wouldn’t we have a better society if our kids learned all that? Let me hear your comments.

NGO’s have a purpose. Companies may have it. But what about countries?
I think countries should have a purpose, and here is my suggestion for Denmark: The purpose of Denmark is to be a laboratory for sustainable development.
If we all learn to develop sustainably (personal, business, public) the world would be a much better place.
Denmark should take the position of the world’s laboratory for sustainable development. We are small. We can make fast decisions. We have confidence in each other. We have already moved far into sustainable development. So why not?
If you have doubt if a country should have a purpose, think of the negation: Denmark has no purpose. If that was the case, why should we be a country? I want the purpose to be discussed in the open and made explicit. I want the Parliament to approve it with a 5/6 majority. If it does, WOW - we would be a hub for creative and dedicated people.
What do you think? Write a comment below!

Yesterday I met Sofia Falk, a 28 year old Swedish woman who has started Wiminvest last year (www.wiminvest.se). She works with big business to help young women develop - not as copies of men, but as the women they really are.
Remarkable: She not only coaches women, but also involves their CEOs and HR-directors in the process. I have no doubt about the effect.
Does your country have a company like that? Go talk to Sofia and start it!

I started this blog in May 2006 simultaneously in English and Danish. I realised I didn’t have time for both, so I left this blog almost dormant. The Danish blog attracted tremendous attention and became one one the most read and cited blogs in the country.

But Denmark is only about one tenth of a per cent of the World’s population (5,5 Million) so now the time has come to start the International Edition.

The theme of this blog is leadership in the 21st century. The previous blogpost sketched a new paradigm for leading organisations, which is what I am working on. I hope you and fellow readers will join into this effort to co-create a new mindset for leadership.

Welcome on board!

I am working on a whitepaper on a new paradigm for business in the 21st century. The key argument is that our current model for doing business was created about 100 years ago to help transform small-scale craft into large-scale industry. It served this purpose well, but facing a completely different challenge, transformig large-scale industry into knowledge business, there must be a better answer.

I have dedicated the next few years to find that new answer and to share it with others.

Here is a brief summary of the current paradigm (the industrial business model):

1. The purpose is profit and the yardstick is return on equity, assets, sales or some other factor.
2. The primary assets are buildings, land, machines, stock, debtors and intellectual property rights.
3. The legal framework is the limited company in which investors, directors and employees are three separate groups.
4. The employees are a production factor, which is bought at the lowest possible cost - just like other production factors such as equipment and energy.
5. The organization is the functional hierarchy where jobs are defined by combinations of functions (e.g. manufacturing) and levels (e.g. middle manager).
6. The management is based on power and professional skills.

I invite you as a reader of this page to participate in a co-creation process by commenting one or more of these six points (please refer to their numbers in vour comments), in particular to suggest what you believe the new paradigm could be. For exaple you may argue what sort of organization should substitute the functional hierarchy (point 5 above). Feel free to comment on other people’s comments. You may also add new aspects and invite comments from others. Your contribution is most valuable to me if you write under your full and correct name instead of just a pseudonym.

Let us share ideas!