"...keeping you great"
HEADLINES:
Hope for the U.S. -- David Brooks Op-Ed in the NY Times this week highlights Joel Kotkin's book The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. Demographics drive most economic trends and if trends hold, America will actually get younger, with only 25% of its population over 60 vs. 31% in China and 41% in Japan. He also highlights Stephen Rose's book Rebound: Why America Will Emerge Stronger From the Financial Crisis which highlights some interesting data points re: wealth. Take five minutes and read this column. As Brooks sums up "the U.S. is on the verge of a demographic, economic and social revival, built on its historic strengths. The U.S. has always been good at disruptive change."
Another Name for "War Room" -- Robert Kyslinger, Managing General Partner of Houston-based OMNIPOTECH has been searching around for another name for their executive meeting space besides "war" room or "situation" room, so he put a request out to his network of entrepreneurial friends. Do you have any ideas? Do you name all your meeting rooms? Nike names theirs after famous athletes, for instance.
Named After Core Values -- John MacInnes, President of Print Audit, noted "We call ours Fun. Typically our meeting/working rooms are named after our core values." This is another way to reinforce the culture. BTW, I couldn't help notice in MacInnes' email this line "Last year Print Audit customers used Rules to save 190,000 trees and $150 Million."
LEGO® Land -- besides being my children's favorite amusement park, Kyslinger emailed me back and said his CFO suggested calling the meeting room LEGO which is Danish for "Play Well" (LEg GOdt). In Latin it means "I assemble." And it just so happens that OMNIPOTECH's theme this year is "Play to Win" and Kyslinger is a rabid fan of LEGOs, which he has been collecting since 1973.
Serious Alignment -- Out of this concept have come ideas for placing a LEGO constructed blue and orange logo of their company in the middle of the conference room table; give out LEGOs as prizes; and have big buckets of LEGO around for people to fiddle with. And it wasn't lost on me that both LEGO and OMNIPOTECH use all caps for their respective logos. Alignment is fun when it works.
Serious Play -- Kyslinger also shared with me that LEGO has a business initiative called LEGO SERIOUS PLAY™. LEGO has a conviction that constructing a metaphorical 3-D model of your business in a playful manner will unleash your creative imagination to develop an innovative and dynamic business strategy based on a clearer sense of your company's identity. Might be a fun team exercise at a planning session.
Serious Creativity -- and while in Dubai on Tuesday for a series of presentations and interviews, Rockefeller Habits "super student" Thomas Lundgren, founder of a 14 store chain of The One furniture stores, showed me his new 3.0 store creation. No detail was overlooked, including writing on the inside of the elevators which in essence said "we're providing this writing on the inside of the elevator so you have something to read to make you more comfortable in the elevator."! And though he encourages people to bring their own bags for the small items you might purchase, if you need a bag he provides a biodegradable plastic bag, explaining that paper bags consume 8 times the petroleum to produce than his bags -- so much what people think is environment isn't. If in Dubai, you MUST see his new store. In the meantime, enjoy the enchanting music on his website when launched -- and then check out the "Fun Stuff" and his "Eargasm" section -- I listen to Thomas's choice of music while I'm doing email.
China Just Adds More Zeros -- with Tiger Woods in the news this week, the big news in China, while I was in Shanghai hosting a one-day Rockefeller Habits workshop yesterday, was the arrest of a business manager who cheated on his wife with over 500 women. She found his electronic diary on his computer where documented each tryst and stated his goal to have sex with 800 women (8 is a lucky number). He was actually arrested because he documented that many of the women were paid using bribes he had received! The Chinese press went wild over the story.
More Mind Blowing Data -- check out these infographics on WalMart from 1962 - present. I wasn't able to get the actual infograph to work, so go to this link.