www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVXo3qYSt0

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Prior to serving as President, José Maria was Minister of Foreign Trade and Minister of Agriculture however, it was during his presidency that he showed his unique leadership skills through implementing invaluable changes that opened opportunities for further development, revolutionizing his country`s economy and transforming Costa Rica into the environmentally conscientious country it is today.

With his remarkable background in global economics as well as environmental protection, Jose Maria Figueres had the objective of leading his country into the new world with his governmental program based on moving the country towards Sustainable Development.

President Figueres joined the World Economic Forum as Managing Director, and became the first CEO of the World Economic Forum in 2003, where he strengthened global corporate ties to social and governmental sectors by identifying common long-term interests.

He helped create and lead the United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force and is the founder of the Fundacin Costa Rica para el Desarrollo Sostenible in Costa Rica.

Currently Jose Maria Figueres is the CEO of the Grupo Felipe IV in Madrid, and in this capacity he continues his commitment to development and technology and participates in a number of projects and endeavors in the international arena. This organization supports and collaborates with institutions working in the fields of development, dialogue, and democracy around the world.

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The problem for many organisations is that they are constantly changing direction and so their employees get change fatigue.”Oh, not another new initiative is the cry we hear in many organisations hence the resistance that comes from the news that yet another one is about to start. So I recommend that organisations focus on their long term strategy for winning rather than their strategy for change”

For example, I was speaking at a large Customer Service Management conference. Senior executives from Disney, Southwest Airlines and Ritz-Carlton gave presentations and the audience were clearly enthralled with how these organisations operate. I am sure many of the delegates went back to their organisations with the intention to adopt some of these best practices. Yet this is dangerous.

One of the first principles of business strategy is to differentiate rather than be “me too”. Professor Michael Porter, probably the most famous strategist alive today, says that strategy is about making a choice; of what to do, but even more importantly, what not to do. To attempt to copy other organisations runs the risk of your being second rate, at best and totally inappropriate at worst. Instead what we must do is to focus on our customers and stay true to our strategy for delighting them.

For example, Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco the global supermarket chain, told me that the key to Tesco’s success was “The day we stopped following Sainsbury (the market leader at that time) and started following our customers”. In other words they focused on differentiation and meeting the needs of their target customers rather than simply copying competitors in a knee-jerk reaction. Since then the brand has focused on creating value for customers to earn their life-time loyalty. Tesco’s slogan of “every little helps” describes the enormous attention to detail that enables them to ensure that processes, people and products operate seamlessly to deliver value.

Today Tesco is the market leader and has declared a 2 billion pound profit for the last year and has now entered the US market. Tesco has stayed true to its strategy over a number of years so that it becomes part of the culture. When your people understand that they are being asked to deliver what customers want and that management are fully committed to sustaining the effort over the long term then the resistance will fade away.

end of the interview with Shaun Smith

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The key to this is a concept that I call ‘loose/tight’. Most organisations exercise a very tight control over what employees should do but a very loose control over why they should do it. In other words they have strict procedures and regulations that employees must abide by even when these do not make sense for the customer.

I believe that organisations should reverse this and be very tight in communicating to employees who the target customers are, what they value, what the brand promise is and the kind of experience that they wish customers to have but then to be somewhat looser about how to deliver this so that employees can use their judgement.

One of the most successful fast food brands in the UK is called Pret a Manger. They employ students from all over Europe to work in their sandwich shops for a season. Whilst they have high employee turnover they also have a fabulous reputation for service. They achieve this by having a very clear brand promise; ‘Passionate About Food’, employing staff for their personality and fit with the culture – I call this hiring for ‘DNA’ – training them well in the technical aspects of the job but then empowering them to deliver the brand. For example, staff are taught to say something as the customer approaches, “say something when you serve them and say something when you bid them goodbye“. It is left up to the good sense of the employee about what to say.

2. In order to attract good employees, do you really need to market your company to prospective employees like one markets its products?

Absolutely. The problem is that most recruitment is done by HR people who don’t understand how to use branding or marketing to differentiate in the employment market place. I think recruitment ads should be given to your marketing department or ad agency to design.

Some years ago I was working with the fashion retailer Topshop who are famous for their brand and strong marketing. They were experiencing high turnover of employees and were having problems in attracting new ones. When we looked at their recruitment ads we found them to be boring so they simply got lost in the mass of advertisements in the job market. The experience they created for employees was just the same as any other retailer despite the brand being one of the most exciting fashion retailers in the world.

We suggested that Topshop use a branded approach to recruitment and focus a lot more on their employee experience. The result was better quality people with a better fit for the culture who stay much longer and give much better service as well because they understand what the brand stands for and want to be part of it.

end of part 1 of this interview

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Shaun Smith runs his own customer experience consultancy, shaunsmith+co, which is firmly routed in the “keep it simple” ethos. He has developed some of the latest thinking and practice around this subject, focusing in particular on how organizations can achieve brand differentiations and long-term customer loyalty through the customer experience.

Shaun was world-wide Sales, Service and Marketing Training Manager for British Airways highly acclaimed “Putting People First” service and culture change programme. During this time he launched a British Airways subsidiary company offering training services to the travel trade.

He has consulted leading international companies developing strategies for their change to a customer focus culture, building the internal capability to sustain and manage the change.

Shaun is an inspirational speaker, he doesn’t talk paradigms, complex methodologies or seven magic bullets; instead his approach is refreshingly straightforward, always pragmatic and at times, controversial.

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There is no Asian management style. We find great differences even between Japanese companies. I think it is fair to say that as individualism and freedom of choice conquer also this part of the world, leaders will have to become less of traditional bosses’ power with rather than power over. As the companies mature and move further up the value chain, many of them will also have to become global not only in output terms, but also when it come to input and throughput. This will require a somewhat different organizational and managerial approach.

4. You have updated Funky Business and remastered it for the new business reality. What are the main things that have been changed since the book was published?

We have given the book a 60 degree wash to make it more independent of space and time. We also include an entirely new chapter with some of the most important developments over the last 8-10 years.

5. Based on the fact that Funky Business has been updated can a manager still use and learn from the old book or from Karaoke Capitalism or can we say that time has been changed?

Some truths are eternal. I still believe strongly in 99.9% of the stuff that we have written about in the books. If anything, we probably underestimated the power of the forces of change. Our books provide people with questions and a way of looking at the world structuring mechanisms and principles that makes them less likely to become irrelevant than books that try to sell you answers in the form of 10 bankable propositions.

end of the interview with Jonas Ridderstrale

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are many great European management thinkers from Charles Handy to Fons Trompenhaars. I think I`ve been successful, because the ideas that I present are solid enough to stand the test of time, but also because my books and gigs provide people not only with intellectual content. In all probability, that stuff is necessary but not sufficient if you want to make it in my industry. I also give people hope, confidence and optimism. Boosting the psychological capital of people is at least as important as adding to their intellectual capital.

2. In world’s economy Europe’s role as a producer is diminishing nowadays and production is moving to Asia. Based on your experiences how could Europe compete? Is there a challenge we are facing with the management skills in Europe or it is just a new era when China, India are getting bigger roles?

In our deregulated world, there are two basic options. Either you design a strategy that`s as fit as the great white shark well adapted to a world of markets, or you focus on being sexy like the peacock with his amazing tail and attractive to people with more or less endless choice. Most people are familiar with Charles Darwin`s idea of survival of the fittest. As an effect of the deregulated business life and our journey into an info jungle where markets rule and reign also organizations must adapt. Right now, they are outsourcing and off-shoring to become the fittest business on the block.

Just farming out stuff won`t do the trick, however. Being fit requires that you find and exploit a market imperfection. For economists (and politicians) perfect markets are those where marginal cost equals marginal revenue and companies make just enough money to stay in business. In a perfect market, profits don`t exist. It`s therefore the duty of executives to pursue imperfections.

Dell created a transactional advantage with its direct to the customer business model, eliminating several parts of the traditional value chain. eBay has designed its Internet platform, where you can sell and buy just about everything, in such a way that relationships and reputation evolve and result in mutual trust. Finally, there are those companies, mainly professional service firms such as Ernst & Young or Accenture, which focus their attention on creating and defending a talent monopoly.

But also Darwin later came to realize there`s another way. The trick lies in shifting perspective from a survival-oriented to a courtship-based view of success. Consider the peacock`s tail? From a fitness perspective, this “psychedelic feather duster“ actually provides a competitive disadvantage. He can`t run. He can`t fly. So, why did the peacock end up with such a ridiculous costume?

In order to understand his look, we must consider the peahen, because in nature as in life and in business it`s always the “customer“ who takes the ultimate decision; go and no go. With the tail, the peacock is actually telling the female that he is so incredibly fit that he can afford to carry around this awkward adornment and still be alive and have a good life. He has a credible handicap. This is survival of the sexiest. The guy is attractive as hell.

Since we`ve deregulated life and moved into a split society in which at least some people now have more or less endless choice, being good is often no longer enough. Today, in the business world we find an abundance of firms that supply a surplus of products and services with similar quality, price and performance. For Generation Choice and sameness sucks. So, corporations must attract the attention of people by appealing to their feelings.

In business, credible handicaps largely fall into two separate categories: ethics and aesthetics. If you refuse to bribe and cheat, you`ll be handicapped. Corporate social responsibility costs = handicap. Also corporations that spend a lot of money on being environmentally friendly develop a handicap at a cost disadvantage. Is this handicap credible? Increasingly so, I believe, after the UN report on our climate and Al Gore`s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. No wonder that the percentage of global venture capital that`s invested in so called clean technology is up from 1 per cent in 2000 to 14 per cent in 2006. But ethics isn`t for everyone, everywhere. All handicaps are subjective, and their exchange rates vary over time and space. As a supplier you also need to be authentic. Transparency works both ways.

As for aesthetical handicaps, consider BMW. We`ve been told that the company employs close to 30 highly trained engineers who work only on the sound of the door, and almost half as many who focus on the smell of the car. Look at the cost structure of that company. BMW shouldn`t exist and not in one of the most competitive industries in the world; not when it spends an enormous amount of time and money on completely “meaningless“ things such as design and branding. Yet, it does. In a perfectly normal and rational world we would all be driving Toyota Corollas. We don`t. BMW is hugely successful and not despite the handicap but thanks to it. The company knows how to profit from the peacock principle.

end of part 1 of this interview

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Dr. Jonas Ridderstrale is at the forefront of the new generation of European-based business gurus. He cuts through the madness and hyperbole surrounding the global economy and his appeal is truly global. Jonas has attained tremendous media coverage throughout the world. In March 2004, he appeared on CNN’s program “Global Office” for a long interview on the ideas behind his books. Dr. Ridderstrale has also been featured in Fortune, Fast Company, Time Magazine, Financial Times, Stern, Paris Match, and many other publications worldwide. The 2005 Thinkers 50, the bi-annual global ranking of management thinkers, ranked him (and his colleague Nordstram) at number nine internationally and as the leading European business guru.

Jonas` uncompromising, imaginative and decidedly fresh take on contemporary business life makes him one of the world`s most sought after and appreciated speakers. Forget dry theories, Jonas` ideas work. He makes things happen. Dr. Ridderstrale practices what he so persuasively preaches. He acts as an advisor and consultant to a number of multinational corporations.

Dr. Ridderstrale holds an MBA and a PhD in international business and has been recognized as Sweden`s outstanding young academic of the year. Formerly, he was an assistant professor at the Stockholm School of Economics where he was responsible for the school`s Advanced Management Program – a five week top-management program that attracts the elite of Scandinavian executives. Jonas is currently a visiting professor at Ashridge Business School in the UK. His research focuses on new organizational models and leadership styles in the information age and has been published in leading academic journals, including Business Strategy Review, Organization Science and CritcalEYE Magazine. Jonas contributed to the best-selling Financial Times Handbook of Management and Business: The Ultimate Resource. He is on the editorial board of The Capstone Business Encyclopaedia.

His latest book Karaoke Capitalism: Management for Mankind is a globally celebrated manifesto for how to make it in the new world of commerce. Jonas` previous book, Funky Business: Talent makes capital dance quickly became an international bestseller, selling more than 300,000 copies. The book was recently ranked at number 16 in a Bloomsbury survey of the best business book of all time. Both books are co-authored with his colleague Kjell A. Nordstram.

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9. Your work is also renown within the circles of personal development – how can an ordinary person live the life of his or her dreams? Are you living the life of your dreams?
Yes, I am living the life of my dreams; I have the love and support of my wife and our two daughters. I am a professional speaker, consultant and author by choice; I enjoy both the people and the various projects I accept. I love to travel and learn about other cultures and ways of doing business, and I particularly enjoy helping my clients by providing them with low cost high impact strategies that greatly increase their profits and overall business success. I take a tremendous pride in each success story. To me, a key element of living the life of my dreams involves personal freedom. I equate that to being able to choose how I invest my time, energy and money and the people I choose to invest it with. By this measure I am truly living a dream life! I believe that everyone can enjoy living the life of their dreams and that it starts with defining what success means to you. Consider a highly skilled and well equipped archer. One would expect this archer to be able to hit the target easily, however imagine if they were bind-folded and spun around many times, and only had one arrow and no assistance from anyone. The odds of them hitting that target have just greatly been reduced. The point behind this bow and arrow example is that “you can`t hit a target you can`t see“. This is true in life. How likely are you to be able to live the life of your dreams if you first can`t identify what that looks like? Once you see it, you can do it. Once you have set your goals, invest some time in planning your future instead of just letting life pass you by. Then read about other people who have also been successful in a similar way and learn how they did it. Consider connecting with a successful person who can guide and mentor you through your journey. Don`t be afraid to be bold and take some risks. Lastly, remember to enjoy each day both the victories and the failures, they are equally part of life`s journey.

10. What would you still like to achieve in your life?
There are two major goals that I am working on. The first is to purchase a small wine estate with a chateau. I am passionate about wine and I love to enjoy the company of like minded people. The second and most important goal is also linked to the personal mission of myself and my colleague Alan Lysaght (co-author of the ABCs books) to “change a generation“, by providing financial education to millions of teens around the world. To date, we have worked with several large financial organizations and foundations in America and have provided free financial literacy education and over 300,000 copies of The ABCs of Making Money 4 Teens book for young people. We want to work with progressive organizations in different countries to bring this information to millions of young people around the world through customized versions of the book in various languages and mentoring support.

end of the interview with Denis Cauvier

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6. What are some of the main reasons that some sales people are successful and others are not?
Contemporary wisdom suggests that the key to successful selling lies within the sales person`s skills, knowledge and selling techniques. Although I agree that these issues are all important, I believe that the single biggest contributor to selling success is the person`s attitude. Their attitude entails many elements, such as their attitudes: towards themselves in the role of professional selling, their attitude as it relates towards the selling process; their attitude towards the company they represent, the products and services they offer their attitudes toward their customers, and their team-mates. These attitudes will ultimately determine their level of selling success.

7. In your best-selling book “the ABCs of Making Money“, what are some of the strategies that ordinary people can implement to create extraordinary wealth?
Actually, the answer to this question lies within the title of my book; it`s what I refer to as the “ABCs“ approach and is doable by anyone who has the desire to succeed and is prepared to put the effort in. It all starts with adopting the right attitudes. By understanding the attitudes of successful, wealthy people, and then engaging in highly effective day to day behaviours (such as living within your means, investing your money at an early age, develop critical skills in the areas of selling, communicating, negotiating and priority management; and finally applying the principles of creating money by owning your business and developing numerous sources of passive income the idea of earning money even while I sleep is very appealing to me!

end of part 2 of this interview

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