Presenting Jonas Ridderstrale
Europe’s number 1 management thinker
Posted on December 3, 2007 - Filed Under Expert Interviews
This week we will be talking to Jonas Ridderstrale, who is ranked number 9 among management thinkers around the world and number 1 in Europe and will present you his views on how Europe can stay competitive, facing the challenges from the growing importance of China and India. And here is who he is:
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.
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Expert interview with Denis Cauvier
North America’s top speaker on attracting, selecting and retaining great people
Part 3
Posted on November 30, 2007 - Filed Under Expert Interviews
8. As a respected authority on customer retainment as well, how is it possible to turn a one-time buyer into a life-time customer?
People the world over complain to me that there is no customer loyalty, that a client will change suppliers to save even a tiny bit of money. I feel this is an over-simplification of the issue. Yes, people are always seeking bargains, but at the end of the day it`s value for money that will win out. I don`t believe that a company has to be the lowest priced provider; rather they need to fully understand the needs of their clients and then exceed the customer`s expectations. This is done by investing in client relationship building, having highly skilled and knowledgeable, sales, and customer service professionals, and constantly seeking ways to improve the life and or business of your clients. By adopting this “imbedded partnership mindset“ you will become the supplier of choice for your key accounts.
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.
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Expert interview with Denis Cauvier
North America’s top speaker on attracting, selecting and retaining great people
Part 2
Posted on November 28, 2007 - Filed Under Expert Interviews
5. What is the key to pre-screening and selecting the right people for a team?
The quick answer is to “pre-screen for competency and select for character“. What this means is that the entire pre-screening process should focus on answering the fundamental question, “does the person possess the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to do the job?“ In other words, are they competent (able) to do the job? Once you are satisfied that the applicant possesses the requisite abilities then the selection process begins. It is here that you need to “select“ the best candidate in terms of best fit with the company. To do this you must focus your energies on examining the person`s character which is made up of their attitude, and personality. The most insightful part of the selection process is the face-to-face interview.
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.
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Expert interview with Denis Cauvier
North America’s top speaker on attracting, selecting and retaining great people
Part 1
Posted on November 26, 2007 - Filed Under Expert Interviews
Dr Denis Cauvier is a speaker, trainer and consultant, who has made a career out of helping his clients and audiences become financially successful. A former personal and corporate lender with two of North America’s largest banks and a financial consultant to his clients around the world, he has uncovered the traits shared by America’s wealthiest people. He also has over 20 years of experience in training and human resources. And here is our interview with him:
1. Having shared your inspirational messages with over one million people in 43 countries, what have you discovered is a common trend throughout the world of HR?
I would categorize this common trend as a “missed-opportunity“; my experience is that too many organizations view HR as a cost centre. For over 20 years I have been an avocate of the notion that HR needs to be seen and held accountable as a Profit Centre. We should stop spending money on HR activities and start to invest instead. When we think in terms of investments we expect certain returns from these investments. HR is no different, each investment needs to be analysed to consider the business case rational prior to making the investment and then measured to determine the actual contribution made to the bottom-line. As a consultant and speaker, one of my greatest sources of professional pride is my track-record in helping companies reframe their perspective on HR creating specific strategies to maximize their returns on all HR investments will result in reduced time and cost of hiring, increase levels of productivity, reduce employee turnover, enhance customer satisfaction, improve sales, and increase profits.
2. What are the biggest challenges to hiring and retaining people in a tight labour market?
The biggest challenge is to be able to differentiate your organization among other employers whom you are competing with for labour. The single best strategy is to be seen as the employer of choice in both your industry as well as your community. Consider how much emphasis and effort you invest in your marketing and branding to gain new business and keep your existing clients happy. During a tight labour market you need to invest this same amount of energy and creativity in your “People Branding“. When a company is recognized as being an employer of choice several things happen: one, your good employees value working with you and thus don`t want to leave, and your reputation attracts other great candidates to seek employment with you despite any recruiting efforts.
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Expert interview with Ray Hammond
Europe’s leading futurologist
Part 3
Posted on November 24, 2007 - Filed Under Expert Interviews
In part 2 Ray Hammond outlined the following Key Dreivers of the future:
1. World Population Growth And Changing Demographics
2. Climate Change
3. The Looming Energy Crisis
To read the entire part 2 of the interview, please click here.
4. Globalization
The term “globalization“ has many meanings and evokes many different emotions. At one extreme the word is used to mean “global economic exploitation of the poor by the rich“ and, at the other, “a global movement to reduce poverty and promote peace“.
World income has itself doubled since 1980 because of globalization, and almost half-a-billion people have been lifted out of poverty since 1990. According to current trends, adds the World Bank, the number of people living on less than the equivalent of $1 a day, will halve from today’s 1 billion to 500 million by 2030. This will take place as a result of growth in Southeast Asia, whose share of the poor will halve from 60 per cent to 30 per cent, while Africa’s share of the world`s poor will rise from 30 per cent to 55 per cent. This represents a continental inequality which carries significant dangers to world stability.
5. Accelerating, Exponential Technology Development
There will be more technological change in the next twenty-five years than occurred throughout the whole of the last century. And that was the century that produced aeroplanes, cars, plastics, nuclear power, television, the computer and the internet.
The reason I forecast such extreme change ahead is that the speed of technology development is itself accelerating. The key to understanding why this is occurring lies in realising that technology development is itself an extension of human evolution
I regard the phenomenon of accelerating technological development as the “joker in the pack“ when it comes to considering future trends. During the next quarter century it is possible that presently unforeseeable “wild card“ technologies will be developed that will solve the world`s demand for clean energy and, perhaps, even provide some degree of control over the world`s climate. It might even solve the drinking water shortage.
6. The “Prevent-Extend“ Model in Medicine (Disease Prevention and Longevity)Because humans often lack a language for the technological future I have invented a portmanteau phrase and “prevent-extend“ to describe a new form of medicine that will emerge over the next twenty-five years. Instead of attempting to provide cures for existing disease and ailments, the next medical revolution will produce a new discipline in the rich world that will focus on personalized medicine that will prevent illness and increase human longevity very dramatically.
Over the next few years the “master map“ of the human gene pool will be completed to a large extent and, as computer power rapidly increases, it will become possible to sequence the genomic map of each individual patient (at least, of those patients lucky enough to be living in the developed world).
In addition to such a powerful approach to diagnostics, gene therapy will harness the power of gene identification to produce new drugs and treatments many times more effective than present therapies.
Stem cell research is another exciting new development that promises to revolutionize medicine. A stem cell is basic embryonic human cell which has the ability to grow into almost any kind of cell. A number of stem cell therapies already exist, particularly bone marrow transplants that are used to treat leukaemia. In the future, medical researchers anticipate being able to use technologies derived from stem cell research to treat a wider variety of diseases including cancer, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injuries, and muscle damage, amongst a number of other impairments and conditions.
In the near future stem cell medicine even promises to grow new bone and tissue for human use that is based on the patient`s own DNA. There is good reason to believe that stem cells may allow us to repair and regrow damaged organs and, eventually, to grow “replacement organs“ which would be at no risk of rejection from our immune systems. Replacement human bladders have already been grown and transplanted into humans using stem cell techniques. Recently heart tissue was grown from stem cells suggesting that within five years whole replacement hearts could be grown and scientists have recently succeeded in producing pancreatic cells from stem cells that produce insulin, holding out the hope that diabetes might one day be curable by the growth of a new pancreas. By 2030 such organ regeneration will be routine and almost all other organs will also be grown from stem cells. We will have our “backup“ parts.
7. What do you think about virtual business development for the next 5 years?
Business is going to make extensive use of “virtual worlds“ such as Second Life, MySpace and Face Book. IBM is already holding meetings with clients in Second Life and this method of virtual meeting appears to be far more satisfactory that real-life videoconferencing. I am certain that within a few years we will all be living several lives at once, both in business and in our personal lives; we will have our real world lives but we will also be supporting parallel world personalities within virtual worlds. It is our future.
end of the interview with Ray Hammond
Contact Ray Hammond:
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Expert interview interview with Ray Hammond
Europe’s leading futurologist
Part 2
Posted on November 22, 2007 - Filed Under Expert Interviews
5. With regard to the present frightening global warming discussions, what do you think about climate change and the impact of technology on businesses related to the future of energy?
Climate change (don’t call it global warming because the extreme weather effects produced by the carbon emission are not always warm) is the greatest threat we face. As a result the future for businesses that are concerned with delivering renewable and sustainable forms of energy and wind power, solar power, geothermal power, wave power, tidal power, hydrogen power and, to a lesser extent, energy from biomass, have a really wonderful future. The technology exists today to deliver our energy needs from renewable resources. What is lacking is the political will to overcome the lobbying of the entrenched interests (e.g. the fossil fuel suppliers) and for governments to provide real incentives for both the producers of sustainable and renewable energy and for the consumers to switch to energy derived from such sources.
6. You say you study “current trends in human affairs in the hope of divining which may affect the future most powerfully, using your writing as a lab. What are those current trends in business?
There are six key drivers of the future. These are:
1. World Population Growth And Changing Demographics
There are currently almost seven billion people on the planet. By 2050 there will be at least nine billion. How are we to feed these many people and, even more pressingly, how are we to find fresh water for them?
One factor that will have a major impact on food production methods to feed so many people is climate change, but the impact of this is hard to predict and will vary from region to region. Suffice to say that technological advances in food production methods will continue to have the potential to feed the Earth`s enormously expanded population even if, in some of the world`s poorest regions, poverty, corruption, bad politics and conflict (and, in some areas, severe climate change) will continue to cause widespread famine. Drinking water, on the other hand, is often forecast to be in very short supply in some parts of the world (fresh water accounts for only 3 per cent of all the water in the world).
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