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New Age Shannon (sans-headaches)

According to a report in today's Herald Sun, we are turning their backs on traditional medicine in favour of new-age treatments, such as acupuncture, naturopathy, traditional Chinese medicine  herbalism, aromatherapy, iridologyt reflexology and massage.  According to the report, 40 per cent of all medical consultations in Australia are for alternative therapies, and it is predicted alternative therapies will overtake conventional medicine within 10 years.

These statistics don't really surprise me, and the trend away from traditional G.P's is a result of the state of the Health Care system in Australia.  It is a "sick-care" system not a "health-care" system.

Despite what the Australian Medical Association and well-meaning doctor's might have us believe, they aren't interested in our overall health and well-being, they are only interested in us if we are sick, can be diagnosed within 15 minutes or less and there is a pill that will makes us better... They’ll fix us when we are broken, but don'r really "care" about our overall and general "health."   It’s not all their fault though, our whole healthcare system is just designed (very badly) like that, and urgently needs fixing; or as Tom put it once:

“Shift focus—dramatically—from dosing, cutting and fixing-after-the-fact to Prevention, Wellness and Healing.”

The truth is that I have a great relationship with my G.P., in fact I have been seeing him for nearly 15 years.  When I am sick, he is great.  But I had long been suffering bad headaches; I had a headache more often than I didn't, not fun.  You name it my doctor tried it (in 15minute intervals of course!), but was really only interested in fixing the symptoms after the fact, rather than looking and fixing (= healing, curing) the cause, which we thought was linked to some muscles in my back.

So I took myself off to see a Shiatsu Therapist, who was interested  in healing my back, not just curing my headaches. He clearly informed me of his diagnosis and on each visit kept me up to date with how the, treatment, healing, and my “wellness” was progressing.. To cut a long story short, Shiastu Therapist visits= 8, headaches in the last 4 months, almost zero.  And with regular exercises prescribed by the Shiatsu "guru" I can now maintain my headache free lifestyle.

And I am obviously not alone, and I can see why there is a trend on towards therapies that were once reserved for hippies in tie-dyed shirts.  It is another example of a niche product (the natural therapy market) catering to a disgruntled market unsatisfied with the status-quo. 

(Hint:  Non traditional therapists like to talk (have a conversation!) about you, a doctor wants to talk about your symptoms....what would you prefer?)

(Read Tom's best Health Care Rant)

The Social Customer Manifesto

I've been reading the Social Customer Manifesto (Christopher Carfi) blog for about a month now, and "nod" at just about every post.    From what I can gather, the blog was born out of the ashes of CRM, but has been evolved into the Social Customer Manifesto:

• I want to have a say.
• I don't want to do business with idiots.
• I want to know when something is wrong, and what you're going to do to fix it.
• I want to help shape things that I'll find useful.
• I want to connect with others who are working on similar problems.
• I don't want to be called by another salesperson.  Ever.  (Unless they have something useful.  Then I want it yesterday.)
• I want to buy things on my schedule, not yours.  I don't care if it's the end of your quarter.
• I want to know your selling process.
• I want to tell you when you're screwing up. Conversely, I'm happy to tell you the things that you are doing well. I may even tell you what your competitors are doing.
• I want to do business with companies that act in a transparent and ethical manner.
• I want to know what's next.  We're in partnership…where should we go?

Of course it is deeply rooted in Cluetrain-think, which is why it rings true with me. 

As a senior manager at work, and an active consumer both in and out of work, I can consider the Social Customer Manifesto from those two points of view.  At work, I often ask myself, and our staff
"How can we give our customers a say?  How can we let them know we are interested in listening?" 
And, at the end of the day,  you can think too long and too hard about searching for a magic answer or solution,  until you come to the realisation that you are a consumer too!  What do you want to hear/see/know from businesses to indicate that they want to listen to you?... Or better still
"What does a company that is not interested sound like? Look like?" 

Chances are they look something like the Anti-Social Customer.  I got rid of a major supplier to our business this week, and when explaining my decision to my staff, the reasons where simple, they were anti-social:

• They wouldn't let us have a say.
• I felt like we were doing business with idiots.
• They wouldn't involve us in product design, they wouldn't let us help shape things that we'd find useful.
• They made us deal with too many people, and we don't want to be called by another person.  Ever.
• We couldn't understand their selling process.
• They wouldn't listen when we tried to tell them they were screwing up
• I thought we were in partnership…and wanted to know where we should go next?  They didn't know.  And didn't agree with us.

So at my work, we'll contniue to try and be social with our customers and we'll continue to deal with suppliers who want to be soical with us. 

By the way, The Social Customer Manifesto is worth checking out, either here, or via the link on my blogroll.

Jingle All the Way

This year I promised myself I would be more organised than in previous years.  I promised myself I would start my Christmas shopping sometime before December 21.  I usually do a lot of shopping online, including gift buying.  It's quicker, easier and it means that I can spend my days off not having to shop.

But Christmas is different.  I prefer (or thought I did) to go to a real shopping centre.  Experience the excitement, the atmosphere, check out the new products, revel in the "sales"...  Since I had an opening in my calendar today, I figured I might as well trek to a Shopping Centre (Shopping Centres- another reason why Cities are Dead) and see if I couldn't purchase some presents and feel some of that festive excitement and buzz.  And what's better, it's still November, so I would get to feel all warm and fuzzy for starting my Christmas shopping so early...

But after 10 minutes driving around the car park looking for a spot, I had no more excitement.  I couldn't have given a stuff about the carols, decorations and all round yule-tide atmosphere inside the walls of the building  I was circling like a predator.  I almost went back home to my safety and dull world of my computer and desk.  It's not as exciting, doesn't have the same thrill as shopping in the real world.  But it's less stressful.  And at the moment, I'd go for less stressful.

It appears as though Seth might have had the same sort of experience, " How come they never have sales online?"

Why can't the excitement in the offline, real world of retail be replicated in the quiet, static world of online shopping. "Better buy it now before the sale ends..." and all of that impulse inducing blurb.

But Seth is a great thinker, and he came up with an extension of froogle (googles online shopping engine):

Not news.google.com
but
news.froogle.com

A place you can go to and see news about sales and bargains and closeouts and new stores. Probably would need a human editor, which isn't very google-like, but hey.

It would be like trying to create the anticipation and thrill towards the end of an e-Bay auction when you are in a bidding war.  It's exciting and great fun... it creates an real-time, online shopping experience.  And that's something that is missing from traditional on-line shopping sites, but something that many people enjoy during the Christmas period.

(And while they are at it how about a dot-com-dot-au extension for froogle?)

Part Two of The Shannon List of Respected Australian Business Leaders

Continuing on from yesterday; here are the top five Respected Australian Business Leaders, according to me!

5.  Graham Turner (MD, Flight Centre, travel)
Graham Turner is another leader who is often interviewed and featured in the news.  Usually it is because of his entrepreneurial success in turning a great idea into a highly profitable business that is built basically around two key concepts; be the biggest travel retailer in the worldm and sell the cheapest flights.  Behin the entrepreneur is a great leader.   He insists that Flight Centre is a fun place to work; in fact if you are not enjoying work, you are doing something wrong.  His ethos emphasised balancing the physical parts of work with the spiritual side, and allow them to feed of each other.

4.  Gerry Harvey (Executive Chairman, Harvey Norman, retailing)
Gerry Harvey goes against the grain.  Although often politically incorrect, he’s been very successful in business by just saying things that make everyone else thinks, like calling institutions "idiots”   He is a billionaire who has built his fortune by knowing what the market wants, but he's also very involved with schools and some of the outer areas of Sydney, as well as funding and supporting many environmental issues.

3.  Michael Chaney (CEO, Wesfarmers, agriculture and retail-hardware)
Chaney is a successful, thoughtful leader who drives the big-picture vision for the Perth-based conglomerate that is Wesfarmers (who own the Bunnings Hardware chain). What does Michael Chaney thinks makes a great leader? "Ability to describe a vision and communicate it, and motivate others to follow it.  Chaney has won the last three Business Review Weekly (BRW) Most Admired Leader awards, and deservedly so.   Whilst creating shareholder value remains a key consideration for him, importantly so do qualities such as communication, consistency and ethics.

2.  Richard Pratt (Chairman, Visy Industries, manufacturing-packaging)
The cardboard king and Australia’s third richest men. His Visy Industries dominates packaging and recycling. Has recently spoken out on national issues like the treatment of refugees (he was a refugee himself, from postwar Poland) and water policy. A Long-time supporter of the arts through his Pratt Foundation but also has a strong philanthropic focus to the environment and welfare.  I remember his saying in a speech once something like "Real leaders find ways to stretch people, to ask what seems impossible. It is about letting people surprise themselves with what they’re capable of. And as a leader you have to know when you are actually asking too much." 

1.  Gail Kelly (MD, St George, banking)
Kelly is the only woman in mys list, but she makes it at the top of the tree in my book.  St George was ripe for take over before Kelly took over in 2002, but under her leadership the Ste George Bank ahs consistently outperformed their more clumsy, monlithic, cumbersome banking peers in revenue, earnings per share and market-capitalisation growth.  She did this by turning St Georges weakness (is small size) into a strength, moving flexibly and quickly to grow organically through product and branch expansion when its bigger rivals rely on risky acquisitions, and dodgy  investment strategies.  But best of all, and unique in the banking sector, Kelly is big on action over analysis.

So that's it.  My list of the 10 Most Respected Australian Business Leaders....

 

The Shannon List of Respected Australian Business Leaders

Yesterday I promised to post the "Shannon Top 10 List of Respected Australian Business Leaders."  But in true suspense, countdown style, I will start from 10 and count backwards.  I'll give you 6-10 today and 1-5 tomorrow (nasty tease that I am...)

I based my list not necessarily on business performance, but also on how much I personally admire and respect the way they "lead" their businesses towards their goals. 

But first, to me, the basic concept of leadership is very straightforward. A leader should be a sort of servant of the organisation. In a business sense, the leader's job is to understand the organisation and get rid of the hurdles that are keeping that organisation from becoming what it can be. That is really what leadership is all about , clearing the path for the aspirations and abilities of the people to be put to the test.  

Anyway, without further waffle or explanations....

10.  David Morgan (CEO, Westpac, banking)
I don't really like Banks, but I like David Morgan. I rate him highly because of his continued commitment to corporate social responsibility, as well as his strong marketing and people policies.

9.  Roger Corbett (CEO, Woolworth's, retailing)
I have read a few interviews with Supermarket boss Roger Corbett and he is a no-nonsense sort of a bloke, he has his values and you know what they are  because he lives by them.  He’s is also very focused and he delivers on his promises

8.  Mark Innes (CEO, David Jones, retailing)
Under Innes' leadership, DJ's has undergone a remarkable renaissance, and everytime I read about hime or hear him speak, I understand why DJ's is on the up at the moment.  On Leadership, Innes says "You need to be passionate about what you want to do; you need to be well-educated, and you need to be able to communicate the value that you can create above someone else – and then to show that you have demonstrated that. You have to be able to show that you have made a difference, not that you can do the job, because what companies need is people in the business who can make a difference – not people who can just do the same thing that was done last year, but people who need this constant re-innovation."

7.   Paul Bassat (CEO, Seek, Internet job search)
I remember reading once that Paul Bassat had a simple approach to resolving differences at work: he would repeat himself until the other person gave in... He also reckoned that CEO's should be capable of knowing a little bit of everything.  A great entrepreneur, but also a great leader who knows his strengths and limitations

6.  Paul Little (MD, Toll Holdings, logistics)
I admire Paul Little because he had a vision to create Australia’s first truly integrated logistics service provider by pulling together what was a fragmented industry.  And he pulled it off!   Under his leadership, Toll has made some really smart acquisitions as well as used technology better than their competitors, and are now the undisputed market leader.   He also funds Melbourne’s First Step drug rehabilitation program and employs its graduates.

What do you think so far?  Any feedback?  I'll give you my "much anticipated" top five tomorrow!

The World's Most Respected Leaders (?!)

Listed over at Fast Company Now is a list (from The Financial Time and PwC of the ten most respected business leaders today. And the envelope please....

1. Bill Gates (Microsoft)
2. Jack Welch (GE)
3. Carlos Ghosn (Nissan)
4. Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway)
5. Michael Dell (Dell Computer)
6. Hiroshi Okuda (Toyota)
7. Jeff Immelt (GE)
8. Carly Fiorina (HP)
9. Steve Jobs (Apple)
10. Fujio Mitarai (Canon)

This is the third year in a row that Gates won while Welch came solidly in second place even though he left GE in September of 2001.  It's an interesting list isn't it?  On the face of it, I sort of agree; but would have Steve Jobs a bit higher, and maybe include Jeff Bezos of Amazon somewhere.

The more fascinating list comes from this survey question asked of CEOs: Name an individual from history or today who you would invite on your company boards The leading vote getter's: Winston Churchill, Jesus Christ, Napoleon Bonaparte, Albert Einstein, Julius Caesar, Leonardo Da Vinci and John F. Kennedy.

But rather than think too much about this list, I got to wondering who would feature in an Australian version of such a list?  Any thoughts?  Anyone who you would definitely leave off?

I'll have a think and post my list of "The Top 10 Most Respected (by Shannon) Business Leaders in Australia".

Road to Riches

Investors here in Australia seem to be falling in love with tollroad projects, probably because they are usually monopoly assets that provide steady and growing long-term revenues, afterall we only have a few toll companies-Macquarie Infrastruture Group, Hills Motorway and Transurban.  But the new golden child is ConnectEast.

Shares in the ConnectEast Group (CEU), the owner/operator of Melbourne's yet to be built $2.3 billion Mitcham-Frankston tollway project, debuted on the Australian Stock Exchange this morning at 68c, up 13c on the issue price of 55c.

After a day of trading, 138 million units changed hands, that's 13.7 per cent of the 1.07 billion units on issue, and the stock closed at 69c giving investors a very handy 25.45 per cent first day paper profit. 

It is not often that a new float finishes the first day with a such a tidy premium, which suggests the Bracks Government has once again been out-negotiated by the clever people wearing sharp suits at the Macqurie Bank- who have already pocketed tens of millions in fees...

However, ConnectEast shares will need to hit $3.53 before it can be argued that the Bracks Government was even more incompetent than the Kennett Government which let the lucrative 35-year City Link contract to Transurban - a stock which floated at $1 in 1996 and today almost hit a new high with a 16c gain to $6.43.  But that day will most certainly arrive.

There is a a bit of  irony in all of this though; the Queensland Government is the biggest shareholder in ConnectEast with exactly 100 million units or 9.5 per cent, held by the $35 billion Queensland Investment Corporation.  This means Victorian motorists (like me) have just handed $14 million of paper profits to the Queensland Government because the Bracks government mismanaged its magnificent financial inheritance from the Kennett regime and wasn't able to fund this important infrastructure project, like they famously promised before the last State Election.

Beer, Pop-Tarts and a Hurricane

 

What do you do when you hear that Hurricane Frances is on it's way, barreling across the Caribbean, threatening a direct hit on Florida's Atlantic coast?  Well if you live on the aforementioned coast you bail out and head for higher ground.  But if you are the world's largest retailer you recognise the opportunity and figure out how to make the most of it.

 

Yep, according to an article in today's Australian Financial Review (from the NY Times), in the week prior to Hurricane Frances’ landfall, Linda M. Dillman, Wal-Mart’s chief information officer, pressed her staff to come up with forecasts based on what had happened when Hurricane Charley struck several weeks earlier. Backed by the 460 terabytes (= about twice as much data than is on the entire Internet!) worth of shopper history that is stored in Wal-Mart’s computer network, she felt that the company could “start predicting what’s going to happen, instead of waiting for it to happen,” as she put it.

 

Excellent!  I reckon this is a really cool, relevant way to use a consumer data base to ensure that supply meets the situational consumer demands.

 

So what did the experts at Bentonville (Walmarts HQ) find hidden in their data?  They figured out that they needed to stock up on things other than torches: 

“We didn’t know in the past that strawberry Pop-Tarts increase in sales, like seven times their normal sales rate, ahead of a hurricane,” Ms. Dillman said. “And the pre-hurricane top-selling item was beer.”

And thanks to these "insights", trucks filled with Pop-Tarts and six packs of beer were speeding towards Wal-Marts in the path of Hurricane Frances...And of course the products that were stocked for the storm were quickly snapped up by scared locals.

 

Wal-Mart often comes under fire for collecting and storing such a huge wealth of customer data.  After all they have the capability of tying the use of your credit card into who you are, how much your mortgage is, your driving record etc, and pay back to its customers exactly nothing, no loyalty cards, no promotions—and no warnings anywhere that they’re doing it in the first place.

 

But should we as consumers care that we are being "data-mined" everytime we shop?  Or should we be grateful that stores have great power to meet our product demands?

 

Interesting questions to ponder, particularly when all the ATM's are empty on the second day of the four day Christmas break....

Peter Davidson @ Lip Sticking

One of my favorite bloggers, Peter Davidson is interviewed over at Lip-Sticking.

Peter is a self-proclaimed man of mystery, but he definately  an interesting bloke, and the interview is very insightful.  I would never have picked this about him:

"Truth is I've been in and out of jail more times than my mother appreciates. It's not a fun place to be. I've been to court 55 times in New York City. I've "worked" with the police in many places. Life in the criminal justice system is harsh."

That aside; just about all of Peter's posts get me thinking about some aspect of how I go about my life and how other people (=business) try to influence me.

Even in the Lip Sticki interview he managed to slide in something that got me wondering:

"Why does Barnes & Noble pay a cashier $6 an hour to ring up my sale when Amazon taught me to feel good about buying books from a machine/computer?"

So, if you enjoy wrapping your head around things like that, then you'll enjoy his blog, and you'll enjoy the interview.  So If youv'e never heard of Peter Davidson, check out both of the links above.

(Oh, and the jail thing, Peter worked for many years as a consultant architect designing criminal justice projects all over the country. He's measured 55 courtrooms in NYC, and been to jail a lot of times. Just visiting, though.)

Fast, Faster, Fastest

As a subscriber to the ChangeThis  (cool manifestos) newsletter, on Monday I found out about an offer to dowload Seth Godins Bootstrappers Bible for free.  So off I went and duely downloaded away  (you can too right here). Big deal.  So did lots of others aswell.

But here's the twist; Seth wrote it seven years ago and published it as a paperback.  He managed to sell about 10 000 copies at twelve bucks a pop.  He then turned it into a PDF and sold it on Amazon (here), and it sat atop of the bestselling ebook list, but in 18 months had sold fewer copies than the paperback did.  But then enter ChangeThis, and in twenty four hours, it had already "outsold" the Amazon eBook and will quite likely surpass the printed edition within a week or so.

Think about it that; in under a week, it will "sell" more copies than it has during the last seven years.  Why?  Is it cause it is free? Nah. I think there is more to it than that (afterall it only costs a few bucks at Amazon, almost free)

I think it  has it more to do with the fact that, via ChangeThis, the Bootstrappers Bible became  a talking point.  It came up in conversations.  Whether you define it a word of mouth, viral marketing or a buzz, it is more proof that markets are conversations. And we talk fast, link fast and act faster.

Of course we know what happen next... in a few weeks (days?) the Bootstrappers Bible will be almost dead.  No one will be talking about it anymore; it will be out there, people will have read it, talked about it, discussed it, maybe acted on it... and moved on with the next topic of conversation.  That's just the way we do things around here, and it makes sense.