Business

Many years ago I was told the story about an IT technician who was called to an executive’s office to fix a computer. The techie arrived, opened the machine, turned one screw, closed it and fired it up. It worked perfectly!

When the executive received the account for USD 255 he was incensed. He phoned the techie, demanding to know how turning one screw could possibly cost so much.

Isn’t technology wonderful? I can sit in my office all day (when I’m not speaking to an audience) and communicate to my heart’s content with the entire world via my blog, e-mail, twitter and Skype. My wife doesn’t understand this – she doesn’t understand that I would rather do it this way than use the more traditional method of picking up the phone and calling someone.

Of course I have a valid reason – I spend most of my time in front of audiences where I can’t answer the phone so I want to make people used to communicating with me in other ways. But what’s your excuse?

Unbelievably, I watched as a guy at gym this morning was conducting his #1 toilet business while speaking on his mobile phone. I was astounded at his dexterity, but I was even more flummoxed by the fact that the call couldn’t wait on the call of nature. I would have (as I suspect most other people would have) let the phone ring, picked up the voice mail, and returned the call. OK, maybe this guy is frugal and didn’t want to call back.

But it kind of got me wondering about communication....

As a “motivational” speaker in the eyes of some people and clients, I’m often asked where real employee motivation comes from. It has always been my opinion that companies falsely believe motivation comes from employees’ back pocket – in other words the money they take home at the end of the month.

I know, however that almost every employee I talk with complains that there is always too much month at the end of the salary. If that is the case around the world, why are these people still working for the same company that does not pay them “enough”?

 I’m in the fortunate position to get contributions from all over the world for my Blog – which is great. Clients, past and present, send me stuff. I very seldom publish it as I try to keep posts here from my own keyboard so to speak. But I can’t resist posting this.

We know that public transport in South Africa in non-existent or diabolical in the first place. So in the run-up to the FIFA World Cup its astounding to read that the public transport infrastructure in one of the host cities has now virtually ceased to exist.

I'm still trying to trace the original source, it was sent to me by someone in the SA Justice system. He's trying to get hold of the original author.

Read carefully and draw your own conclusions.

 Marketing hype today is all about so-called “viral marketing”.  If your budget is big enough, and you want to embrace internet technology, almost any viral marketing company will get you to throw some of your budget their way.  The truth is though that viral marketing is nothing new:  Doctors have been doing it for years, at a fraction of the cost. In fact we've been paying them to do it. Let me explain.

It’s fair to say that, given the recovering economic climate, companies are still a bit shy to dish out sponsorship. Especially when the arena of the sponsorship is a sport that is easily tainted by mal-practice at administrative level, performance-enhancing drug abuse by athletes and the Caster Semenya debacle in 2009. Athletics gets a bad rap in South Africa.

Any CEO, MD and Manager worth their salt should be asking themselves this right now as they’re involved in strategy workshops and planning for the near future.

If you’re a South African company, the short answer is 4 weeks paid leave from 11 June to 11 July to enjoy the Fifa 2010 World Cup.

Jokes aside though. Two recent articles highlight the plight of the employee in 2010 as the world comes out of recession and begins its bounce-back. We hope!! But then again I bumped into an industry colleague at a coffee shop this week and he reckons the recession was just a perception!

Go figure!

In a business environment where everyone wants to streamline their business, cut costs, reduce the headcount but still remain in business, I often find that those decisions – fiscally astute as they might be – backfire.

Yesterday I called the SABC about my TV license. (For my international readers: All South Africans are required by law to be in possession of a license in order to own a TV. This has to be paid annually in order to fund the public broadcaster. They are in dire financial straits due to mismanagement and have cancelled virtually all new programming placing many actors, producers and thousands of related jobs in jeopardy. They’re only broadcasting re-runs on all three their channels. Most, if not all, affluent people here watch satellite TV from a private supplier similar to cable for which we pay a monthly fee.)

I spoke with the lowest common denominator – a call centre agent. The conversation went something like this: (I might even call them again, record it and podcast it...)

This is about the tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, Modern Corporate wisdom and then ‘the world according to Jianele’ follows at the end, because I was reminded that no matter how creative and ‘reasonable’ our excuses seem, we sometimes have to make difficult decisions in order to succeed.