People talk about “doomed” sports and a lack of appeal to “Gen Z” (golf, rugby, baseball, horse racing and so forth) but isn’t the uncomfortable truth that there is insufficient excitement to sustain and grow a large pool of their ideal fans. Those people with the means and the greatest propensity to pay for the “must see” experience. The assumption that this is a “generational divide” is misguided, there are greater differences within than across generations.
When the process of a reserving a room directly with a boutique hotel, in this case, in Rome, is 5 times more time consuming (email and phone) than a booking engine little wonder that they are rapidly ceding control and influence over their customers’ preferences. Time is money.
A New York Times writer impresses his fellow journalists with a condescending story about the past decade of Conservative leadership in Great Britain. One that ideologically is poles apart from his own personal beliefs.
A host of informed American friends of mine “surprised”, ask me about a local’s perspective. When I point out that Britain’s reputation only trails Trump in the NYT “hitlist”, irrespective of the facts, they are resigned to acceptance that the “US newspaper of record” is so divorced from reality that they question why they bother reading the paper.
A 55 year old tanned luxury business owner walks into the changing room of an upscale gym after an intense workout, and starts a discourse with a member about their respective weekends. “I did mushrooms and MDNA, no cocaine.” The other individual replies, “I should give you the name of this wonderful woman, very high quality and discreet.” They depart after exchanging greetings.
Why do I feel slightly queezy and disappointed? Is it the thought that two seemingly healthy, friendly and successful individuals are at one extreme making every effort to be in the best physical shape, and at the other end, embracing a clearly destructive lifestyle? Is it the nagging thought that they might be doing hard drugs possibly in my presence? Is it my business? Not really. Who am I to judge them?
We imagine in life that we are amongst like-minded souls but when that turns out not to be the case, we have choices. We can confront the individuals or management with our dissatisfaction (what do we ideally want to happen?) We can adapt (train at a different time of day). We can ignore it, satisfying ourselves this is an isolated incident (no meaningful impact on us). At the other extreme, we can choose not to come again.
We are not powerless. I tell this story because way too often I hear smart people whingeing to me about events inside their control and influence. Do something about it, you have choices, don’t ignore them.
If you need employees back in the office on a full-time or substantial amount of the week to sustain your client business, how hard is it to first present something that is demonstrably in their self-interest to accept? Judging by headlines in the New York Times, The Times and Globe and Mail that is proving to be very hard for a number of corporate executives in large employers in New York, London and Toronto. Perhaps the Boards of those businesses should accept the reality, those leaders lack the skills, behaviour and expertise to sustain their workforce. It is time for a change at the top!
Look around at the mistakes teenagers and twentysomethings make (financial, gambling, borrowing etc) and invariably, there is a woeful lack of understanding of probability and risk. Indeed, that is magnified in extreme risk situations and risk-taking (addiction, covid, war and so on), where default “cost/benefit” analysis is irrelevant. In order to thrive, you must first survive, is one of the first lessons gamblers learn. When the risk-taking education in the home or classroom is so weak, little wonder our kids are prone to dumb mistakes.
NOMA, the Copenhagen restaurant, announced it is transforming into a pop up and food lab with seasonal opening. London’s free business daily newspaper, City AM, points to an increasing 4-day week in the City of London, as reason for a 4-day print only version. Reinvention stories abound as existing business models are increasingly unsustainable. Look underneath and these announcements are largely about “cutting their way to success” but there is no business or thriving brand that has succeeded doing that. How do you sustainably build a business if you cannot sustainably employ great people?
A quick tour through my Instagram timeline, a more refined repository of self-promotion than Facebook, reveals swathes of mostly females of a certain age, desperately projecting their health and lifestyle. The volume of content creation is impressive but so is the overwhelming inanity. Who do they want to be known as? How does this help them in support of who they want to be known as? Who really cares?
If the taxpayer and State has largely funded the career of a public official or Royal Family member, created their wealth and built their media profile, why don’t the “profits” or a significant portion of them from their post-career work, not return to the taxpayer and State (“pay-back”)? When did we agree that years of public service are a legitimate and “free” resume-building tactic?
We design our lives and businesses in a manner that we believe is optimal (family, customer needs, lifestyle etc) but we give a tenth of the thought and time about what “optimal” is, given changes occurring around us today and the next 12 months. Indeed, many wish that they had given thought to and taken action to re-design their lives and businesses months and years earlier. Why is that?
My observation is huge amount of energy and time is directed to “stuff” that gets in the way (moderate and low importance) and/or if we can avoid thinking about it (changes in beliefs, attitudes, behaviour and action), we can muddle through successfully. Not reflecting that we end up in a “muddle” because we insisted on procrastinating about issues in our lives and businesses, where we didn’t accurately separate the relative importance to us, now and in future.
