January 31, 2004

The Truth About Westminster

See this online book on British political life - and how so many people with integrity can find themselves altered - corrupted even, albeit in subtle ways - by the process of government and the pressures of office. Relevant to posting below, on the battle between media and politicians, based on a morally dubious pattern which tends to polarise and exaggerate party differences, in order to try to gain added public attention or audience.
Future of BBC radio, TV, online, broadcasting, audiences, social trends, news, current affairs, charter review - and commercial television - by Dr Patrick Dixon

Presentation to the BBC on the future of broadcasting, and the urgent need for reform of journalism / political debate
The truth about Westminster, politics, the BBC and the Hutton Enquiry

In December I spoke to around 100 of the most senior people at the BBC about their future, and future of broadcasting / journalism in general.

There is a huge crisis of confidence in both politicians and journalists which is undermining our democratic process, with falling interest in political debate, manifestos or election voting.

A primary reason is that most people believe that politicians are insincere, and that journalists exaggerate to make a story.

In my own experience of the media (audience reach over 200 million in the last 12 months on various interviews - see medialog) there is constant pressure to fill papers and programmes, because or a lack of enough real news.

The gap is filled by debate and conflict between individuals. However there is not enough of that either, so it is often hyped or even invented.

I have lost track of the number of times over the years I have been phoned to appear on a TV or radio programme, and it has been made absolutely clear that they are looking for highly coloured views. If they think that one's views are likely to reflect those of the middle majority, they are keen to proceed if it a general comment piece, but if it is a debate they tend to drop the idea of an interview with me and start pumping me for the phone numbers of people who have a more extreme position (it makes better TV).

Frequently I have found myself in a one-to-one interview being invited on-air to criticise what someone else has said in a previous interview. On many occaisions that person's own words are re-positioned to give a superficial characture of their actual position. I know for a fact that has also happened immediately after I have left a studio.

It also happens in the press. A journalist trying to stir up a fight may phone to suggest that an individual I know has said a particular thing, sharply critical of what I am saying on an issue. A time to take care. A quick call to the person concerned or a reading of their own press release often makes it abundantly clear that their own position has been deliberately distorted.

The truth is that most people agree on most things in most Western countries and this is especially true in the UK.

Most politicians also agree on most things.

Tony Blair and Michael Howard agree in private on most things. That is an inescapable fact. We know that whoever was in power over the next three years, very little would actually change.

The truth is that ministers try to do their best, but have very limited influence. Their job is difficult and complex: they are also very dependent on advice they receive (which can be wrong). Many decisions are dictated by Brussels, much of the rest is decentralised. Yet other decisions were inherited by a previous government. Most other parts of traditional government have been privatised. What little that remains is run by a civil service that endures from one government to another, comprising of (in the main) experienced and competent people who maintain stability and continuity through all the fads and fashions of political policy experiments.

New governments very rarely reverse legislation when they get into power - however bitterly at the time they have pretended to be opposed.

There is a collusion between politicians and the media, both of which have a strong interest in exaggerating differences. For the media it makes interesting copy (they think) or rivetting viewing (they hope). For politicians it gives them exposure and (they fantasise) makes people see them as different from the other side so they win support.

This offensive and melodramatic drama is played out every day in the public media theatre.

It looks awful, is very tedious and boring, invites ridicule and cynicism, damages broadcasters and politicians alike, destroys ratings, contributes to the decline in audiences for current affairs and news programmes, makes a rising generation disinclined to enter politics at all.

After all the virulent criticism of Lord Hutton, the BBC has on opportunity to lead our nation in a more mature political debate.

The BBC, along with all news outlets, must learn to tell the truth - and force politicians to admit the reality.

The truth is that in Select Committees different parties work very happily and harmoniously together for the good of the nation. That MPS seem to undergo a personality refit when elevated to the House of Lords, leaving the infantile rough and tumble of party-poltiical posturing in the dustbin where it belongs. That most MPs have very good friends in the other parties. That many MPs agree more with MPs in other parties over a number of issues than they do with their own leadership. That there is overhwelming agreement on the fundamentals about how the economy should be managed, the need for social welfare as well as vibrant free-market economy which is friendly to business, a cautious view of entry to the Euro-zone, and so on.

The alternative is to continue with the current madness, which is such a distortion of reality. Failure to bring a culture change will result in further destruction of public confidence in both politicians and the media, and will risk further misjudgments such as that which led to the Hutton enquiry.

January 29, 2004

Interesting discussions with two different clients today about the death of shareholder value as a single driver of business targets to the exclusion of all else.

As I have been predicting for some time, the language of shareholder value is changing, softening on websites, in annual reports and internal communications in Europe, tempered by one scandal after another in companies which focussed on narrow definitions of success and corporate duty.

It is absued nonsense to try to build a business on giving shareholders loads of rewards. The core of every successful business is providing customers what they want, in a profitable way - a rather different emphasis.

I cannot understand how apparently intelligent and experienced executives could possibly see otherwise.

Satisfied customers must be a first priority and focus. Placing shareholders first in the feeding chain creates a culture where executives are tempted to cut corners, short-change customers. You cannot allow pressure from shareholders to suck the business dry.

See presentation slides on Real Success

January 26, 2004

RFIDs - the new techno revolution

I met today someone whose company (Alien Inc) has a machine the size of a small room able to make 10 billion Radio Frequency Identification Tags - or radio barcodes - in a year. Ten of these machines could provide 100 billion tags a year. Since Wal-Mart alone will need 5 billion just to tag pallets and boxes, it is clear the market is going to grow fast and prices will tumble - perhaps reaching as low as 3.5 cents per device. The technology is ingenious. I have in my pocket 100 chips in a small bottle. These automatically find their way in solution into identically shaped slots in a plastic membrane where they become permanently attached, so that they can be separated, and mounted onto a piece of paper on which is printed an aerial in special metallic ink. They are then fully active with hardware, software, permanent memory, operating system, and ability to write and receive data. It all happens more or less without human intervention using huge silicon wafers, and wide sheets of special laminates and papers which are then cut up to make each tag.

See presentation I gave today in London on RFID technology and security / privacy issues RFID SLIDES

January 25, 2004

Human milk from cows and other issues in farming - video
Human cloning, human genetics and Brave New World

Huge number of resources on human cloning, stem cell research, biotechnology and other health / science issues
Working for Nothing
Corporate Lessons from Nonprofits

“I don’t understand it. We’ve offered him a bonus of half a million dollars to stay on – and he’s still set on leaving.” The key was what he wanted to do instead – without being paid a single cent.

(A shortened version of this article appeared as a Unisys advertorial in the Economist on 13th September 2003.)

Ask your colleagues about the work they do for nothing and you may be shocked. You could learn more about them in three minutes than in the last three years working together. At most executive conferences I ask the audience the same question: how many people have given time to work for nothing in the last year for a cause you really believe in? And almost without exception, in every nation, there’s a forest of hands. Volunteering is a rapidly growing phenomenon, a common passion even amongst the busiest executives, and a vital issue for corporations to understand.

And what is even more interesting than to find out “what” is to ask “why”? Time and again you will hear moving accounts of people on a journey: a family tragedy, a friendship with someone who started a new community programme, meeting someone in desperate need, wanting to participate in activities that support the children – and so on.

Conference halls light up as people begin telling their own stories: real heart-filled accounts of time and energy poured out into situations that need help. I have never ever witnessed anything remotely like it, in any discussion of marketing campaigns, business challenges, management successes, product failures, financial objectives, operational plans or strategic targets. Actually, there is just one exception: you can often find the same in non-profits, where a high percentage of workers are unpaid, or working for very little financial reward, with a sense of personal vocation, on a mission to make someone’s world somewhere a better place.

There’s a crisis of motivation at work, as shown by a fortune spent every year on the latest management fad, books, videos, conferences and internal programmes. At the same time, many people have this intense drive, when touched in the right way, to work for absolutely nothing,

These community involvements by executives in corporations are often private, usually result from a personal story, and can be hard to talk about, but lessons from non-profit activity should be on the agenda of every executive board, not least because it means far more to many directors than the profit-focussed businesses they run.

Around six out of ten adults in the US now work without pay in any year for causes they believe in. The average volunteer gives 200 hours annually, contributing the equivalent of 4.5% of American GDP. In Europe the figures are lower but still substantial. Take the UK for example where 43% of adults give time each year, worth £40bn or 4% of GDP.

But there’s a problem with paid work. I have rarely met a Chairman or CEO of a publicly listed corporation who is truly passionate about shareholder value, bottom-line profit or return on equity – compared to the passion they express about their children, or community causes they are involved in, or whatever else they give energy to outside of the business. Strange then that that board members should think that anyone else will be deeply inspired by a vision of making their numbers every quarter.

Who cares?

You cannot expect a CEO to have true passion about a corporation when the average length of service before being sacked or pushed out is little more than three years in the UK and similarly short elsewhere. If you don’t make your numbers for three successive quarters you could be on the way out. The corporation has almost zero commitment to the individual, so it is unrealistic to expect the individual to lay down his or her life for the corporation.

This volunteering desire is all part of the same radical rethink about life that has also focussed on work-life balance, corporate ethics, corporate governance and social responsibility, and reflects the spirit of a new age, a spirit that will become essential for future business survival.

Last-century success meant making big profits for shareholders, with few questions asked. Real success in future will be far more difficult to define. It will mean demonstrating how your corporation makes a real difference for everyone: for shareholders of course, but also for your customers, and your workers, for the wider community, and in some small way for the whole of humanity – for example by protecting the environment.

Many corporations are still driving their strategies by profit considerations alone, with minor concessions to what they see as necessary requirements such as corporate governance, environmental protection or social responsibility. This narrow philosophy can be disastrous, as Nestle found recently when they tried to recover a few million dollars of old debt from a nation of starving Ethiopians, or embarrassing and damaging, as the pharmaceutical industry discovered, when they were forced by public outrage to permit “illegal” manufacturing of low-cost life-saving generic drugs by the poorest nations.

So what of the future? Expect more corporations to start adopting some of the language, culture and characteristics of nonprofits, while nonprofits will continue to make huge efforts to become more business-like. Between these two the public sector will struggle to compete with either the passion found in single-issue nonprofits, or the efficiency of corporations. Expect well-run nonprofits, led by spiritual refugees from corporate life, to seize a growing share of government contracts, especially in health care and education, and to attract huge talent.

Non-profits are a growing part of the UK and US economies and can have significant advantages because their mission is pure and simple: “We exist only to help those in need of our services. We do not exist to make profits for shareholders and all the surplus we make is ploughed back into developing even better services in the future.” However, the down-side is a reputation outside of the commercial environment for inefficiency, sloppy management, restrictive practices and resistance to change.

Connect with all the passions people have and they will follow you to the ends of the earth, they will buy your products and services with pride and often work for next to nothing. That is the secret of the voluntary sector. Business has a lot to learn. But so do non-profits and public sector groups – about being more focussed, efficient and future-orientated.

ACTION STEPS FOR PUBLIC SECTOR and NON-PROFITS:

• Make sure your mission is clear and attractive
• Communicate with passion and integrity
• Show how your organisation builds a better world for everyone
• Prove that you are as well managed as the best businesses
Benchmark against best-practice in commercial organisations
o Implement radical changes where needed to reach commercial levels of efficiency
• Explain how your non-profit motivation makes you different
o No shareholders to satisfy
o Total focus on those who need your help
• Make sure your people are proud of the work you all do
• Help your teams see how they make a real difference to people’s lives
o Get people close to where the action is
o Regular exposure to what the organisation is all about
? Eg Private hospital administrators spend time with patients
• Live your message and your mission!

LESSONS FOR CORPORATES:

• Take personal passion seriously
• Make sure you understand what your staff and customers feel most strongly about – outside of your business, and harness that energy - for change and productivity
• Show how you make a real difference because of what you do
• Show how your business builds a better world for everyone - Customers, Shareholders, Workers and their familie, Community, Wider humanity
• Encourage volunteering and community involvement
• Make sure your people are proud of the corporation - What you do, How you do it
• Turn your mission statement into a daily reality
Working for nothing: corporate lesson from nonprofits Article text appeared as an advertorial in the Economist sponsored by Unisys - looks at reasons why corporations are failing to understand changes in values and motivation.
Dr Patrick Dixon, ranked one of 50 most influential business thinkers - 4 million visitors on this Futurist site
RFIDs: GREAT NEW BUSINESS OR BRAVE NEW WORLD?

Billions of wireless electronic tags are about to impact manufacturing, distribution and retailing - raising huge questions about privacy, civil liberties and human rights

(Presentation by Dr Patrick Dixon at national UK conference on RFID use - January 2004)

Get ready for the biggest manufacturing, distribution and retail revolution since the net. The next ten years will see a new techno-revolution which will allow total automation from manufacturing to point of purchase, using wireless technology.

A world, where everything that moves can talk to everyone, everywhere all the time. That means cartons of milk, bottles of wine, clothes, wallets, tyres, cars, pets and people.

Electronic bar-codes embedded into billions of different things and organisms which have value, including animals and possibly some human beings - sending out radio signals about what they are, where they are, and possibly what they are doing or how their bodies are working.

These devices are tiny micro-computer systems which already cost as little as 15p, expected to fall to less than 3p by 2005. They are going to change all our lives, containing hardware, software, and permanent memory stores. They transmit and receive data and have their own built-in power generators which could in theory last up to 100 years. Activated by a high-intensity burst of electromagnetic radiation from a distance of less than two metres, the devices respond with short bursts of data.

So-called Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID) are already being introduced rapidly by chains such as WallMart for larger consignments. RFIDs have been around a long time. Since 1997 you'll have found the same technology in Ski passes in Switzerland , in Swatch watches, some of which can store credit, as well as more recently in London Underground electronic tickets.

Within the current decade more of these RFIDs will be made each year than there are people alive on earth. Once prices fall to less than 1p per tag, retail usage will explode with anything from 20 - 40 billion tagged products sold a year.

RFIDs mean that a retail outlet can watch goods going out of the door and know who is taking them, even which card to charge. RFIDs prevent theft, help guarantee quality, provide absolute 100% precision about what stock remains in the food store and when products are close to sell-by dates. RFIDs allow factory owners to watch products moving off the shelves in Shopping Malls the other side of the world, triggering automatic increases in production, extra transportation, as well as instant requests for more raw materials to the factory door.

RFIDs mean I can pay for products and services ranging from bottles of wine to travel tickets, using a card that never leaves my pocket. They mean an end to stock control, inventory audit, confusion about location of orders, mistakes in warehouse picking or delivery. RFIDs mean accurate and fair road-use charging, and traffic management - as well as car components such as tyres or brake pads which shout to the garage for help when they are nearing the end of their safety margin.

RFIDs will reduce waste, keep stock levels to the minimum, shorten lead times, and allow some retailers to slash prices by more than 20%, by eliminating cost at every level. Laundry tracking, ID cards for employee security and staff location inside offices, data for customer loyalty programmes (we know you bought another one of these yesterday so here's a special discount today), automated guided vehicles in assembly lines, automated airline baggage systems - use will be almost universal across all industries.

At the same time, expect huge emotive discussions about personal privacy, and data leakage, with demands that next-generation RFIDs contain a reliable switch which can be turned off by a consumer after a product is bought. Pressure groups will campaign successfully in some nations against data-leakage, where all kinds of information could theoretically be transmitted about an individual without their knowledge or consent, by tags in their shirts, shoes, gloves, belts, car seats, credit cards and so on, in response to unscrupulous use of scanners which could be as easy to conceal as mobile phones.

In theory RFIDs could enable me to read all the numbers and expiry information on the credit cards in your pocket as you walk by, as well as where you do most of your clothes shopping, and the model of the portable computer you are carrying in your briefcase.

It also enables me to track you (probably by what you are carrying or wearing) as you pass by from one scanner to another, not only in and out of buildings, but on and off trains, planes, in coffee shops and in supermarkets. Of course the technology already exists for this, using mobile phones. For a small fee you can already watch on your children or partner walking around the streets of London on a web-based location map using data provided by cell-phone companies.

Privacy is a major and very sensitive issue: one that has not been properly addressed by passive RFIDs so far - as a recent incident showed at an international conference where it transpired that all delegates were tagged without their knowledge or consent, using concealed RFIDs inside every badge.

We will also see a whole new crime industry built around theft identity - not just of people and their credit-worthiness, but also imitating the electronic signals of all kinds of products - for example disguising empty pallets, supposedly containing many thousands of pounds of pharmaceuticals. Virtual counterfeiting will mean freight loads travelling around the world that talk all the right electronic talk, but contain nothing but ballast inside.

So then, price-falls in technology will have to go hand-in-glove with tightened security measures or there will be a risk that ordinary men and women may decide that RFIDs do not, after all, promise them a better kind of world.

Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you.

* Dr Patrick Dixon is Chairman of Global Change Ltd, author of Futurewise. He has recently been ranked as one of the 50 most influential business thinkers alive today (Thinkers50 / Bloomsbury Publishing). http://www.globalchange.com - 4 million unique visitors

For Times Feature by Dr Dixon on RFIDs and injectable devices in people and animals see "The office has got under my skin"
RFIDs: GREAT NEW BUSINESS OR BRAVE NEW WORLD?

Billions of wireless electronic tags are about to impact manufacturing, distribution and retailing - raising huge questions about privacy, civil liberties and human rights

(Presentation by Dr Patrick Dixon at national UK conference on RFID use - January 2004)

Get ready for the biggest manufacturing, distribution and retail revolution since the net. The next ten years will see a new techno-revolution which will allow total automation from manufacturing to point of purchase, using wireless technology.

A world, where everything that moves can talk to everyone, everywhere all the time. That means cartons of milk, bottles of wine, clothes, wallets, tyres, cars, pets and people.

Electronic bar-codes embedded into billions of different things and organisms which have value, including animals and possibly some human beings - sending out radio signals about what they are, where they are, and possibly what they are doing or how their bodies are working.

These devices are tiny micro-computer systems which already cost as little as 15p, expected to fall to less than 3p by 2005. They are going to change all our lives, containing hardware, software, and permanent memory stores. They transmit and receive data and have their own built-in power generators which could in theory last up to 100 years. Activated by a high-intensity burst of electromagnetic radiation from a distance of less than two metres, the devices respond with short bursts of data.

So-called Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID) are already being introduced rapidly by chains such as WallMart for larger consignments. RFIDs have been around a long time. Since 1997 you'll have found the same technology in Ski passes in Switzerland , in Swatch watches, some of which can store credit, as well as more recently in London Underground electronic tickets.

Within the current decade more of these RFIDs will be made each year than there are people alive on earth. Once prices fall to less than 1p per tag, retail usage will explode with anything from 20 - 40 billion tagged products sold a year.

RFIDs mean that a retail outlet can watch goods going out of the door and know who is taking them, even which card to charge. RFIDs prevent theft, help guarantee quality, provide absolute 100% precision about what stock remains in the food store and when products are close to sell-by dates. RFIDs allow factory owners to watch products moving off the shelves in Shopping Malls the other side of the world, triggering automatic increases in production, extra transportation, as well as instant requests for more raw materials to the factory door.

RFIDs mean I can pay for products and services ranging from bottles of wine to travel tickets, using a card that never leaves my pocket. They mean an end to stock control, inventory audit, confusion about location of orders, mistakes in warehouse picking or delivery. RFIDs mean accurate and fair road-use charging, and traffic management - as well as car components such as tyres or brake pads which shout to the garage for help when they are nearing the end of their safety margin.

RFIDs will reduce waste, keep stock levels to the minimum, shorten lead times, and allow some retailers to slash prices by more than 20%, by eliminating cost at every level. Laundry tracking, ID cards for employee security and staff location inside offices, data for customer loyalty programmes (we know you bought another one of these yesterday so here's a special discount today), automated guided vehicles in assembly lines, automated airline baggage systems - use will be almost universal across all industries.

At the same time, expect huge emotive discussions about personal privacy, and data leakage, with demands that next-generation RFIDs contain a reliable switch which can be turned off by a consumer after a product is bought. Pressure groups will campaign successfully in some nations against data-leakage, where all kinds of information could theoretically be transmitted about an individual without their knowledge or consent, by tags in their shirts, shoes, gloves, belts, car seats, credit cards and so on, in response to unscrupulous use of scanners which could be as easy to conceal as mobile phones.

In theory RFIDs could enable me to read all the numbers and expiry information on the credit cards in your pocket as you walk by, as well as where you do most of your clothes shopping, and the model of the portable computer you are carrying in your briefcase.

It also enables me to track you (probably by what you are carrying or wearing) as you pass by from one scanner to another, not only in and out of buildings, but on and off trains, planes, in coffee shops and in supermarkets. Of course the technology already exists for this, using mobile phones. For a small fee you can already watch on your children or partner walking around the streets of London on a web-based location map using data provided by cell-phone companies.

Privacy is a major and very sensitive issue: one that has not been properly addressed by passive RFIDs so far - as a recent incident showed at an international conference where it transpired that all delegates were tagged without their knowledge or consent, using concealed RFIDs inside every badge.

We will also see a whole new crime industry built around theft identity - not just of people and their credit-worthiness, but also imitating the electronic signals of all kinds of products - for example disguising empty pallets, supposedly containing many thousands of pounds of pharmaceuticals. Virtual counterfeiting will mean freight loads travelling around the world that talk all the right electronic talk, but contain nothing but ballast inside.

So then, price-falls in technology will have to go hand-in-glove with tightened security measures or there will be a risk that ordinary men and women may decide that RFIDs do not, after all, promise them a better kind of world.

Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you.

* Dr Patrick Dixon is Chairman of Global Change Ltd, author of Futurewise. He has recently been ranked as one of the 50 most influential business thinkers alive today (Thinkers50 / Bloomsbury Publishing). http://www.globalchange.com - 4 million unique visitors

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