Mild mannered reporter by day...

We have all seen the standard superhero movie with the recycled plot line. A normal guy living a normal life suddenly discovers he has extraordinary abilities. Continuing his day job, in his spare time he does amazing things to help people he has never met – because he has the ability to act and he knows that it is the right thing to do.

But people like this exist outside of the Hollywood scripts, changing the world one life at a time. Superheroes like James Harrison, who at age 74 has saved an estimated 2 million lives – Batman would have to pull a lot of overtime to match that.

James learnt that he had very special blood, the plasma prevented babies dying from Rhesus disease. He has given blood every few weeks since he was 18 and will reach 1,000 donations in September this year.

So choose to give blood, volunteer, mentor, teach, inspire, sponsor a child, give to good causes, be selfless, spread joy. My challenge to you is to be a hero – you don’t even have to save a life, just try to change one.

Young professional series : Cleaning up your on-line image

If I did a Google search on you, do you know what I would find?

As the world gets more connected, the chances of you being found online increases. Everything you post on Twitter, Facebook and other social media remains long after the controversial conversation concludes or compromising photo was taken. People may not have been watching at the time but the Internet never sleeps and has a long memory.

Take charge of your on-line presence by making sure your content on all these sites reflect a positive image of you. Check your sharing securities on Facebook, think before you post online on blogs, comment on news stories or pass comments on Twitter.

Once you have cleaned up, stay clean using Google Alerts. If you are a registered Google user, you can use the Google Alert function to trawl the internet for your full name or just your surname (mine is pretty unique so that works for me). When anything gets posted on the Internet and Google finds it using your search terms, you get an e-mail with a link to the site.

That way you can check whether the new information on the web that relates to you adds or detracts from your on-line image and you can try to change it.

People are getting fired and not being hired due to Facebook activity and what Google searches turn up. Don’t go making the same mistake.

Young professional series

I am hardly still a young professional, but I am still learning an immense amount about being in the business of consulting every day. And it excites me and scares me all at the same time.

The cause for these mixed emotions is the same thing. No matter how much you know, there still is so much to learn. The learning curve is steep, especially if you have recently transitioned into advisory from a commercial background.

Intermittently, I will be writing down interesting things that I pick up from reading or from experience - as much for myself as for anyone else.

History always repeats itself, probably because mankind doesn't listen well

I woke up early on Sunday morning and followed the usual morning routine of a bit of reading, catching up on the news and e-mails – to be confronted by a tsunami warning. A devastating earthquake in Chile was sending a wave across the Pacific towards Australia. I followed up on the story during the day and fortunately, no killer tidal wave made it to our shores.

What was shocking was the images on news.com.au of people in Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii swimming in the sea after the alarm had been raised but before the threat had been downgraded. Do humans suffer from long-term memory loss when it comes to tragedy?

The tsunami that hit Thailand around Christmas of 2004 killed over 200,000 people and left many more homeless. It was a crisis of epic proportion. And 5 years later, our response to a tsunami warning is either to sit on the beach to watch it come in or get in the sea because the waves should be awesome! I am not exempt from this idiocy, but a South African couple I know were on honeymoon in Thailand when the tsunami hit and were both nearly killed. The story they shared was a miracle. A mix of luck, perseverance and gut wrenching grief. As a result, the word tsunami brings up a very real image of destruction and disaster.

The same will occur in businesses. The lessons learnt from the corporate failures in early 2000 and the very recent global financial crisis will be forgotten – especially by those who escaped unscathed. Or they will simply not be learnt by those too young to be affected. This slow learning curve or the inability to remember tragedy is the reason why large scale financial catastrophes will always return.

Links

Pictures of people watching for the tsunami

Interesting Excel visual of the business cycle clock

Lessons from the pudding guy

True story : In 1999, David Phillips was grocery shopping when he noticed that Healthy Choice Foods was offering frequent-flyer miles to customers who bought its products. A 25-cent pudding would bring 100 miles. Phillips bought 12,150 servings of pudding for $3,140 and then enlisted the Salvation Army to help him peel off the UPC codes, in exchange for donating the pudding.

He mailed his submission to Healthy Choice, and they honoured the terms of the promotion and awarded him 1.25 million frequent-flyer miles, enough for 31 return trips from California to Europe. Phillips also got Advantage Gold status for life with American Airlines, which brings a special reservations number, priority boarding, upgrades, and bonus miles and he got an $815 tax writeoff for donating the pudding!

He is currently earning new miles five times faster than he can spend them, so essentially he has free air travel for life for the net cost of $2,325.

Morals of the story :

1. Always do a full commercial review of any agreement / contract / business decision - check your modelling and assumptions.
2. Make sure that your selling price on a product is greater than the cost to make / buy it.
3. Honour your contractual commitments to increase the value of the trust in your brand.
4. Donate to charity!

Luckily, there are no losers in this story. Phillips bought all his future air travel for $2,325. The airlines sold the miles to Healthy Choice foods so it was a standard arms length transaction and Healthy Choice foods got more publicity from Phillips’ pudding plan than they could ever have hoped to achieve through the promotion alone.

Originally saw this on www.futilitycloset.com