What if people stopped e-mailing files?

E-mail is a great thing, it helps you to connect with friends, family, colleagues. It is fast, reliable (well sort of) and can get you information you need from someone.

But what if e-mail becomes a liability? How many of you have had the experience of jointly working on a document with a number of people via e-mail? And how many of you have had issues with using the correct version? Well I am going to guess a lot of you, as I have.

Is there no better way to share or work on documents? Yes, there is imho. In my team we have started slowly to use a wiki to share documents. Everyone in the team has access to the files, can upload a new version. And if it is a text document, we can all work on it together. All benefits for the team.

Have you used a wiki at work or for private use? What is your experience?

What if you could time travel?

Time travel, who would not like to give it a spin?

Where would you go? Back in the past, to the future? And would you change anything, or just watch?

What if people really started to make presentations?

What is a presentation? According to Wikipedia, this is the definition:

the practice of showing and explaining the content of a topic to an audience or learner.

But what makes a good presentation? Far too often I sit in a meeting (virtual or physical) and I see slide after slide of text appear on the screen. Even if it is created in PowerPoint, the file does not make it a presentation. It will have to be a great presenter to keep the audience interested as most folks will read the slides, not listen.

Even if I am not claiming to be a great presenter, I always make it a priority to include as little words as possible. A title on the slide, a picture that says a thousand words, and off I go with my narrative.

How about you? How often do you feel like someone is not giving a presentation, but reading a document in front of the meeting room?

Do you have any tips you can share about what makes a good presentation to you?

What if taking away MUD leads to war?

People around the world are always jubilant when a new treaty is signed reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world. But should we be really happy about this? At first sight yes, as these horrendous weapons could potentially one day destroy the entire planet.

But what if all nuclear weapons would one day be destroyed? Then the notion of MUD or Mutually Assured Destruction no longer applies. MUD implies that no big nation, be it the US, Russia, China or any other nation with a big arsenal of nuclear weapons, will initiate a first strike, as it will almost certainly lead to a retaliation and escalation that will lead to both (or more) countries being completely annihilated.

Now then, if there are no nuclear weapons anymore, what is stopping a big country from engaging another into war? Or from simply taking over your small neighbour? If you feel you have an edge, and can surprise your adversary with a first strike, what is stopping that country from going for it?

So maybe we need to keep a few nuclear weapons, just to make sure no one does something silly.

What is your view?

What if more people donate 0,83 EUR per day?

It does not take a lot of money to do good in the world. Obviously if you are Mr Gates you can spend millions or billions, but small amounts matter too.

Take Plan International for example, for as little as 0,83 EUR per day you can adopt a child in an underdeveloped country. Your contribution goes towards that child and the community it lives in. And there are other organisations such as Foster Parents who perform similar NGO activities.

Could you survive if you have 0,83 EUR less per day? Changes are high that you could. If yes, why not consider adopting a child through one of these services.

Small things matter.

This is the direct link to sign up in Belgium, I hope you click on it and take action.

What if companies stop quarterly reporting to Wall Street?

At Sun I have attended a number of sales planning training courses and assisted in some account planning sessions. One common theme in these sessions is that if you want to accomplish success you should have a sound planning strategy, and this strategy should look at the long term relationship with your customer. These sessions were held by the Client Executive and the account team. The question that often came to the surface was the following:

“If I discuss my account plan with my manager, and talk about the multi-year objectives, he almost always asks me what deals I can close in the current quarter. How do I handle this situation?”

This is what typically happens in companies that are listed on the stock exchange, and especially on Wall Street. Companies need to deliver results each quarter, and Wall Street is not really interested in the long term, if you do not beat or meet expectations in the current or next quarter your stock price is going down.

Needless to say this is putting immense pressure on C-level management, and this inevitably trickles down to sales management, who is asking for as many deals to close in the current quarter. What happens next quarter, or next year does not really matter much.

There was one exception where a 3-year growth plan was initiated for a certain set of accounts. Without going into details I can confirm that account teams who signed up for this (and received management support) outperformed their colleagues by +10% points (and more) in those 3 years.

But what if companies decided to stop quarterly reporting? What if they only sent out information in their annual report? Would that make a difference?

What if people were not afraid to push OK?

When my mother was still alive, she was afraid to push the button. She was born in 1939, so needless to say, modern technology was not something she was used to. Yet, she did her best to learn to use a mobile phone, digital tv and more. I have to tell you that in the first few weeks of a new item in the household, I was on permanent standbye. There were lots of questions, really LOTS of questions.

More than once I was with her when she showed me what she was doing. And very often she was doing it right, and then I asked her why she stopped.

“I am afraid if I push this, I will break it.”

No matter how many times I have tried to explain her that she could not break the device by clicking on OK, she could not master it, she was always afraid to push OK.

How about you, are you afraid? Or do you know someone who is frightened?

What if people only tried to improve their strengths?

Every year in thousands of corporations and public offices performance appraisals take place. A manager evaluates the past year with the employee, and does a check on what worked well, and what did not.

And in most of the cases, an action plan is taken that focuses on what did not work, where initiatives are needed to improve a particular aspect of the employee.

Now here is a thought: what if we decide to ignore the weak points of people, and focus on the strengths? If someone excels at something, should he or she not be given the opportunity to explore that even further, making that employee even more productive (and might I say happier)?

And if the weak points are so important for a particular job, is that person not in the wrong job?

A few years ago I bought a book called Strenghtsfinder. It was something that I very much enjoyed reading, and I have tried to focus as much as possible on my strengths, rather than my weak points.

What do you think? What would you want to improve?

What if we just said “Goodbye and Good Luck”?

Today is the 21st of July (Dutch text), the Belgian national holiday. This is the day that the 1st king of Belgium was inaugurated, and we remember it with a Bank holiday, a parade, usually lots of rain and speeches left and right.

In the history of Belgium much has been going on between Flanders and Wallonia. We also have Brussels, which many believe is the country, with Belgium as capital. And with many, I mean folks in the US (who usually watch Fox News).

There is still much debate going on, especially after the June 13 elections, about the future of Belgium. Will we stay a federal country, will we migrate towards a confederal state, will we split like Czechoslovakia did? Many things to consider… Many consequences, many difficult decisions to be made.

What would I prefer? Well I am going to be open about it, I would not mind an independent Flanders. I realise Belgium is already a small country, why live in an even smaller country. But I don’t believe size matters, I honestly think it would be better for everybody if we went our own ways and said: “Goodbye and Good Luck”.

What is your view? What do you think will happen, or what do you want to happen?

What if there would be 2 Tours de France?

It’s that time of year again, the Tour de France is taking place in France. Well duh, you might say, but given the places the Tour has started in recent years, it’s no longer a “pure” Tour de France.

And also at this time of year (or the whole year unfortunately) there is talk about doping. Who might be taking it, who has taken it and has returned, who got caught and is denying everything … Speculation about new products that might be used, and this goes on and on and on.

So this came to mind: what if we have 2 Tours de France? One where you can take any doping you want, no limits. After all it is up to the riders to decide if they want to risk their lives. And one Tour where nothing can be taken. Theoretically this should be the actual Tour de France, but that’s me being naive. And there would be controls taking place everyday, for each rider, making sure that nothing is taken. And the samples should be kept for years, if a rider is caught years later, severe penalties (fines, even jail time?) should be given.

What do you think? Would you be interested in a super Tour de France with doped riders? Or do you think the latter is the actual Tour de France?