There’s a new word to describe a wonderful movement that started here in Melbourne just five years ago which has been taking our country by storm. Idealisation – The Realisation of an Ideal through an Idea whose time has come. The cause that I speak of is Thankyou Water – until recently a little known social enterprise which is destined to have a global impact on the provision of safe water to those communities for whom safe drinking water, staple food and basic hygiene is a non-existent commodity. I know that the catch-phrase ‘Social Entrepreneurism’ has been bandied about to explain this new breed of thinking where ‘making a difference’ in the world goes well beyond just plain charity, but I believe that this new description of mine, “Idealisation,”  better describes the essence of what this amazing young team of social entrepreneurs is all about. Here’s a short history of their incredible journey so far…

Co-Founders Jarryd, Dan and Justine

To quote directly from their own material… “In 2008, Thankyou Water was started by a group of five university students, led by 19 year old Dan Flynn. He felt the urgency to help people in developing countries in South East Asia and Africa who don’t have access to safe water. What Dan discovered is that each year Australians spend $600 million on bottled water and yet, over 743 million people a year don’t have access to safe drinking water, resulting in the death of 2 million people (mainly children) and a day-to-day struggle to survive for those still alive. Thankyou Water exists to bring real change into the developing world…

…Thankyou Water’s mission is to provide average Australians with a chance to help those in need, by a simple process of purchasing a bottle of Thankyou Water. For every bottle of Thankyou Water purchased, at least one months worth of safe water is provided to someone in need somewhere in the developing world.”

The way that Thankyou Water has its impact is not by means of charitable donations from you the public, but by competing as a social enterprise in the bottled water market to make as much profit as possible for the sole purpose of funding water projects in some of the worst affected areas of the world. The projects that 100% of Thankyou Water’s profits help to fund are all set up and managed by established NGO partners such as Oxfam; World Vision; Australian Red Cross and the like. These organisations have a proven track record in this area and Thankyou Water selects and audits them in the field on a project-by-project basis. In this way ‘TW’ can provide oversight for the allocation of their funds where they have the most direct impact, utilising the resources and expertise of those universally respected NGOs which have a long history of success in the field.

Thankyou Water have now extended that range to museli-based foodstuffs and a body-care range, and have specifically linked the two new product categories directly to emergency and long term food aid and hygiene education just as they did by linking bottled water sales to safe water projects. Already their efforts have changed the lives of 50,000 souls, but they are aiming for millions. I believe they’ll achieve that goal and by their example they will open the eyes of tomorrow’s entrepreneurs to what is now truly possible in our global village.

What makes Thankyou Water’s approach so unique is that they have developed an on-line method by which retail buyers of their water, food and body-care products will be able to track the positive impact their individual purchase is having via a specially created application called ‘Track Your Impact’. This is achieved  via the unique product code allocated to each item which can be tracked right through to the specific project in a specific location in the world, with GPS coordinates and photographs provided – all within fingertip touch on their smart phone app. Now that’s what I call marrying ‘high touch’ relationships with ‘high tech’ innovation.

The old model of supporting a far-flung community through charitable donations every month via the donor’s personal attachment to an individual child’s life story has just been upgraded to tracking on-line a single retail purchase to a specific impact on the ground in a specific corner of the developing world. Being a World Vision sponsor myself, I freely acknowledge that there is plenty of room for both forms of charitable and social entrepreneurial assistance in our society, but my profound belief is that Thankyou Water’s approach is heralding a new form of ‘idealisation’ that could well be the way of the future. What has brought this about is the vision of a handful of concerned and savvy Gen Y positive activists who intrinsically understand the value and the reach of Social Media combined with the technological ‘smarts’ of  today, and the courage and persistence to believe in their cause regardless of the insurmountable odds weighed against them in the start-up years.

I firmly believe that this masterful utilisation of Social Media combined with cutting edge web design and social media architecture has encapsulated the essence of today’s Gen Y approach to ‘changing the world’.

As a result of their ingenious Social Media campaign executed with military timing and a huge dose of irreverent and fun-filled ‘chutzpah,’ their world-changing bottled water and other staple items are now available for sale Australia-wide through 7-Eleven; Coles and Woolworths. It doesn’t get much bigger than that folks, and it’s all been achieved within five short years from the seed of an idea carried along on a wing and a prayer. Thankyou Water isn’t just an inspired vision any more, or even a sustainable social enterprise. It is developing into a full-blown movement with a just cause… and its followers are growing by the hour.

Here is their website -  www.thankyou.co . I urge you to check it out and spend more than just a few minutes trawling through their well crafted material and on-line creative genius. Once you have engaged with their site, I swear you will be hooked, and in the words of internet wunderkind Seth Godin, you’ll become another member of their ‘tribe.’

Needless to say, all of their YouTube Videos, of which there are many, are personable, informative and entertaining with high quality production values.

Here is just a brief taste of one of them. Do yourself a favour and click on it now… to follow their journey thus far.

This is the future today. As business owners and senior corporate executives, I want to ask you if Thankyou Water’s example has impacted on you as it did me? They once dreamed the impossible dream, but their dream is now a reality.

So what about your dreams?  What difference can you make in the world with all of the resources you have at your disposal?

They had none to begin with and still have very little to speak of today. But they are punching thousands of kilos above their weight.  I challenge you to do the same.  And if you feel you can’t, at least get on board and spread the word. I want my children and future grandchildren to inherit a world that I am proud to be associated with, and this is the type of example I want my children to be inspired by. What about you?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, and your feedback on how you can help me spread the word. Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to discuss further the amazing power of bringing this concept of “idealisation” to our workplaces, inspired by heart-centred leadership.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian.

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

This weekend our papers were filled with the story about a 13 yo girl yelling a racist slur at one of our footy champions playing in the stadium in front of her and many thousands of fans. The champion took offense, pointed out the transgressor to security and she was evicted from the ground in front of her shocked and embarrassed parent. There are many ways to view this episode and many points of view depending on what particular attitude you happen to have on the subject of racial slurs. I don’t intend to add my commentary to the rights and wrongs of what was said and done but what I would like to do is share an important lesson we learn from this incident about perceptions and the ‘framing’ we place around situations at work.

To set the scene here are some known facts about the incident. The footballer was genuinely hurt by the comment and although what was said wasn’t filled with vicious or vulgar obscenities, the words used were perceived to be derogatory based on his race and heritage and therefore unacceptable. The footballer felt hurt because it triggered a reminder in him of all of the racial vilification and bullying he had received as a boy at school and growing up in his teenage years both on and off the football park. The fact that he is a champion footballer who has won the game’s highest individual and team honours over the years is irrelevant because when he gave a media conference after the game he was speaking for all players on the field and people in society who still face the taunts and barbs of those ignorant few who take delight in attacking one’s race, religion, gender, sexual preference or some other perceived ‘difference’ which have no bearing on a person’s character or ability.

I applaud his decision to draw a line in the sand and speak up. And in his own words, we discover that what upset him most was the fact that the person shouting out the racist slur was only 13 years old, and therefore potentially a product of her own environment and not aware of the damage she might be causing. He was dignified in the aftermath by saying that he hoped she would not be vilified for her own ignorant comments but educated on the damage that a thoughtless or vindictive comment can cause for those against who it’s aimed. In doing that, he raised the bar further in the debate on racial vilification. More on that later.

From the young girl’s point of view, we discover that she intended no genuine disrespect and that what she said was a ‘spur of the moment’ thing that blew up out of her frustration that her footy team was getting soundly beaten and the object of her denigration was one of the chief architects in her team’s demise. Upon further investigation we discover that she was totally unaware that what she was saying had racial overtones to it. She was embarrassed and extremely apologetic and subsequently rang the footballer to apologize in person, which he graciously accepted.

Taking the matter further, immediately after the game the governing body (the Australian Football League) and the CEO of the opposing team both spoke out strongly about this behaviour being totally unacceptable either by players or fans under any context, but both stopped short of wanting to reprimand or punish the young transgressor any further, in agreement with the wishes of the vilified footballer.

So, all in all, what could have turned from an unacceptable incident into an ugly witch-hunt by the respective sport authority has ended well in my opinion. There is a strong message that racial slurs do not have a place in our modern society and it gave the opportunity for the sport to educate and inform young people on how they handle the issue of racial vilification… which is to neither sweep it under the carpet, but nor to turn the molehill into a mountain of abuse for the young, uneducated transgressor.

It is indeed a pity that in its eagerness to chase this story, the media has placed the young girl and her mother fairly and squarely in the public eye – something that a young, naive and impressionable girl of 13 should not be subjected to.

So what do we learn about this unfortunate episode that we can apply to the workplace?

I believe the answer is in the concept of ‘framing.’  It is timely that I talk about it today, because just last week my young son Sam came home with a project from school where he had to take three photographs of everyday objects from different vantage points (above, eye level and below, for instance), and then describe in his project how he had ‘framed up’ the photos he took and the different perspectives it gave to the objects being photographed depending on how he framed them.

Framing is a useful concept in our use of language, because it has such a huge impact on perceptions and understanding and motivation of ourselves and others. At the most impactful level, it can help to prevent serious conflict through a process of ‘chunking up’ to another logical level of thinking.

Here’s what I mean by that. If you are talking to me about car tyres, I can remain talking with you on that level or I can shift our focus to the next logical level in that subject matter which is cars. We can remain stuck at that level of conversation, or you might lift our thinking up another cog into talking about road transportation (cars, motorbikes, buses and trucks). We can even go further by talking at a level of all transportation on land, sea and air. Another example would be lifting the logical levels of discussion topic from banana to fruit to food to sustenance (food and water).

What we effectively do here is lift our thinking and talking to another level and at the next level there is a greater opportunity to gain agreement due to the bigger picture being considered. This is excellent for when people are in conflict over a particular issue, because by lifting their level of focus to the next logical level we are helping them to get above the problem and look down on the competing issues as differing but complementary parts of a much bigger whole or game. It is also very useful to apply this process of thinking and communicating when people at work are bogged down in the detail and can’t seem to get out of the mire of their confusion. Conversely when people are too vague and ‘fluffy’ about a subject we can go in the opposite direction and ‘chunk down’ to the component parts of the issue.

So let’s go back to the issue of the racial vilification example above and see the various ‘frames’ that could have been applied to the same content.

Level 1: The racial slur is given and the people who witness the event all laugh it off as being humorous at the expense of a champion footballer. If he takes personal offense it may help to ‘put him off his game’ so in the eyes of the opposing team’s fans, this is acceptable behaviour and this is how it would be framed as a result…. (To the footballer), “Get over it pal and don’t be so sensitive. It’s a tough world out there and there are bigger things to worry about, especially given your status and your own comfortable circumstances.” (As we know, this frame was prevalent on the football field a generation ago. Times have since changed for the better.)

Level 2: The racial slur is given and the reaction that it triggers in the champion footballer is one of hurt and indignation. The transgressor is roundly criticised in turn by the footballer, the authorities and the media as being ignorant and unfeeling and he or she is publicly humiliated and officially reprimanded or punished in some way. The transgressor has now joined the ranks of the victimised along with the champion footballer, and this is how the event might be framed… “The footballer is rightly hurt for this racial slur and the ‘lowlife’ that did it deserves all of our contempt and disgust.”  (Unfortunately the media continues to propagate that frame by continuing to shine their spotlight on the girl in question, rather than the issue. It is a pity that they have not followed the wise advice of the football code authority and the vilified footballer.)

Level 3: The racial slur is given and the reaction that is triggered is what we witnessed this weekend. The champion footballer is genuinely hurt; the transgressor is genuinely surprised and embarrassed at the effect her comments caused; and it is an opportunity for the football code to send a clear message to players and fans alike that this is unacceptable behaviour. Furthermore it now presents the opportunity to educate this young person and her peers about the emotional harm that can be caused by such thoughtless and inappropriate comments, and this is how it might be framed as a result… “What the transgressor said was unacceptable under any circumstances, and we have an opportunity here to publicly acknowledge the hurt that it caused and then to rise above the incident and teach all people of her age and older about showing respect for their fellow human beings and their abilities regardless of their perceived differences to us.”

There we have it. Three different frames of the same incident, each of which lead to a different meaning depending on the frame or the ‘reframe’ we give the incident. Hopefully some day in the not too distant future, the only frame that will be needed around such incidents will be ‘no frame’ because racial, religious, gender and sexual preference vilification will have been stamped out.

Where in your workplace have you been presented with the opportunity to ‘reframe’ an event or situation and so change the meaning that is drawn for all of those involved?

If you have any examples I’d love to hear about them from you. Just email me c/- brian@precisionprofiling.com.au and share your example with me.

Until next time, let’s seek to understand more and judge less.  – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we help you and your staff to uncover why you do what you do and most importantly, which patterns can lead to your success, and which ones might be holding you back.

Now of course the word ‘friends’ has become a description for a collection of entities who form a passing parade of tweets, posts or updates interacting on a whim or a fancy, or the perceived wit of a message or the cuteness of a picture…. like the collection of butterflies behind a glass cabinet. Where snap judgments are formed on the basis of very little information, and where a lot of lonely souls are created who don’t step too far outside of their virtual cocoon and whose lives seem boring compared to those other 5,000 friends who fill their electronic world with pictures of exotic places, stories of heroic deeds and the enjoyment of heaven-blessed relationships.

Mark Pesce

Today as I ponder on this, I would like to share with you excerpts from this blog recently posted by Mark Pesce, the co-inventor of the VRML, co-author of The Next Billion Seconds, and founder of Future St, a Sydney media and technology consultancy. He was formerly one of the judges on ABC’s The New Inventors. I believe that Mark has succinctly encapsulated the essence of what I feel about our new world of instant social media, and he even has a simple answer to that vexed question of how to relate in a world of unrelated connectivity, so I will hand over to him…

“You don’t know me. I don’t know you. We have never met. We might never meet. Yet, because everyone can now connect to anyone else, our paths may cross. It could be a Facebook post, a tweet, a blog, or a response to a blog post. In that moment when we meet – virtually – I’m learning everything about you I can from the few words you provide.

I analyse. I project. What I think about your words says more about me than you ever said about yourself. We always see ourselves in others – the world is a mirror for our beliefs and prejudices – and where we have nothing else to go on, we fill the missing space with ourselves. This happens immediately and automatically all the time. We can’t help ourselves.

Face-to-face meetings provide the rich, sensual interaction we need to assess one another. We look into another’s eyes, watch hands move, note a smile as it dances across a face. We use all of this to draw up an opinion on another person. Online, we have nothing but a string of characters, glowing on a display, folded in with email and invoices and holiday snaps. We cannot assess, so we project, and worse, we amplify. Little things become huge.

I am constantly contacted by people I do not know. We all are. Beginnings are delicate times, because so much rests on an almost impossibly vague series of messages. What does this person really mean? Is this a joke? What do they really want? So much to misread. So much to go wrong. This is where things break down.

When our first interactions with one another are filled with sarcasm, irony, or any of the other linguistic tools that make sense face-to-face, we develop mistaken impressions of one another. In a networked world, first impressions matter more than ever. In the space of a few moments, we judge one another. We probably shouldn’t, but we do. We’re getting pricklier as we get more connected, because we’re continually working from insufficient interaction and information.

Because we do not know one another, those earliest interactions must be cushioned as much as possible. Best foot forward, we must remember that this is first contact, and that to everyone else, we truly are an unknown entity. We’ve all had an experience of first contact that left a bitter taste, permanently souring us on a particular relationship. Beginnings are special. We must remember to be on our best behaviour, because every connection is a potential friend or customer. If we don’t want to leave a trail of destruction in our wake, we have to be gentle with those we do not yet know.

The admonition to be kind to one another might seem like nothing more than good old-fashioned common sense, another rephrasing of The Golden Rule – and so it is. The medium may change, but we remain stubbornly the same. We want to be seduced, not confronted. We want whispers, not shouts. To get what we want, we must be gentle, kind, and sympathetic.”

Thanks Mark, I believe your words hit the ‘mark.’ No pun intended. – Brian

Until next time… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less.

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Revealing the hidden secrets about yourself that even you didn’t know.

…”Generation Y. You’ve heard that they don’t watch TV, and you’ve probably been told that they don’t read that much, and you certainly can’t tell Gen Y what is cool. So how do you reach these 71 million “Millennials” that spend over 200 billion dollars annually and will soon replace the baby boomer generation as the largest percentage of the workforce? The answer is simple… you stop marketing to them.

First, let’s look at who they are. As a Baby Boomer, I can tell you that this generation are our own invention. We raised Gen Y to believe that they can do anything and be anything. We made their lives easy enough that they now believe they deserve to live first and work second. So the first thing we have to do is stop being annoyed at our own creation and embrace the brilliance of this Gen Y community.

This is the most optimistic generation to ever walk the face of the planet. They absolutely believe that miracles are possible. They refuse to work in a job that does not bring them a sense of joy. They care about the earth and servicing their community. In Gen Y, we have created the possibility for everything that we wanted for the world. So we must stop whining about them being entitled and embrace the power of this generation. Once we do that, we can then begin to take a closer look at who they are, what makes them tick, and what they want from our businesses.

How do companies that have been successful at marketing to Gen Y speak to this demographic? To answer that, first we have to understand the four areas Gen Y considers before purchasing a product or service.

1. Cheap cost
2. Good quality
3. Fast service
4. An “experience”

When Apple created the 99-cent download that took eight seconds to transact, they hit the nail on the head with Gen Y. Music is an experience, the quality is stellar, the cost is low, and the purchase happens instantly. What did Apple do right?  They spoke directly to Gen Y and asked the question, “What do you want?”

Living in an age where information is everywhere and where everyone can reach them, the Gen Y community is very selective about who they listen to. Just look at their social media accounts, and you’ll recognize that they get their information from one another, not from us, and certainly not from the media.  And the information they get from each other is not in emails, which most of them don’t even touch anymore. They text one another. They IM. They watch each other on YouTube. And sometimes they do all three at the same time. Most importantly, Gen Y does not care about what you have to say unless you have been endorsed by their friends. They care about what their community says, and they take each other and their network’s recommendations very seriously.

So taking that into account, how do you reach them? Understand that Gen Y is an “experience” culture. They do not want to be told what to like or what to do. They want to experience the world for themselves with their friends and then pass their own judgment.

There is one more major element to consider, and that is how to earn their respect when you are talking with Gen Y:- Authenticity. They don’t waste time on people or companies that are not being real with them.  This generation has seen it all, from televised wars to 9-11 to the hanging of Hussein. They know real when they see it, and it takes them all of three seconds to pass that judgment.

So what does all this mean? It means that you cannot directly market to them until you buy into them, until you value their perspective on life. So while other experts are out there giving you “tricks” to market to Gen Y, stop marketing to them and start listening to them. Hang out with them. Experience life with them. Respect them. If you do, their outlook on life will change you. When you do that, you’ll find your audience within this generation. Then talking “with” them, not “at” them will sell your business….”

This article was written by executive coach and Generation Y expert, Bea Fields. Fields is co-author of Millennial Leaders: Success Stories From Today’s Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders. http://MillennialLeaders.com.

Until next time… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. – Cheers Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Revealing the hidden secrets about yourself that even you didn’t know.