Peter Sheahan was a speaker at the IBM Collaboration Summit in Sydney last month. I had never heard of him before so didn’t know what to expect, but I was instantly impressed with his energetic and enthusiastic presentation style and, shortly thereafter, the content of the presentation itself.
He was introduced as a leading expert in workforce trends and generational change, which sounds like a huge area to be an expert in and a large topic to cover, but that was soon narrowed down as he began to discuss the use of technologies such as MySpace, Facebook, instant messaging and other social networking tools in use by Generation Y, and the impact it is having on the business world.
It was a good presentation and I enjoyed it so much I wandered the streets of Sydney during lunch break the following day to track down one of his books that he had promoted: Fl!p (Random House, Sep 2007), or, to use the full title: Fl!p – How counter-intuitive thinking is changing everything-from branding and strategy to technology and talent. He covers things such as: why “Fast, Good, Cheap, Pick
Three” (preferably plus the ‘X’ factor) has become the price of entry in most markets; Superficial is Anything But; Business IS Personal; There is No Wisdom in Crowds (if you want to stand out or take a lead); how you Get Control by Giving it Up; and Action Precedes Clarity.
It was a good read and within a couple of weeks of reading it we took an “action precedes clarity” step at work with an issue that had been on our minds for several months, but we were holding off making a decision until we had what we thought would be sufficient information. We were at risk of over-thinking the situation and decided to step out and commit to moving on the idea and developing it as things panned out. It was a good move and enabled us to get something in place before the competition stepped in and beat us to it.
