Earthquake: General Electric no longer providing quarterly guidance
Amazing news that General Electric will no longer provide quarterly earnings guidance.
This is not just a decision by a public company to change its relationship to Wall Street, but a sign of a much bigger change in industry itself. It’s not just that people are going to take the longer view out of some appreciation of foresight or sudden development of wisdom, but out of respect for the massive changes currently facing global commerce.
Future Leaders Now! Slides from the ASTD meeting
It was a fine time last night with the Washington chapter of the American Society for Training and Development. I enjoyed the opportunity to interact with the people who will be finding and training the next generation of leaders.
Last night we focused on the major challenges that lie ahead. Below are the slides we used as a conversation starter.
Want to discuss more? Have us out for a workshop or panel!
Check your assumptions - it appears to be the hot new style
How funny that the tools and principles of foresight are coming into vogue, this time without even the mention of a flying car or a rocket pack.
Take my friend Jim Cramer for example, host of CNBC’s Mad Money, textbook definition of an extroverted personality, and one of the greatest fund managers in history. Even he’s doing it. Last night’s show was entitled “Don’t Assume - You Know They Say,” and in it he spent the entire half hour inciting his audience to challenge all of their assumptions about the global economy.
You know, CRAZY intellectual exercises like challenging your assumptions about the price of oil around the global (under $60!), asking if America will have an automotive industry, wondering if the United States will keep taking cues from Evo Morales’ socialist administration in Bolivia. To play with the different possibilities that come out of each tweaked assumption - it’s a good practice for everybody.
Wait, if all the television hosts start thinking this way, what will we do for a living at Competitive Futures? I suppose I’ll go back to playing Latin music and enjoying our new intellectual Golden Age. For the moment, I think I’ll keep showing up at work.
The end of giant corporations?
My intelligence buddy August Jackson just made an interesting point: given the fantastic new AUTOMOTIVE BAILOUT that’s flirting with us, will the world lose its taste for giant, conglomerated corporate entities?
Seriously, what’s the upside of having businesses so large that governments believe they shouldn’t fail? We’re spending ludicrous amounts of tax dollars to keep banks alive. The U.S. federal government is running a debt that would cause any individual to choose bankruptcy. Now, the car companies feel that they need more of (my) tax dollars to keep afloat, because letting them fail would be far too painful for all concerned.
What is the benefit of companies so big, we can’t let them fail?
And if consolidation is so bad, why is the pharmaceutical industry considering even more of it?
Questions for this new age.
We nationalized the banks! Hooray!
You know you live in interesting times when the business press reports the BIGGEST gain ever in the Dow based on the happy news that the United States is nationalizing nine of its banks!
Megatrend: urbanization (blip.tv)
We’re testing out the nice folks at blip.tv to see how their flash players work.
In this spirit, here’s a clip about the future of urbanization:
Future brightspots will result from this mess
Here at Competitive Futures we regularly tell clients, “Just because something is a disaster doesn’t mean it will be a disaster for everyone.” History is filled with stories of leaders who perceived danger early, acted appropriately, and profited.
I’m a bit fatigued of straining about this financial mess, and naturally began to ask, “OK, what’s going to be 
positive out of this?” Despite the ugliness here, there will likely be many positive developments resulting from this crisis of business and governance. One example is quite close to home for me.
My father is in his 28th year running the Rutland Agway, a store dedicated to farm, home, and garden in Central Vermont. Recent economic trends have sent both farming and manufacturing to far-flung states or countries. Giant retailers like Home Depot came to take a piece of the diminishing supply of disposable income in the state. For local stores, things got pretty tight for a moment.
Fleeing jobs and rocketing fuel oil prices are putting a massive financial strain on rural households. How are they responding? By going local - planting gardens like never before. Staying at home, avoiding pricey vacations - and sprucing up the backyard with fertilizer and lawn mowers. And suddenly, times are better in the home and garden business. (On top of it, Vermonters are back to eating their own delicious local foods!)
What else could be positive about this? Think it through - there will plenty of time to think about disaster soon enough.
Nice time to check the foundation of industries
It seems that the fundamentals of the banking industry were unsound, and that ultimately this led to a collapse. It’s a question of structural assumptions - what is underpinning our industry? What might change? When could a tipping point come? These heady questions are often left to us futurist-types, but it seems like this week it would be a good idea for everybody.
For example, I would like to propose a betting pool on when the healthcare industry in America will need/receive its bailout. Between the demographics of the Boom generation’s retirement and the massive wasteful spending of our current system, the now $2 trillion industry has been forecast to increase to $4 trillion by around 2020.
My assumption - which I state here - is that this is structurally unsound. The economy as a whole will crack long before we get to $4 trillion. If we don’t change the structure of the industry, it will require one of those bailouts. What year do you figure it might be? 2015? 2023? 2025?
What about your industry? What assumptions are you using to justify the long-term profitability of your company? This isn’t gloom and doom, things might be great for you. But what’s the structural long-term?
This is a good week to ask those questions. The implications of failing to do so seem quite clear.
Pfizer sues New England Journal of Medicine. Now joins the record industry in “Bites the Hand that Feeds Them” competition.
Amazing.
Drug giant Pfizer tries to force medical journal to reveal anonymous sources.
Yes, Pfizer is suing the New England Journal of Medicine to get them to compromise the confidential peer-review process that keep science from becoming a big political game in which scientific fact can be swayed by money.
Pfizer has issued a subpoena demanding that the journal release the
identities and comments of its referees, who normally remain anonymous
so that they will feel free to give their honest opinions.
Wow. Talk about a short-term strategy that will forever alter your relationship with your customers.
Note to Pfizer, and all pharmaceutical companies: Doctors are your customers. Doctors are scientists who treat people. Doctors take a Hippocratic oath to treat people, whereas you have shareholders who expect money to be made from the treatment of disease. This is a fundamental tension.
Note to pharma companies: Doctors see their relationship with medical data as sacred. Often, your industry sees it as something to be manipulated for market strategy. Notice the difference in emotional content in the description of these two relationships. 
Note to pharma companies: You might consider looking at the record industry, when they started suing their clients. Their sales have been plummeting, and their customers look in variety of places for the service that records used to provide.
Note to pharma companies: Suing your customer base, even when you think you are legally justified is
the last gasp of a burned out business model.
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