Join Me on Tyrone Turner's Grassroots Business Network

Hello Friends, Fans, Family and anyone just wanting to get on board for a half hour of Liquid Leadership. Join me as host Tyrone Turner founder of Grassroots Business Network and I discuss how business is changing, what all entrepreneurs and small business owners need to know right now, and how to sell to Generation Y Millennials.

If you are a Baby Boomer you need to tune in!

And if you stay 'til the end, I have a special offer...

Go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/gbn/2011/01/26/liquid-leadership
or call-in at 8:30 PM EDT to 1-(347)-324-3441

I look forward to your questions,

Brad Szollose

Have Laptop. Will Travel.

"....how will you manage productivity or necessary face time or even morale when your staff is spread out over five continents? Technology is the answer— or rather, those who can handle the technology and people at the same time are. Perhaps those who were raised on this technology would be the managers best able to understand its potential? Or its reach?

Back in 2007, to get a greater grasp of Gen Y, I decided to do some research that was off the beaten path. I took a flight from LaGuardia Airport, New York, to Madison, Wisconsin, to attend the third annual Games + Learning + Society conference, or GLS 3.0, a three-day get together of the best innovations and discussions between academia and game designers. The key discussion was about how to create teaching games that could be used in the classroom—from kindergarten to college.

This may sound like silly nonsense until you begin to realize that every computer’s graphical user interface is based on the intuitive design learned from the use of gaming technology. From your ATM to your MacBook or PC, from your iPhone to your cable television remote and onscreen interface— all have been designed and influenced by the video game interface. It is information architecture at its best.

Now here’s an idea of how gaming technology will be applied to the future of teaching. Imagine taking a city-planning and economics course in college using a Sim City– style simulator to track taxation, capital improvements, bureaucracy overhead, and labor factors within the model.

This type of simulation along with task-and-reward model is already being utilized in more progressive schools and is the central ideology of the GLS conference. How can games be used to teach or to implement dangerous tasks, or, in general, be integrated into our everyday life?

Self-running simulations and simulators all come under the heading of Serious Games, and it is changing the way we work. Remote robotic units can be sent into extremely dangerous situations and locales: a battlefield, a bomb disarming, and a scientific analysis of volcanoes, or the surface of Mars. If you think this is some future you will never see in your lifetime, think again; remote surgery is already being performed using this type of technology right now."

- Excerpted from Liquid Leadership, page 73

This type of work is no longer in the realm of science fiction. It is fact. so when you decide to head back to college to upgrade those Boomer skills ask yourself "will what I am pursuing be obsolete...replaced by a machine, an interface or an open source website?"

We are in an age when everything will be shaken up...

"Riding the Wave of Radical Disruption
During the Industrial Revolution, profession after profession shifted completely or, in many cases, was completely wiped out due to new ways of working and the technological influences of new inventions.

Case in point: With the invention of photography, an artist’s responsibility shifted. Before photography, an artist’s “job” was part historian, part archivist— an illustrator of our day-to-day existence, sketching history in stunning, realistic portrayals as it was happening. But as the camera took over their jobs, artists began to paint in a new way, and thus Impressionism was born. The change didn’t kill portrait painting or archival quality sketches. It only opened up what being an artist meant. Seurat, Gauguin, Matisse, Caisson, Van Gogh, Modigliani, and Toulouse Lautrec opened the doors for the likes of Picasso, Dali, and Pollack. 

I am sure the transition was scary, but it was necessary.

It wasn’t just artists and craftsmen who felt the impact of the technological explosions of the Industrial Revolution. Horse-and-buggy companies such as Studebaker transitioned nicely into automobile manufacturers, while those that resisted watched their market shrink, eventually driving them out of business. The new era was forcing changes regardless of who was on board.

A similar shakeup is happening today as we transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Just as electricity in the home and office changed not only how we worked, but also when and where we worked— marking the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of high-rise buildings and elevators into our working lives—the technology of the Information Revolution will do the same. Digital pictures of people working in cubicles will be soooo twentieth century."

— Liquid Leadership, page 250

We are becoming a constantly on the go culture...no longer defined by a physical location, but by our laptops and WiFi connection. Scary but exciting at the same time.


Thanks for reading,

Brad Szollose

The Pig and The Python

When I was a tween, my best friend Dieter called me up and invited me to his house. As soon as I entered he exclaimed out loud, "come...you gotta see this!"

As we raced upstairs and entered his brother Pete's room, there was a small crowd of our buddies from school. Mike, Bret, and now me and Dieter...all pressed against the glass of a small terrarium. And there it was. A tiger snake coiled up about to attack a fresh white mouse.

Okay, some of you are horrified, but how else does someone feed a pet snake?

Yes pet stores frown on this practice, but snake owners rotate stores as to not become suspect. Now back to my story....

With lightening speed, the snake leaped forward biting the terrified mouse. It squeaked and died under the comparatively massive jowls of the Tiger Snake. Slowly, the snake unhinged its jaw, and began to devour the carcass until it was nothing more than a bulge in the body of an orange colored snake.

This digestive action is called peristalsis. You can look it up online but it basically means digestion without teeth. Pure muscular movement of the esophagus, along with digestive juices...well you get the picture. This is how a python can digest a large pig. Over time, the entire pig is digested...it is also why some snakes only feed once a month.

But the concept of this peristaltic movement,
The Pig & The Python - is also a marketing term.

As I await in anticipation to see the remakes of The Green Hornet, True Grit and The Mechanic, I am reminded of the Pig & The Python by David Cork.

As a marketing term, The Pig & The Python is an attempt to take a brand that Baby Boomers grew up with - think Batman, Speed Racer, and Battle Star Galactica - and repackage it with special effects, a story rewrite and a few sequels - and resell it. This is the peristaltic part: refeed a group of people with something they already know and love.

But more importantly, get a new generation
hooked on the brand as well.

Boomers drag their kids to these movies...or more importantly, tell stories from the glory days of their childhood. This gets another generation hooked on the same brand. Over and over again. thirty years from now, be on the lookout for a remake of The Transformers, Harry Potter and Pokemon movies.

When trying to find a target audience, keep in mind, a built in audience and the Pig & The Python.

Why do you think they have remade Batman, Superman (and tried to match the Christopher Reeve's version) The Manchurian Candidate, Star Trek, Arthur, Speed Racer, Alice in Wonderland, The Addams Family, etc...or even more amazing is the landslide of all the comic book heroes being reimagined...Iron Man, Spider-Man, the soon to be released Green Lantern. All of these remakes are an attempt to bring back the glory days of the Baby Boomer and the brands they grew up with.

Now some of these remakes bomb miserably, like The Avengers movie. The reason is, no one primed the pump to get Boomers excited again to go see the remake. Did you see any Speed Racer cartoons out when the Speed Racer movie was about to be released? No...yet executives at the top wonder why it didn't do so well.

The Pig & The Python. Keep feeding a brand over and over until it is completely digested.

Cool huh?

Thanks for reading,

Brad Szollose

Zane Safrit Interviews Brad Szollose about Liquid Leadership & Multi-Generational Management

Ladies and Gentlemen, here is a unique opportunity to hear me live and get a dose of Liquid Leadership – from Woodstock to Wikipedia LIVE!!!

  internet radio wit on Blog Talk Ra

Or go to the link: Zane Safrit's Blog Talk Radio Show
And here is Zane's Incredible Business Blog

Thank you all once again for your interest in my work, I look forward to your comments and insights...

Brad Szollose

Truth: The Most Important Environment for Leadership to Work

On page 9 of Liquid Leadership I point out the Credo of a Liquid Leader. Most importantly, the 2nd law stands out the most for leadership to be affective

"...Leadership should cultivate an Environment Where It Is Free and Safe to Tell the Truth.

Ever work for a company that micromanages everything to death? In these environments a paper trail becomes more important than getting the work done. Our current enthusiasm for technology has created even more potential for micromanagement, via massive amounts of emails and documentation and endless meetings to sort through it all. Yet when this temptation is given in to, the result isn’t better communication or higher productivity, but the opposite. Management becomes the last to know what is actually happening.

Conversely, in companies that have moved to flatten their hierarchies and create environments where it is safer to point out the truth, you begin to notice that each person takes their role seriously. When responsibility is shifted to the individual—when people are given the freedom and power to manage their time and solve problems—the result is that no one wants to let down even a single member of their team.

An organization like this runs more smoothly and with more trust. The best and the brightest naturally gravitate toward the chance to work with one another. They know courage will be rewarded, not penalized, and innovation will see the light of day. Such environments operate like entrepreneurial start-ups, with each individual engaged in the success of the company. People are encouraged to challenge one another. They operate with confidence and a sense of personal ambition because they have skin in the game.

This approach may fly in the face of every business manual you have ever read, but those manuals are out of date. We are not in easy times. Consider that betting on one direction or a single type of technology can send a company into bankruptcy overnight. All the more reason to put aside your ego, to listen, and to encourage the sharing of knowledge in every area of an organization’s operations. Environments such as these do not centralize creativity; they make it a systemic part of what drives their entire organization.

It is your job as a leader to support the development and creation of big ideas, integrating them into your company’s mix of products..."

The truth has become fuzzy these days as people are more interested in the almighty dollar instead of doing great things. We know fluoride is not safe to put in our water and drink on a daily basis. We know our food supply is filled with carcinogenic chemicals. We know our politicians are...well you get my drift.

But when drug company whistle-blower Cheryl Eckard tried to fix problems at a GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceutical factory in Puerto Rico she was fired.
The 60 Minutes story is here:

Bad Medicine: The Glaxo Case  January 2, 2011 7:00 PM

Yet when Cheryl brought well documented problems to her boss, she was dismissed, told that it would be taken care of and eventually, when she pressed harder, fired. Admitting the truth can destroy entire companies and bring about unwanted changes. Yet the truth is where progress begins.

It is hard to tell the truth when doing so could bring
a wave of lawsuits

By the way, how hard is it to act like a human being?

Some believe that Cheryl Eckard did what she did for the money - (she was awarded $96 million from a $750 million suit against GSK)...really? Did she know she would be a multimillionaire when she discovered drug mix-ups and unsanitary conditions at Glaxo's plant? It was her job to oversee quality control and if she had not followed through she would have been fired. But what is unforgivable is the reaction of the executives; they simply tried to make it seem as if conditions weren't that bad.

Shame does not seem to exist in some boardrooms

Want to make changes in your organization? How about your life or your community? Start by facing the truth...not your opinion. Like maybe my wife is right – I don't look good in that sweat suit anymore, (not that that has ever happened to me. LOL).

What is important to you? Paper trails, micromanagement, telling people what to do? Truth telling is not pretty...but it is transformational.

Happy New Year.

And Thank you all once again for your interest in my work,

Brad Szollose