According to one of the new free-papers ("gratis-aviserne") have several more or less well-known personalities suggested how we should spend these extra “goodies” that Thor Pedersen seems to be in possesion of. One of them (also well-know for spending money and being awful good at it) was Kurt Thorsen, and I can only agree to what he suggested: “Use the money on the elders. On science and education and just make sure that our hearts and brains will shine of happiness!” And here comes the best part of what Kurt Thorsen said: One could also buy back the West Indies….but then again, we have ofcourse Bornholm!”
How would you spent the money? Would you give DSB Harry a raise - or just a helping hand on handling the train-traffic? Would you suggest helping the 3. world?
What to do. What to do...?

I am one of few (?) who actually think that her concert in Horsens was fabulous. Maybe because my friend and I were practically sitting on the back of one of her dancers – that’s how close we were to the queen of pop. And we were thrilled! And we didn’t for a second think about the 700 DKR we had spent on this event. Two hours in pleasant company with Madonna Louise Ciccone made it worth every penny. It also made us forget about unpleasant visits in nasty toilets, not to mention the smell of a lazy mans “droppings” in the middle of the crowd after deciding not to use the toilet in fear of loosing his super spot. We only had eye for the 1,63 cm of glamour and energy dancing on the stage.
But what exactly was she doing back-riding on a dirty ploughed field in Horsens? The woman who had a pink toilet seat brought in especially for her very precious behind?
The show has been accused of being a scandal. No one could see anything. It could have been Eddie Skoller coming out of that giant disco-ball. Know one would have been able to tell the difference. Well I know for a fact that it was Madonna on that stage and so does my friend, Laura. But I am not sure, that does it for the rest of the (84.998) pissed off audience who – according to several journalists “unsaddled” during the concert. Threw the towel in the ring, so to speak and amused themselves (200 meters from the stage!) with expensive hotdogs and beers instead. That couldn’t possibly have been anyone’s idea of a super concert.
There is no doubt that Madonna as an artist sits firmly in the saddle – she knows what she is doing and she does it very well. Maybe that gives reason to question why she chooses to perform with a super professional and ultra coordinated show on a ploughed field in Horsens. Is it fair, that an artist with such a star quality compromises the experience of the audience just to make money – which seems to be the only reasonable motive? Is it authentic?
And what about Horsens and the million dollar hotdogs? Is Horsens Forum really cut out for the queen of pop? Or is the only link between Madonna and Horsens in fact the horse on the Horsens coat of arms and the horse Madonna pretended to ride on (non of them real horses by the way!)? What do you think about the whole horse(ns) affair?

During the past couple of weeks, I´ve been calling a lot of different companies to talk to the person responsible of human resources. Usually that would be a HR manager or perhaps even a president of human resources. But sometimes in my way through the corporate world I encounter some cool titles.
How would you like to be called "President for people and culture", as one guy I talked to? Or how about "Master of Laws" (my personal favorite)? But gives a fancy, long title more credability to you as a person? I tend to think so. Perhaps I´m just an easy target, but I find it a bit intimidating to call up a chief executive officer (officers - shouldn´t they be in the army), and ask for a minute of their busy day.
But when I come to think of it, top corporate leaders aren´t the only ones with long impenetrable titels.
My own academic title is ba.scient soc., stud. komm., and my colleague Amanda Karlsson is ba.art, stud media. I´m not sure, that these titles give us any edge in this business, but they´re definetly long!
I would love to hear your opinion on this topic - do you have an impressive titel, or do you know anyone that does? Please feel free to join this undoubtedly heated debate!

DSB neddrosler Harry

Sommerens trafikproblemer får nu DSB til at skære ned for Harry i en periode. På den korte bane er der mere brug for information end reklame.
Copyright. Markedsføring Dato: 18/08/06

Problemerne på skinnerne har fået konsekvenser fortæller underdirektør i DSB Christian Bjerring, alias Harrys far, til Markedsføring. På tirsdagens ledelsesmøde i DSB blev det besluttet, at de kommende uger skal stå i informationens tegn. Selv om Harry indiskutabelt er god for DSB, analyser viser, at Harry skaber både salg og sympati, så bliver han neddroslet i de kommende uger. Svaret på sommerens problemer er ikke humor og reklame, men reel trafikinformation.
– Det er ikke et spørgsmål om Harry eller ikke Harry. Det, vi har brug for, er et både og.
Din mening
Debat
Der er 0 indlæg.
Vi skal ikke overlade spillebanen til vores kritikere, og derfor må vi ud og give reel information om trafikproblemerne, siger Christian Bjerring.
Han er allerede i gang med at planlægge den kommende informationskampagne, som har to hovedelementer: For det første en informationskampagne på print i en saglig – læs ikke humoristisk – tone, og derudover opgraderet trafikinformation, så både kunder og medarbejdere bliver bedre informeret. MSOL

The other morning I heard on danish national radio P3 that the chinese tourists are misbehaving to such a degree that the chinese government wants to campaign for better behavior when the chinese are travelling around the world. Apparently the chinese tourists are disrespectful and telling everyone off hence giving China a bad reputation.

It's a great (in every way) example of how the behavior creates the image and the reputation of an organization. And it sounds like someone in China knows what creating a winner brand is all about; you have to start at the behavior, the culture, and then later on you can begin to communicate about yourself. Saying it is not enough. You have to do it.

Then the question is, how do you get one billion people (at least the part of them that are able of travelling) to think about the image they are creating and how their behavior should be different? The "internal brochure" is not going to do it - as it never did. Change of culture and the expressions that members of the organization are creating in their everyday is an immense task and takes lots of effort. Nomatter the size. I wonder if chinese leaders will show their good example? Will they make talks and seminars about "the Good Chineses Tourist"? How would you come about changing the behavior of the chinese tourists?

Recently I spoke with Jacob from Saffron about country branding and the Poland-case. Maybe China is a case to work on?

Thats something we all know....but are they also the best female employees?

Uaually when talking about the subject of how to be a mother and have a career at the same time women (yours truly included) are sometimes worried about how they are going to balance work and children and how they might get their job position down-graded when they return from maternity leave (or as its officially called; there has been some restructuring, which means that you have got a lot of really interesting new tasks! Nevermind they are the same tasks you did when you started in the company).
In this office (note: with many young females who aren´t pregnant but are around that age where mother-in-laws are beginning to get stars in their eyes) our boss Nikolaj says that some of the most effective employees he´s ever had have been mums. His experience with them is that they get their stuff done from 8-16 without all the chit-chat that makes the rest of us stay till early evening. Mums know how to prioritize because the have to be out the door at a certain time and spend some quality time with their children. What is your experience? Are you better at working now that you are a mum? Are you an employer who thinks mums are a catch? Are you a woman who is afraid that children might hinder your career? If yes, don´t worry...employers want you! Check out this site called Yummymummy careers which is a site where working mums and employers can get in touch with each other. They also have a blog where women network and discuss issues like gender pay across different countries etc.

A few days ago I raised the question of wether or not (private) bloggers would promote products or companies in their blogposts. Silles description of Compeed made me wonder. Mostly because most of the bloggers I know (who are hardcore bloggers and have strong opinions on the ethics of their life in the blogosphere) claim that they would never advertise any product. So my understanding has been that ordinary people who blog would loathe anything that would be paid for and hence inauthentic.

My point was to see how much bloggers get around which they certainly do. Since then the debate on Silles blog has taken off. Check it out.

Master of Management Development was on DR P1 just a moment ago. Lars Ginnerup was interviewed by Anne Vig about the new management paradigm and the use of social software, which is a part of the CBS executive program MMD.

If you find that interesting, you might also want to join Ole Fogh Kirkebys "summer-camp", a series of programs on P1. The latest one is right here: Oles sommerskole

It's late and we're in the middle of launching a stagis.com beta version. I posted some of the look-and-feel a couple of weeks ago and said I'd come back with more to hear what you think. But now we decided to go a little further and launch even though it's not finished at all. The design, a bunch of (really cool!) functions and the copy isn't quite done but let's hear what you think and then in a couple of weeks we'll take another round and get it into the next stage... Check out the orange things - that's our moblog integrating with the website.

Launching new products, services and websites (well, anything, actually) in BETA has been much discussed lately as the idea of beta is not only to try things that aren't necesarrily considered finished. It's also a way of involving employees, customers, users, stakeholders - call them what you will - in the development fase and thereby contextualizing a relationship of innovation. I think this was one of the strategies used by Microsoft as they launched Explorer and sent Netscape on a detour...

stagis.com

Does it make any sense at all?

I am finally back after a long (warm!) struggle with my fujitsu siemens computer, trying to finish a paper on organizational culture and corporate communication. I won the battle on the short run. I hope I succeeded on the long one as well...

Good to be back again!