This year has had its curses and blessings for everyone.
Among my 2020 highlights: a rare opportunity to spend an hour with two extraordinary people – marketing icon Faith Popcorn, at her office in New York, and Henley Business School Africa Dean Jon Foster-Pedley in Johannesburg on the other side of the globe. Take a listen (scroll to link below): I’m sure you’ll agree – it’s hard to tell that this is a conversation across three continents.
Best wishes to you and your loved ones for 2021. Here’s hoping it’s a year filled with blessings – and more wonderful times with remarkable people.
Listen to Faith Popcorn, Jonathan Foster-Pedley here.
Jackie
This first appeared in the BizNews Daily Insider newsletter:
Be kind: your business depends on it – Faith Popcorn, Jon Foster-Pedley
Covid-enforced rules of engagement have given us all rare glimpses into other people’s lives that otherwise would have been unlikely. Earlier this month I was fortunate to spend a pleasurable hour on Zoom in the company of characterful world-leading futurist Faith Popcorn and the highly personable Dean Jon Foster-Pedley, director of the Henley Business School Africa (part of the University of Reading).
The conversation focused on happiness and kindness, which Popcorn – whose strategies have underpinned many game-changing innovations for businesses over four decades – has identified as essential attributes for brands to project. The alternative: customers will turn to those who show they genuinely care about the world and others, said the expert who has been described as the Nostradamus of marketing.
Popcorn, with a trendy scarlet-red short hair cut, was at a desk with a Picasso-style sketch produced by a friend on the wall behind her, in New York. We connected with Foster-Pedley, who was under a thatch roof at his home office, in Johannesburg.
In keeping with the theme, we were very kind to each other. We got to say hello to Foster-Pedley’s domestic worker, who made a cameo appearance. Popcorn revealed that she is working on a rap with SA rocker Karen Zoid – this, because Zoid has ‘kindly’ offered to teach her to write a song.
The Popcorn Report author and trends forecaster said she’d be happy to chat to BizNews again; next time the topic may not be so kind, but it is sure to be engaging. We might pick up more on SA-born tech pioneer Elon Musk, whose vision of the future has the world making plans for humans to go to Mars, among his many other inventions.
For a bit of fun and a reminder of the importance of kindness, listen to the conversation with Popcorn and Foster-Pedley here.
Sound bites
Faith Popcorn: Mood modulation, marijuana, living in a square box
“We’ve been having delicious chats with Professor Foster-Pedley about people’s search for just plain happiness. It’s kind of mood modulation. That’s the reason marijuana is getting big. We’re talking about, not happiness from the soul, but induced happiness. Mushrooms, alcohol have gone through the roof. What are we looking for? We’re looking to change our mood…To become happy. In the end, people start to understand that it’s how you receive what’s been thrown at you, more than trying to change what’s been thrown at you.
“At Harvard, the most attended class was a class in happiness. We’re searching for it desperately. We’re lonely. We’re even lonely without Covid being in our pod. We’re living in a square box, we’re fighting with our spouses – divorce is through the roof.
There seems to be certain human entitlement to happiness. How come only babies can giggle?
Faith Popcorn in conversation with Jon foster-Pedley, Jackie Cameron – BizNews Radio
Jonathan Foster-Pedley on creativity
Jonathan Foster-Pedley on happiness in business:
“Businesses exist to create value for people. Some of that is addictive value, some of it is consumerist. But deep down, what we’re looking for is prosperous societies that give us a decent living. Just having things – as we all know, may be nice to have – but that’s not proper living. The whole idea of what makes a worthwhile life becomes really important in business these days. Especially when you see what businesses and governments do to make life not worthwhile, in terms of the unintended consequences of pollution, species disruption, and pure addiction to work and acquisition.
“So business schools have become very interested in prosperity rather than profit. What makes for a prosperous life, especially when you’ve got South Africa with so many poor people who are smart and can come out of that poor quality of life into something better? So business schools have woken up to the idea that they are connected to humanity at large. We are becoming more and more interested in what makes a quality life.
Faith Popcorn on hiding behind the CSR wall
“I hate corporate social responsibility. I think they built a wall so defended, so fraught with lawyers, so deep and impenetrable – such a big, tall wall that they can hide behind. Does that arose an increased heartbeat or a passion in you when you hear corporate social responsibility?
Repression is never happiness. How can you be happy if you are repressed? The question is, how much of me is welcome at work? Now, if what is welcome at work is some little construct who is ever so polite, how are you ever going to get those people being creative? Because creativity is a voluntary act. Look at Faith. She’s oozing creativity. But it’s not through repression and hiding herself.
‘Don’t capitalise on kindness‘
I think the money-making opportunity is, if you’re sincerely kind in the workplace, your people will perform better. Some of them will take advantage of that, but they should go if they do. But when we start manufacturing and selling kindness – ‘oh, we’re so kind, we’re so good and we gave away a pair of socks for everyone’ – okay, that’s nice. But you should be doing that anyway and you shouldn’t have to mention it. I don’t want to see anyone capitalising on kindness. It sort of takes it away.
Kindness – just do it
You get more out of building things for the community. That’s the real secret of happiness. You get more out of thriving and giving and building. You just do.
jackiecamerondotcom 