The ultimate ONE company - MyFootballClub

You could read about the newest football club in the latest issue of the Economist (Here comes's Fanchester United. This club is unique in the way it is managed and controlled. Each shareholder can vote for which players should play in the next game and which should be sold and bought.

The concept is absolutely fantastic. You will create a club with real fan involvement and engagement. They have to visit the homepage often, have to keep updated with the results and they really care who's playing. Furthermore the players really feel they need to deserve the respect of the fans, not just the manager. Since there are so many fans, no one will get selected because they have the manager's eyes.

I would call this the first true ONE company ever. For the first time the fans and customers are invited to participate in the everyday life of the club. I will of course become a member and we'll see how it goes.

Other favorites when it comes to customer involvement in John Fluevog who let customers design their own shows or accessories and then they are shared as Open Source to the public. You can read more about John and his shoes on Fluevog Shoes. Besides this he has wonderful shoes as well :-D

If you are interested in more about ONE I can recommend Stefan Engeseth (Detective Marketing).

Missionaries in Change

"Everything changes" is a well used saying. We believe that it is only today that everything changes and that the speed has increased. Looking back in history one can see that there has been no period of time when nothing changed and everything stood still. Roman empire was changing all the time, from internal initiated change and from external pressure. I think that the reason we talk and experience so much change today is that the media and information is much more available today. Thus we get to hear about new and different things all the time. This creates a pressure for change just because we hear so much about how others have done it. The other influencing factor for faster change is competitive pressure. Since competition is much more fierce today people, organizations and countries have to change to stay ahead of competition.

Why am I writing this? Because today I read an ad from the Swedish IT and Management consultancy company Connecta who claimed to be Missionaries in Change. Interesting that organizations see themselves as missionaries in general and in change specifically. Since everything has changed all the time in history, why do we need missionaries in change? Do I sound like an old fashioned uncle now? Of course we need to change, we have always done it and it is an integral part of human mindset. Why then missionaries in change?

The picture they used to illustrate their change mission was with a consultant holding a bee-frame where bees were flying around in the air. And then saying "When it seems impossible". I think they want you to get the picture of it being impossible to handle a lot of bees flying around. But for a trained bee keeper it is an everyday task you do without much thought. So why is it impossible? Doesn't it depend on the persons mindset, expectation and experience?

My take on this is that change is inevitable, it has always happened, goes faster today because media is reporting it, and it depends on your mindset, expectation and experience.