"WATCH OUT FOR A TSUNAMI OF RETIREES" - WILLIAM HANLEY - FINANCIAL POST

I "tsurvived" the tsunami, watching last Saturday's events unfold on TV from the comfort of a high-and-dry couch. So, I will likely make it to my 65th birthday on Thesday, March 9, when a government computer far away in Canada will go "phhht" in cyberspace and inform the folks who make the Old Age Security payments to electronically transfer William James Hanley a pension payment for $516.96 each month beginning April 30.

Being born in 1945, I am a year ahead of the Baby Boom generation, which Statistics Can­ada defines as those born between 1946 and 1965. Next year, the first cohort of nine million Canadian Boomers will begin receiving Old Age Security, a demographic tsunami that will see about 1,200 people a day celebrating the "Big 6-5" over the next 20 years.

While last Saturday's tsunami mercifully did not live up to advance billings, it did pro­vide Hawaii's emergency authorities with a successful rehearsal of what might be done in the event of the real thing. Unfortunately, there has been no rehearsal for what might transpire when the long wave of Boomers be­gins to flood into official old age and puts un­precedented pressure on the public purse and on the private pension plans of corporations and individuals.

Fortunately, the pensions crisis has landed full square in the public conscious. It is no longer a "looming" crisis. It is here. Now. Un­fortunately, it is a massive, complex problem that will test the will power and ingenuity of people and institutions at all levels.

Evidence mounts almost daily that the re­tirements of the Boomers and those older are under threat. This week, the Ontario Munici­pal Employees Retirement System COMERS), one of the country's biggest pension funds, announced that while its assets bounced back last year after 2008's big losses, it still is run­ning a deficit on what is needed to fund obli­gations.

This scenario is being repeated at pension funds - both public and private - across Can­ada as managers grapple with chronic under­funding stemming from overly optimistic return-on-assets assumptions. Recent reality, in the form of a struggling economy and the second stock market crash in a decade, has collided with the diminishing prospects for retirements going forward.

The growing unease about pensions and re­tirement among Boomers is apparent in many surveys.

A recent poll conducted by TNS Canad­ian Facts shows that almost one in every two people over 50 say they're not confident that the country's system of pensions and retire­ment savings, including employer pensions, OAS, the CPP and RRSPs, will provide them with a comfortable retirement income. More than a third say they're "somewhat confident" and only 15% are "very" or "completely" confi­dent in the system.

No surprise there. And no surprise that al­most half of the 50-plus group surveyed by TNS want pension-system reform, including more room for seniors in tax-free savings ac­counts, pension surpluses belonging to indi­viduals 'holding plans - not employers - priority for pensioners in the event of bankruptcy and the right to make voluntary supplementary CPP contributions.

While pension debate and subsequent re­form is a high priority as Boomers approach 65, they and other generations are becoming increasingly aware that they should be the main authors of their own retirement destin­ies. Common sense also tells us that over time many people will have to make sacrifices, that paying somewhat more and getting somewhat less is certainly in prospect at all pension lev­els.

It will be interesting to see in 2020 - half­way through the great Boomer tsunami ­what hindsight will tell us about where exact­ly we were in 2010-11 on the difficult road to a more secure retirement for Canadians.

If I'm spared, I'll by then be turning 75.Meantime, though, I've got next week and a birthday party at Chuck's Cellar here in Wai­kiki to get through in one piece. More than 20 of us will assemble, including young Boomers, older Boomers, retirees, those working past 65, for drinks and dinner, for a good night out. Retirement worries will have to wait.



William Hanley
in Honolulu
Comment
Financial Post
March 6, 2010

MAKING 'GOOD' BETTER

ITERATION

Definition

A process for arriving at a progressively ‘better’ decision or a desired result by repeating the rounds of analysis or the cycles of operation


The objective is to bring the desired decision or result closer to discovery with each repetition (iteration)


The iterative process can be used where the decision is not easily irrevocable (such as a marriage or war) or where the consequences of revocation could be costly


While a high number of iterations is desirable, it is usually constrained by the limited availability of time, energy, other resources and presence of other pressures.

The iterative process is a an incremental process of approximation used to define a result whose parameters have numerous variables which do not lend themselves to a mathematically designed solution.

Our planning services integrate complex mathematical and non mathematical less tangible variables (goals, hopes, objectives) into a meaningful outcome.


To cover our need for the assurance of a sustainable 30 - 40 year lifetime retirement we develop answers to 2 key questions:

"Will I be OK?"

"Will I be able to retire - without running out of income?"

The iterative process is central to our analysis.

Weigh House

ENCOUNTERING FINANCIAL 'DEPENDENCY' - DURING RETIREMENT

Insights common in the pursuit of personal and financial health

A Medical Analogy

We develop type 2 diabetes because our pancreas does not supply sufficient insulin to carry the sucrose in our bloodstream to the fatty cells which require them.

We must supplement the insulin upon which we are dependent through medication for the remainder of our life.

We develop Financial 'Dependency' when after our first 30 - 40 years of earning an income we do not have sufficient capital to provide a sustainable income for us during a further second 30 - 40 years during our retirement.

To supplement our income we may have to continue to work during retirement and supply the necessary financial 'insulin' that we need.

Both events have a common cause.

Simply put, we are unaware that either condition has been developing for years.

Both the medical and financial versions are at epidemic levels.

The Financial version is impacting 1 out of 2 Canadians who are preparing for retirement - the boomers.

Without a Financial prescription retirement will not take place either as planned or as expected.

There is a solution to the financial condition.

It includes awareness, time and discipline in its application.

We would pleased to share it with you.

Ask us and we will share it with you.


Dan Zwicker
Certified Financial Planner
Charted Financial Consultant
Chartered Life Underwriter
Professional Engineers Ontario

Weigh House

Email: dan.zwicker@weighhouse.com
Tel: 416-726-2427

THE RELATIONSHIP ECONOMY......SOCIAL GAME CHANGERS

Everyone is chasing “social” as if it was the cure all and end all. Whether you’re a brand, a non-profit, a politician or a small business the lure of social media is being applied in many different ways.


Over the past several years the stories of how people are using social media has dominated the web and is now bleeding into main stream media. How? People and organizations are creating eye-opening stories about how they applied social media to accomplish an objective. Scott Brown’s win in the Massachusetts senate race is but one example and when you examine the factors that created his win social media stands out front and center.


There are inspiring lessons from the BIG and small stories of how people and organizations successfully applied social media. The irony of these stories is that most people who actually used social media to achieve and objective don’t understand “why” social media actually influenced the outcomes.


Lessons From Use


Social media is in its infancy stages and current usage is organic growth of a message propagated to the masses. A simple message from one person or organization can “catch the crowds” attention in profound ways that previously was not created by traditional media. The lessons from usage illustrate the simplistic yet profound nature of viral communications whose reach and richness has accelerated due to the internet.

Some lessons to consider:

1. Enable consumers and constituents to be the influence, not your ads or your marketing but rather your message that appeals to the masses.


2. Innovate the message with the medium even if you don’t understand why or how. Barack Obama leveraged social media to get elected into the highest office in the nation. His party doesn’t understand “why” this worked and neither did Scott Brown. All they know is that it worked. Now both parties are jumping into the use of social media but neither understands why or how it works.


3. Social media reaches outside the traditional market and taps into people who have an affinity to your message, your product/service and you individually regardless of geography or traditional demographics that have defined your market.


4. Leverage social technology with relevant and relative media. Relevant and relative media is different than traditional media because it is relational rather than institutional. Social technology enables relational media to spread like wildfire because of the distributed power of reaching hearts and minds.


We live in a world of unprecedented change, increasing globalization, and the explosive influence of distributed communications fueld by this thing we call social media. Innovative uses of social media is the central driving force for any business, any cause or any nation that wants to grow organically and succeed in the new economy. This is a game-changing dynamic which will evolve rapidly as will the influence and impact on everything.


The game has just begun. There are no spoken rules rather the rules are hidden in the fiber of human relations and only spoken to the hearts and minds of those participating in the game of change. A game changes when people learn “why” people play the game and not necessarily “how” they play the game today. The rules of the game change when we learn why which then changes how we use something as simple yet profound as the ability to “connect” to and with the human network like never before in the history of mankind. The crowds learning why are the game changers.


Jay deragon,
Author
02 03 2010

THE RELATIONSHIP ECONOMY......WILL SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY CHANGE BUSINESS?

The impact of social technology on business as usual is and will continue to be profound. Profound in that social technology fuels never-ending change caused by the markets of conversations. These markets represent intelligence that is transparent, fluid and engaging by crowds of suppliers, employees and consumers.


Change is now fueled by the rate of interest and the rate of change caused by interactive conversations from everywhere and everyone.


Instead of the old model of change, from the inside out, the new model of change is from the outside in. Markets are shifting at the speed of a mouse click. These markets represent the rate of interest change (both economic interest and consumer interest) and the interest is changing based on the consumption of information and knowledge.


The voice of the customer used to be analyzed based on old feedback mechanisms and survey’s which were poorly designed and time-consuming. Today the voice of the customer is instant, transparent and designed by the content and context of open and transparent conversations. The new world of instant communications controlled and influenced by the end consumer is the outside force forcing fueling organizational changes for those businesses wishing to thrive or survive. However, the pace and strength of these outside forces is changing the very change models used before by the leading management consulting firms and guru’s on organizational change.


McKinsey, one of the top management consulting firms in the world, is even changing their own approach to the creation and implementation of organizational change models. The video below illustrates their commentary on changes fueled by the current technological revolution. The irony is that the current rate of technological change is not static but, as they show, revolutionary. The irony of a “revolution” is that is not only fueled by change but its outcomes create even more change and it doesn’t seem as though the rate of change and interest in new technology will ever become static.


Organizations will have to learn change is now a permanent process and the only thing that should be managed is the rate in which you adjust to it. Not adjusting or accepting that change is permanent means you’ll be left by those that do. Get it?


What say you?

Jay Deragon,
Author
11 09 2009



Lenny Mendonca: How Can You Make The Most Of Technological Revolution?

The chairman of McKinsey Global Institute analyzes how technology is catalyzing business successes—and failures.

Lenny Mendonca
Chairman, McKinsey Global Institute

THE RELATIONSHIP ECONOMY......WILL YOUR SOCIAL STRATEGY CHANGE THE GAME?

Those who do extraordinary things change the game for those who don’t. Changing the game for others means you do something which changes the rules of the game before those following the old rules know it.


Apple changed the game for mobile device manufacturers and for mobile users. Apple is now attempting to change the game for “laptops” with the IPad. Google changed the game for internet search engine utility. President OBama changed the game of politics when he leveraged the internet to raise contributions ($600 million compared to McCann’s $50 million) and to take his message of change directly to voters.


Social media is a game changer. It is changing how people interact with markets. How buyers influence sellers and how old media adapts to this thing we call new media. The dynamics and disruptive nature of all things social are emerging on a daily basis.


Individuals and organizations are looking for and trying innovative ways to garner attention, awareness, affinity, audiences and subsequent actions. The flow of new technology enters the marketplace faster than most people and entire organizations can keep track of never mind comprehending the pending implications. Jumping from one technology to another there is a frenzy of tactical maneuvers, creative uses are all indicative of a race with no clear end in mind. While garnering people’s attention for the moment the next moment moves the audience because someone else applies tactical maneuvers and creative uses of social media to get our attention. The limelight of tactical and creative attempts to get the audiences attention are but for a moment.


Strategy is What Changes the Game Not Tactics


There is no road map for use of social technology, only temporary roads. Temporary roads are tactical uses aimed at getting attention and awareness. Fueled by creativity these tactics are short roads with a dead end unless there is an overriding strategy that creates new “highways” for others to follow and use.


A highway for use of social technology requires deep thinking about users wants, needs and intentions. Since there is no preplanned highway and the objective of a sound strategy is to create a highway where none exist. Doing so takes creative thinking long term and the development of tools and experiences that users find valuable, useful and serving their intentions. Time, convenience and valuable experiences are the strategic elements that can create new highways. Slick marketing and tactical attempts to get the audiences attention are side roads not long term highways.


A sound Social strategy is one which changes the rules of the game for more than a moment. If you can change the rules of the game and users like the new rules then competition will have to follow your highway.


Social media and related social stuff currently grabbing everyone’s attention represents an explosive map of new roads where everyone wants to discover where the roads go. Those who can think strategically will create highways for all to follow and use and subsequently these people and organizations will change the game and pull all the traffic from the side roads. Why? Because highways are faster routes for users to get from point A to B with better experiences.


If you are not thinking strategically about all this social stuff you may end up on a dead end road. Get it?

Jay Deragon
Author
02 12 2010

THE RELATIONSHIP ECONOMY......SOCIAL 'PRODUCTION' MENTALITY

With all the emphasis on social media ROI you would think that companies believe that social media is a production line in a factory. This mentality is reflective of how management thinking is still in the industrial era.


Production thinking is about producing something for consumption by the masses. The results of “production” are reflected by subtracting the gross revenue from the cost. Thus the emphasis is placed on selling more to make more. To enhance sales opportunities companies adopted marketing strategies and tactics.


The process of marketing has been focused on reaching the masses using numerous forms of media. Marketing has been designed to create attention and awareness of an offering targeted to a specific audience. Marketing followed “production thinking”. The more we market the more sales we’ll “produce”.


The model of “production thinking” creates environments in which “people” are used to “produce more” at less cost. The aim is to make profits from producing more and production is enhanced by optimizing people, processes and technology. Management methods to optimize production evolved around measuring anything and everything with the aim of finding out how effective people, processes and technology are at producing a result. The problem with the “production model” is that the people part has changed while the model for using people has not.


Now Measure Social Media Production


The internet has changed a lot of things for people and business. Every evolution of the internet creates yet another change and business tries to apply old management methods and thinking to these changes. The problem is that most of the changes brought on by the internet are centric to how people and markets interact. These interactions are changing how business ought to manage people and markets. People and markets are no longer for use rather both are now the users. The change from being used to being the user means “production models” for business are no longer viable rather the model for has shifted to a “conductor model”.


The term conductor means a person who directs an orchestra or chorus, communicating to the performers by motions of a baton or the hands his or her interpretation of the music. Conductor also means a substance, body, or device that readily conducts heat, electricity, sound. The “conductor model” for business is more about enabling people to conduct commerce, internally and externally, rather than management trying to “produce” commerce with a “production mentality”.


Now reflect on what the social web, and all this social stuff, is creating. The fundamental change is that people are being empowered to “conduct” their own commerce, whether buying, selling or simply conversing. The term commerce deals with the exchange of goods and services from producer to final consumer.

The social web is self organized orchestras formed by conversational threads that readily “conduct” ideas, information and knowledge threaded throughout the internet and propagated on most any device.


The optimum business model is one of embracing the “conductor” function aimed at providing people with “ideas, information and knowledge” they in turn can use to produce what they want with their community of friends and followers. Giving people the “right instruments to create their own orchestras” of conversations will ultimate lead to the creation of commerce.


To adopt the “conductor model” for business means you have the recognize that measuring social media ROI is more about measuring your ability to enable people, internally and externally, to use you rather than you using them. Measuring your ability to be used is a lot different than measuring how you use people to use your stuff. To optimize in a world gone “social” it is wiser to think as a conductor rather than a producer.


Conductors measure the synchronization of efforts aimed at giving the audience of people more than they expected. They don’t measure the results of people producing rather what they produce for the people.

Jay Deragon,
Author
02 09 10