I’ve got so much reading going on I normally fail when someone asks me to recommend something I am reading. So, will start posting here on great current reads.

Top of the list is: The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks, Joshua Cooper Ramo (Little, Brown and Company, 2016; nonfiction).

Good list from McKinsey here. And don’t forget to read the latest book I was lucky enough to collaborate on.

Greg Thomas isn’t just a poor spokesperson for Sanzaar, he’s a mouthpiece for an organisation that has become clearly biased to serving Sth African rugby. As if the slanting of semi-finals and final locations weren’t enough, we then have the debacle where the Crusaders can’t even get to Sth Africa with a reasonable rehabilitation window – clearly favouring the locals.

Then today, Greg feels it’s his and Sanzaar’s job to rule on the quality of a team. Where local players serve their country on the field that clearly shouldn’t impact their eligibility to play in the tournament. I can see how their ruling would be fair as applied to players joining from other teams, but where it involves national representation across the code its a cynical view to hold. To suggest that the players they’ve selected are better than Messam is, well, ridiculous.

Loved this piece on and from my friend Paul D’Arcy.

“… he aims for a high mean and a median of zero, meaning he anticipates more than half of his team’s ideas will fail” 

I’m not seeing it in Australia – and the lazy approach brands in crisis are taking to CMO recruitment is staggering. Nevertheless – interesting comments from the WPP crew:

“If you are running a legacy business, as many of our clients are, you face disrupters like Uber and Airbnb at one end of the spectrum, zero-based cost budgeters like 3G and Coty at the other end, with seemingly short-term focused activist investors in the middle, like Nelson Peltz, Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb,” WPP added.

“There is, therefore, considerable pressure in the system. Moreover, the average managerial life expectancy of a United States CEO is currently 6-7 years, a CFO 5-6 years and a CMO two years, although the latter has improved from 18 months recently.”

Interesting story also on rebirth of financial PR. I’ve been developing a view that PR needs to get back to PR as its core function – a new PR – PR 4.0. It got distracted chasing social, content and more. We need hardcore PR help in our businesses to engage through new media.

Thrilled to have Augmented hitting the streets over the coming weeks. A collaboration between Brett King, Alex Lightman, JP Rangaswami and myself, we take a hard look at the road to virtual and augmented reality – and where its going. Its been incredible to watch VR generate so much attention over even the last month – makes the book seem very right for the times. You can read more about it here and watch the trailer over here.

Brett has done a ton of work getting Augmented to this point – I’m very grateful to have had the chance to collaborate with him on it.