One of the privileges I enjoy in my role is attending the best business conferences, primarily because I usually takeaway more than I came with. This was certainly true of the recent Narta Seminar in Europe which featured several cutting edge presenters.

Vijay Govindarajan, was one who seemed to managed to motivate as well as educate the delegates with an unusually moderate delivery (if anyone has seen Deepak Chopra present, Govindarajan’s style was similar).

Almost mesmerising at times, Govindarajan made the obvious sound profound: that you can’t succeed in the future if you continue to hold onto your old ideas. With a simple timeline he explained that concepts that were once held in concrete, such as how to highjump, have been constantly innovated over time. But because nothing changes overnight, the Govindarajan said the skill of the champion was to “selectively forget” about the old concept while “managing the present circumstances” and most importantly “creating the future”.

For more details read our Trends department below or you can keep up to date with Govindarajan teachings by following his blog here.

Meanwhile, I am now up for more learning this week when I attend the annual Forbes Global CEO Conference commencing in Sydney tomorrow. The theme is ‘Full Sail Ahead’ and presenters will address enormous issues including, ‘How should CEOs and entrepreneurs navigate in the face of perils such as weaker consumption, fluctuating costs, stricter bank lending, increased government regulation and global competition?’ Not a subject for the faint-hearted.

In the general study, 88% of people say it is acceptable for marketers to use causes. This record number represents a 33% increase since Cone began measuring in 1993 (66%). But it reached a whopping 95% with mums. In food and beverage products, 94% of mothers want to know about causes but in manufacturing, the figure is also high at 91%. These consumers claim that they are also passionate about health and disease, education, and economic development. 

In the study, Cone described mums as “The epitome of the cause consumer. Perhaps because they control the purse strings and have socially minded youth influencing their buying decisions behind the scenes, they are open to being marketed to when it comes to cause brands, and they are virtually unanimous in shopping with a cause in mind: 

Meanwhile 94% of Millennials say that cause marketing is acceptable with the study revealing that 53% have bought a product benefiting a cause this year, versus 41% for the total study. Their group said that a company’s support of social or environmental issues was also more likely to influence their decisions outside the store including where to work (87% vs. 69% average) and where to invest (79% vs. 59% average).

According to the study, “Millennials’ passion for supporting causes presents significant growth opportunities for companies as these young adults’ income and purchasing power grows.”

LG’s reappearance in the national headlines as a “serial offender that deserved harsher penalties” (according to Choice) flags a red light for this industry.

The comments followed the ruling on Friday by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that LG apparently misrepresented the energy consumption of two models of refrigerator. These greenwashing claims were initially raised by Choice in March and were investigated over a six-month period.

The size of LG’s market share in Australia brings with it certain responsibilities. Primarily these include honesty and transparency and at some level, a requirement to behave in a manner that doesn’t bring the industry into disrepute.

Over the past 15 years the local management of LG has been hell-bent on dominance. As a result its tactics have impacted negatively on several competitors and it now needs to take a long hard look at its levels of integrity.

Without a strong local whitegoods manufacturing sector, Australians are compelled to purchase products made overseas, but this doesn’t mean that we also have to accept business practices of a poor standard. Our retailers and consumers deserve better.

Before I tell you about my encounter with one of the Fortnum & Mason floorwalker in the china, glass and silver section on the first floor in “the heart of London’s Piccadilly” last Thursday, I really need to let you into a secret: I am a connoisseur of Ladies Powder Rooms around the world.

(You can check this out with Gadget Guy www.gadgetguy.com.au    Peter Blasina who shared a business trip to Hong Kong with me where he patiently escorted me through almost every LPR in that city, including McDonalds).

Obviously, there is functional side to this interest, but I reckon that the true nature of a business and how it cares about its female customers can be reflected in the care and attention it gives to the LPR. It’s a small investment that will pay off in unknown ways.

So, on my list of the Ladies Powder Rooms in London that I had been checking out last week, F&M’s shot to the top even ahead of Harrod’s, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Westend’s Apollo Theatre, which is no mean feat.

1. The title of the room is enough to entice: no toilet or washroom badge for F&M. Ladies Powder Room spoke directly to me as a place for beautifying and resting and even before arriving at the LPR I felt that care was also on the agenda.

2. The room itself was fitted out as fabulously as the rest of the store. Fine wood panelling on the walls, exquisite marble floor tiles and of course gilded mirrors and door handles. I thought…wow! and my self-esteem shoot through the roof as I started to ‘powder’.

3. Once inside, I noticed the discrete presence of an attendant, dressed in black and white and standing next to the linen basket with a small array of toiletries. This was separate to the choice of French perfume and hand cream which was on offer above the washbasins. Her primary role was to spray sweet smelling perfume throughout the room as the ladies came and went.

4. The presence of the attendant immediately told me that I was an important person to F&M and that, even if I didn’t spend a cent in their store, they had treated me as equal to their most prestigious customer, which I believe is HRH Queen Elizabeth II.

5. Of course, there were no electric hand dryers or paper towels, but fine cloth towels which I deposited into a equally fine wicker basket. And as I left the room, it was apparent that I didn’t need to tip or pay the attendant as it was her pure joy to attend to the delightful environment created by her employer.

By now I actually felt excited about shopping at F&M. My LPR experience had created such a sense of well-being that I really didn’t want to leave. In fact, I decided to stay for lunch in one of their five restaurants.

And it was only minutes later as I walked into the china, silver and glass section pondering which F&M teapot to buy, that the beautifully dressed floorwalker approached and asked, “How do you like our store?”

Meanwhile, if you can’t fly to the UK soon to check out Fortnum and Mason’s Ladies Powder Room, a visit to the LPR at Sydney’s Observatory Hotel is a great alternative

Claire is enjoying a well deserved break and her Upfront column and Connecting to Women blog will return next week.

It’s not often that you get a free kick in business, but I was given one yesterday while sitting aboard the Seabourn Spirit which had just berthed at the sailing port of Hvar, Croatia. In fact, I was parked inside the Amundsen Lounge which was doubling as the presentation hall for the Narta 2010 Seminar.

 For those who may not have been following my tweets, Narta is Australia’s largest consumer electronics buying group for independent retailers. Every year the group takes around 200 industry executives to premier locations (last year it was the snowfields of Whistler, Canada) and I am also privileged to attend.

Yesterday’s session commenced promptly at 8.30am and there was a fission of excitement in the room as the celebrated management ‘guru’ Tom Peters was giving the keynote presentation. It’s always exciting to experience a “celebrity” in person and despite his slightly avuncular demeanor Peters, whose seminal work ‘In Search of Excellence’ co-authored with Tom Drucker, reshaped the way business looked at management practices in the nineties, was in good form.

Peters is a commanding speaker and his well-honed presentation style dominated the room. So it was difficult not to pay attention. But it was when he started waving over his head a Panasonic toughbook computer emblazoned with the slogan ‘Women are born leaders’ that I really leant forward. It seems that Peters is a pragmatic feminist (my term). By his own admission he knows that the power of the female purse drives the world’s economy and taking this market seriously makes good business sense. To back this up, he cited research published by The Economist and The Harvard Business Review which includes facts such as, “ In developing nations, women’s earned income is growing at 8.1%, compared to 5.8% for men. Globally, women control nearly $12 trillion of the $18 trillion total overall consumer spending, a figure predicted to rise to $15 trillion by 2014.”

While Peters session surprised many executives in the audience who are rarely exposed in such data (with the exception of this blog) his passion on the subject was powerful. It was the strongest takeout from his presentation and it remained a dinner table subject that evening.

But Peters’ world is much larger than mine and most of the industry’s executives, both male and female. As a native to North America he has watched the emergence of understandings of how gender intelligence can impact on the bottom line first hand.

Two of the key pillars in his message was that if independent businesses are to survive against the corporate giants, then they needed to start listening to their staff and customers and in turn create ‘intimacy’ in their business, a condition that corporations can’t hope to match. Both listening, and the ability to be intimate with one another, are skills that the female gender possesses in spades.

But what wins Peters more points in my book is that like even a closet feminist, he knows the power of sharing. So, if you would like to hear just what one of the world’s leading experts on management has to say about women and how you need to start connecting with them have a look here.