According to a 2010 BBC poll, one in three web users is looking for an online date. Sigmunt Bauman points out that internet dating is preferred as a way of meeting people as it avoids the unpredictability of face-to-face encounters. The fear of being alone sends people to their computers, while ‘stranger danger’ encourages the procrastination of real life encounters… so Bauman is suggesting that we are commoditising ourselves, and online dating is just one more way in which ‘in a society of consumers, no one can become a subject without first turning into a commodity.’

Social media sites like Facebook respond to a need to share one’s private life and thoughts in revealing photos, confessions and journals… at the same time as social skills are in decline among the very same age group that most uses these media.

And our fast-moving society encourages us to be flexible as employees, ready to respond to the needs of an employer whose ideal employee is ‘zero drag coefficient’: no ties, no family, minimum friction.

Iain McGilchrist warns that we are now in an age where experience is so mediated by technology that we are caught in a cold, autistic web.

All that is a roundabout way of saying that MOJO (the Mojo network referred to below) is the way forward: reach out to others and find alternatives to social isolation. Half of Irish houses are now occupied by a single person. The thing that is so exciting about MOJO is not that it can be a ‘fix’ for social problems, but that we don’t know what the limits are once we get together and act as a community.

Btw, tune in to 2FM radio at 1100 on Monday 14th May for an interview with 2 of the members of the Mojo group, Ciaran and Dave. They will be talking about their experience of the group, and the benefits they have drawn from it.

Thanks to my friend Bill Felton for reminding me of this…

Once upon a time you wrote a letter, stuck a stamp on an envelope, posted the envelope in a letterbox; someone then collected your letter and brought it to a sorting office, where someone sorted it into a pile… then someone took the pile to a train where someone else brought it to another town, where someone collected it and brought it to another office before someone delivered it to the recipient’s address.

And then they invented the fax machine.

10 years later they invented email.

5 years later they invented text messaging.

5 years later they invented Twitter… and so on.

Moral #1 of the story: we cannot imagine what our children’s children will work at.

Moral #2: within one generation ‘work’ has almost vanished from sight… the ‘dematerialisation of labour’.

This wonderful graphic was produced by 2 members of the Mojo Network, which has been based in the Blackrock, Co. Dublin area since last October. The aim is to create a self-managing group, rather than to focus on getting jobs for people. Next session, Thursday week, we will look at Facebook and set up a Facebook page.

On the radio this week, I heard that the Dutch government had been brought down by ‘Hurt Builders’. And I thought, ‘good for them, about time the construction industry got their own back’. Brave of them to call themselves that, mind you.

Turnarounds interest me. There are many kinds: sporting turnarounds, from huge success to complete failure (think of Rory McIlroy at last year’s US Masters) or in the other direction, from the lowest to the highest point (Rory again). But whether it is sport, or warfare (Dunkirk to D-Day), or business, the story is a strong one. So strong that it is somewhere between an archetype and a cliche.

And all of those stories, including the ones one has taken part in oneself as an under-12 soccer player with nobbly knees, all of them build up a rich sediment of ‘turnaround stories’ that lights up when you come up against a major challenge in your adult years. They form a half-remembered archive of moves and moods, like the ‘muscle memory’ spoken of by sportspeople.

I remember a coach explaining to us that, contrary to popular belief, there is no gap between the team winning by 3 goals and the same team losing by 3 goals: if you are used to winning by a good margin then you think that you are safe from humiliating defeats, because you would have to pass the 0-0 mark on your way down! But the slope is slippery and unbroken.

A turnaround in business is when a non-performing company is reset to become a profit-making enterprise. It is one of the great adventures of my consulting life to have assisted in this phenomenon. People change substantially: from dull, defensive individuals before the turnaround they become lively and sparky sources of fresh ideas and insight. I changed too: the experience was so exciting and life-affirming that it restored my faith in humanity. And this was true whether it was a corporate-scale turnaround, or that of an individual. My sense of profound satisfaction was of the same order.

And sometimes it is only neat and tidy in retrospect, when you figure out what has happened and why. At the time there is a lot of noise and confusion around.

Here are 5 things I have learned about turnarounds in my consulting work:

1. The initial outlook and the expert forecasts are doom-laden, convincing - and wrong. You have to work against the tide, and treat these cast-iron certainties with scepticism.
2. It is not about heroes. There are heroic deeds and individuals, but they emerge in the course of the turnaround.
3. Nonetheless there is a moment when true leadership is required… the whole system is in balance, ‘it can go either way’ - and there is usually someone occupying a role of authority who can trigger the swing in momentum.
4. There is often an outside stimulus which acts as the necessary spark to ignite the timber: this is often a small event which nonetheless constitutes the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’.
5. Part of the transition/transformation is the change of mind that the classical philosophers referred to as ‘metanoia’. The grip of the old way of doing things must be broken, must be seen to fail, before the system is open to change.

So there I was, on the 0720 train from Dublin to Waterford, and hardly a soul on board. Beautiful sunny morning, we ran down the east coast, through the countryside and through several towns… and not a soul to be seen.

Then we arrive in Kilkenny, and a voice invites us to step off the train for a few minutes to stretch our legs (all 2 of them), and I do that.

Stepping out onto the platform, I was suddenly reminded of another train trip I took, 30 years ago, across Canada on the trans-Canadian that ran in those days from Montreal to Vancouver - 3 days and nights of travel. Quebec, Ontario, Sasketchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia. Vast, beautiful country. Ontario alone was endless. Sasketchewan was so flat that the same grain silo, the only feature for miles, would be visible from the observation car for an hour or more amidst the waving wheatfields. There was one stop, in Medicine Hat Alberta.

We were given about 30 minutes, and I wandered off down what looked like Main Street. It was Sunday morning, about 1100. Nothing was moving except a weedball blown by a breeze. The train’s hooter blew, and we legged it back on board; we were relieved as the train pulled out that we did not have to live out our days in Medicine Hat.