Tweet tweet…anyone working?

So yesterday, upon news that Michael Jackson died, millions of users swarmed twitter and sites like TMZ (which broke the story – take that CNN). The surge in volume resulted in delays accessing websites and apparently  Twitter was tweeted to the limit as users sent 5,000 tweets per minute which created tweeting delays of up to five minutes. How many tweets can a twitterer tweet (try saying that three times really fast). The founder of twitter is quoted stating that the news of Jacko’s passing rivals the tweeting created by the US Presidential election. Overall web traffic was up by 20% due to the news and there are now 16,549 articles on google news related to the death of Michael Jackson. So the question is – what is everyone doing at their desks? Apparently they are tweeting.

Now get back to work.

Succession – Conan vs. Leno

This is such an interesting succession case study.

So back in 2004 TV executives at NBC looked ahead and thought… golly gee…in 2009, Jay will be 59. He is a workaholic with lots of motorcycles that he likes to ride so of course he is going to want to retire. They then looked at Conan O’Brien, host of the Late Show with Conan O’Brien, and thought; he is 41, has high ratings and taps into a young hip, spending demographic. Hence, lucrative. They then looked over at Dave Letterman and thought, he will be 62 in 2009 and good grief egads CBS might poach Conan when Letterman retires so we have to get Conan locked down. NOW. So let’s convince Leno he should retire in 2009,  lock down a contract with Conan to take over the Tonight Show in 09, announce the plan to the world and onwards we go. Sound not stupid? Almost.

Here’s what happened… Leno decided not to retire (gasp). Turns out, he likes working… So now we have a new crisis – Leno is at risk of going to another network. So after a couple of backflips by NBC, as of September, Leno will host a new show five nights a week at 10PM that due to the timeslot has TV critics anticipating a train wreck.

But let’s just look at this for a second… what do we learn from this? Succession plans made years in advance don’t tend to work. The world moves way too fast for smug smart decisions made years in advance about people. In 2004, PVR’s didn’t exist. The thought of retiring at 59 was not crazy as we were all striving to achieve our freedom 55, well at 55. Not so anymore… One, the economy has changed retirement plans for a heck of a lot of people, but it also turns out that people who are engaged in their work, well, often want to keep working.  You can’t use age as a the sole indicator of one’s willingness to stop working. Think about the amount of organizations who build succession plans, only to hire from the external market when there is a need for a successor. Having a “hit by a bus plan” is a necessary risk management strategy, but the era of “grooming” and doing backflips to retain “stars” seems antiquated.

Had Conan left NBC for CBS to take over the Letterman show, who’s to say he would not have “boomeranged” back to NBC at some point? No one would judge him for it. We are way past that. The average lifespan of an employee in a job is 22 months. The world is fast, changing and loyalty is not to employers…it is to oneself and one’s social networks.