I have been reading my friend Brian Paxton’s MBendi Newsletter for a couple of years, now. He is from Cape Town — a truly lovely city — and writes about the issues and opportunities that impact Africa as a continent. Bet you did not know this:

Most Africans now own a cell phone, increasingly a smartphone, and in South Africa, for instance, 70% of web traffic is estimated to be via cell-phones.

He generally amazes me with his writings and ideas and suggestions and seems to be one of the “Very Clear Minds” in my network of people. He is not a colleague and I really cannot remember how we first connected. But I completely respect his opinions on things and would suggest that you sign up for his materials (free). There is a ton of information, but it is his front section that I always read.

One of his columns is “The World After 2020,” which is fantastic “fortnightly” as he puts it. (I am really not sure what a fortnight is, but I like it when I get the newsletters!).

This recent one is about “government work” and one of the ideas he promoted was this Square Wheel / Round Wheel:

I’ve never understood why it takes a standard time, measured in weeks no matter where you live, to acquire a driver’s licence, passport, travel visa or identity card or to register a company. Clearly there are enough people on the job to keep up with the flow of applications coming in. And the business processes involved in checking for duplicate or fraudulent applications should be pretty straightforward. At the end of the process appropriate printer technology produces the final record of approval at the click of a button. Surely we can’t be far off submitting an application, preferably electronically, one day and getting the required document the next? Temporary extra resources could be used to clear the backlog.

I suggest you sign up if you are interested. One link to subscribe is this one:

http://app.totalsend.com/f.php?p=726/5v2/rs/2rly/ts/rs

and his website is at http://www.mbendi.com/

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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