The characters an actor plays vanish as soon as the curtain falls. Giving a presentation, however, means having to perform in your own costume, write your own script, use your own accent and then hold your own while being questioned afterwards. That's a tough call!

The transition into the second decade of the century has futurists busily forecasting what's coming next. I've been thinking more about the kinds of cross-cultural management trends we can expect in the Tens. So here are some of the big changes I expect to see over the next few years.

A vast segment of our population spends their lives doing things that they hate to make money they don't want to buy things they don't need to impress folks they don't like. All in the vain attempt to experience happiness. Is that you?

If you want to challenge complacency in an organisation, you need to make a strong case with strong ideas. Simply claiming that 'things could be better' is too vague.

What could you give your customers or colleagues this Christmas? I'm not talking about discounts or donations, but things that won't cost you anything but still add real value to others.

We use metaphors in every conversation we have. But there may be more to them than we think. Metaphors can often hide deeper feelings and thoughts. If the issue is really important to us, what's behind these metaphors needs to be understood.

I read the other day that Cisco is helping build a city in Korea. But what are the implications of this? I mean, would you really want to live in a city built by your IT Department? What would it be like?

Fifty years ago, the workplace was full of similar people with similar values and ways of doing things. Not any more. Modern organizations are full of people from different backgrounds with different sets of unwritten rules. And these rules lie at the heart of many workplace conflicts.

The late Peter Drucker was the greatest management thinker of our times. Yet as the recent and current chaos shows, his wisdom went either unheeded as the wrong goals were attacked by the wrong managers. And what a tragedy that has proved to be.

I'm often appalled at the physical spaces and meeting formats in which people are meant to open their minds, solve problems and inspire progress. Desks are for filling in forms and filing papers – not for creating, thinking, making, learning, or collaborating.

To kick of 2010, Jurgen ponders a better way to deal with email, suggests a totally contrarian time management system, takes some ideas from the Wizard of Oz and offers some thoughts on how to loose weight more effectively.