By John Zogby

First Globals™ are fascinating to me – and actually all audiences I have spoken to. I see heads nodding in affirmation when I describe this group because it captures their children, grandchildren, or themselves. In Prague, our discussion was very practical. The chair of Forum 2000 was the main organizer of our event – an American named Pepper de Callier. Pepper co-owns a major global head-hunting firm based in Prague and writes a column on trends in employment. Pepper was particularly struck by the mobility of First Globals™. Just what does the urge to travel around the world, to seek and actually experience new places and cultures, and to consider one’s self a “citizen of the planet Earth” mean for the future of work, workers, and employers?

First of all, the definition of work will change. Today’s 20-somethings will have had four “jobs” by age 30 and 10 jobs by age 40. Back in my day, that was considered unstable. Today it is a fact of life. Company loyalty certainly isn’t what it used to be and steady employment will actually be a series of projects – independently contracted, for a set duration of time. And the work can (and most assuredly will) be done anywhere. I hear a lot about “working from home”, but where is home? Today it may be in a parents’ home, tomorrow in Bangalore, and the day after in Panama City. Companies like IBM are both leading the charge, and following the trend with their “globally integrated enterprise”, multiple nerve centers and a mobile work force.

Secondly, what about job retention? That also will be redefined. To be sure, personal services employees (eg. restaurant servers, physical therapists, teachers) will be stationery, though they too may look elsewhere for better deals), but today’s 20-somethings employed in a global workforce will be constantly on the move. Employers will need to be sure that they can keep these Globals for the duration of a project and hope that the experience is positive enough for them to carry good will and positive references about their projects and workplace with them – for the next wave of new hires. It may look bleak for Globals at the moment, but in the growth economy that emerges they will be in the driver’s seat.

Finally many rules will need to be re-written. A new generation brings to the workplace a new set of circumstances. For example, a new look at privacy and openness. As I write in my book, The Way We’ll Be:

As to what such a high level of openness portends for society at large, I think I had a glimpse of that future in a chance encounter my wife and I had with a twenty-year-old waitress in Utica during the summer of 2007. In the course of a conversation about YouTube and public access, I asked our waitress about her own limits on what she would reveal.
“My boobs,” she answered, not terribly demurely, “but only on Halloween, and only for my friends.” “Well,” I said, “I’m your friend today, but tomorrow I might not be. Can you stop me from sharing your, um, breasts with the rest of the world, or with the company you’re hoping will hire you?”
“No,” she said, after some serious thought, “but so many of us do this in one form or another that employers are just going to have to adjust or they won’t have anyone left to hire.”
And thus, I remember thinking as she wandered off to the next table, what’s bad for beauty queens and teenage ingénues today becomes business as usual the day after tomorrow.

What do you think?

By John Zogby

Today marks my 25th anniversary of owning a polling company. The following are all true stories. I actually did get calls in the early days when some customers heard I was a “pollster” and wondered if I would do their chairs and sofas. I actually did run for Mayor of Utica in 1981, worked with my community college students on polling my own race, and knew exactly how much I would lose by before anyone else. Obviously, I would rather be right than president. And there actually were a few “associates” when John Zogby Associates was born.

I have been very lucky – but luck happens to those who work very hard. Very hard! And plan, too. In the early days, we did fundraising for politicians and charities, retail advertising, and public relations to help feed us in between the polls and market studies. And beginning in November 1987, when only five of us were present, we established our annual Strategic Planning meeting where we established goals, then proceeded to meet quarterly to score our success or failure in meeting those goals. These meetings produced some momentous decisions.   In early 1988, following one meeting, I trekked up to Watertown, NY, to check out the huge Fort Drum expansion that was drawing tens of thousands of new people into that economically depressed area. We launched the North Country Tracking Service which did quarterly household surveys to determine the values, behaviors, needs, and attitudes of these newcomers (vs. longer-term residents). This project became a cottage industry for us until the 1990 Census came out in 1992. It also broadened our name recognition which led to referrals to small cities, counties, and townships throughout the Northeast – and a growing body of more lucrative polling work.

By November 1991, we were ready to tackle New York statewide political polling. I funded the first of what would be eight quarterly polls designed to tackle New York’s presidential and state elections. Our first poll in early December 1991 showed then-Governor Mario Cuomo down by 6 points in his home state in a presidential match against then-President George H.W. Bush. The fact that the poll was released the day before Cuomo decided to stiff a campaign plane waiting for him on the tarmac  at the Albany Airport and not fly in to New Hampshire to file for the presidential primary caused quite a stir. It was the top story on CNN’s Inside Politics that day. We polled through the 1992 cycle and became well-known in New York (and in key circles politically nationwide).

In 1994, the Zogby Poll was the only one to suggest early on that an unknown state senator named George Pataki could defeat Mario Cuomo. By September of that year, we got a contract to poll for the New York Post and Fox 5 in New York City. We completed daily tracking and many television appearances in this high-profile election and had the most accurate poll that year. We continued with the Post and Fox 5 until 2001. Meanwhile, our stellar track record for these media giants in the 1996 presidential primaries brought us an even greater opportunity. We nailed the New Hampshire primary and our performance in the Arizona Republican primary was accurate to the tenth of a percent. This was enough to bring our name to the attention of the Americas Executive Vice-President of Reuters, the global news behemoth. Our daily tracking of the 1996 presidential election was by far the most accurate and our worldwide brand was up and running. Lost in all the presidential hoopla was the fact that we were the only polling firm to correctly get the margin of victory of Senator Robert Torricelli in New Jersey.

By the time 35 Zogby International employees and advisors gathered for our annual meeting in November, posters were all over the conference room touting “Gallup, Harris, Zogby”. That was our goal and we were well on our way.

In 1997, we correctly polled the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races – again the only correct poll in New Jersey. In 1998, we distinguished ourselves in Missouri and came closer to the margin of any poll in Illinois – this time polling for the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

In 2000, we (along with CBS News) were the only polls following the popular vote victory of Vice-President Al Gore over Governor George W. Bush. At the same time, we blew the New York Senate race, missing Hillary Rodham Clinton’s victory over Rick Lazio. No conspiracy, my friends, we blew it. But we got every other state right on the mark.

Since that time, our track record has been near-perfect. In 2002, 16 of 20 Senate races were correct. In 2004, my polling had George W. Bush beating John Kerry 49.8% to 48.4%. Bush won 50.8% to 48.4%. I did indeed “predict” a Kerry victory based on historical analysis and some pretty terrible network exit polling. But I have vowed to stick to what I do best – poll, not predict.

In 2006, 18 of 19 states nailed. And in 2008, we had Barack Obama leading by 10.4 points. He won by 7.3 points. Can’t be perfect all the time. But we were credited with being the most accurate of all pollsters in 8 of the 9 states we polled. This following 19 of 24 primaries that were correct.

Zogby International is now the second-best known name in polling in the U.S. This follows a lot of planning and very hard work. And it has been done with a gifted staff of tireless, smart professionals. And we still meet every November to look ahead to bigger and better things.