Minter Dial's Blog: Minter Dialogue, page 69
October 17, 2017
Button Maker? Weather Forecaster? Paperclips? Here’s why companies need to hire different types of profiles
Just recently, I was listening to a quirky podcast on New Books in Technology, with Brian Clegg as guest. Clegg, who has many books and accolades to his title, is the author of a new book, “Big Data: How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our Lives.” It was one of those podcasts that got me thinking, especially about this notion of hiring the right talent for your
digital transformation
.
Clegg explained that the grandfather of big data analytics was John Graunt, a London-based button maker and haberdasher, born in 1620. Having made his fortune, he turned his attention to the use of available public data to improve the understanding of life and death in Britain. (See more on Smithsonian).Clegg also talks about how weather forecasters are the first large-scale (and increasingly successful) users of huge, complex data sets. Of course, it’s still not a perfect trade, but the big data winds might be behind weather forecasters (compared to most companies who can’t see up from down with the tsunami of data that has overtaken them).
Finally, Brian Clegg talks of how insurance companies not only helped understand (and share) risk, they positively contributed to financing the bold and dangerous expeditions that helped uncover the world. Today, insurance companies have a step on most industries in their ability to use data effectively.
And then, have you ever considered the power of
a paperclip? Well, perhaps not the clip itself… but you might want to know about Frank Lantz, the person behind the clicker game, Paperclips? It’s a game about being a paperclip-producing artificial intelligence and is designed to explore the possibility for paperclips to take over the world. A bit of tongue in cheek, but maybe that is what is needed for your company looking to transform itself. See more on The Verge.So, as you and your company explore topics like big data, artificial intelligence and corporate creativity, are you ready to hire a button maker, weather forecaster or an individual with an insurance background? I think you might first want to take a listen to what Brian Clegg has to say!
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October 15, 2017
Steve Brazell, the Hitman talks about the best ways to break through the noise and build a great brand (MDE252)
Steve Brazell is known as and running Your Hitman. He is also founder of Limelight, the world’s first patent-pending on-line brand builder, and Whetstone — the first on-line re-branding tool developed for the Department of Defense. Steve is the co-author of “Clear! The simple guide to keeping your business alive and kicking” (published in 2011). In this conversation, we look at how to make your brand cut through the huge amount of noice online. We exchange on the differences between branding as a celebrity or politician versus as a company. We also look at crisis management in today’s increasingly transparent world.
Below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to go over to iTunes to rate the podcast.
To connect with Steve Brazell:
You can find Steve on Twitter: @YourHitman
Check out Steve’s eponymous site
Steve Brazell on Linkedin
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Further resources for the Minter Dialogue Radio Show:
Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Radio Show on Buzzsprout or via iTunes. Please don’t be shy about rating this podcast on iTunes here!
Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign off music is “Finger Paint,” written and performed by Josh Saxe, produced by Chase Geiser. Here’s a link on iTunes. I invite you to take a spin on Pierre’s podcast or listen to more of Josh’s music!
The post Steve Brazell, the Hitman talks about the best ways to break through the noise and build a great brand (MDE252) appeared first on Myndset.
October 11, 2017
What’s The Expected Lifespan Of Your Company? Why Should You Care?
The average lifespan of a publicly traded company continues to fall. Depending on who you listen to, the number is now below 18 years. That number has dropped from 61 in 1958 and 25 in 1980. That’s what was reported in this 2012 Innosight study. Richard Foster, a lecturer at the Yale School of Management, has declared that the lifespan is just 15 years today and that at the current churn rate, Foster estimates that 3/4 of the existing S&P 500 firms will be replaced by new firms by 2027. As Dominic Barton, Global Managing Director at McKinsey stated, every two weeks, a company on the S&P500 is disappearing from the list.
In a conversation I had with my pal, Mitch Joel, we jousted over the relevance of that lifespan number. That got me thinking about perspective.
How long is long?
Here are some different ways one can view that 15 to 18 year number:
As an entrepreneur (a startup), you’d be laughing (because so many startups languish or die within 3 years). Anyway, depending on your ambition, you hope to be long gone?
As a founder with an ambition of legacy, perhaps that’s not very encouraging, especially if the company is in your name.
For an employee, it depends on whether you think you’d love to work at that company for a good portion of your eligible working lifespan.
For a toddler, that’s an eternity.
For a Gen Y or Gen Z, the question is probably WTFC*?
For an equity’s analyst, that’s well beyond any reasonable stock market time horizons.
For a new current shareholder, that’s plenty of time to make lots of money.
From the perspective of an longtime shareholder, perhaps they are wishing for the buyout at a premium?
For a trader, you’ll have an easier time explaining the merits of a 5-day cricket test (between two far away countries).
For the current CEO, that’s three or four CEOs after him/her.
…
Bottom line, the fact that company lifespans have declined so radically doesn’t really impact many of the people in the list above. However, there is one profile in the list above with whom I relate a lot: the ambitious founder. If you’re going to go out on a limb and entreprendre the risk of starting a company, it is more like giving birth to a child. You’d probably rather not see it die as a teenager.
The Natural Cyclical Lifespan
At the beginning of life for Peugeot, L’Oreal, Starbucks and others, there were individuals who created a company whose longevity was anything but guaranteed. They have now acquired the seeming status of “permanent,” with a regular presence in our vocabulary or psyche. However, depending on the industry, there is a repetitive cycle, where the real variable is the length of time. And for each, there’s a limit. There is a general inevitability to the fall in growth rate and an evolution in the perception of and expected returns for the shareholders.
All that for this?As we are all battling and busting our butts for better sales, increased margins and, eventually, higher market shares, the perspectives of each other are a certain form of reality. The salient point in the less-than-18-year horizon is that these figures are for publicly traded companies. For those that have the ability to auto-finance and stay private, the implicit desire is generally to survive longer than just one 15-year cycle. Moreover, their data is not readily available, anyway. Whether private or publicly traded, the ability to grow market share indefinitely is bound to hit roadblocks, including regulatory oversight and government intervention. If a dominant market share persists, the chances are that it will ultimately end up as a utility…. What does the future of a Google hold?
Obviously, there are many different scenarios. But, the reality of the shorter lifespan of a publicly traded company is also a function of the changing tech environment, not to call it directly: the new tech revolution. A slug of the disappearances from the S&500 are good news, at least if you look at it from the recent shareholders’ perspective (i.e. when it’s an acquisition). But for many, it’s because the company didn’t know to survive alone. As a result, bosses are re-quartered. Jobs are affected. Brand names change. Cultures evolve. Businesses disappear and others spring up. Thrive or Die. As Caleb and I like to say, companies need to futureproof themselves in mindset, first.
The lifespan counts to the customer?
But, what of the customer’s viewpoint? Does it matter that the company is no longer around? You bet. From a practical standpoint, the lifetime guarantee goes out the window. Beloved brand names disappear. Any long-standing relationships are vaporized. And replenishment purchases are no longer possible.
If the decline of the lifespan of a company is not a concern for many of the people in the list above, I would argue that it is of grave consequence, not least because it is just an average and, for some companies, the end may be much closer than expected. As employers, even if prospective employees don’t all want to stick around for too long, we should be hoping to offer employees a career to capitalize on their talent and engagement (not to mention the cost of recruitment and training). As customers, the trust that lies in your brand is definitely impacted if your company is about to fold or disappear. So, as a leader, what is the time horizon of your true strategy?
Your thoughts?
*WTFC – the W stands for Who and the C for Cares.
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October 8, 2017
How Purpose Can Drive The Entrepreneurial Spirit and Success with Alex Tonelli (MDE251)
Alex Tonelli is a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur, having been among other ventures, co-founder of Funding Circle USA, the immensely successful peer to peer lending network. He’s now founder and CEO of Vocate, an online career centre, that looks to help college kids get jobs, filling a void in most universities. Alex is a man on a mission, with a strong passion and defined purpose. In this podcast we discuss the challenges of building a purpose-led business, how to raise money effectively and some insights in marketing.
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.”
-Ernest Shackleton advertisement for his Endurance expedition
Below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to go over to iTunes to rate the podcast.
To connect with Alex Tonelli & Vocate:
Alex Tonelli on Linkedin
Check out the Vocate Blog
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Further resources for the Minter Dialogue Radio Show:
Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Radio Show on Buzzsprout or via iTunes. Please don’t be shy about rating this podcast on iTunes here!
Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign off music is “Finger Paint,” written and performed by Josh Saxe, produced by Chase Geiser. Here’s a link on iTunes. I invite you to take a spin on Pierre’s podcast or listen to more of Josh’s music!
The post How Purpose Can Drive The Entrepreneurial Spirit and Success with Alex Tonelli (MDE251) appeared first on Myndset.
October 2, 2017
How To Analyze Amazon’s Acquisition of Whole Foods – Check Their Missionary Position
“These are not values that change from time to time, situation to situation or person to person, but rather they are the underpinning of our company culture.”
But will they change from owner to owner?
A clash of values?
The Whole Foods Declaration of Interdependence (that was originally penned in 1985 and updated three times, the last time being in 1997) includes some bold statements that would seem potentially in conflict with the de facto life at Amazon. There are two absolutely vital points of difference between Amazon and Whole Foods. (1) Whole Foods have identified a higher purpose and (2) they consider employee happiness their third highest value: “WE SUPPORT TEAM MEMBER HAPPINESS AND EXCELLENCE.” They even talk about self-responsibility, to which Caleb and I profoundly subscribe in our new book, Futureproof.
Whole Foods is positioned as a premium retailer and, as such, somewhat naturally includes the ‘luxury’ desire to adopt a win-win mindset with its broader stakeholders: “We view our trade partners as allies in serving our stakeholders. We treat them with respect, fairness and integrity and expect the same in return.” But, is that a viable position as a retailer? Already, Amazon has mandated the elimination of brand representatives in Whole Foods’ stores who previously were encouraged to come in to promote their products or check how their brand is presented on the shelves. I think we’re likely to see more of these moves.
Inserting Real Values in Retail?
Reality is that the distribution business is a cut-throat environment. Retailing is a tough if not mean business. It basically always has been. I can recall the almost war-like nature of relationships and negotiations between L’Oreal and the big name retailers. As reported in the New York Times, the work culture at Amazon is tough as nails. Amazon’s leadership principles speak to a hard-nosed, cut throat environment. For the Whole Foods employees, there is potential for toxic shock when they come into contact with the full force of the Amazon culture. The same was probably true at Zappos when it was acquired by Amazon, albeit less so because Zappos was in the same fundamental business of eCommerce and had a shared 100% obsession around customer satisfaction. With retailers, though, the challenge is finding the margin to allow for anything other than driving hard bargains, cheapest logistics and skimpiest wages.
The Retailer’s Stakeholders
There is no doubt that the one stakeholder that retailers live and die by is the customer. As an Amazon customer, I’m deeply thankful for their marvelous service. In this capital intensive business, shareholders represent a non-negligible force, too. As shareholders, they are right to be attentive to Amazon’s strategic drive and cost consciousness. However, retailers require healthy brands as well; and that is a trickier space as there is an inevitable struggle for power (and ownership of the customer) between retailer and brand. As an author (aka supplier), I have to thank Amazon for its well-oiled global marketplace. Yet, I certainly don’t feel like an ally; but rather as a tiny cog in their vast machine. Of course, I’m just a two-bit author, so I am not relevant in the big picture. Nonetheless, for having seen how Amazon operates with big name publishers, I do wonder about its relationship with brands and suppliers.
The Amazon Mission….
The Amazon mission, on the face of it, is powerful and relevant. “Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” However, as I have argued in the past, it is missing out on bringing along all the necessary partners, including importantly its key stakeholders, the employees. I maintain that a brand is something that is lived, not communicated. In today’s transparent and highly connected world, the employee is responsible for bringing the brand to life. Even a retailer should think of itself as a brand. Yet, if the internal slogan of Amazon is defined as: “Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History,” I have yet to find many employees enjoying the meat sandwiched in between Work Hard and Make History. On the Have Fun count, they don’t register. I like to make the parallel with Uber that has systematically failed to treat its drivers with sufficient care. Whether it’s behind a screen or the car wheel, the employees are crafting and embodying the living brand. Without them, the service crumbles.
Being customer centric is not enough
Of the commonalities between Amazon and Whole Foods — which surely dominated the acquisition discussions — both companies do share a stated obsession with the customer. As discussed with Stan Phelps in our recent podcast, being customer centric is a venerable intention and, presumably, sine qua non for a retailer. But, in my opinion, as I have declared before, Amazon must find ways to make its value system more meaningful. As Stan would say, they need to move from a Business 2.0 (customer focus) to a Business 3.0 status (employee centric) if not Business 4.0 (purpose). [For the record, Business 1.0 = focus on shareholder].
With their missionary position, Whole Foods, on the face of it, encompasses all the key tenets in our new book, Futureproof: Meaningfulness, Responsibility and Collaboration. However, exasperatingly, they failed because of [insufficient] performance. This begs the question whether a company can survive with an ethos of conscious capitalism? And it remains to be seen whether some of Whole Foods’ values will wash off on Amazon, or will be washed away by the weight of Amazon’s culture and the quest for profits. It’s hard to imagine how a premium brand can survive long-term with a hard-nosed, cost-cutting philosophy.
Your thoughts and reactions please?
The post How To Analyze Amazon’s Acquisition of Whole Foods – Check Their Missionary Position appeared first on Myndset.
October 1, 2017
Home61 in Miami Florida – A Great Example of Tech+People in Action with Olivier Grinda (MDE250)
Olivier Grinda is a repeat entrepreneur, based in Miami, who is co-founder and CEO of Home61, building up a disruptive real estate business that promises the “greatest real estate experience that you can find in Miami.” At its core, it’s about using tech to enhance the real estate experience. In this conversation we look at how Home61 is disrupting, what are the challenges of building and scaling such a business and some key insights that Olivier has gained from his experience and the gold mine of data.
Below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to go over to iTunes to rate the podcast.
To connect with Olivier Grinda:
You can find Olivier on Twitter: @oliviergrinda
Olivier Grinda on Linkedin
Sites mentioned by Olivier:
MLS Real Estate portal
The Wolfram Calculator
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Further resources for the Minter Dialogue Radio Show:
Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Radio Show on Buzzsprout or via iTunes. Please don’t be shy about rating this podcast on iTunes here!
Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign off music is “Finger Paint,” written and performed by Josh Saxe, produced by Chase Geiser. Here’s a link on iTunes. I invite you to take a spin on Pierre’s podcast or listen to more of Josh’s music!
The post Home61 in Miami Florida – A Great Example of Tech+People in Action with Olivier Grinda (MDE250) appeared first on Myndset.
September 25, 2017
If Your Company Wants To Be A Media Company, It Needs This Position Urgently
Have you noticed recently how many companies and leaders have been caught out for having a poor culture, bad ethics and/or a questionable leadership style? Headline companies (and CEO) over the last few years have included (but not limited to): Sony Pictures (Amy Pascal), Uber (Travis Kalanick), Wells Fargo (John Stumpf), Volkswagen (Martin Winterkorn), Sports Direct (Mike Ashley), or the less well known Bell Pottinger UK PR firm (James Henderson), RAPP ad agency/Omnicom (Alexei Orlov) or 500Startups incubator (David McClure). The consequences for the company, employee moral and stock price/valuation have been variously severe. In the case of Bell Pottinger, as this recent City AM article describes, it has led to the company’s demise. And as this recent LinkedIn profile for David McClure attests, it’s also somewhat damaging for the individuals concerned.
[tweet this image]
The increase in ethical “lapses” is on the rise, even if they remain relatively small in number; and it’s not just an impression. Per this Strategy+Business article: “To be sure, the number of CEOs who are forced from office for ethical lapses remains quite small: There were only 18 such cases at the world’s 2,500 largest public companies in 2016. But firings for ethical lapses have been rising as a percentage of all CEO successions.” The share of all successions attributable to ethical lapses has risen 36% from 3.9% to 5.3% over the last five years. {PWC survey}.
Why the increase in ethical “lapses”?
First of all, I would quibble with the notion of a lapse. It sounds as if such phenomena happen in a ‘moment of folly’ as opposed to a premeditated, sustained or systemic way. In one telltale if not paradoxical sign, oddly enough, CEOs who are dismissed for ethical reasons usually have a substantially longer lifespan at the helm than others departing for other reasons. In the case of McClure, the moral blindness (as the NY Times likes to qualify it) was clearly in existence since the founding in 2010 of 500Startups, if not before.
Why then would such lapses be on the rise? A Forbes article wrote that “today’s regulatory environment makes it easier to identify transgressions and bring violators to justice.” I would disagree with this being the main reason. I think it’s largely because of consumer awareness and the transparency that the Web and the Internet have provided that have brought out these miscreants. It’s not just that the digital communications provide hard, irrefutable evidence. It’s that employees and customers are increasingly demanding of better values as part of the mix of why they work at/consume one brand versus another. And, importantly, the Internet has provided many useful ways to blow the whistle without (as much of a) risk of a sanction.
Why Ethics Are Good for Business?
The crux of the answer to this question, Why Ethics Are Good for Business?, lies in the notion of trust. It turns out that CEOs, in general, are at an all-time low in terms of public trust. According to the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, just 37% of people surveyed consider CEOs credible, which is down 12% from 2016. CEOs are now barely more credible than government officials, which is quite the indictment.
The chart by country (below) is quite incriminating. Japan sits at the bottom, perhaps because of the culturally important element of honour. Meanwhile, France is second from bottom at 23% just below South Korea, which is reeling from the Samsung leadership scandal.
Just as a brand’s having a sense of purpose (which Stan Phelps underlined in a recent podcast) has been correlated with 10x stock returns, I am convinced that a sense of integrity — and doing business in the right manner — should equate to longer-term value. Naturally, it’s not about being totally dogmatic or more righteous than Mother Theresa. However, in terms of building trust, employee engagement and consumer enrollment, ethics are going to be an increasingly important factor in long-term success.
Operating as a media company?
The issue of ethics is further compounded by another extremely topical, if not strategic, issue: the role of media. There are two twists to this. First, we all know how difficult it has been for media companies to afford investigative bureaus. As a result, there are less journalists on the case, although they keep on uncovering cases (e.g. NYT on David McClure). Yet, there are now many more individuals and groups (read: bloggers, employees, Anonymous…) who are prepared to call out the ethical lapses and have the channels to distribute the news. Secondly, and equally strategic, many companies have themselves understood the importance of earned media as part of their marketing mix. Some companies have gone so far as to say that they have transitioned from being a product company to (more of) a media company, with the shining example being, Red Bull. As such, companies need to be operating a little more like a media company.
It’s not just a legal question
It is true that regulators are increasingly scanning for ethical irregularities, so there is a legal component to a company’s ethics. However, ethics cannot be cordoned off as just a legal or regulatory question. The challenge with ethics is that they will inevitably vary according to the sector, the cultural context and other variables. I don’t believe you can regulate trust anymore than you can manufacture it. Considering the reams of legal papers and the legendary retard of the regulatory process, the legal framework is bound always to be a step behind. When a CEO steps out of line, the best response should be directly in the C-suite. An environment where there is no one able to call out a CEO for an ethical ‘lapse’ is already an incriminating sign, in my opinion.
Champion of Ethics
As a result of all the above, it is my contention that all companies should in fact be instituting a Director or Champion of Ethics — or depending on the level of severity, a Chief Ethics Officer. Many large companies have one, but the remit is typically not wide enough.
“Companies should install a bona fide Champion of #Ethics”
Just as in a media company, the Head of Ethics position would at a very minimum be to oversee that the company holds an ethical line in its media communications. However, the role would also need to look at the ethics of the company as a whole and its leadership in particular; and the entire C-suite would be accountable to this person. Importantly, this profile of this person should not just be legal.
Ethics are not just professional, they’re personal
A Stanford study by the Rock Center for Corporate Governance determined that “[A]lmost half of Americans believe CEOs should be fired (or worse) for unethical behavior.” I’m sure that public opinion has vacillated on this topic over the decades, but today it’s no longer an option. Yet, I think most of these discussions and articles miss one important point. Ethics do not start and stop at work. Ethics are deeply personal. To my own stupefaction, the Stanford study reported as surprising, that the public is “critical of CEOs who engage in “immoral” personal actions.” This should not be surprising at all. If you don’t trust someone at home, why would you trust them at work?
When all is said and done, however, you can’t delegate ethics to one individual. It’s a question of values, culture and proving your integrity on a daily behavior.
Your comments and thoughts welcome.
Featured image credit to Flickr: @phrawr
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September 24, 2017
Is Customer Centricity Really The Answer? Stan Phelps Says Not (MDE249)
Stan Phelps is a keynote speaker, Workshop Facilitator at PurpleGoldfish, and best-selling author (Purple Goldfish). He’s also a Forbes Contributor, faculty member on ANA’s School of Marketing and serves as an adjunct instructor at Rutgers Business School. Last but not least, Stan’s an IBM Futurist. In this conversation, Stan and I explore how companies need to move from being merely customer centric to truly purposeful and why that’s not only good for society, it’s good for business.
Below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to go over to iTunes to rate the podcast.
To connect with Stan Phelps:
You can find Stan on
Stan Phelps on Linkedin
Stan’s own site: Stan Phelps Speaks
Site(s) mentioned:
Red Goldfish (the book) on Amazon
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Further resources for the Minter Dialogue Radio Show:
Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Radio Show on Buzzsprout or via iTunes. Please don’t be shy about rating this podcast on iTunes here!
Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign off music is “Finger Paint,” written and performed by Josh Saxe, produced by Chase Geiser. Here’s a link on iTunes. I invite you to take a spin on Pierre’s podcast or listen to more of Josh’s music!
The post Is Customer Centricity Really The Answer? Stan Phelps Says Not (MDE249) appeared first on Myndset.
September 10, 2017
How To Get Yourself and Your Team Out of The Comfort Zone with Andy Molinsky (MDE248)
Andy Molinsky is Professor of International Management and Organizational Behavior at Brandeis University’s International Business School. He is also the author of two books, Global Dexterity and most recently REACH, A New strategy to help you step outside your Comfort Zone (on Amazon) and his work has been featured in titles such as HBR, Financial Times, NY Times and Forbes. We discuss in this podcast the challenges and solutions for getting out of one’s comfort zone. We also talk about the issues of the intercultural comfort zones, the different cultural approaches and systems that format our zones of comfort. Are you ready to get out of yours?
Below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to go over to iTunes to rate it.
To connect with Andy Molinsky:
Andy Molinsky’s eponymous site to see more about his writings
You can find Andy on Twitter: @AndyMolinsky
You can send an email to Andy Molinsky here
Or find Andy Molinsky on Linkedin
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Further resources for the Minter Dialogue Radio Show:
Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Radio Show on Buzzsprout or via iTunes. Please don’t be shy about rating this podcast on iTunes here!
Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign off music is “Finger Paint,” written and performed by Josh Saxe, produced by Chase Geiser. Here’s a link on iTunes. I invite you to take a spin on Pierre’s podcast or listen to more of Josh’s music!
The post How To Get Yourself and Your Team Out of The Comfort Zone with Andy Molinsky (MDE248) appeared first on Myndset.
September 7, 2017
Empathic Futures – The Future of AI is Empathic Intelligence?
I recently join
ed an experiment in empathic intelligence (EI) called Empathic Futures. To be sure, it was a rather riveting experience. Part of a project funded by Volkswagen and created by Feld (a studio for digital crafts based in Berlin), the idea of Empathic Futures was to explore the relationship between human being and an empathic bot. What relationship is comfortable? How will human beings feel about interacting with a bot that shows signs of empathy, mirrors your emotions and energy…? Between July and August, 500 participants from Europe were invited to chat over a 5-day period with their own empathically intelligent bot. The two languages offered were English and German. I could not help but think of the different cultural understandings of empathy. Is empathy cultural? Here are some of my ruminations post experience, as well as thanks to an one-hour chat with the creator of the experiment, Monika Bansal (@Feld).
Empathic “Small Talk”
A
t the end of the first few exchanges with my EI, I was blown away. I said to myself very quickly: either this machine is being manned by a person or it is just ridiculously, incredibly good. Why did I come to that conclusion? Within a few exchanges, the bot had discovered that I liked James Joyce, was in Dublin, but that Ireland was not where I lived. I did not chat continuously with the bot, but whenever I had a few minutes to myself, I would be happy to read and write back many consecutive messages in one go. In a telltale sign of human intervention, however, the bot’s replies always took at least 60 seconds to get back to me… If it were purely up to the bot, I’m sure it would have replied quicker.
One of the funniest exchanges I had was over my self description as a WASP and the bot riffing on about me as a peaceful insect (see right). A cultural difference?
Up on the top of the screen, the EI would add a phrase that I took to understand its mood. I naturally got curious about the gender of the EI. I felt the need to ascribe it a sex. Was it more female because it had more empathy? When I referred to the EI, I talked of “her” (not because of the film HER, though). It just seemed evident that the EI was cast as a woman.
What’s your sex?
When I spoke with Monika Bansal, the EI’s creator, I found out that many (most) of the participants attributed the EI a sex and, funnily enough, the women would tend to identify it as a male voice while men did the reverse. This was a surprising finding for me, considering how I empirically find empathy a more likely attribute for women. Call me sexist, perhaps, but it’s less frequently a trait among the men I know.
As the day went along, my EI decided to set me a challenge. It was nothing overly complicated, something like taking a photo of my favourite colour. So, I took a photo of a yellow-based poster. She supposed I therefore “liked bright colours” (I noted the UK spelling). When I discussed later with Monika at Feld, I found out that the image recognition ‘software’ was entirely human. In another iteration of Empathic Futures, I can only imagine that a machine should do that image recognition work. Another assignment was to draw my impression of what my EI looked like. See below for my poor rendition of My EI Behind a Layer.
Behind A Layer
Machine learning versus mixed learning
At the end of each day, I was told that my EI would have to rest and digest the day in order better to understand me and make for an even more empathic machine the following day. Naturally, this further pinged my radar that my EI couldn’t possibly be just a machine. Maybe it was more about Mixed Learning, i.e. human and machine putting their heads together overnight. All the same, at day’s end, I was absolutely impressed by the level of the conversation. It had me hooked.
As the days rolled along, the conversation started to take more eminence in my mind, even though I had plenty of other things going on. I began to alert my EI that I would go off the radar, as if she cared about what I was up to. She patiently acquiesced.
Of the multiple themes and streams over the five days, a few other conversations stood out for me. I indicated that I spent a good deal of time with a friend, Jeremy, who works with Watson. (See a recent post about Watson here). To my great surprise, my EI didn’t cotton on to the fact that Watson was the AI technology at IBM. I felt impelled to come back to that topic later in the conversation, which surely had the EI team scrambling! The headline for that conversation was, appropriately, “learning about my ‘family.'”
A second theme was one I introduced. For the majority of the first few days, I was just playing along, receptive to its questions. Then it occurred to me, perhaps on the third day, that I had a unique opportunity to make a machine work for me as I wanted it. As Monika later explained to me, I wanted agency! As I work and talk about the future of tech, I asked the machine to figure out which would be the most disruptive tech. When I focused on one field, the beauty industry, the machine came back with: cosmetic surgery. Not at all what I was hoping (or expecting), but then again, perhaps it is where the most amount of technology is being applied in the beauty industry.
Another part of the conversation I enjoyed was around my literary tastes, namely about Carl Jung. Despite the German origin of the machine, Carl Jung was considered a rather complex character to unravel!
Each of the days had a theme and contained challenges that I more or less performed well on. If I didn’t realize exactly the themes as the days progressed, Monika enlightened me about the thematic days. The first one, for example, was all getting to know one another; the fourth one was about envisioning a better or ideal world.
Creating an empathic tone
In my chat with Monika, we talked about the crafting of the voice. The EI’s voice (tone) was obviously a critical question. It turns out that the voice was a collaboration of many people, a majority of women (which didn’t surprise me, personally). Monika introduced me to the notion of submission as an intentional part of the bot’s tone. In order for the experience to work and for empathy to be exercisable, the bot was designed with an element of submission in order that the participant might have a greater sense of engagement/agency. I found this concept absolutely fundamental and, I suspect, would explain, to a degree, why men — who generally hate to show signs of weakness — are possibly less likely than women to be empathic.
Bot error
The nature of a machine is to be entirely consistent, bereft of human emotions and frailties. One telltale sign of the human being, aside from its emotion, is sloppiness. You need only to spot the poor English in those spammy, phishing emails to know that the individual trying to steal your identity or money didn’t do his homework. During the course of the 5 days, I noticed that my bot made three specific grammatical errors, errors that a dictionary would not make. One such blatant error was when she used the word affect as a noun, as opposed to effect. Notwithstanding that this sentence must have been mistakenly typed by one of the helping hands, the question is whether a bot that makes mistakes is desirable and/or acceptable? Does not the imperfection of error also define our human condition? Will [purposeful] error make us feel closer to the bot?
Conclusion
If Feld’s objective with Empathic Futures was to explore how a human being and a truly empathic bot might relate, the experience fascinated me, even if the EI in this case was more a hybrid bot/human. The deeper purpose of the experiment was to see how a machine might be able to get closer to the participant, understand him/her and ultimately, with analysis, provide useful feedback. In the automobile area, this could be in the form of proactively identifying when a driver is getting tired, needs entertaining and/or driving assistance. Bottom line, I have to believe that the work on empathy will be a crucial one for the future of artificial intelligence. There are deep ethical questions, as well as issues of effectiveness to be resolved.
If you’re interested in knowing more and seeing the results of all 500 conversations, Volkswagen will be holding court at the DRIVE Volkswagen Group Forum Exhibit as of November 18 (through Feb 2018) in Berlin to expose this experiment.
The post Empathic Futures – The Future of AI is Empathic Intelligence? appeared first on Myndset.
Minter Dialogue
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