Rishad Tobaccowala's Blog, page 19

Connectedness.

Nike’s slogan is “Just Do It!”

In the world we live in we may want to “Just Connect!”

Connectedness or the lack of it is a driving force far more powerful than we might imagine.

There are many types of connectedness.

Connections and Technology: The Third Connected Age.

In 1993 with the advent of the World Wide Web we entered The First Connected Age where we connected to discover and connected to transact. This is today known as Search and E-Commerce which are forces that have given rise to companies like Amazona and Google.

In 2007 we entered The Second Connected Age (which builds on and does not replace The First Connected Age) when we were connected all the time and connected to everybody due to smart phones and social networks. These two advances which we call Social, and Mobile have re-ordered society, politics and culture while creating juggernauts like Apple and Facebook but also enabling everything from Uber to Airbnb to Dollar Shave Club.

The world we live in today is hard to describe to someone thirty years ago.

But we have not seen anything yet

Four new forms of connection will re-order society, work, and the future much more in the next decade than the past three decades.

These are the four new connections that will drive The Third Connected Age.

Data connected to data which is machine learning the form of AI that is most scaled.

Much faster and resilient forms of connection called 5G.

New ways of connecting including Voice, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

New Trust Connection built on the Blockchain.

The entire world of Web 3, Metaverse, Tokens, Wallets and DAO’s (all of which are different from each other but connected to each other) are just one subset of all the changes underway in The Third Connected Age.

It is key that every individual and company pay close attention to the implications and opportunities that The Third Connected Age will bring.

Connections and Humans: God Like Power

Today the capabilities that someone has with a modern smartphone would be seen as “God-Like” Power by people just two generations ago.

We can connect to anyone at any time around the world for zero to no cost.

We can connect to movies and shows across the world and across time.

We can produce, distribute, and monetize our work to a connected audience of billions.

The companies that have become most valuable are those that have leveraged the connected age to give the individual God-Like power.

Human beings are social and want to connect.

We want to be acknowledged and heard.

We want people to know we are here and find ways to make a mark on the passing of time so that people knew we were here.

Connections and the World: Globalization

While Ukraine and Covid-19 among other shocks have tested and questioned the premise of globalization, the shocks underline that we live in a connected world.

Some of the greatest challenges facing us are global in nature from Covid-19 to Climate Change to emerging AI and Biotech regulations and our struggles to deal with these are less about the reality that globalization is out of vogue but that our established governance models and institutions were designed for yesterday versus tomorrow.

Many of our structures were created post World War 2 when there was no Internet, no understanding of the Human Genome or China and India among the top 10 economies of the world.

Today in Board Rooms leaders are working to add resilience as a key to their supply chains and partner relationships versus a previous focus primarily on cost savings. In many cases this is not about being less connected but re-routing connections and adding additional layers of connections to provide optionality and manage risk.

The end of a connected world makes for good headlines, but the genie cannot be put back in the bottle.

Globalization will remain but will move to a multi-polar form of globalization with different countries and regions connecting in different ways to other countries. There will be tighter and weaker forms of connections which while not the most optimal from a financial perspective will be more resilient in the long run and reflect different cultures, beliefs, goals, and agendas.

Connecting the Dots: Creativity/Innovation.

At its heart innovation is about fresh insightful connections and creativity is about connecting dots in new ways to move minds and hearts.

Both require people to inter-connect with each other and be connected to different stimuli and opportunities.

A closed gene pool leads to damaged children which is why cousins are not encouraged to marry.

The power and impact of major cities are that tides of different diaspora and talent inter-woven together. London, Paris, New York, Mumbai, Shanghai are key interconnection points.

The brain works when synapses connect.

Connecting Workspaces: Organizational design.

One of the biggest opportunities for companies is to find ways to work better internally and with external partners.

Better communication, reduced friction, sharing of opportunities and the ability to connect expertise to where the expertise is required can unleash significant growth and margin.

It is one of the reasons every company holds off-sites to enhance teamwork, leverages technology and encourages connection.

And connection between leaders and their teams, a company to a higher purpose and connected values are so central to an organization’s culture.

Companies continuously adapt and swing from centralization to decentralization, top down to bottom-up approaches to find ways that keep people connected enough to the marketplace and each other so as not to fly blind but not so connected that one is overwhelmed with so much information and options that decisions cannot be made quickly.

The rewiring of organizations is really about the architecture of organizational connections.

[image error] The Connected = a competitive advantage.

Andy Grove wrote only the paranoid will survive.

Paranoia is anti-connection and in a changing world it leaves individuals and companies deaf, dumb, and blind like The Who’s Tommy. We are unable to compete. (Unless we are playing pinball).

Individuals and companies that connect with a larger eco-system, are open to partners,  have API’s (application protocol interfaces) and enabling technologies and platforms to connect with others and a culture where people  communicate and disagree honestly will likely emerge with significant long term competitive advantage.

We should seek connectedness.

Because the connected will thrive!

Return to Office

Photography by  Scott Firestone.

As companies and individuals navigate a return to the office here are some considerations one should keep in mind.

Photography by  Scott Firestone.

The Future of Work will be increasingly distributed and unbundled.

There is no going back to December 2019 only a move ahead into 2022 and beyond.

The Covid-19 lock-downs underlined that the way many of us were working two years ago was not significantly different than the way we operated in 1980, despite a plethora of changes from advanced computing to new communication technologies to a huge increase of women in the workplace.

After two years of working differently with little if any decline in productivity the scales have fallen off our eyes and every individual is re-thinking work in several ways.

The role of work in our lives: The past two years have underlined the fragility of life and given people the opportunity to interrogate the meaning of work in their lives and the nature of how they do it. Inertia had led us to continue to do things that made very little sense but the shock of displacement from Covid has made many re-consider and re-think.

Where we work: Significant portions of a company’s employee base live in a location different than they did two years ago. Many have found their new habitat more conducive to their lifestyles whether it is for economic or family or other reasons.

When we work: The 9AM to 5PM or the 8AM to 8PM need for presence under the watchful eye of management has been replaced by many different ways of getting work done where a person has integrated work and non-work agendas in a way that suits them.

Who we work for: Up to a quarter of “full-time” employees have in the past two years developed a side gig for reasons of interest, passion, and economic need. They have unbundled their income stream from a single employer.

Web 3.0 and new technologies: A plethora of new technologies are increasingly going to enable a much more decentralized, open and composable future. Already companies like Meta are asking their employees to “live in the future” expecting half of the work force to be distributed across the world.

Our thoughts about work today are like Champagne corks. They have swelled with the new possibilities and will no longer fit into 2019 vintage.

Photography by  Scott Firestone.

There are many benefits to in-person interaction but most of them do not require sitting in an office all day or for five days a week.

The three key benefits that in-person interaction bring are learning, relationship building and problem solving/creative idea generation.

Learning: There is a belief that some flavors of learning uniquely come from watching others in action or being mentored by bosses in an apprentice/guild like model. This is probably true for many industries and particularly for people early in their career or new to a company.

Relationship/Network Building: While relationships can be built online (for example dating apps), the reality is that some in-person meetings can help deepen and strengthen relationships. The best relationships combine the physical and the virtual, so some in-person interaction makes sense for many.

Problem Solving/Creative Idea Generation: If innovation is about fresh insightful connections, then the give and take between people can be a real asset. Whether it be the unexpected interaction between two colleagues or the in person back and forth of a brainstorming, these are benefits that result from being together.

But we should recognize that for creative brainstorming many people would leave the office to go off-site, building relationships and networks often took place at restaurants, bars, coffee shops and events and learning occurred at conferences and specialized training programs.

The key is that many of these occur out of the office, take up less than a third to half of a working week and need to be scheduled and programmed versus just happening by chance.

Photography by  Scott Firestone.

Unbundled and Distributed work enable significant competitive advantage to companies that embrace them.

Imagine if you were a company starting today and were asked to choose between Door A and Door B.

Door A:  You are limited to accessing talent who can afford to live near your headquarters or must work full time. This talent only works for you and is reliant on their entire income on you which could make them loyal but also potentially less likely to challenge the status quo since they may have limited optionality.

This door gives you great control over your people and a return to a simpler way to manage and organize.

Door B: You can access talent from anywhere in the world and they can work for you half, three quarters or full time giving them and you the ability for variability in employee cost and gives them the flexibility to fit their work into their life versus fitting their life into work.

This door gives you the ability to hire diverse talent, attract people from everywhere in the world while giving you flexibility on cost management but increases complexity and requires enhanced management styles.

For businesses needing to attract white-collar and knowledge workers asking people to return to the office for three or four or five days a week (versus coming together for specific training, creative or relationship building events) is in effect choosing Door A and will likely leave these firms at significant competitive disadvantage to companies who choose Door B and find a way through its initial messiness and complexity.

Photography by  Scott Firestone.

In-Person interaction should be the focus versus returning to the office.

Six simple steps for every company to consider:

Future forward: Recognize that the future does not fit in the containers of the past and a four- or five-day week in the office is a container of the past. Communicate that your plans are about moving ahead to build on what has been learned in the past two years and not to return to some nostalgic halcyon days of yore.

Celebrate benefits of the past two years: Call out the significant benefits from flexibility and diversity to more that the world of unbundled and distributed work has enabled.

Re-enforce the importance of in-person: Explain why in-person interaction (supplementing just virtual connections) are important to your ability to compete, build talent, enhance relationships, and culture and generate creative solutions and solve problems.

Focus on the synergy: Emphasize that the company is trying to integrate the power of in-person with the flexibility of virtual work to build a solution better than either one separately and it will a) require some flexibility per individual and b) some iteration and constant learning.

Schedule events versus just days in the office: Program events from training to brainstorming to team get togethers both in the office and outside the office. Do not ask people to return to the office but re-turn to specific programs. An individual is not being asked to come back to the office which many do not find productive for “heads down” work of reading, creating documents or presentations but for “heads together” or some “heads up” work of training, relationship building and problem solving. If you have folks returning two days a week, make sure there is something programmed around these events those two days versus just having people sit around.

Freedom within a framework: Allow for some freedom within the framework in how many days someone returns to working together. Some folks may want to be together more than the prescribed two days or require more time together if they are going through orientation and training while others may need the flexibility initially of one or two days a month.

These steps communicate that you are looking forward, trying to balance the best of both worlds, and reflecting that talent looks for freedom, to fit their work into their life story and want growth (skills, personal development, career opportunities, income).

This approach is likely to attract and retain talent while ensuring a company’s culture and competitiveness.

It will not however work for everyone and a company at some stage may have to part with talented individuals who refuse to be flexible in their ways rejecting all in person work or working to undermine the new model. While losing talent especially stars is not ideal, a company is more than any one or two or three individuals and a certain framework is essential for fairness and cultural cohesiveness.

The real challenge will be on leaders and managers who will now need to truly up their skills in enabling, inspiring and motivating talent.

Greatness.

Photography by  Antony Spencer.

Greatness is everywhere if we care to look and find people to admire.

These people are not just the powerful and famous.

They can be teachers, nurses, craftspeople, social workers, and story tellers.

Observing and reading about greatness reveals a common pattern.

The great have been  forged  in a  furnace  of challenges and formed in a  foundry  of experiences.

Their challenge, and experiences have led many to some  foundational  beliefs, core  fundamentals  they leverage and  first principles  they turn to.

They have an ability to combine great  focus  with  flexibility  in ways that make them a  force.

Photography by  Antony Spencer.

Forged and formed in the furnace of time and experiences.

Even if one is lucky to born with prodigious skills it takes time to hone one’s expertise where it can have a powerful impact.

Only with the feedback and continuous iteration that comes with experiences does one learn to connect dots, see patterns, and identify processes that work.

Malcolm Gladwell proposed that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to build expertise.

Many people who are seen as “overnight successes” have spent thousands of nights learning.

Time is its own unique furnace but so are moments of acute challenge.

Recently many leaders whether they be CEO’s, schoolteachers or nurses were forced into the furnace of Covid-19 and its challenges. Many rose to the occasion and in midst of this great distress their greatness was formed.

Most recently millions of Ukrainians and their leader have revealed their greatness.

Under pressure people who you thought might be coal turn into a diamond.

The pressure twists and transforms them into new shapes.

The furnace of challenges and the foundry of experiences is what sculpts and chisels greatness.

Photography by  Antony Spencer.

Foundational Beliefs. Fundamentals. First Principles.

Great practitioners often have a framework of some fundamental and foundational beliefs and first principals.

A way of doing or filtering, a check list, a smell test, a feeling of prescience or a sixth sense.

Some things that they have come to believe as absolutes, such as a belief reality must be faced, facts are stubborn things, and one cannot look away from the data. There may be first principals on how to deal with and inspire people or how to problem solve or best ways to integrate different companies and cultures.

There is a “way” or “ways” that they use to frame and filter what they see.

This fundamental understanding allows them to see patterns that many others cannot just like great chess players can sense an underlying design to the game or great investigators combine what seems to be disparate dots to identify patterns.

Photography by  Antony Spencer.

Focus and Flexibility combining to create a Force.

If you see Monet’s water lilies or listen to Beethoven’s Late Quartets, you will find utter simplicity and focus on some key elements fused with a flexibility of craft and style that combine to have an impact and force.

The best in a field can speak and explain with simplicity by focusing on what matters and leaving out the rest while customizing (flexibility) the communication to ensure the outcome.

The best nurses or doctors know exactly what to focus on when treating a patient but are flexible in how they apply their craft to ensure the best medical result.

It is an odd combination of The Mandalorian, Lawrence of Arabia and Yoda.

The focus is on recognizing there “is a way”, the flexibility is in understanding that when applying this to a situation “nothing is written” and by combining these two the “force is with them”.

Photography by  Antony Spencer.

Learning from the great and unleashing our own greatness.

Look around and most people you see are great at something or the other. We all have superpowers and instead of focusing on our weaknesses we may want to hone in on our strengths and celebrate and leverage the strength of others.

First, we must realize that time, experience, and circumstances are necessary to get to a level of greatness. It cannot be hurried or willed into being. Seasoning matters.

Second, we should interrogate ourselves to better understand what fundamental skills, foundational beliefs and first principals drive us.  Better understanding these allow us to confirm their validity and if so leverage them. We should ask those that we admire what they leverage and filter to make decisions.

Third, we should both watch and learn from ourselves and others to hone our ability on how to keeping our eye on what matters and learn that less is often more.  

Finally, be open to new data that allows us to flex and iterate our way to remain relevant.

Next time observe those around you and yourself.

The potential for greatness is everywhere.

Find something, somebody, or some ways to admire.

New Narratives

The human tragedy on the ground in Ukraine is hard to fathom or look at and no amount of imagination can match the pain and the destruction on the ground.

It is one of the reasons that Putin has for the first time in his twenty year reign shut down everything that is not under his control (including social media and every small independent newspaper, broadcast or online service) and has promised 3 year to 15 year sentences for even carrying a placard with the word “War” on it ( because in Orwellian speak it is “a special military operation” to liberate and “de-nazify” a country).

But the world of storytelling and media has changed. Not just in the past decade but very dramatically in the last two or three years and this changing narrative landscape plus a new generation of narrators and voices combined with new media behaviors is increasingly difficult to control from top down.

This post samples these new narratives through the lens of the Ukraine war…

New Narrators/New Narrative Publications.

Today arguably among the best writers on the war if not the best writer is Julia Ioffe from a new journalist owned and controlled publication called PUCK which believes “ in this new media age, the creator is the heart of the business equation”

Julia is deeply sourced, rational and tries to get to the truth even if we do not like to hear what she reports.

In this piece which includes an excellent interview she notes that half to two-thirds of Russians support the Ukraine war. That most Russians have not yet felt the big impact of the sanctions since it is really a tiny fraction of the population who has been first hurt (the upper middle class and rich who own the assets and use rouble/dollar accounts that have plummeted). The impact of the sanctions will begin to impact the country shortly with inflation and some initial shortages ( the closing down and discontinuing of the major global brands in the country will also prompt some questioning and therefore is likely to be very impactful).

However, there is a vulnerability for Putin which is that Russians under 35 who because they did not grow up during the Soviet era and most importantly because they do not get their news from newspapers and tv are anti-war and it is through this information wormhole plus the shrinking of the economy that will pierce Putin’s media black hole.

Here is Julia on Putin’s black hole.

To read the entire piece you may have to subscribe which I highly recommend for two reasons. First these are some of the best writers anywhere. But as importantly I believe like Substack (where you are reading this), Puck is another new model where the creators are grabbing back control and their livelihoods from aggregators and traditional content owners. This is just a preview of the explosion in the way we hear, see and fund a large part of narrative from creators as we enter the Web 3.0 world.

The Tik-Tok Take-Over

While Puck, Substack and other new forms are scaling we have already seen the power of social media particularly Tik-Tok in how narratives are made, and opinion shaped. In a wonderful piece from the New Yorker we learn that…

“The invasion of Ukraine isn’t the first conflict to play out over social media. The  Arab Spring  uprisings and the  Syrian civil war  used Facebook and Twitter to organize protests and broadcast D.I.Y. footage.  But in the intervening years, social platforms have become more geared toward multimedia, and smartphones have become better at capturing and streaming events in real time.  Large numbers of Ukrainian civilians are taking up arms to defend their country against Vladimir Putin’s reckless imperialism; they’re also deploying their mobile cameras to document the invasion in granular detail. The war has become content, flowing across every platform at once. One video that has circulated in recent days appears to show a Ukrainian man gingerly moving a mine, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, off a road and into the woods.  A single tweet  earned the clip more than ten million views, but it could also be found on YouTube, TikTok, and the sites of various news publications. Perhaps owing to Western sympathies with the plight of Ukrainians, their videos have overwhelmed American feeds in a way few foreign news stories ever do.”

“The flood of TikTok videos is perhaps more likely to evoke our bemused awareness, a feeling of sympathy that lasts only long enough to keep us scrolling.  Yet as the Russian convoys outside of Kyiv continue attempting to penetrate the city center, traditional news organizations are pulling their journalists to safety. Social media is an imperfect chronicler of wartime. In some cases, it may also be the most reliable source we have.”

More here…https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/watching-the-worlds-first-tiktok-war

Influencers today often have more power than media companies.

Given the power of Tik-Tok influencers both sides are reaching out and trying to influence the “influencers” but at the current time the Russian ability to dis-inform is less effective the global army of influencers arrayed against it each with their unique audiences, voices and styles.

The Biden Administration earlier this week briefed influencers…

“On Thursday afternoon, 30 top TikTok stars gathered on a Zoom call to receive key information about the war unfolding in Ukraine. National Security Council staffers and White House press secretary Jen Psaki briefed the influencers about the United States’ strategic goals in the region and answered questions on distributing aid to Ukrainians, working with NATO and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons.

As the crisis in Ukraine has escalated, millions have  turned to TikTok  for information on what is happening there in real time. TikTok videos  offered some of the first glimpses of the Russian invasion  and since then the platform has been a primary outlet for spreading news to the masses abroad. Ukrainian citizens hiding in bomb shelters or fleeing their homes have shared their  stories to the platform , while  dangerous misinformation  and Russian propaganda  have also spread . And TikTok stars, many with millions of followers, have increasingly sought to make sense of the crisis for their audiences.

The White House has been closely watching TikTok’s rise as a dominant news source, leading to its decision to approach a select group of the platform’s most influential names.

Teddy Goff, a founder of Precision Strategies, a consulting firm, said that the White House’s strategy of embracing the next generation of media voices was crucial.  “There’s a massive cultural and generational shift happening in media, and you have to have blinders on not to see it,” he said. “The reach of a piece in a traditional news outlet is a fraction of what a big TikToker gets.”

The entire article is here…https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/11/tik-tok-ukraine-white-house/

Imagine five years ago reading the paragraphs above. You would ask what are “Zoom”. “Tik-Tok” and “Social Media Influencer”?

If it is real time it is Twitter time.

After Tik-Tok, Twitter is being leveraged to shape and keep up with new narratives.

There is a Ukraine-Russia list (a list is composed of a number of people worth following on a topic, a.k.a. members) that you can engage with by just following the list versus each person. The list gets updated as the curator of the list adds new members to the list. The best list to keep updated in real time on Ukraine is the Ukraine-Russia list curated by Noah Smith. It has a list of 75 key accounts (members) worth hearing from.

It is followed by many journalists and leaders of countries.

You can follow the list by clicking here :https://twitter.com/i/lists/1492242776825552896

It is hands down the go to source for real time news, analysis and much more.

Imagine access like this to world class experts with one click for free without Twitter!

A single voice and a shared list can shape narrative in a world of ESG where customers and employees hold their leaders and bosses accountable.

“Founder of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, Sonnenfeld has spent four decades pushing CEOs to act to benefit society, not just shareholders, on social issues ranging from gun control to voting rights. But nothing has drawn as much attention or support from business leaders, media, or the public as his inventory of companies that have cut ties with Russia.

“So many CEOs wanted to be seen as doing the right thing,” Sonnenfeld, 67, said in a telephone interview. “It was a rare unity of patriotic mission, personal values, genuine concern for world peace, and corporate self-interest.”

The list, updated hourly by his research team, has grown to more than 330 as of Friday.

“What these lists do is give courageous CEOs the confidence to keep going, and the wannabe courageous ones the reinforcements to deal with their boards so they come off as responsible business leaders when they can see a stampede of their peers leaving Russia,” Sonnenfeld said.

Sonnenfeld said the “laggards” followed this week, when the public relations arms of more than two dozen consumer products, fashion,  fast food  and packaged goods companies contacted him in a single day to be included.”

To see the entire list and much more on how companies are grappling with this situation please click here: https://som.yale.edu/story/2022/over-300-companies-have-withdrawn-russia-some-remain?te=1&nl=peter-coy&emc=edit_pc_20220309

The Power of Podcasts.

New narrators and voices and newly empowered established narrators and voices are leveraging a spectrum of new techniques and media, one of which is the humble voice in your ear via podcasts.

Podcasts are amazing in their ability to unleash the eye and the heart of your imagination and reason thorough the power of spoken word. They are cheap to produce and can be heard everywhere including in the dark. Most importantly they can truly go deep into a subject and bring in superb voices who are deeply informed and knowledgeable to you.

Sam Harris this week had a live conversation over Zoom (but then provided as a podcast) with Garry Kasparov the Chess Grandmaster and champion who has been warning about Putin for years. This conversation will unleash new perspectives. (Sam Harris podcast requires a subscription but 40 minutes of the interview are free, and you will learn a lot from it)

Here is the link: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/275-the-russian-war-in-ukraine

Web 3.0 is playing its part.

Web 3.0 is so misunderstood by so many often equated with the Metaverse or valued by the latest NFT craze. It is much more and just a couple of its key elements (Wallets and DAO’s Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) are described by Packy McCormick in amazing Not Boring Substack.

“Ukraine Crypto Wallets

If you’re looking for a way to donate crypto, the Ukrainian government solicited donations in ETH and BTC on Twitter: 

The addresses have been verified, and I donated without issues. Over $5 million (over 50 million since this piece was written) has been donated via ETH alone, and you can see the wallet on Etherscan here for live updates (the amount on Etherscan is lower because they sweep out money periodically).

UkraineDAO

UkraineDAO , organized by Pussy Riot and PleasrDAO, among others, is taking a slightly different approach to fundraising, more in line with ConstitutionDAO with a twist.  

UkraineDAO on PartyBid

The group set up a  PartyBid  on an NFT of a Ukranian flag so that anyone could contribute any amount. All contributors will receive $LOVE tokens which “have NO utility nor value but are a beautiful testament and reminder of your contribution to a noble cause.” UkraineDAO has raised $3.3 million already, and proceeds will go to  Come Back Alive . 

Lastly,  this Notion doc  has a long list of ways to help, financial and otherwise. It’s the most comprehensive I’ve found.”

You Tube.

You Tube remains as impactful and important as ever.

Please watch the video embedded above of a speech that the President of Ukraine gave to the British Parliament.

You will see what a leader and the ongoing power of William Shakespeare and the oratory of Winston Churchill sound like in combination.

The video is being watched all over the world millions of times a day can teach us all about why leadership matters, right matters, history matters, words matter and all of these combined with truth amplified by the power of new narratives will play a huge role in the difficult days ahead.

To Be !

S.A.V.E.

   

S.A.V.E is a heuristic and filter that one can deploy both for business and personal interactions.

S = Solutions

A = Accessible

V = Value(s)

E = Experience

   Solutions

People and potential Clients look for solutions, but companies often focus on products, services, and processes.

This is understandable since the purpose of an organization is to provide products and services and often the way to differentiate oneself is by focusing on the special inputs (e.g., data), ingredients (e.g., saffron), processes (e.g., “bespoke”, “hand curdled”), approaches (e.g., some sort of diagram of how the company comes up with results) or organizational structure (e.g., “our special way of working and organizational structure that is silo-less, client focused and efficient”)

All of this is well and good and often necessary but never sufficient.

Because what the buyer is asking is “can you show me some cool shit instead of showing me how your colon works?”

Ask how much of your selling efforts are about broadcasting a colonoscopy on your company’s methods, tactics, history, purpose, and strategy and how much is simply “here is an amazing solution, idea, innovation”.

   Accessible

Today, most people are constrained for time and want things fast, friction-free and optimized for their personal situation.

Simplicity in understanding what is available.

Convenience in buying.

 Flexibility in delivery and returns.

Optionality in payment terms.

Are our solutions easy to buy and ourselves easy to deal with?

For an organization this means being easily discoverable on all major platforms. Using language that is simple and free of buzz word bingo and jingo lingo. Being available to purchase or interact with across all channels and offering varied methods of delivery and payment.

People will not adapt to the way of the company, but the company needs to re-tool its spine to adapt to the way of the people.

Today when someone watches a video on Tik-Tok and comes across a shoppable commercial which offers them the choice of picking up a product from a physical store one wonders the following:

Was the transaction above the line or below the line?

Was it about marketing since it was an ad or sales since there was a special deal at the store that was featured?

Was it online since it began there or offline since it ended there?

Was it mobile since it was a phone, social since it was Tik-Tok or was it was e-commerce?

The customer or consumer journeys (and there are many and no longer one) has become a mongrel mix and fusion as technology  like hydrochloric acid has dissolved the definitions, containers, and organizational structures of the past.

In many organizations now marketing and sales, regular commerce and e-commerce, and a lot more need to be re-thought around making the firm and its solutions accessible.

   Value(s)

Value is always a key since in addition to time, money is often a constraint for most.

This often requires competitive pricing but is not necessarily about selling out with the lowest price.

 Ideally one finds a way to price the outcome versus the input.

Buying cheap pigs could lead to poisoned hot dogs.

Smart archers use fewer arrows and can get to the bullseye of solution faster, so quality has great ROI but often one must find ways to illustrate and numerate quality.

Some approaches include truly differentiated solutions or people where the result or experience are so clearly superior that premiums are justifiable.

It is important to note that Apple, LVMH, Disney and many others do not differentiate on price but value.

In addition, today like never before the values of a company or person matters.

Purpose.

A stance on ESG.

Approach to DEI.

Care and growth of employees and community.

All these now become ways to signal value and values.

   Experience.

In the end people remember the experience and pay for the experience.

And much of business and marketing is creating seamless experiences or rectifying and correcting lapses in the experience.

Experiences have always been key but in the next few years as Web 3.0/The Third Connected Age scales with increasingly open, decentralized and composable systems, AR/VR interfaces, new organizational structures (DAO’s) and new currencies of trust and monetization (Blockchain driven tokens) it is likely to be the KEY differentiator.

One reason is that brands such as packaged goods which may have struggled to create experiences are likely to be unchained and unleashed using the next generation Web 3.0 tool sets (metaverse anyone?) and create truly valuable CRM programs using tokens that deliver value and unlock opportunities.

A creative age for building experiences is upon us.

   The Question to Ask.

Is your company offering solutions that are accessible and deliver value while enabling experiences?

Or is it selling poorly differentiated products and services in ways that are friction-filled for the buyer  at cheap prices with a so-so quality of interaction.

Most companies are somewhere in between but using the S.A.V.E filter and focus efforts.

But this also works for each of us as individuals.

Do we look for solutions or fester and brood over problems?

Are we easy to understand and deal with? Are we easy to get a meeting with or communicate with? Do we speak English and make things accessible to understand?

What and who do we value? Are our motivations and methods transparent? Can we get people to trust us?

Do people have positive experiences with us. Do we leave people with clarity, energy and inspiration or do we collapse the mood of the room?

S.A.V.E

Solutions. Accessibility. Value(s). Experiences.

Photographs by Rishad Tobaccowala.

 

Generosity.

Sculpture by  Antony Gormley.

What is generosity?

The University of Notre Dame’s Science of Generosity Initiative defines generosity as the virtue of giving good things to others freely and abundantly.

The definition is further articulated in greater depth as follows:

Generosity is a learned character trait that involves both attitude and action—entailing as a virtue both an inclination or predilection to give liberally and an actual practice of giving liberally.

Generosity also involves giving to others not simply anything in abundance but rather giving those things that are good for others. Generosity always intends to enhance the true wellbeing of those to whom it gives.

What exactly generosity gives can be various things: money, possessions, time, attention, aid, encouragement, emotional availability, and more.

Generosity, to be clear, is not identical to pure altruism, since people can be authentically generous in part for reasons that serve their own interests as well as those of others. Indeed, insofar as generosity is a virtue, to practice it for the good of others also necessarily means that doing so achieves one’s own true, long–term good as well.

The key points here are that a) generosity is more than about money, and b) being generous is usually a win-win where both sides gain.

Sculpture by  Antony Gormley.

Generosity and life.

A CEO shared a story about how a poor family of immigrants stopped to help someone who had a flat tire in bad weather. After the tire was changed, the individual offered money to the family. They turned it down saying “Today it was you. Tomorrow it might be us.”

Sooner or later, everybody finds themselves needing help and depending on acts of generosity. It might be some form of aid, guidance, a person to talk to who will listen, a leg-up or sometimes gently delivered difficult to hear advice.

By being there and helping when someone is in need ensures good “Karma.”

If what goes around comes around it may make sense to send good stuff people’s way.

Sculpture by  Antony Gormley.

Generosity and emotional well-being.

Several research projects have indicated that helping others has significant benefits from making your body “glow,” to reduced stress and anxiety and a longer life!

Generosity enables greater human connection, a sense of community and a higher social standing.

Importantly, generosity is not about wealth and a number of studies indicate that those less well-off tend to be more generous with their resources than those with resources often giving their time and energy and often even money from their constrained budgets.

Being more exposed to the challenges of limited resources they may be more compassionate.

Generosity, compassion, and empathy are three emotional states that are deeply inter-connected.

Sculpture by  Antony Gormley.

Generosity as a strategy.

If strategy is future competitive advantage, generosity is smart for individual or company strategies.

Generosity builds good will which is both an asset and a moat.

It is an asset in that it can be tapped in the future.

It is a moat because when an individual or a company has been generous in times of trouble their employee or customer are less likely to switch to a different firm for a lower price or higher pay.

Generosity is also a key differentiator in that usually when a person or firm needs help there are few people willing to help someone out of power or in trouble. Those individuals and brands who do help stand out and their showing up and helping when others are not burns into the emotional and mental memory of the recipient.

Emotional connections are harder to sever or replace than financial connections.

Sculpture by  Antony Gormley.

Generosity and modern marketing.

We are at the Dawn of a New Era of Re-invented Marketing where Brands are increasingly differentiated through experience, purpose and employee joy.

One way a brand delivers a great experience is when it surprises you with generosity.

Last week’s post Tattoo resulted in many people sharing stories of how a brand or company’s generosity made a lifelong impact.

Here is one:

“Long ago, must be 30 years ago or more, I went into Tiffany’s to purchase one cufflink.

 The night before I had attended a black-tie event and one cufflink must have worked itself free (it was the solid type, and was difficult to get on and off), and I lost it off my sleeve. Just wasn't there when I got home.

I said to the counter person that I just wanted to buy one cufflink to match the other one. 

She left. 

She returned with the typical Tiffany's blue box with the white ribbon. "Here you go...no charge," she said.

I couldn't believe it.

You must be -- at least -- the 400th person I have told this story to.”

Brands today cannot succeed unless their employees are happy. It is the employees who after all provide the service to customers and clients. It is the employees who generate the ideas and solve the problems. It is often the employees who are most believed and can be the greatest ambassadors and advocates of a brand. Often employees are far more authentic ambassadors than a celebrity that companies give tens of millions too. Why not be generous in care, money, and attention to employees?

The CEO of the company where I spent my full-time working career recently awarded many tens of millions of dollars in bonuses to thousands and thousands of employees who were not eligible or expecting such largesse. The impact of that generosity has been very significant and builds on many other acts of generosity of care and attention through the very difficult circumstances that people have had to deal with due to the tragedy of Covid-19.

Culture is not just a place or a history but a way of being and behaving. Great cultures always have some form of generosity whether it is compensation, benefits, forgiveness of mistakes that encourage risk taking and more.

Generosity is a key to brand experiences and brand employees, but it is also a corner stone of brands purpose driven marketing. Smart companies recognize that purpose ensures not just attraction and retention of talent but also that ESG, DEI and other initiatives truly help the company economically.

Generously helping community, environment and others helps the brand.

 Stake-holder capitalism usually helps stockholders when balanced and managed well.

Sculpture by  Antony Gormley.

Be generous.

Generosity is aligned with life and happiness.

It is strategic and a key to the future of marketing.

It scales by helping you build a reputation.

Talent wants to collaborate with talent that gives versus talent that takes,

As we move to the Third Connected Age of the Internet with open web and DAO’s (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) generosity will be a key edge and signal that attracts collaborators and unlocks opportunities.

Being generous reminds us that a zero-sum, transactional, closed mindset makes little sense in a world driven by abundance, relationships, and openness.

And it makes us feel big regardless of how small or junior or resource constrained we might be.

Finally, it aligns with one’s self-interest because when you give you often get back much more than you gave.

The generous thrive both in the short and long run.

Tattoo!

Illustration by  Gabriel Moreno

The official definition of “tattoo” according to Webster is:

1:  a mark, figure, design, or word intentionally fixed or placed on the skin:

a) one that is indelible and created by insertion of pigment under the skin

b) one that is temporarily applied to the skin, resembles a permanent tattoo, and usually lasts for a few days to several weeks

c) one that is composed of scar tissue intentionally created by cutting, abrading, or burning the skin

2:  the act of  tattooing   :  the fact of being  tattooed

But what if the real tattoos are internal and not visible for all to see?

The moments, experiences and events that mark a person’s life but leave no external sign.

The transformative moments that impact what we feel, think, and believe.

Moments that resonate for a while or forever.

These are tattoo moments.

Illustration by  Gabriel Moreno

Tattoo moments and identity.

We are what we are because of what we were, where we have been and whom we have intersected with.

We are in large part what we remember.

Often, we try to define a person by demographic or behavioral criteria.

We segment by media exposure, search history, geographic location, political affiliation, product ownership and leisure activities.

The fumes of people’s digital usage and external badging are read like entrails to understand and reveal motivations.

But do they truly paint a picture of who a person is, what they care about or what makes them tick?

Data, data everywhere.

So much data under which we sink

Data, data everywhere.

Does it paint a picture or help us think?

Imagine getting all the data you could collect about a person to paint a profile.

The reality is any individual is many different people depending on the specific mood and situation and in many ways may not be knowable.

So, we will parse the data depending on what we are looking for.

As has been written “we see as we are.”

Imagine if instead you could have a conversation with that person and ask questions like these:

a) What events and or people in your past have made you who you are today? Why?

b) What beliefs have you given up on and/or what beliefs have you aligned with more strongly? Why?

c)  What makes you most happy and most fearful?

We might understand someone as a person and a human versus a consumer, user, or target.

We are not a compilation of our purchases, downloads, page views or other numerical juxtapositions.

The meaning is not often in the math.

Illustration by  Gabriel Moreno

Tattoo moments and marketing.

For decades marketers have found certain stages in a person’s life where they are more susceptible to messaging and marketing.

Whether it is the impending birth of a child to a physical re-location there are times where people are more open to change or to paying attention.

Marketers also recognize that there are moments of interaction where up-selling or cross-selling is likely to be more successful, such as when someone is opening an account or when one is about to pay for items in one’s real or digital shopping cart.

Basically, marketers look for moments of greatest attention and interest.

The challenge is that everybody knows these rituals and some combination of high costs and fees to show up at these moments or a certain weariness and understanding by people of what is happening, makes these less differentiable.

If instead of thinking only about where someone is on a customer/purchase journey we think about where we can surprise them positively the most, or turn a negative to a positive, we find compelling tattoo moments.

For instance, if we want to get people to speak well about our product or service instead of advertising to them or desperately try to get likes or influencer mentions, why not give them a sample of the product for free? Why not re-allocate a portion of the communication budget to enhance the quality of the product or service which will then speak for itself and get its satisfied users to speak about it. In today’s world brands are more likely to scale through people if they have a superior product or service rather than just telling people they have a superior product or service.

Imagine if you were a cable company or publisher and re-allocate the “stop them from unsubscribing” budget where you slash prices, increase channels in a bundle or enhance broadband speeds to people who are quitting, to instead reward the most loyal customers by going to them and cutting their fees and/or upgrading their services to simply say thank you.

When someone least expects an act of generosity it has a tattoo like impact.

It means they are special, and they are not being taken for granted.

So many marketers promise to “surprise and delight” customers but do we really?

Instead of a yearlong spray of pellets that have little impact why not focus spending by delivering a couple of cannon balls of high impact interactions, gifts, or surprises?

One or two “surprise and delights” might be worth a year of messaging

Less is more. The rare is meaningful. The special resonates.

Traffic in scarcity to stand out in a world of abundance, sameness, and noise.

Find and fund the tattoo moments by asking “what can we do and where can we do something that will make someone come away different”?

Illustration by  Gabriel Moreno

Tattoo Moments and Talent.

A combination of new technologies and the challenges of Covid-19 have forever changed the future of work and how talent views things. 

A colleague of mine recently noted that most work could be segmented as “heads down”, “heads up” or “heads together”. “Heads down” would be tasks like reading documents, working on developing content and other primarily solo work. “Heads Up” is where we attend presentations and meetings primarily to share and gain information. “Heads together” is when we need to work together to collaborate, brainstorm, and network.

Cultures are important to companies. Connections with other people in the analog world can be important for people particularly early in the career to learn and build relationships. While much of the “heads down” and a majority of the “heads up” work can be done in a distributed and unbundled fashion, a large part of the “heads together” work can gain from in-person connections particularly early in a project or when teams are first getting together.

But the reality is that for most people the five day or even the three day a week model may be replaced by a few team interactions a quarter and many of these may happen outside the office at an off-site event, a restaurant, or a conference.

Companies are going to have far fewer opportunities to build the fabric of their cultures and managers are going to have far fewer in person opportunities to interact with their teams.

Therefore, every company must re-think how to manage the growth and development of their talent, the fabric of their culture and the strength of human connection when there will be just a few occasions a year.

How does make these interactions count and meaningful?

A significant investment in great training to help people grow themselves is a way companies will create tattoo moments that matter.

Ensuring that managers are trained to make the most of in-person interaction and to learn to empathize with the situation of their teams (family or other pressures, need for flexibility) or enable acts of generosity and kindness that will forge emotional links between people is another area that companies should focus on.

Increasingly companies will recognize that attracting and retaining talent means sculpting moments that matter. Powerful experiences, employee joy and a diverse fear free culture can be built around a few tattoo moments.

Regardless, we can all make our mark on each day by living it italicized, bold and with an exclamation mark!

Every day we should ask what made it memorable and special and how we tried with each interaction to help someone come away different and better.

Tattoo!

Learning to Learn

Photography by Xuan-Hi Ng

Earlier this week, I was invited to speak about the Future of the Internet to nearly 800 individuals.

This included topics like Web 3.0, Metaverses, Crypto, NFT, Wallets and more.

After the presentation, I heard from quite a few attendees who in addition to finding the hour enlightening and educational queried me on how I had "figured out" and “made clear and enabling” versus “confusing and intimidating” a complex topic.

They were asking how one learns to learn.

Photography by Xuan-Hi Ng

Upgrading Our Mental Operating Systems.

My book "Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data" includes a chapter called 'Upgrade Your Mental Operating System" which ends with these key takeaways:

1.    Regardless of how senior or established employees are, they all possess the capacity for growth and relevancy in changing times.

2.    Organizations need to set aside time for people's mental self-improvement. They can encourage employees to escape digital routines and engage in tasks and conversations that stretch their minds.

3.    Today there are many amazing new ways of self-learning and improving of which every person can take advantage of.

The book was written before the tragedy and challenges of Covid-19 which we are still grappling with two years later. Today, in a world of unbundled and distributed work, the great resignation, the need for meaning, and a hunger for skill and personal growth to remain relevant in transforming times, these key takeaways are even more resonant.

Photography by Xuan-Hi Ng

Three things all of us can do to learn.

1.To learn we must be committed to learning and set aside time for it.

All of us should set aside an hour a day (or seven hours a week) to learn.

Understandably, when so many of us are stretched with responsibilities and job pressures and family challenges it may sound unrealistic to set aside an hour to learn.

The reality is that we do not have a choice since the world is changing so fast that a failure to upgrade our mental operating systems will sooner or later result in failure and setbacks that will cost us years because we did not find an hour a day! (Chill an hour less with Netflix, scroll a little less on the socials, watch summaries of sports games on YouTube versus watching the entire game). 

We cannot outsource learning (yes people can help guide us), but we must exercise our own minds just as we cannot outsource physical exercise to someone else to keep our body healthy.

2. Build a case for the opposite of what you believe is true.

Nothing makes you think differently and truly see from a different perspective as building a case for the opposite of what you think or believe is true.

At minimum it helps you make your case better by seeing the opposite side and fixing the weak spots in your argument and sometimes you may see things differently and change your mind.

Today we really need to do this since a combination of who we spend time with, media we choose, and algorithm driven feeds that are optimized to re-enforce our convictions can lead us to lose grip with reality.

This is true for all of us but particularly for senior and powerful people who may be surrounded by sycophants or people worried about saying things that will displease the “boss”.

Sooner or later because of these filter bubbles, self-re-enforcing loops or carefully massaged and edited communications we make the mistake of believing that our flatulence smells like Chanel 5!

3.Do!

If you want to learn how to be a good writer, you cannot stop at reading great writers and books on writing. You must write and get feedback and then write again.

If you want to learn Web 3.0 reading Scott Galloway, A16Z or others are interesting and important but sooner or later you must plunge into Discord and Twitter communities, get a wallet, mint an NFT, put on an Oculus 2 or a HoloLens (if you can access one) and much more.

Only then will we realize so much of what people are promoting, boasting, fear mongering, moaning, or screaming about is utter BS and why Web 3.0 and Metaverse are not the same and one can do very well without the other! And the real sleeper here is how the wallet could change everything about identity, privacy and data ownership!

Only by doing can we learn enough to understand and lead.

Photography by Xuan-Hi Ng

Fresh perspectives. Fierce provocations. Feedback.

To ensure learning it is imperative that one have a diversity of not just faces but voices. By looking at things from different perspectives and from perspectives of different people we grow.

In addition, one needs to think provocatively and question all in going assumptions and first principles. Too many of us believe we are more limited and have less agency than we do. One does not know where the line is until one crosses it.

Finally continuous or regular feedback helps us learn. Here are some best practices on receiving and giving feedback. https://rishad.substack.com/p/on-feedback

Photography by Xuan-Hi Ng

The Journey Ahead.

The future is important because we are going to spend the rest of our lives there.

Regardless of what your news channel and your digital stream may indicate we are not all doomed, things are not all dark and the days of the past were not the halcyon days they are made out to be.

Rather, we are at the cusp of the most amazing time for humanity where a combination of all of our learning to date, breakthroughs and inter connections between technologies such as AI, Biotech, Blockchain, 5G, Robotics and a total re-think of education, finance, mobility and health care in a global world where billions of people have access to technology with “God-Like” power is going to unleash a bright future.

We can be better, and we can do better.

Even if it is just us as one single individual.

Because after all a society and a company is nothing but a collection of individuals.

Arthur Clarke the writer of 2001 a Space Odyssey is buried in Sri Lanka.

His tombstone can serve as an inspiration to us all to keep learning and growing:

“He never grew up, but never stopped growing.”

The Fractionalized Employee

Arizona Canyon photography by  Ed Cooley .

Most of us need to work and it is central to our identity.

Yet, even though work is important most of us do not define ourselves solely by work. We have many other identities and responsibilities (parent, caregiver, sailor, artist…) that make us who we are or passions we wish to pursue.

To integrate and deal with the spectrum of what life brings we could work at a job with all its benefits but also constraints or be a free-lancer/independent worker with all its freedoms but uncertainties.

Today due to several forces there is the possibility of another way as we architect the future of work.

A way that benefits both the individual employee and the firm.

Arizona Canyon photography by  Ed Cooley .

Three Forces

Three con-current forces are re-sculpting the nature of work and what constitutes a company in the most dramatic ways in over a century.

Technology: Over the past four decades one wave of technology after another has changed the nature of work, where it is done and when it is done.

This began with the expanded use of the personal computer in the 1980’s, the birth of the First Connected Age with the World Wide Web in 1993, cloud and mobile computing of the Second Connected Age of the 2000’s and now the coming tsunami of Web 3.0 +5G+AI and more of the Third Connected Age.

Demographics: Except for the continent of Africa most countries particularly Europe, the US, China, and Japan which account for most of the global GDP are seeing shrinking and aging populations on one hand and a new generation of talent which questions the way companies are organized and run.

Covid-19: The past two years of unbundled and distributed work has changed people’s mindsets. They are like champagne corks that once opened swell and do not fit back in the bottle. Everything is being questioned from the nature of work to the role of management.

These three forces of accelerating and enabling technology, declining work forces and new mindsets have significantly shifted the balance of power to talent versus the firm in most white-collar knowledge-based industries.

Arizona Canyon photography by  Ed Cooley .

The firm is likely to endure.

Companies of various sizes will continue to exist both as key drivers of economic growth and the creators of jobs.  The late Ronald Coase of the University of Chicago wrote the firm exists because external friction is greater than internal friction which means whether it is from standing behind a Brand promise, to building and bundling expertise to re-allocating capital it is easier to do it as a firm versus a swarm of individuals. As we move into the Web 3.0 world of DAO’s (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) the nature of governance may change but some sort of firm will likely endure.

But their architecture and how they attract, retain and leverage talent will continue to morph dramatically in the next few years as both capital and labor, management and worker, and employer and talent work to find a mutually profitable win-win scenario.

Work will matter.

Despite the anti-work screeds of Reddit (which itself has imploded in a civil war of schism and re-crimination) people will need to work for a variety of reasons including income but also for identity, community and meaning.

The big shift is not going to be about working or not working but how the work is done at a particular time in an individual’s career. There will be more flexibility in how talent will work but also more flexibility in how companies can interact with the talent.

Today most companies combine three types of work forces.

A full-time employee,

A full time or part time contracted employee from another firm (e.g., Wipro or Cap Gemini)

Free-lancers (directly or via an intermediate firm)

Full-time employees are usually the backbone of any company and its culture with contracted and free-lancers being mixed in to expand expertise and manage oscillating workloads in a cost-effective manner.

We may now want to think of a fourth type of worker to reflect the forces of technology, shifting demographics and new mindsets: The Fractionalized Employee.

Arizona Canyon photography by  Ed Cooley .

The Fractionalized Employee.

Imagine if one could get both the continuity and loyalty of a long-term employee with the flexibility of cost management of a part time employee and the expertise of a free-lancer and do so in a way that both grows employees and retains them in the long run.

This is the Fractionalized Employee.

Every employee in the company is given a choice to work 100%, 75% or 50% of their time. (In the US one needs to be working 50% to be eligible for health and other benefits).

They get to select this at the beginning of every year or can adjust to a different level when a life event occurs (health, birth of a child, need to take care of a parent, a passion that needs to be attended to or other life issues).

No longer does an employee have to choose between staying or going or being torn trying to do two things at one time. If they wish to try out a different type of non-competitive job (starting a gaming company –assuming they are not working at a gaming company--or being an artist or writing a book) it behooves their employer from letting them do so because retaining half or three quarters of a talented person is better than zero. As importantly these external skills or vocations will make the employee better rounded and probably more productive. And there will be cost savings from both reduced compensation but also eliminating the friction and cost of severance, re-hiring, and training.

And it will probably attract a lot of talent who may want to work 50 to 75 percent of their time.

Including the more seasoned who might only want to work half their time. As countries grapple with aging and declining populations this is one way to address this issue.

For the employee they do not have to give up an income stream, health benefits or a part of their identity to build new skills, pursue new horizons or take care of life’s events. Over the course of a career, they can dial up and down the percentage they work.

As importantly with a base revenue stream and health care they can decide how to use the percent of time they have bought back or own including building new skills or working as a free-lancer or expert with many new communities of talent. For many people free-lance work alone does not work either because of lack of health care, unstable income, or lack of connection to a community (though there are many new models of communities working to offset these issues).

The Fractionalized Employee model will allow companies to retain talent, grow talent, mix, and match talent in ways that are truly win-win.

The company gets access to cost effective talent and a program to differentiate and attract talent. It has a stronger culture than one with lots of people who do not leave or lots of continuous dependence on free-lancers.

Talent gets to retain income streams and benefits and continuity and community or work while balancing life challenges or other passions and interests.

Arizona Canyon photography by  Ed Cooley .

Why the Fractionalized Employee makes sense today?

The Great Attraction listed the nine factors that make people join, stay, and thrive at a firm. They join for money, fame(recognition) and power(autonomy). They stay for values, purpose, and connections (with clients, bosses, and their colleagues). They thrive when the have freedom (flexibility), story (how the company fits into their lives versus they are fitting into the company’s life) and growth (growing themselves as people as well as skills).

Being offered the ability to work 50, 75 or 100 percent of their time enables all of these but particularly the latter three of freedom, story and growth that allows them to thrive.

And if a company is to thrive it can only do so if its employees do.

Modern technology, new mind shifts and changing demographics call for a new way that allows firms to thrive and people to grow. Smart companies, leaders and talent/HR teams should adapt their rules, structures, and ways of operating to enable the fractionalized employee.

Wisdom.

A week ago, I was one of a dozen speakers at a “Celebration of Life” event to mark the passing of a renowned and highly respected leader in the marketing, media and digital industries named John Durham. ( Had written a tribute to John on his passing ten weeks ago that had struck a chord :  “Go the extra mile. It’s never crowded.” )

For the Celebration Event each of the speakers was given a specific brief to speak to one facet or time in John’s life. I was asked to speak about lessons he left for us leaders in the marketing, media, and digital industries.

Hundreds of people from students of John to CEO’s and pioneers of industry attended the event and I heard from many of them on how meaningful they found the talk and noted that John’s lessons were essential wisdom not just for the marketing and media industry but anybody in any business.

So today, I am sharing John’s wisdom with some significant variations and adaptions given the very different and wider audience and that this will be read rather than heard.

1. Be Distinctive

Companies, brands, and individuals which succeed are ones that differentiate themselves.

Stand for something.

Have a distinct point of view.

Provide a different perspective.

Craft a culture and a way of working.

Build a network and teams of diverse and the different and let them be them and free to speak out if you want to have a truly different product or service or grow your own skills.

John was so distinctive from his unique viewpoints (Durhamisms) down to his amazingly colorful socks that he became “The Durham”.

[image error] 2. Be a source of enlightenment and inspiration.

All businesses can be tough. The marketing and media business can be tough.

It is very easy to get down and be negative given all the challenges that come with great velocity every day in a business filled with persnickety customers and clients that can be trigger happy in switching providers.

We can all be caught in a frenzy of urgency, twisting, and twitching with cyclonic vigor in attending to the matters at hand.

But never forget that people are looking to leaders to show the way forward.

Despite a topsy turvy career and significant health challenges, John always checked in on folks, had a story to make you feel better and inspired everyone from his students to all of us.

He shone a light on the way forward. And made us feel lighter under our burdens.

3. Fiercely defend ideas.

This is a business like all businesses that has gotten more data and spreadsheet driven as communications have become more digital and technology enables measurement at a granular level.

We all need to better understand and grow our data capabilities, but John reminded us that the key to marketing and media business are ideas.

We are in the businesses of change, culture, fashion, trends, insights, innovation, and human connections.

We need to be careful that in our idolizing the technology and data and spreadsheet we do not lose our way by following the wrong star home.

It is ideas and creativity that attract people to the marketing and media industries, and if they wanted to work in finance or technology or data they would join Goldman, Palantir, Snowflake or another company where those skills are what differentiates.

Ideas are the heartbeat of our business and the best of them tend to initially be so heart stopping in their difference with what has come before or so fragile that they need to be defended, protected, and nurtured so they can refresh the bloodstreams and future of our businesses.

4. Look over the horizon for what is next.

John was besotted with what lay ahead.

He switched careers and built practices around what would come. He moved from radio to magazines to media companies to agencies to tech companies to a bespoke consulting company working with start-ups.

He would invite me to his class at University of San Francisco where he prepared students for tomorrow and in the last class, we talked about the revolution in marketing that Web 3.0 might bring.

I would not be surprised to find that John might have owned some Bored Apes Yacht Club NFTs.

Tomorrow is where we spend the rest of our lives and even in the waning weeks of his life John looked over the horizon.

Whenever we are surprised as leaders or companies it’s because somebody made tomorrow tangible today first while we were solving yesterday’s problems.

5. Be passionate and care deeply.

John was dignified.

John was a cool cat.

But he was not cold, haughty, or chilled but rather warm, approachable, and vulnerable.

He was not a reticent, calculating, two steps ahead strategic plotter or someone who hedged his positions and blew with the wind.

He cared deeply and passionately.

He remembered in a silicon based, data driven and digital world to remain a carbon infused, feeling filled and analog human.

John cared passionately about his people, his companies, his work, and his points of view.

And of course, wine.

Very fine wine.

6. Renew. Refresh. Re-invent.

In a complicated world filled with hurly burly speed and messy things called people things often go wrong.

Snafus of communication and differences in expectations, incentives or approaches will lead to wires crossed and hurt feelings that can sever ties and relationships.

John always counseled to renew and restore and repair relationships even if it meant eating humble pie sometimes when you did not have to or want to.

He also noted that we constantly change as people, and we need to see each other from time to time with new eyes.

It is important to refresh and renew both your own relationships and those of your brand and company. Do not put people in a box and think you have them figured out. They change.

Finally, as someone who re-invented his skills to align with whatever new reality and opportunity, John reminded us that the real death occurs when we stop learning.

In illness and in good health John practiced a daily resurrection.

7. Combine roots and wings.

As we have heard there were at least two John’s. The John of the South which were the first half of his life which we know just a little of and then John of the West which we called “The Durham”.

While we may never have understood John’s roots and we often do not understand where people come from, their past beats like a second heart within them just like the roots and history of brand and companies have twisted them into their current shapes.

Every successful individual, brand, and company is fed by their roots, but they aspire to change, grow, and adapt and fly with wings.

Wings without roots often get blown away.

Roots without wings wither and die.

Fusing roots and wings is the way.

8. Protect and guide people.

In the end the most important thing John taught those willing to listen was that as leaders our first and foremost job was to protect and guide people since we scaled through our people. The best people could get into trouble, down cycles, or be upended in some ways and they must be protected.

The most talented would sometimes lose their way or come to a fork in the road and begin to question themselves, where they were and where they were going and needed guiding.

By protecting and guiding not only would we do the right thing, but it would be such behavior that would attract and retain talent for the long run.

Today hundreds of us from all over the country and all over the world are here because in the end John through his Durhamisms, his call just at the right time and his sharing of wine with wisdom has made all the difference to our lives.

And while he is gone if we practice what we learned from him he will still be beating in our bloodstreams.

Photographs by Rishad Tobaccowala.