Rishad Tobaccowala's Blog, page 21

Career Turbocharging

Photography by  Massimo Listri.

For well over a decade, I have been in the fortunate position to help guide people as they look for jobs, evaluate opportunities and navigate their careers. 

While my advice is always customized to the individual situation (stage of career, staying or leaving an industry, finding oneself in a fork in the career road or finding oneself stuck without any forward momentum or sometimes unfortunately without a job) there is one exercise I recommend to every person.

It is The Nine Word Exercise.

Today many are evaluating where they work, why they work, how they work and who they work for, this exercise could be one resource to help guide the way.

Photography by  Massimo Listri.

The Nine Word Exercise.

The nine-word exercise requires one to identify three words that describe one’s niche, voice, and story.

Niche: What are the three words that describe what you are very good at?  What expertise, craft, or subject matter knowledge do you have an edge in?

Employers are looking for specific skills, competitive edge, and depth of experience.

Voice: Three words that describe who you are? While niche is about what you are good at, voice is about who you are as a person and your personality.

People today do not follow titles, but they follow people. So, who are you?

Story: Why should people believe you ? What three words describe your journey and experiences that give a reason to believe?

While niche calls out what you are good at, and voice describes who you are, story lets you explain what forged and made you.

Here are my nine words.

Niche:  Future. Change. Innovation.

Voice:  Authentic. Provocative. Inspirational.

Story: Global. Mongrel. Re-Inventing.

Photography by  Massimo Listri.

Things to keep in mind as you do the exercise.

It looks easy but it is not. You are attempting to distill yourself down to nine words and only nine words. Not sentences or paragraphs. Just words. These need to be sharp and not soft. As precise as possible vs fuzzy and generalized.

Do not do it all alone. It helps to get input from people who know you and those you trust for honest feedback. This could include your partner, bosses and ex-bosses, current colleagues, and friends.

It is an iterative process: Once you settle in on your nine words do keep revisiting them to see if you can further curate and clarify the words. Re-visit as your career evolves and the world changes around you.

The audience with whom you will share the nine words with is a prospective or current employer and not a potential life partner or friend. Thus, describing yourself as “funny” only makes sense if you are applying to be a comic or clown.

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Photography by  Massimo Listri.

Focus. Frame. Filter.

How do you use the nine words?

First to focus yourself and provide key points for any conversation.

Second is to frame yourself so that it is easier to present yourself and to make your story easy to get and help it stand out.

Third is to filter opportunities. When you get multiple offers or must determine how to navigate the fork in the career road the nine words can be a great filtering device to both decide which way to go but also what new skills/habits/stories will you need to build if you wish to avail of other opportunities.

Hope you try it.

The Great Attraction

Photography by  Gavin Goodman

Teams and companies that thrive usually have a disproportionate share of talent.

Brands that grow tend to attract a disproportionate share of brand loyalists.

What attracts talent to companies and what makes people loyal to brands?

Could it be the same 9 factors?

Photography by  Gavin Goodman

Acquisition: Three factors that get people to join companies or make the initial purchase.

1. Money: Talent makes decisions to join a company in part because of financial factors.  A brand that allows someone to save or make money is one to gain trial. Incentives matter to get people on board.

2. Fame: One joins a company that is well known or a company that will allow one to become famous or be recognized for their work. Brands that have good stories, provenance and history or are known to treat customers like royalty are more likely to attract trial.

3. Power:  Individuals join companies that give them autonomy or power and people are loyal to brands that enable and empower them.

Photography by  Gavin Goodman

Retention: Three factors that ensure continued access to talent and brand love.

1. Purpose: Talent cares about the purpose of the company and people ask about the purpose companies serve beyond making a profit.

2. Values: Over time employees stay with companies whose values they find resonate with theirs and consumers stay with brands whose values they resonate with and who show that they are valued.

3. Connection: If someone feels connected to their manager, their clients, and their colleagues they are more likely to persevere through the ups and downs of a career. Similarly, an emotional connection to a Brand ensures a greater loyalty.

Photography by  Gavin Goodman

Passion: Three factors that get individuals to feel passionate about their place of work and brands.

1. Freedom: Companies that recognize that they work for talent rather than talent works for them and approach talent as something they access versus own ensure that people have the flexibility and freedom to be who they are. Brands that are highly accessible and adaptable (ability to purchase and return across channels and adapt to the needs of customers ensuring freedom in how they are used and paid for) garner long term loyalty.

2. Identity: A career is part of a person’s identity as are the brands with greatest loyalty. Understanding the identity of a person also allows for customization of how they are served, treated, and grown. It is important to know that while a company and a brand are part of the identity and story of a person, they are just a part. Companies that understand that they need to fit in the story of the lives of their talent and customers rather than the talent and customers fit in the story of the company or brand are ones that thrive.

3. Growth: A career lasts for four or five decades in a world that is changing fast. Skill sets need to be continuously refreshed and kept relevant. Companies that focus on the future and constantly transform ensuring their growth will always be able to access talent since people care about ensuring they are growing and remaining relevant and will work at firms who allow them to grow skills that are valued outside the firm. By making talent highly attractive to the outside is the way to ensure continued access to them. Similarly brands that find ways to adapt and change over the years by combining their roots and wings engender long term passion.

The Age of Creativity

As we all fixate on forging things with the scalability, math and plumbing of data, a case may be made that true wealth and joy are being sculpted with the specialness, magic, and poetry of creativity.

A story is “data with a soul” and “we tell ourselves stories in order to live”

Humans seek the magical, choosing with our hearts and then using numbers to justify what we just did.

If humans made ROI decisions, we would not have children since on a financial and other numerical criteria they do not compute.

Data and tech are necessary but will increasingly not be the differentiators for most companies.

Disney has the “Magic Kingdom” and not the “Algorithmic Kingdom” and Disney+ invests in data and technological capital to ensure competitiveness but they differentiate using creative and intellectual capital.

Netflix stock price fluctuates on its ability to attract new subscribers which is directly co-related with its ability to launch new creative endeavors and its true difference today versus other competitors is not necessarily just it’s celebrated data but it’s ability to harness global creative talent versus most competitors who focus on creative national talent.  Eg. Squid Games.

In 2021 the most valuable company in Europe was LMVH the owner of Louis Vuitton and Tiffany and the most valuable company in the world was Apple both differentiating on creativity.

Both companies have amazing supply chains and foundries/technologies, but they differentiate versus competitors and have an ability to charge significant premiums (they manage to get their buyers to forgo data driven decision making that many marketers fixate on) by focusing on provenance, materials, design, innovation, and storytelling.

Almost all the value of a Nike shoe is in its design, collectability, and brand halo and not in the rubber, cloth, and lace.

Tesla is as much a community and a religious movement than a bender of metal.

Data and technology are like electricity and water in that one needs them to illuminate the way forward and hydrate decision making but very few companies truly will have differentiated data and technology as more and more computing moves to the cloud and becomes open, modular, and inter-operable as we enter Web 3.0.

One cannot compete without access to data and technology, but one cannot win with them alone unless one is just a data and technology company and even then, they may not be enough.

Companies’ ability to leverage human capital and talent to leverage data and technology to unleash creativity and innovation will be the true builder of wealth.

Technology has always turbocharged art and creativity.

From the earliest discoveries of fire to modern computing devices and cloud-based software, humans have bent and leveraged technology in creative ways to express themselves and connect with each other and the wider world.

Fire did not just keep us warm, enabled the cooking of food and forging of new tools but it also let people turn clay into hardened ceramic pots and vases, useful for carrying and storing food, water, or other items which were then shaped and decorated in ways beyond their functional use.

The invention of paper gave rise to scrolls and the printing press to religious and other revolutions, then came photography which unleashed several industries and moved away from being another form of painting. We saw radio, television, and the most revolutionary force of all the conflation of mobile phones, social networks, and creative enablement via cloud software.

Today technology is enabling artistic and creative endeavors by a) fueling new art forms, b) enabling far more people with a variety of tools to express themselves creatively and c) scaling the ability to share, display and connect with potential audiences and patrons.

Today fifty million people in the United States call themselves “Creators”

Please see  Art and Technology to understand how Art and Technology have moved hand in hand.

Web 3.0 will unleash a revolutionary creative age.

And we are just about to launch into the truly creative age enabled by Web 3.0

The current age of computing which is Web 2.0 has been one that has been centralized, closed and not inter-operable. The reason that Mark Zuckerberg is keen on the metaverse are twofold. First, he realizes that he needs to attract engineers who may not want to work on the social network aligned with their values or cutting edge enough and second because he is smart enough to know that Facebook as designed today looks like America Online did when the World Wide Web came to be, and he needs to pivot the entire firm.

In the new world of Web 3.0 closed systems will be replaced by open systems, centralized by decentralized/democratized and interoperability modularity will rule (think how Lego pieces regardless of where you buy them, and from which set work with each other).

A big part of this will drive be the Blockchain and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT’s) combined with advances in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

Facebook became Meta Platforms, Square became Block, Microsoft is a key leader in this space, but it is the creative uses of these emerging technologies what one needs to pay attention to.

While a big part of what is happening in the crypto and NFT space maybe a combination of noise, hype and Ponzi schemes there is a true revolution underway in that individuals will increasingly have much greater ownership of their creativity and data and attention and be able to monetize and own them versus handing them over to a social media platform that owns them, monetizes your attention and data and gives you a bunch of “likes” in return.

Some years ago, when we had to buy a song, we liked we may have been forced to buy a CD. Then we could buy the song itself from the Apple or Google store. Then we could access any song we wanted from Spotify or Tidal or other services. So, the content had become unbundled from the physical form but in most cases the creator was still bound to the company they had sold their rights to. And they could not usually profit from sales of their work in the future which they can now do with smart contracts.

The move to talent power began as individuals like Shonda Rhimes could negotiate with a Netflix, a Taylor Swift re-recorded her songs so she could own the rights rather than Big Machine and folks like the late Virgin Abloh could simultaneously be LMVH’s creative director and have his own Off-White label. But it was not just big names, but new stars could leverage Snap, Tik-Tok, You-Tube and other platforms to become known and then launch programming on Netflix and Network television.

But there were limitations to how many rights they held and how much control they had.

That is now changing and is likely to turbo charge the Age of Creativity as talent begins to own more rights, have more control and a far greater palette to tell stories.

The late Virgin Abloh called himself and was truly a “Maker”. Here is his masterclass on how he makes at Harvard University Graduate School of Design

We are about the enter the “The Age of Makers”

Here is an animated film that Virgil directed during the dark days of both Covid-19 and what we now know when he was very ill with terminal cancer.

How to prepare for the next Creative Age or “The Age of Makers”

Step One: Watch this just issued video on NFT’s from the Financial Times. It is 20 minutes  long but is the best overview in plain English with artists, curators, technologists explaining their potential.

Step Two: Google “Bored Ape Yacht Club” and burrow into the articles. If you would like a sample article to read here is one… https://www.cnet.com/how-to/explaining-the-bored-ape-yacht-club-nft-collection/

(Please pay attention not to the dollar figures but the fact that four artists began this and how other members of the community get to own, adapt, build what they bring to the program. Try to separate your feelings that this may be a Ponzi scheme with the fact that there are now technologies that enable true creative ownership, democratization of benefits and the ability to create/interoperate and build without knowing code. Also note that right now the whole thing is very difficult like things were at the early age of the Web but in a couple of years this will be simple as using an Apple phone)

Imagine the creative (and marketing) possibilities coming.

Step Three: Make sure that you and your company are not being blinded into an alley filled with data and technology only.

If leaders particularly leading marketers truly believe that the future is all about data and tech versus it being just an ingredient, then there is no need for a marketer. AI and other Algorithms can do our jobs since they can compute, compare, and co-relate better than all of us.

Too many industries forget that it is talent and people combined with technology and data that make the difference.

If the marketing and marketing services industry is reduced to a data driven and tech industry the continued flight of talent that most Clients and Agencies have been suffering from will continue since if you only want to work in data and tech, why not work in a data and tech company that is more focused on that and provides the potential of valuable stock options?

Wealth and Brands are created through combining story and spreadsheet. Today when a new dawn of creativity and making is being unleashed and data and tech is being commoditized and offered as ingredients and service, we need to make sure we are focusing on our ability to attract, retain, train, re-aggregate and unleash talented creators and makers. And to do so in a flexible way, in fear free innovative cultures that modern technology and the new unbundled distributed workspace of tomorrow are enabling.

Let us stop fixating on the Arrows (how they are made, how many big lakes full of them we have and how cheaply we can buy them) and instead let us focus on the Archers.

Getting the arrows is not too difficult but attracting and motivating the archers is.

Building enterprises that have access to a disproportionate share of archers/creatives/makers is what true leaders and companies will focus on in the Creative and Maker Age.

Creative by  Virgin Abloh . RIP.

The Great Re-Invention

Two years ago in Wuhan, China the first human became ill with what is now known as Covid-19. By March 2020 most of the world was in lock-down and in early May 2020 I wrote the piece below on what we could anticipate in the future, how things might change and what we would need to do as individuals, business and society to prevail.

While this was written prior to vaccines, George Floyd, a change in the US President, the Great Resignation and many more events it anticipated all these changes.

Today, two years later with the advent of the Omicron variant and re-closing of some borders, I am re-publishing on this Substack which did not exist when the original piece was written.

In 2008/2009 we lived through the Great Recession.

One way to frame the impact of the Covid-19 tragedy is to think about it as the start of the Great Re-invention. 

Of Business, Of Government, Of Society.

And of our ourselves.

The Impact of this crisis will be greater than the ones we have lived through including the dot.com bust, 9/11. SARS/MERS and the Great Recession, because it is a health, economic and social crisis happening to everybody in the world, at the same time, for an extended period.

People’s habits change if they repeat or stop a behavior for 60 or more days.

People’s mindsets change when they go through a severe shock.

People’s relationships change when they get the opportunity to see, feel and think in new ways.

All this is happening to all of us.

Predicting has always been a risky business and all futurists need to be humble since tomorrow will prove them often wrong. This is particularly true today given the unprecedented circumstances. In order to ground my observations, I am beginning with what I believe is a key to understand and frame the way forward.

We need to 1) address fragility, 2) sculpt resilience and 3) resurrect now

1. Address Fragility

The first thing we all need to do is to address the reality of Fragility.

Human Fragility: If there was ever a doubt about the frailty of our bodies and minds and the reality that we all are carbon-based feeling filled creatures with limited life spans and parts that go wrong, Covid-19 has brought us clarity. Never have so many people been so anxious, fearful and uncertain for their futures. Even the well to do who are working from home with financial reserves are stressed. As I remind people we are not working from home. We are working under duress in homes filled with children who should be at school, worried about parents and loved ones and our jobs, while being scared out of our wits via our television and social feeds and dealing with toilet paper shortages and the grocery trip as a hazardous life risking endeavor!

Economic Fragility: Tens of millions of businesses and hundreds of millions of people all over the world have less than two or three weeks of reserves after a decade of a booming economy. Huge corporations including airlines spent all their reserves buying back their stock and would go out of business without government help. The CEO’s who believed in free enterprise and told government to back off are going hat in hand and pleading for help.

Social Fragility: In the US about 16% of the population are immigrants but over 25% of the people who are working on the front lines whether it be delivery, warehouses, drivers or nurses are immigrants. Across the US African Americans are dying at over 2X rate to the general population. The harsh downturn is impacting labor particularly gig workers, poor people and young people. The walls we put up thinking that we could live compartmentalized lives are eroding as it is becoming clear that we are all connected.

Focus on Society, Safety and Security.

As businesses and a society, we need to think, see and feel differently to ensure that we work to re-invent our world in the light of the learnings of our fragility. This is likely to mean that successful businesses and leaders will acknowledge the following in all their behaviors, product development and messaging: Society, Safety and Security:

Society: We live in a society where we are all connected as people. We must ensure we are optimizing for society and not just for consumers or businesses.

America is different from Europe with a rugged individualistic streak that is part of the national character but today when we see CEO’s who were capitalistic in boom times turn socialist when they run into trouble ( or as Professor Scott Galloway says they want to individualize the gains in good times for themselves but socialize the losses for everybody when things go wrong) or politicians who claimed had no money to address infrastructure or social issues but now have unlimited money will give people pause on nonsensical ideologies.

The shock of Covid-19 has revealed the fault lines of inequality (African American compared to general population, rich versus poor, urban versus suburban, baby boomer versus millennial). These must be bridged through new legislation, better listening and enhanced leadership (one more empathetic, diverse and trustworthy) rather than rants and rages inflamed across polarized and algorithmic media which often colonize minds and rot the soul.

The days of making fun of government or causes that focus on common good are likely to pass. I anticipate a newfound appreciation of blue-collar workers and people on the front lines and would not be surprised to see increased unionization particularly among gig and warehouse workers.

Safety: This crisis has shown the most important asset is our health. It has placed a new spotlight on the importance of safety and the people who keep us safe.

Funding for some form of Universal Healthcare will become essential and newfound appreciation for medical staff, first responders will remain long lasting. Too many people are too vulnerable and there will be a hunger to keep oneself and one’s family safe.

And Climate Change will be taken seriously for the first time by many deniers.

For a few months and maybe longer messaging will need to emphasize safety. Why is this conference safe? Why is this theater safe? How does our company keep you safe?

Security: A joint survey by the Financial Times and the Peter G Petersen Foundation released this morning  indicated “how widespread the pandemic’s economic impact has become, with almost as many families making more than $100,000 a year reported a hit to their income (71 per cent), as those making less than $50,000 (74 per cent). Similarly, 53 per cent of those making less than $50,000 said they would lose their pay if illness forced them to stop work, while 47 per cent of those making more than $100,000 were in the same boat.”

People all over the world at all income groups will feel far more financially insecure after Covid-19 than before it. The Millennials burdened with student debt and facing a constrained market for employment will feel particularly vulnerable and older retirees are facing lower retirement balances, zero to negative interest rates on savings and the possibility of higher inflation as 6 trillion dollars in the US flows through the system.

As businesses restart, they will have limited to no pricing power since their customers will watch their spending and will be needed to be incentivized to re-start behaviors they may have given up.

A key to driving the Great Re-invention will be to focus on society and how you are serving society while helping peoples (customers, employees, stakeholders) need for the safety of their and their family’s health and the need for financial security.

2. Sculpt Resilience.

In order to address the fragility that has been revealed and underscored in recent weeks, society, business and each of us will need to sculpt ourselves into more resilient forms.

A. Society

A health crisis where every single person is at risk, with impoverished people at much greater risk, combined with an economic crisis that will leave over a quarter of the US population unemployed is going to change the mindset of the United States in three ways.

1. Government matters. Governance matters: As he set off what would be four decades of deregulation, former President Ronald Reagan said to great laughter:

“The most terrifying words in the English language are I’m from the government and I’m here to help. “

Who is laughing now?

During this crisis we have seen the need for Government and importantly the difference in good versus bad governance at national, state and local levels.

Government matters. Governance matters.

It is a life and death thing.

2. Expanded Healthcare: Regardless of who gets elected in 2020 we can expect to see significant expansion of health care benefits particularly to blue collar service and gig workers.

We are likely to finally understand that in a world that will require more mobility and flexibility we must decouple affordable and comprehensive health care from being employed. This is good for business and good for society.

3. Optimizing for society not just consumer and business: Over the past few decades whether it be the government or judicial system there has been a tendency to favor decisions which benefit consumers or business.

Consumer and business will remain key drivers of economic growth, but we will now see the importance of society stakeholders like community, environment and employees.

Make America Well Again may replace Make America Great Again.

B. Businesses

Many businesses particularly smaller ones may never recover from the shock of having to shut down for two to three months. Even, large established firms are going hat in hand for bailouts or imposing a combination of pay cuts, furloughs and mass layoff of employees to cut costs and drawing down every credit line they can to buy liquidity and time.

After going through such a near death and chastening experience business will re-invent the way they work in order to build in resilience in the following ways:

1. Re-architect to a smaller and/or different footprint: Bob Iger of Disney believes it will be very different in the future including have many fewer employees.

Companies will not bring back all the full-time employees they have furloughed even if they can afford it because they will want to create a financial buffer for the future. The University of Chicago estimates that up to 42 percent of those furloughed will not return.

Anticipate a greater use of contract versus full time employees to allow one to flex staffing to changing circumstances.

Companies will also radically re-think all their real-estate needs and slash their travel budgets recognizing that not only many meetings can be done remotely but most business travel is not an efficient use of time.

Most importantly, companies will re-think their business models or be forced to do so because this great pause will lead to a great acceleration of change with any nay-sayers either seeing the light or the first to be let go.

2. Re-think supply chains: For the past decade off shoring and just in time supply chains have driven great speed and financial returns. The recent crisis has shown that the most efficient chain is the not the most resilient one and companies will now balance efficiency with resilience. They will carry more inventory and ensure multiple supply chains.

Wendy’s cannot afford to ask “Where is the Beef” or our supply of N-95 masks dependent on a moody China.

3. Hybrid versus Pure breed: There is really “no digital “only or direct to consumer only. Majority of businesses will be a mix of analog and digital, direct to consumer and retail channel firms, full time and contractor businesses. For resilience you need optionality. To thrive one needs diversity of models.

Restaurants will be dining in, drive through, pick-up and delivery. Conferences will be real and virtual. Being mono-maniacal will simply be being a maniac.

4.Strong Balance Sheets will be cool again: With major well-run Unicorns like Airbnb forced to borrow money at double digit rates of interest while eliminating nearly a quarter of their work force signal implies that lesser Unicorns dreams will pop.

5. A New Set of Companies and Wealth Creation Opportunities will arise: In the debris of the Great Recession companies like Airbnb and Uber were forged as was Square, and technologies such as Blockchain and much more. One will see new companies being founded that are built using the current technologies and changed expectations of people.

Whenever there is a mindset shift as there is now and new technologies (5g, Machine Learning, Cloud and Voice) there are new industries and opportunities.

C. Individuals/Employees

Over a four-decade career I have seen a lot of changes and adapted to a lot of changes. Some of my distilled advice as 10 Career Lessons remains my most popular blog post and remains even more relevant today.

Every  individual must recognize that a part of the Great Re-invention it is imperative to spend time rethinking their own careers. Let’s utilize this down time to begin to up skill in ways that will allow for resilience in times where there will be fewer and different full-time jobs.

1. Upgrade Your Mental Operating System: Spend at least a few hours a day learning new skills when you have the time and there is a world of free resources and training like this. And when the world returns never stop learning. Whatever you are good at will likely erode in market value unless you replenish yourself.

One of the keys is to also ensure that you become “virtual certified” and can work in a world of distributed work forces. We will get back to offices but less than before both in numbers and the time we spend there. Here is how to ensure that you are seen as capable, trustworthy, empathetic, vulnerable and inspiring will be so key to your career.

2. Build a Brand: In a world where full time jobs are going to be fewer at least for a while you need to make sure that you have developed networks and a brand so that you retain optionality.

A recession is not just a time where smart brands who continue to market gain market share, but it is where you can stand out. This is not the time to go into hiding or expect that when you return things will be the same.

3. Face the reality that you are likely to have little pricing power and may need to cut your own costs: When the economy opens up most businesses will find limited demand from customers combined with millions of people looking for work. This will be true at least for a year or two if not more. Those temporary pay cuts may not be temporary and the big bonuses of the past may remain memories as companies husband resources and face cost conscious customers.

You must find ways to cut your cost base wherever you can so that may build your reserves. This will also allow you to afford your next career which may have you start at lower level in growth industry, join one of the new next-generation startups which will pay you a lower base but lots of options or finally follow the career you wanted but did not do because it did not pay big bucks.

No longer should you price yourself out of your dreams because of your cost structure. Could it be that you should be doing something else? Could Plan B or “one day I will” be really Plan A?

4. Change sucks but irrelevance is worse: While today is traumatic in both human and financial and career loss and the path forward will be uncertain and sometimes difficult, we are likely to come out as a better people and society.

Every day you see this with the way people are stepping up and helping their neighbors and finding new ways and approaches to cope.

Humans adapt. Humans invent.

Humans are resilient.

And you are human.

3. Resurrect Now!

As firms re-emerge from the shutdown and begin to return to what Bill Gates calls semi-normal and I believe will be a New Strange world (google images of workplaces, malls and schools in South Korea to get a glimpse of our future) , it will not be business as usual, since people, industry and society will all be different.

In an era of constrained growth, companies and individuals will all be addressing fragility, by looking for safety and security. They will be working to sculpt resilience by re-thinking their size and scale, incorporating optionality into the way they design their work force and supply chains, while also strengthening their balance sheets.

As I work with a range of companies and their senior management, I am helping guide their transition from managing the shock of the shut down to the new landscape they will find themselves operating in.

It is critical that business as they await the shutdown to end to get ready by asking themselves three questions:

1. What will my Customer/Consumer be like: How will the behavior and expectations of my customer/consumer be different? What will they be doing more and doing less?

For every industry and product category it will different, but I would expect that most firms should begin with an expectation that a) their customers will be more value driven due to reduced purchasing power combined with a need to enhance their future financial security and b) they will be ultra-sensitive about health and safety

For these financial and health reasons people are likely to move to a semi-quarantined state for at least six months to a year, as they travel less, go out less and work more from home.

2. How can I get my company to learn from and accept the new reality?

Leaders face and adapt to reality versus living in a world of magical thinking.

Every business has been shocked, and this has revealed internal fault lines and hopefully also some strengths which exposed several new threats and possibly opportunities.

Major new realities will include:

a) Accelerated digitization of business and expansion of remote everything: Covid-19 has transformed more businesses than any strategist, chief digital or chief transformation officer. Every old school resistor has been zoomed into the future.

b) Growth Reversal: Many growth industries (hospitality and travel) will experience depression economics as tens of thousands of restaurants close, airlines grow smaller, hotel room become dorm rooms.

c) Schizophrenia of Size: We will find “smaller is beautiful” as industries like puffed up and bloated universities get reality punched in their theoretical faces. Many will be forced to stop being pseudo sport franchises, building developers and luxury brands with unlimited pricing power to get back to focus on teaching and research.

There will be widespread amputation of company appendages as a combination of strategic focus and financial flexibility result in harsh surgical action and sale/burial of body parts.

On the other hand, “Bigger is wonderful” will also emerge, as the large well capitalized businesses such as Amazon, Walmart and Costco in retail, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Adobe will grow even bigger buying the sawed-off parts up for sale or entering new arenas as they smell blood in the water. They will use their scale and reputation to deliver the value pricing and safety signaling people are looking for.

Very few businesses will be spared in the eddies and crashing waves ahead and over the next month you and your team in order to stay afloat and navigate the seas need to do a two-part audit:

a) Shock/Resilience: This is a look inside the business.

What broke or almost failed and what can we do about it. As importantly what worked and why?

b) Threat/Opportunity: This is a look outside the business.

Given that consumers and customers are going to be different what parts of our business is threatened and could there are new opportunities and unmet needs we can work on?

When doing these exercises please be real? Call out the turd on the table.

3. How can we leverage fresh sheet thinking: How would we re-start if we had a fresh sheet of paper?

So now that your team has envisioned the future consumer/customer and looked inside and outside of the business to do an audit of shock, resilience, opportunity and threats, what are you going to do?

The biggest mistake individuals or businesses can make is continuing with the status quo.

Every time there is a significant economic shock like the Great Recession, new business is born in the bonfire of the old structures. Remember that Dollar Shave Club, Uber, Airbnb and many more were born in midst of and right after 2007-2009 period.

The reason I call this era The Great Re-invention is that we have a health, financial and society crisis occurring at the same time all over the world. People are being forced to start or stop doing things for 60 to 90 days. As a result, new behaviors will start, and old behaviors may no longer return.

Imagine and invent without limitations except these three reality checks. 1. Whatever you do has to be legal. 2. Whatever you do has to be scientifically and technically possible today and 3. Whatever you do has to break even within three years.

I would then imagine your re-invention keeping in mind:

a) You are not behind your competitor but your customer. Too many companies focus on benchmarking against their competitors but beating other pathetic people does not leave you any less pathetic. When customer/consumer behavior changes this focus on what competitors do is all wrong.

b) Your competitors have changed: Either because new categories have been created or a new type of competitor has arrived. Just as when the auto companies were ogling each other Tesla, Uber and AI re-wrote the rules of the category or as Gillette and Schick were out blading and out price increasing each other, new competitors such as Dollar Shave Club and Harrys emerged.

c) Your talent needs to be incentivized, trained and aligned differently: There are only two ways to transform your company. Upgrade the people or get better/new people.

If you want your people to behave differently in this new world you will have to incentivize them differently. While people like to be informed via your press release, videos or mantras on transformation, they are most eager to understand what it means to them. Go check out Fishbowl and Glassdoor to get a look at what is on their mind and sometimes get a kick in the gut.

Put your best people against tomorrow’s opportunities versus today’s biggest businesses.

Incentivize behavior and not just outcomes.

Invest in training. Skills are learned and not immaculately born.

Look in the mirror dear leader. We might be part of the problem.

d. The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the past:

Why are you organized the way you are if you are re-thinking your category, your competitors and your talent?

If you started today, would you have all the people and parts that make your company. Competitors who are starting today do not have these legacy structures weighing them down.

There is a dawning of a new era.

Many opportunities and positive changes will occur after the period of shock. Use this time to get revitalized and re-invent.

Resurrect Now!

“Go the extra mile. It’s never crowded.”

On Monday November 15, 2021, a gentleman named John Durham passed away in San Francisco, California after many years of struggling health.

What happened in the hours and days after news of his passing was initially shared with a list of two hundred plus of his friends would signal that someone unique, very special and very impactful was no more.

Social media flooded with tributes and stories. Here is just one feed:

https://www.facebook.com/thedurham

The email announcing the news of John Durham’s demise was so responded to and shared that Microsoft believed it was the work of a spammer and for those lucky enough to be on it looked forward to and hoped everybody would hit “reply all” every time they added a thought or their memories. Five days later the email thread continues to vibrate with ideas to honor the man, memories that stir tears and evoke laughter and unspool many anecdotes and stories.

John for over a decade would share a thought, a story, an observation, or an anecdote which came to be known as “Durhamism’s”. They were wise and they were funny. They made you hold in tears or spit out what you were drinking or eating since they were so funny. A request to sign up for a crowd sourcing project to take these writings and put them together in an electronic form prior to publication of a selection was oversubscribed within hours with CEO’s and leaders grabbing as many assignments as they could!

If the measure of a man is the lives he has touched, there is no tape or ruler long or deep enough to measure the impact of John Durham.

John was in many ways the fabric that connected and weaved together a global diaspora of what initially were digital marketing and media pioneers but grew to include people of every stripe from CEOs to students across industries and the globe.

I was one of those lucky to know John Durham. We were far more connected in the last two years of his life brought together by his being a generous champion of my writing and thinking which he asked me to leverage to the benefit of the many communities he cared about from University of San Francisco to the San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group to his clients at SF Catalyst and many more. Almost every Sunday, he would write me kind words after he read this weekly thought letter.

Many people knew him much longer and far better and interacted with him almost daily and I have now begun to suspect there may have been many John Durham’s because surely one individual could not be so much to so many!

He was friend, mentor, counselor, teacher, advisor, family member.

And he was their sommelier, their sports buddy, their fellow traveler and the one who made them laugh.

The container that molded John was broken when he was born and we are unlikely to see someone like him again in the future, but his teachings can help guide us forward.

Here are just a few:

1. Be kind.

Durhamism #1117: “Kindness, like a boomerang, always returns. The kindest word in all the world is the unkind word, unsaid.”

George Saunders wrote “err in the direction of kindness”

John Durham erred so much in the direction he would be put in detention for life if there was a prison for the most kind.

But John showed that kindness was the key to unlocking everything and everybody and we all remember the little and big acts of grace, courtesy, and attention we got from him.

2. Be generous.

Durhamism # 1140: “Go the extra mile. It’s never crowded.”

Along with kindness the word and feeling that ran through John’s life and the tributes to him was his generosity.

He was always there for everybody.

And he was there before you knew you needed him.

A few weeks before my book was published John reached out of the blue and asked if he could hold an event in San Francisco. Typically, he phrased it in a way that he thought I was doing him a favor in supporting the San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group by creating an event around the book launch! He got a sold-out crowd with so many leaders who had come for the Godfather and for “The Durham”, but John shone that spotlight on me.

Class act after class act of giving (including lots and lots of fine wine for the smallest of favors) and helping was his story.

3. Be grateful.

Durhamism #510: "What often screws us up the most in life is the picture in our head of how it's supposed to be. And the reason so many of us give up is because we tend to look at how far we still have to go, instead of how far we have come. Remember, life is a journey, not a destination. This moment, like every moment, is a priceless gift and an opportunity. Be positive, smile, and make it count. Pretend today is going to be great. Do so, and it will be. Research shows that although we think that we act because of the way we feel, in fact, we often feel because of the way we act. A great attitude always leads to great experiences.

John was a man who was increasingly sensitive to the finer shade of differences.

From a conversation to a fine libation to every interaction there was infused a sense of joy and of presence.

To be alive. To be there. To experience.

Gratitude.

4. Laugh! Laugh at life.Laugh at yourself.

John despite all his kindness and generosity had standards and could like all of us get angry and did not suffer fools. Here are two perspectives on this from funny to deep.

Durhamism #288: “Life is all about ass. You’re either covering it, kicking it, kissing it, busting it, trying to get a piece of it or behaving like one”

Durhamism# 2849: “The most wasted of all days is that in which we have not laughed. A man who can laugh, if only at himself is never really miserable. Laughter is the soul’s health; moroseness is its poison. Laughter is therapy for physical pain, emotional pain, and the everyday pain of life.”

5. Live deeply and with a sense of wonder.

For many years in his last decade John struggled with his health. There were many days he was in pain, but he was with almost everyone stoic and wanted to know about them and how they were. The passage of time and the shortness of life infused the way he lived.

In an interview he was asked about happiness.

What is happiness to you?

“I used to think about it a lot. I think happiness is what you enjoy doing; how you spend your day; what kind of people you associate with – both in work and in your personal life; the experience you have and how you think about all the things that you do, and the people surround you; places you’ve been to and places you want to visit.

My happiness is: number one, waking up every morning knowing that I am healthy. That means I care about my health and try to be healthy. Number two: doing something good every day. I want to smile every day. I think if you don’t smile, if you go to bed without a smile, your heart hurts. That means I care about smiling once or twice. I want to laugh once or twice a day. Some days I want to cry; sometimes I cry for happiness, sometimes for sadness.

I don’t believe you can be happy until you experience some negative things to appreciate what you do have. Happiness is the appreciation of things you have in life, and I do.

When I die, I want people to say: He was a good person, he was fun to be around, he shared his thoughts, ideas and believes, he cared about people, and he gave only good. That would be a very happy tombstone.”

If you are to give one advice to other people to be happy, what would that be?

“Appreciate every moment, everything, everybody, every day. When you do – it is breathtaking; you can never capture it again.”

Photographs by friends of John Durham.

Escape Velocity

Photograph by Anja Conrad 

In physics, escape velocity or escape speed is the minimum speed needed for a free, non-propelled object to escape from the gravitational influence of a primary body, thus reaching and infinite distance from it. Wikipedia

The dawn of a new mindset.

More than 4.4 million workers quit their jobs voluntarily in September, the Labor Department said Friday. That was up from 4.3 million in August and was the most in the two decades the government has been keeping track. New York Times

A May survey of 1,000 U.S. adults showed that 39% would consider quitting if their employers weren’t flexible about remote work. The generational difference is clear: Among millennials and Gen Z, that figure was 49%, according to the poll by Morning Consult on behalf of Bloomberg News. Bloomberg News.

Web 3.0 will bring us a fairer internet by enabling the individual to be a sovereign. True sovereignty implies owning and being able to control who profits from one’s time and information. Web 3.0’s decentralized blockchain protocol will enable individuals to connect to an internet where they can own and be properly compensated for their time and data, eclipsing an exploitative and unjust web, where giant, centralized repositories are the only ones that own and profit from it. Forbes.

Photograph by Anja Conrad 

The future is escaping from the containers of the past.

The office and the nature of today’s firms are probably containers of the past as power moves to talent, the cloud and to the edge.

Mark Zuckerberg is aware that the Facebook of today is a container of the past as he seeks his own escape velocity into the metaverse.

Media companies and content owners are working to re-invent themselves not just because the content is now free from the physical distribution medium of compact disc, physical book, or newspaper and increasingly television networks, but the real challenge is now dawning on everybody…what happens if talent owns the rights and is increasingly empowered to be their own media companies?

From Taylor Swift re-recording her catalog as Taylor’s Versions to authors using Substack and self-publishing, Tik-Tok stars doing deals with Netflix without the need for CAA and artists using Non-Fungible Tokens to monetize their craft, the great escape of talent has just only begun.

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Photograph by Anja Conrad 

The waves of change enabling the great escape.

Three key shifts occurring over the past two years will drive the biggest revolution in power dynamics between individuals and the companies.

1. Covid 19: Covid accelerated the move to Cloud, distributed work and a new mindset about life and career balance that cannot be wished away.

The companies demanding people return to the cages of the office will find empty zoos. (Almost all the very important benefits of human interaction from training to collaboration to brainstorming can be done at events, educational institutions, restaurants, and bars.)

The issue is no longer the relevancy of huge offices but a far more seminal question which is how a firm should be organized and designed in a world where technology is enabling a reduction in external friction in connecting, combining, delivering, and servicing products and services.

There are many reasons for firms to exist from making long term investments, building supply chains, ensuring the promise of a Brand and much more but so few of these require people to cluster in offices for more than short bursts of time.

2. A Shift in Talent/Capital Dynamics: The term that is being used here is talent rather than labor. While there has been a shift in power to labor versus capital in many markets post Covid-19, it is still on balance much more tilted to capital. This is not true when it comes to knowledge workers and many white-collar workers who either through experience and/or education have built expertise, craft, intellectual capital, reputation, and methods.

Everywhere they understand that they are in short supply at the very same time that distributed work is no longer limiting the need for expertise to their local market but can be monetized across the globe!

The current constraint is less of demand and mindset but the lack of portable health care. Many entrepreneurs and financial technology companies will soon find ways to address this issue if governments do not.

3. Web 3.0: Imagine a world where one could code as easily as connecting Lego’s. A world which was open and one which was decentralized where every one of us owned our own data and gave people a look like through a window when we wanted to and under financial considerations that were mutually beneficial? This web of composability, openness and decentralization is upon us and enabling everything from crypto currencies to non-fungible tokens and much more. An underlying outcome of the new protocols is increased power to the individual.

Photograph by Anja Conrad 

Smart companies are preparing for a new atmosphere.

All over the world smart firms and leaders are preparing for the new world now versus dithering and delaying. They have either benefited or been hurt by their experience of being early or late to Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 that they realize that this wave of change is going to happen faster and with greater force than what came before and so they are asking and working to answer the three big questions.

a. Business Model Fit: As the first three decades of the Internet took away certain scale benefits in some industries ( scale of manufacturing, scale of spending, scale of resources) while enabling other scale ( scale of data, scale of networks, scale of ideas) and removed the benefits of time, distance and information arbitrage, leading firms are seeking  to understand the implications of the decline of the scale of centralized control and the rise of the scale of individual talent among other shifts on their business models.

b. Organizational Design: In a world of unbundled work, distributed talent, unprecedented edge computing power and new trust and identity currencies how must they shape shift their firm, their partners, and other parts of the eco-system to ensure they can make the most of the new opportunities on the horizon.

c. Talent Investment: The firms with the access to the best talent in ways that allow them variable access to brain power and skills combined with superb reputations, ecosystems and plug and play interfaces with other firms are likely to be the ones that thrive. The top companies are working to find ways to enable cultures and processes that allow talent expanded freedoms to practice their skills, to fit the companies into the story of the talent lives versus fit the talent into the story of the company’s life and to keep growing skills, assets, and reputation. Companies will work for talent and talent will not work for companies.

Photograph by Anja Conrad 

Smart talent is seizing control of their future.

Talent recognizes that the future of work will be one where everyone is increasingly a gig worker like those work in entertainment (movies, theatre, music) or consulting (move from project to project from city to city based on the need for their expertise) as companies seek to manage their variable costs.

A gig mindset does not preclude long term careers at a firm and in fact smart firms by enabling career shapeshifting, flexible hours and investment in training are likely to extend the tenure of their best talent.

Smart talent will invest in four core behaviors to ensure they can rocket into the future.

1. Continuous learning: The half-life of much expertise is shorter and shorter, and talent will insist on access and invest in their own training and skill upgrading.

2. Building stellar reputations for competency, trust, and collaboration: In a plug and play world those who are skilled, are trusted and known to collaborate will thrive. The future will treat empty branding, the self-obsessive, and the friction filled drama kings and queens as viruses and route around them.

3. Generosity and investment in their networks: An individual will scale across companies, industries, and the world not by themselves but through the power of Web 3.0 networks, alliances of talent and reputation. To feed oneself one will need to fit the network. Trust to be trusted. Give to get. Help to get help.

4. Balance, unite and integrate left brain and right brain skills: The future requires and understanding of the concepts of science, math, and technology. It does not require one to be good at mathematics or know how to code but there is an underlying truth, fabric, and design to the future, and we must all understand the concepts. Everyone can and must understand these key elements if they are to thrive. If one must align with the force, one must understand the force. But that alone will not be enough. Top talent will also hone their creativity, their ability to empathize and to be vulnerable. The best talent will integrate math and magic, plumbing and poetry and spreadsheet with story.

The future begins every day.

We are all on a rocket ship to a new world.

Prepare for escape velocity from the containers and mindsets of the past.

Photographs by Anja Conrad (daughter of a long-time mentor Michael Conrad the former Global Chief Creative Officer of Leo Burnett)

Balance. Unite. Integrate

Art by  Benjamin Shine 

Successful leaders, teams and companies that endure over the long run seek to find balance, unity, and integration.

They work to balance opposing dynamics and points of view from how they invest for today versus tomorrow and how they compose leadership teams with differing points of view.

They strive to unite their organizations to work collaboratively to achieve common goals.

They recognize that in diversity there is strength, and it is important to integrate several perspectives and skill sets to succeed in an increasingly fast moving and complex world.

To balance, to unite and to integrate is difficult because it requires nuance, trade-offs, empathy, and communication skills. It is recognizing that there is rarely a silver bullet answer or simple and easy solution.

Art by  Benjamin Shine 

Balance: The Mandalorian and Lawrence of Arabia.

Between 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia and 2020’s The Mandalorian there is much in common including each being an innovative use of a new film technology. It was 70 MM wide screen for Lawrence of Arabia and high-definition streaming for The Mandalorian which brought Disney into the future.

But in world view they are completely different.

In Mandalorian we sense a force and a code best captured in the line “This is the way” repeated throughout the series. There is a code of conduct almost religious. A way of doing things handed down over time. A deterministic march forward.

In Lawrence of Arabia a key theme is of old ways and traditions being challenged best captured by the line “ Nothing is written”. The desert is empty, and the sands are wiped clean with the winds of change. The past is not an anchor, and one must write, sculpt, and invent the future.

Most individuals and firms must balance both the roots (history, legacy, anchored costs, reputation, provenance, rule of law and expectations) of “this is the way” with the wings (leaps of faith, casting of on a new journey, challenging the status quo) of “nothing is written”. We must balance roots and wings.

 Portfolio managers need to balance safety with risk to reach for returns while working to preserve capital.

Balancing is difficult but a focus on one extreme versus the other rarely allows for long term success.

Art by  Benjamin Shine 

Unite: The lessons of sports teams.

Regardless of the sport, the teams that win titles tend to share two characteristics.

1)    Talent:  they have a disproportionate share of great talent

2)    Unity:  they are passionately aligned and united to achieve a common goal

Often it is not the team with the best talent that wins but the one where the talent are passionately aligned and united either due to culture or great management.

Teams are not collected they are built and forged.

It takes time but once finished in the furnace and foundry of time and experience they operate at levels of performance and delivery that create a unique competitive advantage.

Similarly, companies win contracts and retain clients and take on external challenges where there is a glue of culture, purpose and values that ensure a gestalt (1+1=3) which sets them apart. People choose their partners with their hearts while they use numbers to justify their choice.

A leader can get elected or selected by dividing and conquering for a short while, but sustained legacy and success is usually forged through uniting and uplifting.

Unity is hard and harder still in polarizing times, but a divided house will most likely fall.

Integration: Judicious surrender to the force of opposing tendencies.

Art by  Benjamin Shine 

If balance is often about allocating between today and tomorrow and unity about aligning different perspectives and people, integration is blending these opposing forces and personalities in a way that works and delivers.

While it may seem difficult, we all do so as individuals since each of us integrate many identities.

F Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function”. When applied to companies we could write that first-rate companies are able to operate two business models at the same time, one optimized for today and one focused on creating tomorrow even if it eats today.

Today the big luxury brands are seeking to integrate aspiration ( specialness, history, limited quality, high price, cathedral like retail spaces) with access ( bringing in tomorrow’s buyers, reflect unique cultures, be available online)  and integrating them so the brand can combine these different product portfolios and go to market strategies without the underlying story and brand falling apart from its internal dichotomies.

The best always balance, unite and integrate.

Balance roots and wings.

Unite diverse talents and voices into a common culture.

Integrate multiple and often opposing approaches.

Benjamin Shine  art recommended by  Terri Bartlett

10 Forecasts for the Next Decade. Part 2: Looking Ahead

Illustration by  Olivia Waller

In 2010 the Economic Times of India published predictions for the next ten years.

Every one of them ended up being correct !

You can review them here: Ten Forecasts Part 1.

In this post a look ahead to the next 10 years.

Illustration by  Olivia Waller

The Four Forces.

There will be four critical unstoppable forces that will carve and sculpt the future.

1.Multi-Polar Globalization: Globalization is unstoppable (many of the big challenges are global from Climate Change, Covid-19, China, to Congestion of Supply Chain).  The hand wringing of some publications positing the decline of globalization are probably misguided. There is no doubt there are challenges to globalization and its flavor is changing from one that was dominated by the United States and Western Europe to one that will have many centers of influence including China and India and where strategic imperatives to ensure a steady supply of silicon chips and rare earths will impact the contours and landscape of how nations and companies navigate in the future.

2. Three Challenging Demographic Shifts: Three big demographic shifts of a) declining population, b) aging populations and c) significant differences in ethnic make-up and mindsets between young and old will challenge politicians and leaders of businesses. Most countries except for the continent of Africa have begun to go into population decline. And most Western countries and now China due to its one child policy are grappling with more and more seniors supported by fewer workers challenging everything from healthcare to financial support. In the US 10,000 people turn 65 every day and despite the fixation of marketers on the young the money is with those over 50. In the US next year, the country will turn multi-ethnic majority under 18 years old while those over 50 are dominantly Caucasian. It is not just the ethnic make-up but perspectives on social and economic issues are radically different than in past decades. And this generational gap is widespread across the world.

3.  The Third Connected Age: In 1993 we entered The First Connected Age with the advent of the World Wide Web where we all connected to discover (search) and transact (e-commerce). In 2007 we expanded into The Second Connected Age where we were connected all the time (mobile) and connected to everybody (social). This decade will be The Third Connected Age where data will connect to data (AI), we will connect in new ways (Voice, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality), we will have much faster connections (5G) and far more powerful computing (Next generation Cloud).

4. Covid-19 Shock: The fault lines of Covid-19 impact will have long lasting impact on the terrain of the future. When every single person in the entire world goes through a financial, health and social crisis that has already lasted for nearly two years and exposed new forms of fragility and resilience in everything from personal relationships to business operations to social structures many of its reverberations will cascade into the future.

Each of these forces individually are deep, wide and strong but together they will shape shift the next decade so that not only are we going to see change but a quantum rate of change!

Illustration by  Olivia Waller

Ten Predictions.

1. New models of governance emerge: Most institutions at the national and international level were designed over five decades ago post World-War 2.  The future will not fit in the organizations and governance of the past where we need to grapple with AI Ethics, Climate Change, Gene Technology, Data Privacy, an African-Asian future and Space Junk/Wars and much more. We needed new rules for an Industrial Age since the rules of an Agricultural Age were no longer relevant. Similarly, the legal and institutional frameworks of the past cannot get us into the future.

2. A workplace revolution: Even before Covid-19 the forces of technology, globalization and demographic shifts were challenging the ways companies were designed and run from the nature of work to the where and when work was done. The challenges that most managers face in getting people to return to the office is a symptom of a much deeper challenge which is their firms may not be designed for the reality of the future.  In a world of cloud-based computing, where companies are looking for agility, flexible costs and diverse talent and where most networking and relationship building and brainstorming takes place at off-sites, events and bars/restaurants which knowledge worker company starting in 2022 would ask people to return to offices x days a week?  Human interaction is often important but who said it must happen in the office? The office is going to be a museum where the artifacts of the company’s history, some senior curators and some training programs occur as part of a distributed unbundled workplace with most value and time being created in third places, events and in home offices.

Illustration by  Olivia Waller

3. Saving capitalism from the capitalists: Nearly twenty years ago in 2003 two University of Chicago Business School professors (the bastion of free markets)  wrote a prescient book with the title Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists where they noted:

a) The free market is the form of economic organization most beneficial to human society and for improving the human condition.

b) Free markets can flourish over the long run only when government plays a visible role in determining the rules that govern the market and supporting it with the proper infrastructure.

c) Government, however, is subject to influence by organized private interests

d) Incumbent private interests, therefore, may be able to leverage the power of governmental regulation to protect their own economic position at the expense of the public interest by repressing the same free market through which they originally achieved success.

e) Thus, society must act to "save capitalism from the capitalists"—i.e., take appropriate steps to protect the free market from powerful private interests who would seek to impede the efficient function of free markets, entrench themselves, and thereby reduce the overall level of economic opportunity in society.

Today everyone from the biggest investor in the world which is the Black Rock Group to CEO’s speak of purpose and multi-stakeholder capitalism. They do so because they realize that there is a growing backlash against the lobbying efforts of leading firms, the inability of society to reign in or understand the power of technology firms and many other factors leading to a questioning of the current system including a significant move towards socialism among youth.

Whether it be China’s dramatic moves against their billionaire class, a newly empowered and expert driven FTC and FCC in the Unites States or the fury of the disenfranchised indicates that a great re-setting will occur as we move into the future.

4. Gene therapy/bio-tech miracles: Today while we still grapple with Covid-19, life is much better for billions (almost 3 billion people have been vaccinated) because of break-through in vaccine development. The combination of the technologies of The Third Connected Age along with advances in gene-therapy and biotechnology is likely to lead to the greatest advances in health care which may not only be effective but increasingly efficient and therefore available to everyone in the world. There is a good likelihood that many types of cancers may become like AIDS which is not curable but controllable. These technologies might leap from the field of health care to also help in everything from food production to helping fight climate change.

Illustration by  Olivia Waller

5. A new financial/trading eco-system: Today Square, PayPal, Coinbase are but three of a myriad number of massively valuable and fast-growing companies putting pressure on the large banks, credit card and marketplaces. We are in the early innings of a de-centralized, democratized and destructive creation phase that is completely aligned with the four forces of multi-polar globalization, three demographic shifts, The Third Connected Age and a questioning of everything mindset post Covid-19. Combine this with new marketplaces from Shopify to Etsy to StockX and access ramps to monetize creativity from Tik-Tok to Substack and fewer and fewer people are looking to the leaders of Wall Street or the City for permission or access or direction on the future of finance.  

6. A renaissance in education: Learning has never been as important due to the massive increase in knowledge, the need for re-training in a world buffeted by change and the increased returns to talent when combined with technology. Covid-19 revealed both the positives and negatives of the current educational infrastructure often illustrating that education has become a luxury brand versus an empowering and enabling platform which in many ways now adds to versus eradicates inequality and where more is spent on administration and buildings and other cocktail party and “badging” puffery than on teaching. From online companies like Coursera, to Khan Academy, to companies like Google providing credentials and training to a Chinese crack down on expensive private tuition at companies like TAL and New Oriental Education there is a call for a renaissance in education especially continuing and constant training where careers last 50 years and companies last 15! Companies and countries will win on the software called the brains of their citizens. It will be key to ensure they are upgraded all the time!

Illustration by  Olivia Waller

7. The Automobile Industry will be at the vanguard of future and is an industry to watch: Along with healthcare, finance and education the auto industry looms large in most countries of the world and is one that we will see the future becoming tangible first. Already Uber and Tesla have re-invented mobility. China has become the world’s largest auto market and from impacting the future of how a Mercedes is designed is building cities optimized for self-driving cars.  Every major auto-company is sprinting into the future by re-tooling, re-thinking and re-imagining for an electric, semi-self-driving future as they become software companies and innovators in energy, safety and on the go entertainment and education. Terry Kawaja shared an incredible insight that the place the first true meta-verse will happen will be inside automobiles where we already have screens, voice, augmented reality, navigation and next generation entertainment systems. We do not have to put on a helmet or be isolated to live in a true blend of the real and augmented and virtual worlds.

8. Trust particularly in the areas of data, identity and privacy will become a key currency for the future of everything including Brands: Many of the big companies we rely on today for our communications and entertainment from Facebook to Google to Amazon to many others were built as Advertising Operating Systems (AOS) focused on consumers. However, because of their utility they become Society Operating Systems (SOS) but the companies were not set up to think about Citizens. Now as we enter the Third Connected Age in a world of AI, Voice, AR and VR these and other platforms could become Life Operating Systems (LOS) and we will wonder who we can trust. A company? The Government? A neutral third party? Or maybe nobody but ourselves. Many companies and leaders including Tim Berners Lee the founder of the World Wide Web who has set Inrupt, that will use PODS (personal online data stores) so we can control and monetize our own data. This is one of many companies and approaches using a wide range of technologies including the block chain to ensure that in our future lives we are not animals in a zoo of some walled garden where we are fed a medley of sugary or enraging distractions while our time and wealth are harvested and milked like cow udders.

Illustration by  Olivia Waller

9. Creativity will be the key differentiator and all of us can and will be creators: Today in the US, 50 million individuals call themselves creators and many of us want to make, to build, to express. We want to create and distribute and often monetize our work. Before Squid Games took over Netflix their most popular shows were by Tik-Tok stars who earned these breaks on the strength of their talent and followings. We are living a world where Kylie Jenner has more Instagram interactions than the total combined viewership for the Superbowl, the Oscars and the Emmy’s. Today we have a creative and distribution studio on our phones and a worldwide canvas to paint on amidst a plethora of platforms and niche sites. Each one of us are creators since as Joan Didion reminds us we tell ourselves stories in order to live. Some of us may create through code, others building companies, others creating art and stories, designing shoes, podcasting or building and creating our imagined lives. In the end the technology is the plumbing and the creativity the poetry of our lives and more people in more places will be more enabled to be themselves and grow than ever before.

10. Enlightenment and connection will have greater market share than enragement and polarization: This may be as much hope as prediction but while there are significant challenges and issues, let us not forget that despite what the television screens and our doom scrolling may want us to believe, globally a greater number of people are more healthy and better off today than every before. With new advances in every form of science, with lower cost technologies and tools that allow more and more people to get connected and learn and grow and question, leaders all over are increasingly aware that the drums of change are beating in the blood stream of society and they will need to adapt or be overcome by a new wave of talent, imagination and ideas.

Ten Forecasts for the Next Decade. Part 1: Looking Back

Artwork by  Gabriel Isak.

Next week’s post will attempt to identify the key trends for the decade ahead.

This week looks back at predictions made for this past decade.

In 2010 the Economic Times of India (India’s Wall Street Journal) asked me to look ahead the next decade and identify ten key trends.

This past week a decade and a year later I re-read the article and was surprised to find not only that many of the forecasts did occur but that most of them would be ones that one might predict for the future today.

So, is the world really changing fast or is it that it is moving slowly, and we humans and organizations are adapting even slower and therefore feel the speed of change?

Artwork by  Gabriel Isak.

Here are 10 predictions for the decade ahead written in January 2010…

Top 10 Consumer Trends for the Decade Ahead (The Economic Times of India)

1. Anxiety for Authenticity

If there is one overwhelming trend globally after the financial folks turned out to be wanting and everyone from Bernie Madoff to many others were found to be posers, there is a great deal of skepticism among consumers as to what is fake and what is real. In such a world marketers must ensure that they, their actions, and their spokespeople are the real deals. There is a huge premium for authentic, real, and dependable in a world gone crazy and fake.

2. Celebration of Caution

Risk is questionable. The days of spending more than one earns, and deep leverage seem to be behind us at least in an extreme form. The people with savings (China and India among others) now seem to have the high moral ground over those who have been prolific in spending.  Brands must recognize this resetting and be nuanced in their celebration of consumption.

Artwork by  Gabriel Isak.

3. Mobility

Finally, the platform of the future appears to be clear, and it will be mobility. With over 2 billion phones we are on the cusp of a dramatic change in communications. Due to the rising affordability of smart phones, we can anticipate that between Blackberry, Google Android, Nokia Ovi and Apple iPhone the smart phone revolution will really take off in 2010 and within three years most "phones" will be mobile computers that combine real time data, social network, and highly empowering and entertaining applications.

4. Real Time Social Platforms

SMS, which is still the worlds most used communication medium, is a social platform. But with 350 million Facebook Users, tens of millions Twitter users and a range of local and international innovations (Google real time search) that combine real time and social we are going to see an explosion in the impact of both word of mouth and real time information. For instance, in many ways the best way to keep abreast of the 11/9 terror in Mumbai was twitter and real time NDTV live streams. Expect every media company and consumer brand to invest in real time listening and response in 2010.

Artwork by  Gabriel Isak.

5. The Rise of The Post Digital World

The world is going increasingly digital but a) most media and marketing is analog and b) people are analog. Thus, it is wrong to become overly hysterical even in advanced digital penetration countries by screaming about "digital at the core"! What is important is people and their needs and passions at the core and most of us combine the real and virtual worlds in ways that allow us to connect, save money and time and pursue our passions. We use mobile tools to have real world meetings and we enhance real world occasions with digital augmentation. Just like Wal-Mart stores are paying a lot of attention to digital capabilities one can expect digital companies like Amazon to have analog or real-world presence. Today besides Kindle you will see Amazon stores and maybe even bookstores just like Apple has its online store and its real stores.

6. Youth Uprising

India is unique among major nations in having a demographic dividend with most of its population under 25. But we expect all over the world including in the nations that are aging fast (Japan and Western Europe and possibly China with it’s one child policy), a combination of technology, dismay with the world and inauthentic doings of the old and just plain "fed-upness" to see a generational shift. The times they are a changing as Bob Dylan sang. Marketers must take the rise of youth into account, but these are not the youth of yesteryear but people who are increasingly committed to a better world. They are folks that care about sustainability, community and leaving things better than they found it. This is not just about sex and money.

Artwork by  Gabriel Isak.

7. Purpose Driven Marketing

The hardest question a brand, a marketer and a person will have to answer is " What do you stand for?" or " What is your purpose"? My sister company Leo Burnett has a great insight which notes that the increasingly in the future you will be judged by what you do and not what you say or as Leo states "Acts not Ads".  We anticipate Brands and marketers will have to show and not tell and one of the filters they will be evaluated by are by their actions and how they improve society.

8. Environment

Sustainability and environment will become a key factor in how consumers evaluate brands and begin to calibrate their own behavior. Brands will need to understand their carbon footprints and be able to explain how they are being proactive about cleaning up. This will also be a "have" vs. "have-not" or rather a "why are you lecturing us you western folks?" emotion that will find itself into the nuance of marketing.

Artwork by  Gabriel Isak.

9. Mongrelization

Okay this is not a real word but more powerful than globalization, which has already happened, will be mongrelization where cultures and capabilities from different nations, expertise and industries will meld and blend. Part of this will be due to global companies like Google, Samsung, Infosys, Lever and Procter. It will also come about as Reliance invests in DreamWorks and Bollywood and Hollywood give birth to something new. A huge impact of technology is the ability to share ideas and create new value.

10. Surprise

Less than four years ago the following did not exist. Facebook, Twitter, Amazon Kindle, Apple iPhone and App Store, Mumbai Terror, The Financial Meltdown, A Black American President... The most important thing about the future is to be nimble and flexible to react to the only thing that is certain among all my predictions.

The future will surprise!

Next week will share what may lie ahead…

Impact!

Roy Lichtenstein

Many want to have an impact, to make a difference, to be seen and to be heard.

One can have an impact and stand out in ways that generates attention but not admiration.

What can we learn from people who make an impact in ways that generate goodwill?

Outcomes. Scale. Iteration.

Three behaviors are commonly seen in impactful people we want to be like.

a) Outcomes: They focus. They focus on outcomes versus process. Deliverables vs drama.

b) Scale: They find ways to have a far greater radius of impact by projecting far and wide.

c) Iteration: They continuously improve and use time as an edge.

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Alexander Calder

Outcomes.

Spend time one focusing on one or more of three outcomes.

a) Help make someone or something better: Impactful people we admire tend to be generous and kind. They give, share, teach, share, show and help grow an idea, a person or firm.

b) Grow skills: Practice craft. Build muscle. Learn.

c) Create / Immerse themselves in tattoo experiences: If the core of existence is experiences, impactful people create, participate, and enable in experiences that give them or others joy and ideally create tattoos in the mind by being memorable.

If one is not growing others or oneself or having an experience that is joyful or pleasant, why are we doing what we do?

Clearly in many cases we spend time on things that are difficult and unpleasant because of illness, bad luck, a lack of opportunities, or the constraints of a job.

With a little luck and help over time we need to find time to grow from these challenges, find ways to help others and to lessen the negatives and look on the optimistic side of things to have an impact.

Alexander Calder

Scale.

Successful people find ways to scale in many ways of which the three most powerful levers are those of stories, talent, and technology.

a)  Stories: Stories scale. They pass from person to person. They echo across time and space. Learn to be a good storyteller and your ability to blend imagination, metaphor and insight will ripple and reverberate.

b) Talent: A powerful way to scale is through talent. By building teams and leveraging the impact of others and their skills. By teaching and growing talent, a person scales and grows through other people’s growth.

c) Technology: Today technology allows a professor teaching a class on Happiness at Yale or Justice at Harvard to share their knowledge with worldwide audiences. Modern platforms, cloud computing, powerful and democratized technologies like the mobile phone enables a person at home using Tik-Tok to end up with a top-rated television special on Netflix seen all around the world.

Embrace stories.

Surround yourself with and channel through talent.

Leverage technology.

Alexander Calder

Iteration.

The most impactful people use time as a weapon in three ways.

a)  Only Asset: They realize it is the only real asset since it the one they cannot make or buy more of. If someone is wasting their time or trying to buy it for cheap the realize they are paying with their lives and they walk away as soon as they can.

b) Continuous learning: They constantly learn by reflecting on what has gone before and their experiences to improve and grow. They realize it is not experiences themselves but reflecting on experience that one grows from. Many look back at each day, celebrating what worked and try to understand from the mistakes and missteps that were made.

c)  Sequencing: They sequence their days and schedule to do the things that matter the most first before they lose control of their calendars and fall into the pincers of the urgent or the cacophony of distractions and digital stream where activity is confused with productivity.

In the end there is only time and how we spend our days is how we spend our lives

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