Jacob Morgan's Blog, page 30

Introducing The Future of Work Podcast

I’m very excited to announce that we are launching a weekly podcast dedicated to exploring themes, ideas, and concepts related to the future of work. Each podcast will be around 45 mins to one hour in length and will tackle a specific theme such as millennials, collaboration, smart cities, privacy, the internet of things, globalization, and what have you. Each episode will also feature a guest who will share their ideas and advice on the theme we will be exploring. My hope for this podcast is to provide much needed educational and informative content around the future of work. This is a huge topic with lots of interesting things to explore! I’m open to any suggestions and ideas that you may have for this as well.

To make it even more bad-ass I’m going to be including music from one of my favorite artists, Ronald Jenkees in each episode!

You will be able to find all episodes of the podcast on the Podcast page and the first episode is already live for you to check out, it features Dan Schawbel and we talk about millennials and their impact in the workplace and on the world in general.

If you are interested in the future of work then I definitely encourage you to subscribe to the podcast, you can do in two ways:

Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes

Click Here to Subscribe via RSS Feed (non-iTunes feed)

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The Future of Work Podcast, Episode 1: Dan Schawbel – Millennials in the Workplace

http://traffic.libsyn.com/futureofworkpodcast/completed_Dan_Podcast.mp3

 

Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes

Click Here to Subscribe via RSS Feed (non-iTunes feed)

What this episode is about and why you should care

Millennials are one of the five trends impacting the future of work, the others are: globalization, technology, new behaviors, and mobility. However there’s always a lot of focus placed on millennials which is why I picked this topic to start with for episode 1.

This is the largest generation to ever exist and there is plenty of discussion going on around whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing. Some people say that millennials are littler narcissists and describe them as the “me, me, me generation.” Others, are more optimistic and they realize the importance and opportunity that millennials can bring to the workforce.

To help us unpack millennials and everything we need to know about them I spoke with Dan Schawbel. Dan is a New York Times best-selling author of several books including Me 2.0 and his more recent book Promote Yourself. Dan also runs a company called Millennial Branding, a Generation Y research and consulting firm.

The one stat you need to know

“By 2020, 50% of the workforce is expected to be comprised of millennials and by 2025 that number is expected to be 75% of the workforce.”

What you will learn in this episode

Why millennials are having such a big impact in the workplace and the world in general
Attracting and retaining millennials at your organization
Introducing generation Z (the next generation after millennials)
How you should work with and manage millennials
Facing the new reality of decreased employee tenure
Dan’s early years as a college student to his pursuit for a writing career
How technology is impacting the “talent war”
The “free-agent” mentality that is impacting all generations in the workplace
What organizations need to do to evolve their corporate culture for the future of work
Why being self-sufficient is so critical for younger generations
Workplace flexibility and the myth that only millennials want it
Dan’s advice for managers working with millennials
Dan’s advice for millennials in the workforce

Links from the episode:

Dan’s website where you can connect with him Millennial Branding

Dan’s book on Amazon Promote Yourself 

Dan’s other book on Amazon Me 2.0 (Amazon)

 

 

 

 

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Pre-Order My New Book And Get Tons of Valuable Bonuses!

The Future of Work is coming out on September 2 and I’m giving away a ton of cool stuff to anyone that pre-orders a hardcover copy of my book before that date. The orders must be shipped in the United States and it must be a hardcover copy of the book! My reasoning is that I’m going to provide as much value as I can with these free bonuses and hopefully you will return the favor by ordering a copy of my book, sound fair? You will need to email me proof of purchase (a screenshot is fine) at “fowreceipts@gmail.com” and then I will send you the bonuses via email (in the next 1-2 weeks).

So here’s what you get if you pre-order a hardcover version of my book by Sept 2:

An Ebook I just wrote with the SVP of Engineering and Product at Elance-Odesk called: Hire Fast & Build Things: How to recruit and manage a top-notch team of distributed engineers (due out soon!); a great guide for anyone looking to build a distributed team (engineers or not)
20 Quotes to Challenge Convention Around the Future of Work which will be put together as either a PDF or PPT
The original book outline I put together for The Future of Work which is very different than the finished product
A proposal template that you can use when writing your own book, it’s based off of what most major publishers use
Seven versions of the original book cover that didn’t make the cut
The document I sent out to companies and executives to help secure their endorsements and features
The Official Guide to The Future of Work, which features insights and images from the book
Things You Need to Know About Writing a Book That Nobody Else Will Tell You!  This will be either a PDF or PPT which features 15+ different pieces of advice
Proposal guidelines and helpful tips for your book proposal from Wiley, this will be a word doc or PDF

If you buy 10+ copies I’ll gladly spend 30 mins on the phone with you to give you advice on writing your book (or to talk to you about anything related to the future of work).

I’m also heavily discounting and in some cases completely waiving my speaking fees for companies that order bulk copies of my book, this applies to either webinars or in-person engagements. You can email be directly to discuss this, Jacob@ChessMediaGroup.com. The quantity usually starts at upwards of 500 copies.

I’m trying to provide as much a valuable content as I can and I may even add things to this list as I think of them. You get all of this just for ordering a hardcover copy of my book which is less than $20 online, hopefully you consider that to be a good deal!

So just to recap, pre-order a hardcover copy of the book from one of the places below (or any other book retailer) by Sept 2 and email me proof of purchase at “fowreceipts@gmail.com” and I’ll send you the bonuses via email, it’s that simple!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Booksamillion 

 

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New Research from Pew on AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs

There’s an ongoing debate around whether technology, AI, and Robotics will displace more jobs than it creates or create more jobs than it displaces. The latest research from Pew tries to help answer that question by surveying around 1,900 experts. Not surprisingly the results were close. 48% say scenario one is more likely (more jobs replaced than created by 2025) and 52% say scenario two is more likely (more jobs created than replaced by 2025).

The report broke down key themes around which to be hopeful and key themes around reasons to be concerned.

Reasons to be hopeful

Advances in technology may displace certain types of work, but historically they have been a net creator of jobs.
We will adapt to these changes by inventing entirely new types of work, and by taking advantage of uniquely human capabilities.
Technology will free us from day-to-day drudgery, and allow us to define our relationship with “work” in a more positive and socially beneficial way.
Ultimately, we as a society control our own destiny through the choices we make.

Key themes: reasons to be concerned

Impacts from automation have thus far impacted mostly blue-collar employment; the coming wave of innovation threatens to upend white-collar work as well.
Certain highly-skilled workers will succeed wildly in this new environment—but far more may be displaced into lower paying service industry jobs at best, or permanent unemployment at worst.
Our educational system is not adequately preparing us for work of the future, and our political and economic institutions are poorly equipped to handle these hard choices.

You can read through the whole report or download a pdf version by visiting Pew research.

I’m curious to hear what you think. Will technology create more jobs than it replaces or vice versa?

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How a 300,000 Person Company is Becoming a Start-Up

A few months ago I created a Youtube video where I talked about the paradox of organizations which is as follows. Business leaders know that as their organization’s grow they increase in complexity and decrease in speed and agility, however these same business leaders are constantly focusing on growth. So the paradox is how do you create an organization that can continue to grow while simultaneously focusing on staying “small,” nimble, agile, and adaptable?

General Electric (GE), the 300,000 person conglomerate is attempting to tackle this challenge head on by tacking a page right out of the start-up world. GE brought in Eric Ries, the creator of The Lean Startup to help change how they operate. The new approach is being called FastWorks and is being rolled out to the entire company.

Take a look at the image below (from Businessweek) to see how this works, you can also read the full article that they wrote up about this.

When a company like GE makes such a drastic change then clearly something is happening. Today the rate of change in the world of work (and in the world in general) is increasing at a more rapid rate which places the advantage of adaptation squarely in the hands of  new, smaller, disruptive incumbents that tend to have less bureaucracy, complexity, legacy technologies, and sluggishness.

In my upcoming book on the future of work I spend some time talking about how organizations have gotten too large and that moving forward we are going to become much more distributed entities with smaller teams and more decentralized decision making. For organizations to continue to grow and operate in their current models is just not realistic, scalable, or practical. We can expect to see other companies follow in GE’s footsteps and place a growing emphasis on intrapreneurs, a topic which will I spend more time exploring later.

 

 

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I Need Your Help to Make “The Future of Work” a Best Seller!

I’ve spent over the past half decade writing about and exploring the future of work. If you have found the content valuable or interesting I’d certainly love it and appreciate it if you pre-order a copy of my upcoming book (Sept 2), “The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization.” The book took around five months to write and features a completely new approach for looking at the future of work based on specific principles for employees, managers, and organizations. Readers will find plenty of examples, stories, unique visuals, and great stats which all come together to create what I think is a very compelling book focused on challenging convention around how we work, lead, and build companies. I really put a lot of time and effort into creating something that I think you will find both interesting and valuable!

Pre-orders are VERY helpful for authors who are trying to make any best-seller lists which is why I’m writing this up now. Get a copy for yourself, one for your boss, your colleagues, or even for your kids who are not even in the workforce yet!  If you have a blog, newsletter, podcast, or anything else, I’m happy to write something or contribute something to your site. If you’re able to get the book to me I’m also happy to sign it for you.

For people/companies that are interested in ordering bulk copies of the book I’m happy to explore doing something together such as a webinar, in-person session, Q&A, video, or anything else that you might think of.

If you need some convincing for why you should get the book, check out what these business leaders said about The Future of Work:

“Morgan has written a book to help you understand how the world of work is changing, why it’s changing, and what you need to do about it. The Future of Work inspires you to rethink how employees work, how managers lead, and how organizations are structured.”

-Gary Hamel

“The Future of Work provides valuable insights that will help organizations seize opportunities in this rapidly changing landscape, transforming a possible vulnerability into a competitive strength.”

-John Veihmeyer, Global Chairman of KPMG

To be future-ready, companies need to embrace a new type of culture that empowers employees to find innovative ways to drive impact. The Future of Work provides a helpful roadmap to engage the workforce of a new generation.

-Brad Smith, President and CEO, Intuit

“Jacob Morgan cracks the code on the biggest mystery in the workplace: what it takes to build and sustain a new generation of loyal, engaged and inspired colleagues. It’s impossible to read this book and not see the great risks of the status quo.”

-Bill McDermott, CEO, SAP

The book is available through all major outlets including:

Amazon Hardcover

Amazon Kindle

Barnes & Noble

Booksamillion

 

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How Collaborative is Your Organization Really? Take This Test to Find Out!

Collaboration continues to be a top priority for many companies around the world and as we move towards a world where change and disruption happen at an increasing pace, collaboration becomes even more important. Still, saying you want to create a collaborative organization vs actually doing it are two different things. Two years ago I wrote, The Collaborative Organization, which is still just as relevant today as it was then.

When we launched the FOW Community a few weeks ago we also introduced a few public facing tools that anyone can access. One of these tools is a collaboration quotient test. This “test” allows anyone to answer a series of questions to see where their organization lies in a five stage collaboration maturity model (which was first introduced in my book). It’s a fun and easy way to get a sense of where you are currently and what you need to do to advance.

I find that most organizations are somewhere around “exploratory” or “defined” with a few organizations being more advanced. Take the collaboration test to see where you stand!

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Privacy is Dead and We Killed it

Privacy…everyone keeps talking about it and apparently everyone is concerned with it, but does it matter? I recently watched the documentary, “Terms and Conditions may Apply,” which provides a fascinating look at how organizations such as Facebook, Google, Apple, and others have changed the way they look at and approach privacy. After watching the movie it had me wondering, “does privacy even matter anymore?”

Most of use Facebook, have iPhones, use Twitter, search on Google, and use the hundreds of other tools and platforms on the web. All of these companies have “terms and conditions” documents that pretty much none of us read. In effect everyone that uses these technologies has signed away their privacy yet we still see people saying that they want more privacy. What gives? I think we’ve clearly reached a point in today’s world where privacy is pretty much a lost cause. Our information is already out there and regardless of how hard we scream that we want it back or want it to be secure, it’s not going to happen…ever. If anything we are seeing a shift towards more openness, more transparency, and less privacy.

Most people (in my opinion) don’t event know what information they are giving up or to whom. For example, in their recent Privacy Index, EMC found that 51% of respondents were not willing to give up their personal information for a better experience (27% were), however, how many of these people realize that they are already doing this multiple times over every single day? In fact it’s safe to say that if you want privacy then you probably shouldn’t be using the internet. It doesn’t appear that businesses or governments are going to protect us either. I’m not quite sure how we got to this point, one minute I was filling out my profile to join Facebook and the next minute some company I’ve never heard of has hundreds of data points on me.

Are we too far over the line to head back to the other side? Is it even possible to do so?

I’ve just talked about social media data above but what about your health records, browsing habits, purchases, financial data, or employment information? Although some of these forms of data might be considered to be more secure than others many social media users are actually publicly sharing this information online on their Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Instagram photos, Foursquare check-ins, Linkedin profiles, or anywhere else you can think of. So it’s not just the fact that companies have information about us that we don’t know they are collecting it’s about the fact that we are opting in to this lack of privacy and in many case go above that by actually purposefully sharing private information.

It seems like going forward we have two choices. We can either accept that privacy is dead and that we now live in an open world or we can challenge this notion and continue to fight for privacy. The second option seems to be a bit of a paradox though. We want more security and more privacy but at the same time we want:

our corporations to be more open and transparent
to use social technologies without we don’t want being able to see our information
to be able to buy and use free products and services without giving up anything in return
to opt into using things like Google and itunes without reading the terms and conditions agreements, assuming that they have our best interest in mind

What’s scary is that we’ve gotten to a point where many of the things we do and the tools we use are such a big part of our lives that we HAVE to use them today. Are you really going to delete your Facebook account, stop using Google, no longer buy products online, or ditch your iphone? No, you’re not because everyone else that you know on this planet is using those same things as well.

So is privacy dead? It sure seems that way, and we are the ones who killed it without even knowing it.

 

 

 

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The Internet of Things is Coming to a Store Near You!

If you recall, the internet of things is about connecting pretty much anything with an on and off switch whether it a car, a vacuum cleaner, a jet engine, or a toaster. The internet of things is clearly an important area for businesses but what about for the average consumer? Companies around the world such as Whirlpool, Samsung, and others are already creating smart appliances which allow anyone to walk into a store and buy a connected device.

Recently this got kicked up a notch as now both Home Depot and Lowe’s have launched their own kits to allow people to create smart homes with smart devices. Home Depot has something called “Wink” and looking at their list of supported products you will find everything from lights and irrigation controllers to locks and air conditioners. Wink was developed by Quirky, an invention company based in NYC. Lowe’s has their own product called Iris which also features a similar array of products that any consumer can purchase and then connect.

The internet of things is only going to get more mainstream from here and in the very near future you can expect to find devices and appliances of this kind at Target, Walgreen’s, Walmart, and pretty much any other major retail chain. As I’ve said many times, “anything that can be connected WILL be connected.” The ease of doing so increases every day until before you know it we will all be using connected devices and living in “smart homes.”

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Which Brands Will Disappear in 2015 and Why?

The folks over at 24/7 Wall St. put together an interesting list of predictions around companies that are going to disappear in 2015. Their major criteria used for evaluation were:

Declining sales and losses;
Disclosures by the parent of the brand that it might go out of business;
Rising costs that are unlikely to be recouped through higher prices;
Companies that are sold;
Companies that go into bankruptcy;
Companies that have lost the great majority of their customers
Operations with withering market share.

Before reading the list below take a moment and think about which companies YOU think will go out of business next year, then you compare your answers with the ones below.

Here are the predictions from 24/7 Wall St. You will find the name of the company followed by “why” they are expected to disappear in 2015.

Lulumelon

Why?

Net income collapsed from $47 million to $19 million
Big issue around their pants being see-through
CEO Christine Day left the company
Founder and chairman stepped down
Stock down 50% from peak in June 2013

DirectTV

Why?

Likely acquisition by AT&T

Hillshire Brands (Ballpark Hotdogs & Jimmy Dean Sausages)

Why?

Acquisition by Tyson Foods

Zynga

Why?

Daily active users in Q1 2014 down 50% to 28 million
Lost $61 million in Q1
Stock down by 45%

Alaska Air

Why?

Potential acquisition by Delta
One of the few remaining independent airlines left

Russel Stover (third largest candy maker in America)

Why?

Rumored Hershey acquisition but could be someone else

Shutterfly

Why?

Attractive acquisition target
Shares down 18% over past 12 months
Modest 2.55 million customers in first quarter of 2014

Time Warner Cable

Why?

Comcast acquisition pending government approval

Blackberry

Why?

In 2008 had almost 20% of global smartphone market now below 1%
Bad sales of recent two new phones: Z10 and Q10
Revenue dropped $966 million in most recently reported quarter

Aeropostale

Why?

Revenue fell 12% in most recent quarter to $396 million
Same-store-sales down 13%
Losses increases from $12 million to $77 million
Stock price down 85% in last five years
Ended Q1 with only $24.5 million in cash, lowest since 2000

So there you have it, all of these companies are expected to disappear sometime next year and all of them have become known brands in their respective industries. Do you have any other companies you would add to the list, if so why?

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