What is your moat?

Posted by mattpoy on December 13, 2017 Posted in Future of Technology, Future of Work, Ideas Tagged Future of work, Future Technology, Ideas

I read an insightful interview with an executive from a major player in hotels where he discussed the future of the industry and his organisation’s “moat.”

When you think about a moat, you immediately see protection and defence, and with so much change happening around us, and accelerating in many ways, we all need to consider what it is that differentiates, but also protects, our company and service, to such a degree that we can actually visualise our place in the market for years ahead?

Today, most companies can’t.

You may hate gravity, but gravity doesn’t care

Posted by mattpoy on November 22, 2017November 22, 2017 Posted in Big Data, Future of Technology, Future of Work, Marketing, Technology Tagged Future of work, Future Technology, Marketing

Let’s open with a great quote from Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen:

“You may hate gravity, but gravity doesn’t care. Substitute gravity with cloud computing, big data, mobility, or social.”

However you challenge and dispute it, technology-led change is happening all around us. I recognise how hard it is to adjust decades-old practices and how different these may be compared to traditional methods of marketing and communication, but it isn’t about to slow down or go back to how it used to be. The transformation is ongoing, it will lead us down its own path, and like many the job roles in future, we are not quite sure where it will end up, because a lot of it has yet to be invented.

But we must take note, and here is a quick story to make the point:

A Chinese consumer spends millions each year in Beijing and is recognised across the city for her taste in luxury goods, lifestyle and events. She flies to Europe on business, takes her morning exercise and whilst in her running gear, pops into a designer store (of which she is a top 5 customer back in Beijing). She is ignored because she is not recognised and she leaves, unhappy. This is not acceptable. Because of the customer service expectation that the likes of Amazon, Netflix and others have bestowed on us, we expect the shopping experience to be highly personalised.

Data is the new currency. People will gladly share their data but in exchange they want value (however your product or service might define it). You have to recognise every customer, regardless of where they are and when they move across the world, and provide them a unique experience utilising the new technology.

Think of the impact if you don’t.

Humans turning robotic – robots becoming human

Posted by mattpoy on October 23, 2017October 23, 2017 Posted in CompTIA, Future of Technology, Future of Work, People Skills Talent, Skills, Technology Tagged CompTIA, Future of work, Future Technology, People, Skills

I enjoyed being part of an engaging panel session at the CompTIA Annual Member & Partner Conference in London where we talked about skills and employability, and how employers continue to struggle to find the people to meet their needs.

Well how about the baby boomers (born 1946-1964) and Generation X (born 1965-1976)? We have the time, wherewithal and the experience, and more often than not the resilience to compete. That determination is manifesting itself by standing our ground – we won’t give in easily, to age or to retirement plus we can handle the demands placed on us.

I suppose technology isn’t helping us, but is it really tech’s fault? Haven’t we brought this on ourselves? Are we just obsessed with being online and staying connected for more and more hours throughout the day, waking at 4am for a sneak peek at email and responding to the last of the day’s messages with drooping eyelids 20 hours later? Moreover, if you are in a business that covers all time-zones of the world, does it ever stop?

We need to remind ourselves what humans are good at and take a good look at the work and roles that machines cannot do as well as humans in future. We need to reassert and take control, yet isn’t it ironic that we have become robotic in automating our lives, at precisely the time that robots endeavour to become more human.

People are our biggest problem

Posted by mattpoy on October 3, 2017October 3, 2017 Posted in Future of Technology, Future of Work, People, People Skills Talent, Skills Tagged Future of work, Future Technology, Investment in people, People, Skills

A lot is being written about robotics and the impact on the workplace, as well as the form and structure of tomorrow’s workforce.

I think we are all in agreement that technology is increasing the pace of innovation and forcing us to think differently: be more customer centric, open via multiple channels to customers, and collaborate more and differently. But what underpins this is that it is always people that companies need to drive that change – exceptional, creative people.

However placing an even greater responsibility on people means the pendulum can quickly swing from people as our greatest asset to our biggest problem. My Pearson colleague Andy Stockinger, Manager of our Product Strategy Team and I presented this at the eATP conference last week. Technology is impacting how we work and disrupting old ways of doing business, so people have to change too, but you can’t simply retrain staff – an organisation needs to think and operate differently, with an entirely new attitude.

With that comes changes to how people learn and how we assess their suitability for the job. We will need to understand how technology has changed their role day to day, and figure out how to reach them accordingly, most likely introducing learning as part of their daily work, integrating training-module updates at more regular intervals and in smaller bite-sized pieces; and then testing and assessment will follow suit, quite possibly taking place live in the workplace.

Finally, let me add: Gen Z, iGen, Next Gen or however we label them, ultimately want the same thing as other generations such as Millenials and Boomers before them, namely job satisfaction, decent pay and career development.

Lifetime employability not lifetime employment

Posted by mattpoy on September 18, 2017September 18, 2017 Posted in Big Data, Education, Future of Technology, Future of Work, Learning, Next Gen, Skills Tagged Education, Engagement, Future of work, Future Technology, Robots, Skills

I am currently preparing for a presentation that will look at how the acceleration of today’s market trends, coupled with cross-sector technology innovations, might affect the future of education and assessment. I enjoyed Richard and Daniel Susskind’s book The Future of the Professions and will be referencing some of their thoughts – I recommend it as a very good read.

The changes this is bringing the professional world is a far cry from a time when McKinsey consultants had to wear a bowler hat as part of their uniform as evidence of their professionalism. Today, with fewer jobs for life, much less security and very little predictability, we will see both disintermediation and decomposition of roles within the professions and a new emphasis on the ability to learn and adapt as roles change – in smaller, bite-sized pieces, learning and quite possibly assessing on the go.

Knowledge and information have taken on a greater importance compared to traditional assets such as physical capital and natural resources – an educated and highly skilled workforce is among the most valuable assets an organisation has today. But because of the pace of change and progression, the workforce must continually retool its skills.

The knowledge economy is also borderless and knowledge workers are not a homogenous group; they have specialised skills and perform specialised roles, and knowledge workers do not spend their careers with one company; they change jobs frequently and with future generations the likelihood is this will increase.

Therefore, lifetime employability instead of lifetime employment is the goal of knowledge workers. Yet more and more tasks that once required human beings are being performed more productively and cheaply by machines and new capabilities are emerging on an almost daily basis. Machines can look back into data, discern patterns and make predictions (Big Data). Systems such as IBM Watson, with whom we have partnered here at Pearson, can perform tasks that we normally think requires human intelligence. Machines can interact with manual skill and dexterity via robotics and systems are getting smarter at detecting and expressing emotions.

We used to believe these tasks were the sole purview of human beings – are we just training machines to make us redundant? How do we stay in the game, differentiate and compete?

Tech = Art + Science

Posted by mattpoy on May 18, 2017 Posted in Customer Service, Education, Future of Technology, Future of Work, Ideas Tagged Education, Future of work, Future Technology

Driving in my classic car, listening to Grover Washington Jr on cassette tape (honestly, after all this car is 30 years old), I marvelled at how reliable this car is and how little tech was involved all those years ago in these machines, but mixing old thoughts with new, I realised just how technology is both art and science today. It is worth a post.

I think the biggest opportunities lie where technology is able to span both; let me explain why and how with education in mind.

Tech is science: one of the greatest opportunities in education is where technology can create a market segment of one: the individual. Where tech can help us create personalised learning so that students can learn at their own pace and level, and achieve goals and qualifications that are unique to their requirements, career aspirations and future. Tailored learning to suit a unique need at one point in time.

Tech is art: I experienced this a second time with air travel recently, where the entire check-in process was automated and I, as the traveller, had to self-serve. This is a masterstroke. Companies putting technology in place to allow customers to check-in themselves, print out their own documents, weigh their own luggage, print their own tags and calling it improved customer service – while saving costs all along the journey. How can technology help and even encourage people to learn, test and credential themselves, consuming small modules to achieve a goal, then move on to the next one? How can we utilise technology to predict, based on past learnings, what we need to do next?

I assembled the idea for this post sitting in traffic. I wonder as we get older whether we start going back to the old days, where we can be creative and have time to think, and not worry about the InBox.

The ultimate in convenience

Posted by mattpoy on April 5, 2017April 5, 2017 Posted in Customer Service, Future of Technology, Ideas, Marketing Tagged Customer Service, Marketing

I don’t normally talk about one product or brand but this deserves a mention, even though I have learned it’s not that new. Staying at a Westin in Chicago last week, I noticed the room keys had a small advert promoting their Stay Well campaign.

For just $5 you can borrow a complete set of New Balance running gear including training shoes, so you don’t have to pack your own each time you travel – this is very smart. I didn’t take up the offer as I had my gear with me, but in future…

That is real innovation in thinking and also the ultimate in convenience to the customer.

So let’s loop technology into this – it is a great example of how technology needs to be serving us, integrating with and re-imagining business processes, offering customers choice and making it easy for them to purchase from or partner with us.

Plus, if we exercise in the morning and have to hand back the kit before check-out, it leaves that extra little bit of time for email and online activity later in the day…or is that counterproductive? Either way, I am impressed.

Make our jobs better

Posted by mattpoy on October 24, 2016October 24, 2016 Posted in Future of Technology, Future of Work, People, Skills, Talent, Technology Tagged Future of work, Future Technology, People, Robots, Skills

The General Manager of Deloitte UK, said “We should automate work and humanise jobs; give the mundane to the machines and the purpose back to people,” as part of Deloitte research called Essential Skills for Working in the Machine Age.

We need to make our jobs better (different) and add more value to the human side of what we are truly good at. It is not simply a case of putting technology in place of people; Starbucks could quite easily replace people with robot coffee machines in its outlets, but the conversation that takes place in a Starbucks shop, the smell of coffee beans and even the individualisation of your name written on a cup, is part of the carefully crafted Starbucks experience.

We must learn to understand what technology can do for our business and then use it to enhance the customer, but also the employee, experience. Every company has the opportunity to apply technology to make it better.

No question that both customers and employees will be better engaged.

Humans: a case for the opposition

Posted by mattpoy on October 14, 2016 Posted in Future of Technology, Future of Work, People, People Skills Talent, Skills, Talent, Technology Tagged Future of work, Future Technology, People, Robots, Skills, Talent

The Future of Jobs report from the World Economic Forum highlighted that over 7m jobs will be lost to redundancy, automation or disintermediation, although they did also state that some of this loss will be offset by 2m jobs in new areas.

We know that as industries evolve and technology puts its arms around a business model and disrupts it, that jobs are created elsewhere, just as retail and services have replaced the factory and manufacturing, so the message to us as employers is invest in the skills of our people, rather than hire more workers, as the key to managing disruptions to the labour market long-term.

Jobs aren’t going away, they’re just changing. We know that softer skills like empathy, communications and prioritisation are essentially human. The future of work is not about jobs going away, it’s about redesigning what we do to make better use of the tools and technology at our disposal.

My point? Robots and technology are already in place. They trade on the stock markets, they drive cars in some cities and they are persistently recommending what we buy next. What they can’t do is serve the delicious loaves of bread in St Albans market with a chat on a Saturday morning or provide that extra bit of care and attention when you’re not feeling at your best – so work with the humans in our teams to find the things they are good at, the tasks and roles that require thinking, judgement and emotion.

Finally, is Nike really launching self-tying shoelaces on sneakers/trainers? Isn’t learning to tie a shoelace an important step in our childhood?