March of the Machines

Posted by mattpoy on March 5, 2015 Posted in Future of Technology, People, Skills Tagged Future of work, Future Technology, Investment in people, People, Robots, Skills

There is a Future of Work event taking place this week, so I will add my remarks to this field of discussion. It is important to keep perspective and recognise that in this race between computers and people – people need to win. It is key that we find the things that humans are really good at, to make our pitch for the long term.

The work environment is changing. More than 1 billion people will work virtually this year; mobile will extend its dominant position; artificial intelligence and robots could automate 40% of jobs within 20 years. Those most at risk include security guards and financial advisers, but just about every clerical and administrative role is at risk.

Technology is pervading every work environment and so people have to take charge of their careers and re-skill and up-skill themselves for the next role or project in hand. Everyone has to be responsible for their own development.

For the lower skilled or those starting out, I am concerned. There will be fewer job opportunities and weakened job security for them, plus how do they take their first step on the work-progress-skills cycle?

With the need for lower-skilled roles drying up, the most worrying paradox is that we are struggling to fill jobs at a time when we have a record number of people available to fill them. The mismatch shows no signs of abating and parts of Europe have very high unemployment rates for young people. We need to do something about it and give everybody a chance.

A story for this time of year

Posted by mattpoy on December 1, 2014 Posted in Future of Technology, Ideas, Next Gen, People, People Skills Talent, Talent, Technology Tagged Future Technology, Next Gen, People, Skills, Talent

Last week I presented at the CCA Annual Conference at the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms. An excellent event. Despite all the noise around technology – big data, wearables, the internet of things – our audience created more conversation around my stories and emphasis on talent. I liked that. This was a crowd of deep thinkers.

The greatest mix is that of old and new. Whilst I implore companies to give young talent a chance and to watch how the net generation will flourish if we attract and engage them on their terms (normally with technology in mind), I equally underlined the value of the older worker. The more experienced employee has a lot to offer, they are committed, they know the ropes and their experience is telling; and they are staying in post for longer, so the younger generations need to be better skilled to displace them.

Here is a summary of a story I told last week where two generations didn’t quite gel, or understand each other: a young lady beat off other applicants to make it to the final stage of interview and meet the CEO of the hiring company. She arrived on time and was immaculately presented. All good so far.

She was invited into the office of the CEO, a gentleman with years of success on his sleeve and decades her senior. The interview was progressing well, as planned, and then her phone start buzzing in her bag. The young lady pulled out the device mid-interview and started texting in reply, oblivious to the sudden stop in proceedings. This is what she was used to doing. The CEO waiting patiently for her to stop and then ended the interview, thanked her for her time, and saw her to the door. The interview process was about to start again, for this lady did not get the job.

I can see that the net generation does things in its own way and communicates differently, but there are certain rules of etiquette, respect and simple good manners that stand the test of time. I hope those things will never change.

Robots, Jobs, People

Posted by mattpoy on September 16, 2014 Posted in Future of Technology, Next Gen, People, Skills, Technology Tagged Future Technology, People, Skills, Small Business

I had a great time presenting at the Learning Live Conference in London last week and engaged in some great discussion afterwards. I wanted to share one of my points here, and how we can use change to our advantage.

Our work environment is evolving and more than 1 billion people will work virtually by 2015. Are we thinking about this – can it help us attract new talent, from further afield, and save operational costs?

At the same time, artificial intelligence and robots could automate a high percentage of jobs (40% of jobs within 20 years across the board), as technology pervades every work environment – this means it is down to us as individuals to continue to up-skill and stay in touch, particularly as more and more low-skilled positions are taken over by technology. This will result in fewer job opportunities and weakened job security for the low-skilled. Coupled with that is those who do work hard and seek the next step may well be trapped in low-level entry positions as older workers stay in post longer. Just because the older generation have the cash to spend doesn’t mean they want to retire. In fact, older workers are better engaged and can add more value in the workplace than ever before. In many cases their experience is priceless.

But with change, automation and new technology comes opportunity – we have to believe that – and as Ashok Vaswani, Barclays CEO for Retail Banking said recently, “People are not designed to do the same thing again and again and again. Utilise people where it requires the mind and the application of judgement.”

Let’s think about that.

I have seen the future

Posted by mattpoy on August 2, 2014 Posted in Future of Technology, Ideas, Next Gen, People, People Skills Talent, Skills Tagged Education, Engagement, Future Technology, Skills, Talent

I attended the Certiport Global Partner Summit and the MOS and ACA World Championships this week in California. Let me explain.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of young people enter competitions, at a national level, to see who are the most creative Adobe and most proficient Microsoft Office Specialist users. After months of competition and excitement, around 130 competitors gathered in a hotel at Disney in California this week for an intense conclusion to proceedings. As the results were announced, the young winners ran to the stage to earn their medals and prizes as family, friends and those watching from afar via live broadcast jumped into raptures. So what does this all mean?

For the winners, no doubt fame awaits them in their countries when they return home and probably a gateway to a nice job role in the near future. That is very well deserved. For the IT industry, even more. These world championships highlight everything that is good in our industry. The work the Adobe competitors delivered as part of the Kiva project, for example, could easily have been created by a professional agency. The fact that most of the kids were not native English speakers made it even more remarkable.

I saw the future. It lies with those excited kids having a fantastic time, representing the next generation of IT workers, innovators and companies. My summary of the week was that every IT vendor should have a competition, should invest in the next generation in this way, because it is some of the most powerful and compelling branding and engagement I have ever seen.

It’s about people – it always is

Posted by mattpoy on April 22, 2014 Posted in People, People Skills Talent, Talent Tagged People, Skills, Talent

As far back as 2001, when Jim Collins wrote Good to Great, he said “technology by itself is never a primary root cause of either greatness or decline.” That rings true even today, despite the massive disruption taking place as new generations of workers launch their brilliant ideas – think of Halo, Snapchat and Vine. All of these came about as a result of an individual or a group thinking differently.

When Collins and his team of researchers set out to establish what made companies ‘great,’ they expected that leaders would set out the strategy and the vision, and make it compelling enough that their employees would follow. Instead they discovered something different, that they first got the right people on the bus and in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it.

One of the early birds in the revolution was Circuit City, the company that pioneered the electronics superstore in the US (sadly not around today), and the one of the protagonists in their success was asked to name the top 5 factors that led to their transition to a great organisation.

He replied, “One would be people.”

“Two would be people.”

“Three would be people.”

“Four would be people.”

“And five would be people.”

It seems we need to correct the old adage “People are your most important asset.” People are not your most important asset. The right people are.

Borrowing ideas from Apollo 13

Posted by mattpoy on January 20, 2014 Posted in Future of Technology, People, People Skills Talent, Talent Tagged Future Technology, People, Talent

As someone with an interest in space, I was transfixed as the team in Houston pulled together to generate ideas when Apollo 13 ran into trouble, particularly how they brainstormed to fix the carbon dioxide removal system.

Part of Mission Control’s method to find a solution was to discover what the spare parts were and not just recycle the same old ingredients. They chose not to sit around in isolation but get more parts on the table to give them options. Eventually they found the answer and saved the crew.

Their approach lends itself nicely to the tech world we are immersed in today. How do we get lots of parts – ideas, even people – to the table? Proctor & Gamble figure that for every senior scientist it employs, there are two hundred others working somewhere else in the world, just as good. Using technology platforms such as Innocentive and Kaggle, it can reach those minds and get access to some brilliant ideas to keep it at the leading edge of its industry.

However we connect, network, generate ideas or discover new products, we must do the same.

My mantra for 2014

Posted by mattpoy on January 3, 2014 Posted in Culture, Next Gen, People, People Skills Talent, Talent Tagged People, Skills, Talent

The new year is one of the busiest times in the calendar for people looking for inspiration, exploring change and opening at least one eye to new jobs.

I spent most of 2013 talking about talent and the value of our people as our number one differentiator. I will kick off 2014 by helping integrate a division into our business and welcoming a few new people into my team, and with technological change increasing its influence on our work and home lives, it is important to maintain focus on our talent pool.

One of the last presentations I delivered in 2013 was at the cool offices of ITV, thanks to Andy Kyriacou who set up the event. I was inspired by the people who work at ITV but most importantly by how engaged they all were.

The CEO at ITV, Adam Crozier, the man that led much of the cultural change made in the last few years there, once said:

“Silver bullets rarely exist – when great things happen, they happen because of good people, teamwork, fantastic amounts of hard work and a giant dose of luck.”

So this has become my chief principle for 2014: look after our people and create the theatre for them to deliver, for they are the best thing we’ve got.

Making friends

Posted by mattpoy on October 11, 2013 Posted in Communities, Next Gen, People, Technology Tagged Engagement, Future Technology, People

The CEO of one of our clients retired recently, and I heard both sides of an incredible story of partnership and friendship that was built up over many years of our companies working together. It was truly impressive and reminded me of a story.

My dad used to say, “You can count your real friends on one hand.” Today, kids add friends to their Facebook pages in an instant, because technology makes us think we can shortcut the process to making friends. This is not true.

One of biggest mistakes about building relationships is trying to build a rich experience to win people over very quickly by using technology, and for those people with the greatest influence – I have called them the ‘one-percenters’ in the past – to share your message or story across their network so that it goes viral.

But in real life, and in business especially, relationships form via many lightweight interactions over a period of time, and usually with your customer getting to know the person first of all and gradually building trust.

So despite the speed of interactions that technology brings to the table, when you meet somebody for the first time and have a conversation, you are not suddenly best friends.

Technology and our leaders of tomorrow

Posted by mattpoy on October 3, 2013 Posted in Pearson, People, People Skills Talent, Skills, Uncategorized Tagged Pearson, People, Skills, Talent

I was thrilled to be asked by the Pearson Diversity team to present to the interns who joined our organisation this week and I was even more pleased to see how positive they were.

I chose to present something different – with our company tagline being ‘Always Learning’ I didn’t want to just talk about our division and the business we are in, so I told them why I think they are our future! I sprinkled my story with technology of course, but my emphasis was on talent.

I took this direction because I was enthused by a person who inspires me, CEO of Burberry Angela Ahrendts. She recently posted on the importance of storytelling. Each time I have been truly uplifted by a presentation, it was because of the story told and shared, and in the current digitally-driven world, where are we are often overwhelmed with information, rediscovering the age-old principles of storytelling will help us connect and differentiate, so I took that course.

It paid off – I met some great young people, our workforce of now and our leaders of tomorrow, and I had fun telling sharing story.