Categories: People

Gold Dust

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in People, People Skills Talent, Skills, Talent, Technology Tagged , , ,

One of my favourite meetings recently was with Alan Loader (Publisher) and Sara Yirrell (Editor) of CRN magazine, part of the IncisiveMedia group. The conversation could easily have continued all afternoon. We talked about the speed at which technology is dictating how we do business, how education will remain the single biggest differentiator regardless of change and that the best people are becoming more elusive.

Alan coined a great term in human gold dust– how it is becoming harder to find good people and more importantly to retain them, to motivate them to stay. Surveys tell us the same thing over and over, that it isn’t always about more money. If somebody is fundamentally not happy doing their job, a few thousand pounds will not change those feelings and 3 months down the line, you will be back in the same position. My earliest blog posts talked about a formula, a magic blend of rapidly changing technology plus talented people equalling tomorrow’s great companies. This is the here and now.

Furthermore, Seth Godin asked, “Do we have to pander” [to people, to customers]? Should we trade our reputations for a short-term boost of awareness or profits? He argues that if we want to build a reputation that lasts, to be the voice that some (not all) in the market seek out, you must resist short-term greed and build something that matters. The same applies with our people. Don’t compromise just to fill a position. Look for the best, give them the bandwidth to be creative and spend a percentage of their time on crazy new ideas, and let them be exceptional. Let them use the technology at their disposal to promote your product or service from every conceivable angle, as long as what they do ties into a central theme for your business.

I think you will find they will flourish, and stay.

The Facebook Way

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in People, People Skills Talent, Social Media Tagged , , , ,

Since its IPO, the media has attacked Facebook from every angle. I would like to take a moment and highlight some of the positives to come out of camp Zuckerberg.

You have to give credit to its creativity, its ability to scale and allow millions of people to connect on a social level. You also have to applaud the platform now used by the likes of British Telecom, Heinz and others to get closer to its customers. Heinz in particular is brilliant at marketing via Facebook, involving their customers in creating products such as the new balsamic vinegar-flavoured ketchup and their personalised ‘Get Well Soon’ can of soup. I have said it before, the future of marketing is not about campaigns but conversations.

More importantly for me, when you dig a little deeper into the empire, you start to understand the Facebook way – Mark Zuckerberg talks about moving fast and breaking things. Facebook, like Google and others from its generation, launches products quickly, listens to what its customers are saying and adjusts accordingly. New online furniture company Made.com has built a great business entirely on this model. In some ways, if you don’t develop this way, you will be left behind. At Apple, the iPod is now almost obsolete, and two-thirds of its revenues come from products invented after 2007. At printer giant HP, the majority of revenue stems from products that did not exist a year ago.

Mark Zuckerberg narrows his focus to two things – having a direction for the company and what it builds and assembling the best team possible. The talent in Menlo Park cannot be doubted. We can learn from this model. On a more local level, my good friend Kypros, CEO at Ryman, the UK’s best stationery company, talks about how they differentiate. It is no secret. Go into their stores – the formula is the same. They find great people, train them well and look after them. The attitude cascades down from CEO throughout the organisation and extends to its customers every day.

Technology or not, it’s all about the people. Always.

The Best Advice

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in People, Skills, Talent Tagged , ,

Often, the most profound things are the simplest.

I read an interview with Christian Louboutin who said his father gave him the best advice of his career. His father was a carpenter and once told him that to make beautiful sculptures in wood you should work with the grain. If you go against the grain, you end up with splinters. Louboutin took this as a metaphor for getting along with people.

I think that is a golden nugget of advice, especially when people, skills and talent are the future of everything.

The future is small

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Future of Technology, People, People Skills Talent, Small Business, Uncategorized Tagged , , ,

I first starting reading the Sunday Times in the early 1980s and I was fascinated by the big-company stories and headlines around the industrialists of the era. But one story that stuck with me was about shopkeepers. My father was a shopkeeper and my family own a wonderful vintage tea room today; Britain grew up as a nation of shopkeepers and although the front pages remain the same, I believe that our the future is once again small (nearly 70% of GDP in the US and 60% in the UK is made up of consumer spending).

Technology has spawned a new type of entrepreneur which allows people to work not 9-5, but 5-9 in the evening, having a side business that runs online and with an appearance that can compare with any giant out there. The little guy can compete. My point however, is that the great next idea will most likely not stem from the giant corporatioons, because these organisations are focused more on satisfying their shareholders, their green footprint and their internal systems. Most innovation, great ideas and next-gen creativity come from small groups, startups and the individual – a youngster in a corner of the south west of England or two best mates from college on the west coast of the US. We must give them a platform for dialogue and exchange – give them an opportunity to shine, because I firmly believe these youngsters, digital natives as they are, are full of ideas that may materialise into something great. The future for me is all about small countries, small organisations and individuals.

My view of the role of the big company matches something Rajesh Chandy of the Deloitte Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship referenced last week – that arguably the biggest responsibility of the CEO of these big firms is to assign time to think about the future. My personal view is that these CEOs will help all parties if they organise think-tanks, workshops and invitations to young people willing to talk ideas, and give them a chance.

How do you sleep at night?

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Future of Technology, Pearson, People, People Skills Talent Tagged , , ,

Just back from a whirlwind visit to the Pearson VUE headquarters in Bloomington, Minneapolis. What a slick operation. Professional, exceptional talent working in well-organised teams to serve its clients.

A lot can be learned from watching people at work, although generally I find I pick up a lot more ideas and nuggets of information from the US when I travel there than anywhere else. How can we capture some of that “essence” and ship it home? Is it the people and their attitude, their education or just the unflinching desire to succeed? I think it is a combination of all those things, and especially the philosophy of learning by failure. The US is the only market I know where mistakes and failure are a recognised part of growing up and the learning process.

It all about continuous learning. Every discussion and every experience is an opportunity to learn something new. On every plane journey I take, I weigh myself down with books, magazines and printed articles, always capturing quotes and stories along the way. That is how I assemble the content for my presentations.

The future of IT jobs and learning? That is a little harder to predict. The world of work continues to evolve and IT jobs are moving up the value chain, combining technical with business-savvy skills to give IT a seat at the boardroom table (more of this next post). But what is absolute, is that surrounding yourself with the best people is how to make the difference, regardless of business model. That is, yet again, the one standout thing from my trip to the US. I close with a comment made by fashion mogul Tommy Hilfiger in a recent interview:

“Hiring the best, most intelligent people allows you to sleep at night. One of my advantages starting out was that I was never afraid to hire someone smarter than me.” Rock on Tommy.

The daily treadmill – getting back our time

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in CompTIA, People, Time Tagged , ,

Many people are commenting on the future of email this week, predicting it’s slowdown and demise. Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook fame, declared that “we don’t think a modern messaging system is going to be email.”

Technology has increased the pace of everything. We are never offline and once we get on that treadmill, we cannot stand still. If we stop for a moment, we invariably go backwards. But whilst it needs to slow down and we need time to think and reflect, I do agree with him. Email is growing largely due to the sheer volume of new users in Asia, but for the younger demographic, email doesn’t cut it. Our kids want something faster and easier than e-mail and amongst teenagers email usage is down 59%. How often do you see kids wandering with heads down clicking away on Blackberry Messenger?

As most people know, I am a big supporter of giving youngsters a chance. At a recent event in Brussels at the EU, a minister said if every small business employed one person we would have no unemployment problem. Easier said than done of course, but I took on a few apprentices/interns at CompTIA and it made a difference. What’s more, I unearthed a couple of real diamonds with great futures ahead of them, just buy committing to giving somebody a chance. We should all do it – it is very rewarding.

A bigger issue I have, however, is these kids and their career choices. We are too easily led by the glitz and the glory of TV fame, and it is unrealistic. 25 years ago, the three primary career choices were Teacher, Banker and Doctor; today, they are Sports Star, Pop Star and Actor. This is the X-Factor generation and there will be a lot of disappointed young people out there.

Now I love technology and continue to take an interest in its evolution. More notably, since I resigned from my current role at CompTIA (my favourite place of work to date), I have had a couple of weeks to do things for myself and email has reduced to a trickle. What a joy! How I have used my time has opened my eyes to how we should work, think and be creative ordinarily. We should not have to stop work to get access to this quality time but factor it into our daily routines – I for one will be doing this at Pearson when I join.

Inspiration with Zenos

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in CompTIA, Education, Learning, People, Talent, Uncategorized Tagged , , , ,

As a young man growing up, I followed many sports stars – Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalgish, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, but my sporting inspiration was Zinedine Zidane. He was so naturally gifted and so intelligent with the ball. This week, I found inspiration not with footballers, but at youngsters no more than 18 years old who won the apprentice of the year awards at the Zenos annual conference, where I also had the pleasure of presenting my view on the ‘Evolution of IT, Jobs and Learning’.

Zenos is a quite amazing company. 400 staff, mostly young and very dynamic, but what really stands out is the camaraderie, the culture and the ethos that drives this team of people led by Jason Moss and his management team. They live to help the next generation acquire the skills that will set them on the road to a new chapter in their lives, a career IT.

I selected Ashleigh Carr as the Zenos-CompTIA apprentice of the year.  He is 18 years-old. He has Crohn’s disease. Our CompTIA A+ certification helped him find himself and a job at the Royal Bank of Scotland in IT Support. Most of 400+ audience were in tears as I presented the award to him (and we gave Ashleigh a 3D LED TV as a cool gift to go along with his award). We must never forget, this is why we exist, helping Ashleigh and others like him to get a job and make progress in the world of technology.

I will always love football, basketball and most other sports, and I will always enjoy watching the best talent grace our stadia. But this week has taught me that our inspiration comes from these youngsters, who overcome adversity to achieve results and aim high, and get the jobs they apply for. If that is our future, there is hope. Presenting at Zenos this week, and handing out this award, was my finest hour at CompTIA. Thank you Jason, Claire, Nicky, Richard and all the fantastic Zenos team.

Youngsters helping the elderly get online

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in People, People Skills Talent, Skills, Technology Tagged , , ,

Back from a short visit to the US, where once again I learned and picked up some cool new things. This one is all about people driving technology.

Read an inspiring article about Steve Jobs, who has left his day-to-day role at Apple. He embodies everything that Apple has created. I particularly liked the quote, “Apple has beautiful artifacts, but what Jobs has been building is a company whose legacy is ideas.”

Another such inspiration is London-born Sean Maloney, who was one of the leaders at Intel and recently suffered a stroke that deprived him of his ability to walk and talk. He has made a great recovery and is now the chairman at Intel China. Success, companies and technologies are always about great people.

A project that impressed me recently was Adopt a Care Home, an initiative that encourages young people from schools and colleges to help the elderly get online. The saddest part of this was that residents of a care home would go downstairs in the morning to collect their post and there wasn’t any. They were used to mail as a form of communciation. This project seeks to do something about that. One great example of its success is Enid Adamson, 87, who hadn’t seen her daughter, who lives in New Zealand, for 2 years. It was terrible that she feared she may never see her again. With the assistance of this project, they now talk once a week on a large screen using Skype, a webcam and clip-on microphone.

Great story. People driving technology to make this a better place.

Community update

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Communities, CompTIA, People Tagged , , ,

CompTIA UK hosted our UK Channel Community last Thursday at the ICC in Birmingham and most of us agreed it was the best meeting to date.

A community operates differently. Whilst sometimes tempted to dictate the run of play, it was more productive and more satisfying to see members of the community step up and take the lead at different times during the session, each adding their own nugget of value to the collective. Our chair, IT consultant Richard Tubb, is well respected by all, and his effortless leadership ensured everybody in the room was included, particularly with the ‘30-second Best Practice’ session, now an institution at these meetings. Adam Harris launched the legal resource centre and shared why we localised it for the benefit of our UK members, and vice-chair Lee Evans, owner of Vital Technology Group, updated the delegates on the Quality Mark we are working on.

It was also pleasing to see some new faces take the stage, such Les Billing from HMD Electronics, who led the update on the Vendor Resources Portal and my favourite session of the day, ‘Connecting with Customers’ presented by Gareth Brown, MD of Sytec. Gareth told us that simplicity is the key for customers; that we often talk in our own ‘IT language’ which customers don’t understand, and how great it was to see his company’s mantra – “We Fix IT” – get a great response from the group. This was my biggest take-away from the day: all of us must “de-jargonise” and “de-fluff” our services when we market, and talk to, customers. Great phrases!

The most fulfilling piece of all however, was seeing the members come together, engage in conversation, laugh out loud, talk about the markets, economy and trends, even about their cars, but most importantly build connections and enhance the community.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and sometimes the beauty is just to step back from the conversation and watch the magic happen.

IT is the place to be

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Learning, People, People Skills Talent, Skills Tagged , , ,

Pupils across the UK have received their A-level results and are wondering what to do next. Like every year, we can expect that nowhere near enough of these talented individuals will pursue a career in IT.

The reason for this is surely not that IT has little to offer, or that it is too specialist, or even that it is boring, for it is none of these things. But this is how a lot of young people see it. Until we start doing something to change this perception, we will struggle to attract the required talent.

IT flies our planes, broadcasts our football matches, and records and edits our music. IT systems monitor the effects of global warming, fight terrorism, and ensure hospitals function. New innovations like the iPad and Facebook have made billions and changed the world.

None of these are dull professions and they are all areas which interest young people. They are more interesting than most office jobs, and a heck of a lot more interesting than bar work, which seems to be the fate of all too many talented young people.

But as an industry, we are seen by many 16-18 year olds as sitting in a basement with a computer. We need to change this perception and get these people, who are currently making big career decisions, excited about IT. We need to start focusing on all the exciting and varied opportunities that IT offers, and to communicate this to young people through education, careers talks and the media.