A Laser Focus

child-with-ipad-ogrady

I have used a video of this girl using an iPad in some of my presentations, which underlines how adept this generation is at using technology, plus I have dismissed before words that say kids today cannot focus.

On my holiday in the US this summer, I read a lot of good stuff and came across two stories along the same lines involving different youngsters, so I thought it well worth a mention. One in particular was described by Will.i.am. He used to graffiti the classroom, not because he was a vandal, but because he wanted others to see his art – to ‘know’ him. Doctors wanted to give him Ritalin (to treat attention deficit disorder – ADD) and his teacher told his mother not to let them give it to her son.

Instead he suggested that his mother encourage his creativity, that he will work out a way to work with it. How true that was.

A similar story applied to the principal ballerina at the Royal Ballet, who couldn’t sit still for her love of music. Kids do have a laser focus, just not on the often-outdated stuff we give them. We need to learn to work with them on their terms, after all they are our workforce and our customer of tomorrow.

Pictures and Words

fresh guacamole

A picture speaks a thousand words. Today, people multitask and run 5 windows on their machines and tablets concurrently and we have even less time to grab their attention with our message.

I think text is yesterday’s business and to engage we need pictures and headlines. If I created slides that were made up only of bullet points, what would the audience think? Would anybody concentrate for longer than a minute or two, before switching to reading messages on their phones, surf the web or look at what was happening on social platforms and completely ignore my presentation, no matter how compelling?

People respond to images, they like short videos and their brains are like filters. They block out the majority of information, so why do we send our customers and prospects long emails, pages of text and documents, and expect them to respond?

Take note how the market for short films is booming. At this year’s Oscars, “Fresh Guacamole”, at 1-minute-41-seconds, was the shortest movie ever to receive a nomination. It has no real characters, no dialogue, no traditional storyline, but got 8 million viewers on YouTube. There is a message in there for all of us.

Creative kids from Calcutta

kids-in-kolkota

This story inspires me and it keeps me believing in the future.

A group of primary school kids in Calcutta realised that the slum in which they live wasn’t on Google maps anywhere. Their home simply didn’t exist in the eyes of officialdom, which meant they didn’t get access to government services such as running water and vaccinations.

The school kids took it upon themselves to add themselves to the map. They went door to door and took photos of the entire area. Eventually, they were put on the map and recognised by local government.

While one result was great evidence of the amazing outcome that can be achieved by bringing together young people with technology with a community goal in mind, the thing that left me speechless was that this meant polio vaccination rates doubled in the local area. Do we understand what that means to the people there? It means health and life – all down to kids with a camera and creative genius! I am taken aback each time I recall this.

The difference is 5%

At a recent winter Olympics, one of the ski teams famed for their ability on the slopes won no gold models, which was a big disappointment to both team and nation. Post-event the team’s management did some analysis and discovered that if the team performed 5% better – that is an improvement of time of only 5% – they would have won almost every gold medal that they competed for. I think that is a great reflection of society today. One false marketing move, one poor product decision, one error of judgement with a customer and you are left standing and in second place. Technology has sped things up, removed our levels of tolerance and demanded instant and regular communication, but I think the example above reflects true in life and business today. I don’t necessarily like it, but it’s true – just 5% can often be the difference between front page success and dismal failure. We need to ensure our people are the best, our technology is helping us understand and maximise our business, and our strategy clear and lived and breathed by everyone.

The Evidence

At a recent event we talked about getting out of our comfort zone in order to be remarkable. If we stay doing the same things in the same way, why do we expect results that are any different?

We must break from the past and need look no further than a company I grew up with, Kodak, if we are to see how destructive this technology movement can be if we stand still and don’t embrace change. Regardless of the sector our business is in, we are being impacted – a new way of listening and engaging, a new way of reaching our customers and in many cases entirely new ways of transacting.

Kodak invented film, but they also created digital photography. What the company didn’t do was embrace a new way of working and let go of the past (I have talked about ‘Learnability’ in this column before). Often it takes bravery and imagination to leave behind a legacy, especially when the legacy has held the company in good stead for decades, but for Kodak it was catastrophic.

The digital age has changed more, faster, than anything that preceded it. The number and speed of smartphones sold compared to desktop and laptop computers is evidence of that. We need to remember the past and learn from it, but we must also leave it behind. Every company has to find where the magic happens, because that place is somewhere different.

Pick-and-Mix

I enjoyed being a part of the ‘Voice of Apprenticeships’ Conference this week, where I presented immediately before Skills Minister Matthew Hancock MP. I shared my views on how technology is changing not just how we must think about educating the next generation but how we engage and reach these students today.

MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, are getting a lot of press currently and the UK’s FutureLearn programme led by the Open University is leading the way. Smartphones and tablets are changing how we absorb information and education must follow suit, in smaller, bite-sized chunks, when and where the learner chooses to digest it.

Education may well take the form of a pick-and-mix bag of choices, but hopefully not as expensive as the pick-and-mix outlets selling confectionery. It may be that the role of the education institution includes tracking and approving building blocks of learning that add up to a unique qualification and that very few degrees actually look the same, but are pieced together based on an individual’s requirements and more importantly, the needs of a job role and the workplace.

What are the choices? History and prestige means the top tier universities will always have a demand for places, because of the prestige of having the institution listed on one’s CV or profile on LinkedIn. But for the rest, there is no choice. The majority of learning establishments have to change their value proposition; a student in a small town in England, or even as far as Africa or Asia, won’t pay to attend a mediocre lecture, when they can learn online from world experts.

Small is Beautiful

More than half of UK GDP comes from small businesses. In the US, it has been quoted as high as 70%. At a meeting in Brussels, one of the ministers told us that if every small business was helped and encouraged to hire one new member of staff, there would be no unemployment in Europe.

So why am I a big supporter of the small, the underdog and the start-up. Because it is the lifeblood of our economy and it means people will continue to be creative, use technology to collaborative and think and share in communities rather moving backwards to an era where we clocked in and worked 9-to-5.

While big brands such as General Mills, General Motors and General Electric will still have their place, this is the ‘long tail’ of business. A billion little entrepreneurial opportunities ready to be exploited by smart, creative people. The future will be about ‘more’. More innovation, from more places and more people – people focused on narrow niches, where collectively all these producers will reinvent the industrial economy.

I liken it to the old days of small specialist shops and boutiques on a high street, but this time online, trading via Etsy or some other platform or ‘storefront.’ I don’t think we are too far away. In the meantime, I am happy to attend, support and present at events that encourage businesses of all sizes to come together and talk, share, exchange. I will be at Business Expo 3.0 (www.national-expo.co.uk ) on March 8th – we have a lot to learn.

The Professions Paradox

Technology is one of the great levellers. With a smart and creative online presence, a small business can often give the impression of a large organisation, and yet technology alone doesn’t hold the key moving forward.

A look at unemployment rates across Europe shows that the employment bubble of the past 30 years has burst and the need for lower-skilled roles is drying up. There are currently 25m unemployed people in Europe plus 15m discouraged workers, which together would make the unemployment rate over 15% in total. Plus, over 20% of the true unemployed in Europe are under 24.

Yet a common thread amongst employers looking to fill skilled positions is that they can’t find the staff, and this trend is global! Almost half of employers in Europe report a shortage of skills (Accenture: ‘Turning the Tide’ survey).

By 2020, it will only get worse. An extra 16m high skilled jobs will be needed, countered by a decline of 12m less low-skilled positions.

That was the landscape. We must solve it by training and certifying our employees; we must use ‘big data’ to predict, anticipate and better target our customers, and we must apply technology to engage and connect everyone to our brand. Once again, the solution revolves around companies investing in their people, and individuals investing in themselves, in lifelong learning, in whatever shape that may take.

One of my favourite quotes comes from Richard Reed, one of the founders of Innocent, the smoothie drinks maker, “You can imitate our services and technology, but not the quality of our people.” I am guessing not many people choose to leave that company in a hurry.

Haircut sir?

I recently finished Walter Isaacson’s brilliant biography of Steve Jobs. The more it described Steve as different, the more I warmed to him, because the imperfections made him more human.

One of the early Apple board members recounted when he first met Jobs and Wozniak, sharing how he looked beyond the fact that both desperately needed a haircut. He was amazed by the ideas and the work that he saw, figuring that the two Steve’s can always get a haircut!

The Apple ‘Think Different’ campaign really put the company on the map, raising awareness of the brand to new heights. Today, we take the genius Apple products for granted and yet we ignore the talent of people for whom the gadgets and technology are second nature. Remember the need to understand them on their terms, for they will be both our customer and our workforce of tomorrow, so market to them on their terms, and when recruiting them, please don’t ask them to fax through their CV. You will be waiting for some time..

Shopping & Listening

I was following the news of people scrambling to shop for just about everything on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when America goes wild for bargains. Now I have witnessed this personally in Chicago a couple of years ago. It was crazy and I quite enjoyed it!

People choose not to buy an item because they don’t see value in it, then decide it is priceless once it has that little red and white discount label attached to it. 25%, 30% or 70%-off turns even the most sensible of shoppers into a possessed individual who has to have the item they turned their nose up at a week before.

I tracked back to the 1950s, when the US discovered the disposable society and set about telling consumers they had to replace and update almost everything they owned. Then it was all about dictating what people buy, the era of the advertising agencies – epitomised in the series ‘Mad Men.’

Today, it is all about asking customers what they want. The smartest companies are already engaged with their most influential networks (people we sometimes call ‘sneezers’ or ‘yawners’ who are very good at spreading news), already at the centre of all discussions around their sector and as a result the first name that comes up when searching for that product. You don’t have to be a technology company to make this work for you. Just look at how a crystal glass making company in Wales has become expert at making social media work for, and grow, the business. You can learn a lot by following them on Twitter @WelshRoyalCryst.

Forget the old, embrace the new.