Category: Communication

Black Lives Matter

Like many people I watched the video of the killing of George Floyd with a quiet disbelief. That someone can kneel on the neck of a fellow human being and think that is acceptable I find shocking. . What is more shocking is that the racism that led to Mr Floyd’s death goes on under my nose and across the world and I barely notice; I am privileged that society over the years has favoured both men and people with white skins.

As a strong advocate of Diversity and Inclusion at work and as the chair of our D&I council progress has been made particularly in the relationship between men and women but its clear we and I have a lot more to do.

But I do see a lot of comment about all lives mattering. And I thought I’d share the following as I think this gives a really simple explanation of why Black Lives Matter.

There is so much to be done but I am going to play my part and make a difference if I can.

Tags BlackLivesMatter, D&I, diversity, New Zealand, NZ, People

Business Change Communication Customers Leadership People Technology

Who will see the most benefits from AI?

Post author By The Burble....
Post date May 9, 2018
No Comments on Who will see the most benefits from AI?

A recent report from PWC titled ‘Will robots steal our jobs’ summarised a number of investigations into the potential impact on jobs as a result of the rapid development and implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI, which in this context includes robotics and machine learning.) The report indicated that up to 30% of insurance and financial services roles could be impacted although exact numbers remain not surprisingly, elusive. Let me repeat that, up to 1/3^rd of all roles in the insurance industry might cease to exist or have to change in a significant way.

That’s a pretty astonishing estimate. With some significant impacts.

Companies are going to undergo major transformations; changing what they do, how they create value, and how they deal with customers. And perhaps, the biggest impact will be on employees; how will they deal with this transformation?

Tags AI, automation, Business, change, future, insurance, insurtech, jobs, People, robotics, society, stakeholders, Technology

Business Communication Leadership People Technology

AI and the future (?) of work

Post author By The Burble....
Post date August 14, 2017
No Comments on AI and the future (?) of work

If you read my last blog on trust and business you might be forgiven for thinking that the argument was built on a little hype on the development of technology. And of course there is nothing out there at the moment other than hype about technology.

But I thought this article from ZDnet which arrived in my inbox about the same time I published my last blog posting provides some additional support for my argument that business and society are about to under go some radical changes. Technology developments tend to take longer than we envisage and tend to disappear off in various directions before reaching any form of conclusion but even supposing that AI exceeds human capabilities in more than 125 years that is actually close enough to imagine.

For anyone born today with a life expectancy of around 100 years it is possible that we will see technology become more advanced than humans. That should not scare us but simply drive us on to do more and better things with technology.

Tags Business, future, human rights, IT, society, Technology

Business Change Communication Customers Leadership Risk Self Driving Cars Technology trust

The business of trust.

Companies and businesses have a problem – Trust. Put simply there is a decline in how much trust is being placed in business by customers and society in general. And a business that isn’t trusted isn’t going to survive for long. But is trust that important?

I think so. Customers are spending more time researching the companies they buy from, and the fact that so much information is available on line, opens up a business to a lot more scrutiny than previously possible. As customers are subject to exponential levels of change they will look to anchor themselves through relationships based on trust.

Would you go to a Doctor you didn’t trust?

And businesses play a huge role in society, providing income and rewarding places to work, generating wealth and making tax payments to help governments support their chosen areas of investment. The problem is partly guilt by association. As Edelman reported there is a collapse in trust in 4 of the major institutions (Business, Government, NGOs and Media) in many countries around the world.

At the same time however, businesses face some challenges that while not specific to industry will have a large and potentially dramatic impact. The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) is beginning to reshape what business is and what it does and how it does it.

And trust is going to be come one of the most important topics businesses will have to deal with.

Tags Business, Communication, company, Finance, future, IT, Mobile Phones, People, society, taxes, Technology, trust, women

Business Communication Customers Leadership Self Driving Cars Technology

Trust me – I’m in business

Post author By The Burble....
Post date July 31, 2017
No Comments on Trust me – I’m in business

Google's prototype driverless car has been unveiled at the company's California headquarters. Photograph: /Google

Trust is something that is extremely important in business. Whether it is between colleagues or between companies and their customers or between companies and their suppliers trust underpins everything that is written down in a contract. Without trust business simply doesn’t work as well as it should.

Of course trust becomes even more important when dealing internationally with people from different backgrounds and cultures.

So let’s get a definition written down

Trust as a noun is the firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.

The little Google Car pictured above is a prime example of a growing need to trust. In this case trusting a software engineer who has written the code that is helping you navigate your way around town. As I talked about in ‘Can sheep drive?‘ we will all to have a lot of trust in technology going forward.

But what about trust in business. Well there we seem to have a problem. According to a report by the World Economic Forum – We’re losing trust in business. How can we get it back? people are losing trust in business. And while this is not really a surprise with the focus on fake news currently it does present serious challenges, particularly to businesses that operate outside of their locality ie where the owner or staff are not known by their customers or suppliers.

The article goes on to highlight a number of areas businesses need to think through such as

how to focus on developing a narrative about the business that is not just about shareholder returns explaining how the business contributes to improving society
how to actually communicate this narrative to a broad range of people who might be interested in the business and what it is doing for society and
actually doing something about it

And while I think the irony of the World Economic Forum highlighting a lack of trust in business is interesting in itself the article seems to miss one very major aspect. The almost complete focus on the investor and shareholder above all others. The quarterly reporting cycle focusing as it does on numbers and shareholder returns is probably the biggest contributor to a lack of trust.

Perhaps its time for a quarterly reporting process on what value has been added to society rather that just focusing on the eps?

Anyone have any other ideas?

Tags Business, company, Google, New Zealand, society, Technology, trust, WEF

Change Communication Leadership

Leadership – Just abandon your family?

Post author By The Burble....
Post date July 24, 2017
No Comments on Leadership – Just abandon your family?

Leadership, or getting people to change can be tough. But being dumb seems to be a whole lot easier. In this article from Business Insider (BI) you’ll find a great example of what I think we can all agree is pretty dumb leadership.

As I have argued before leadership is not something that comes from your position in an organisation although the more senior you are does tend to give you an implied authority to lead. We expect people further up the hierarchy to lead. That is surely their role. So if you’re a CEO it is expected that you lead. Not that all you can do is shout.

But from what I am seeing more and more leaders, rather than leading are simply hectoring or demanding ultimate loyalty. What I am seeing more and more is the need of some of these high level leaders to have you put them and their role in the business above everything. Above what you are working on at that moment, above your social life, your weekends and above all above your family.

And it is more and more about them and less and less about creating something together as a team.

And this makes no sense. Because what you want if you’re leading is to change something. And to change something you need people give more than they absolutely have to.

The more hectoring that goes on, the more it is about me the leader and making me feel good the less effort anyone is going to put in. I particularly like the definition from Aubrey Daniels International which talks about Discretionary Effort.

Discretionary effort is the effort people can put in over and above what they absolutely have to do. And as a leader who wants to change things you need people to put in extra effort. Change means by definition doing something that is above what people absolutely have to do.

Being a leader means having followers. And followers want to be respected by their leader for what they do and for their own lives. If it’s all about the leader then it simply isn’t leadership.

The article from BI identifies a CEO type that really needs consigning to history. I was asked what I would do in an interview if I was asked to put the CEO above everything. I would simply walk out of the interview. That is not a company that I would work for,

Let me know what examples of good and bad leadership have you seen?

Tags Business, ceo, Communication, Experience, family, Leadership

Business Change Communication Leadership People

Leaders shouldn’t be so sad….

Post author By The Burble....
Post date July 18, 2017
No Comments on Leaders shouldn’t be so sad….

We are all on a journey

I met up with a colleague in the office today who relayed to me that he’d just had dinner with someone who left the company a few months ago. Meaning it to be a positive statement my colleague regaled me with stores about how his friend was now doing all the things he didn’t have time for when working such as

seeing family
getting fit
spending time on his hobbies
enjoying watching his family grow up

And all I could think about was how sad that sounded. Sad that it was only when his friend was between jobs that he managed to find time for the rest of his life. And yet so much of what leaders seem to expect is to work all hours that exist. And this rubs off on their teams who get equally caught up in the working all hours syndrome mainly because their boss does the same.

I once worked for a leader who wanted to know what was going on continuously. He worked all hours and wanted everyone else to do the same. He demanded to know whatever was happening before anyone else. Presumably because this made him feel good. After a month of 24/7 working (at least that’s what it felt like) I picked up the phone to him and had one of the most difficult conversations I have had. I simply told him that I was not going to talk to him every hour, txt him every 15 mins and make sure he had regular emails. I let him know that I felt I was employed as a trusted officer of the company and once I had agreed with him the objectives he should trust me to get on with it.

He really didn’t like it. The silence on the phone spoke volumes

But he eventually accepted what I’d said and we then worked in the way we’d agreed and despite his nervousness it actually worked quite well.

Sometimes you need to lead your boss.

Or as I sometimes tell my colleagues – boss your superior.

Tags 24/7, Business, Communication, Experience, Leadership, Mobile Phones

Change Communication Customers Risk

I have seen the future – it doesn’t work properly

Post author By The Burble....
Post date November 28, 2016
No Comments on I have seen the future – it doesn’t work properly

Last Friday found me sitting in the office with a number of colleagues watching another corporate briefing. I say briefing rather than call as the executive team had decided to try and do the briefing through a live video conference broadcast. Now while I am the first to say that some of my colleagues have the perfect faces for radio, it was good to be able to see the team present some key facts about their business and the challenges they face. While the words were clear and powerful, being able to see the body language really made a difference. I hope they will repeat the process again.

Image courtesy of ddpavumba at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

And the best bit was that the technology didn’t work very well.

Tags Business, change, Communication, People

Change Communication People

Back in 2011 I fell out of love

Post author By The Burble....
Post date May 8, 2016
No Comments on Back in 2011 I fell out of love

As anyone who read my last post knows I have just returned to the UK after an 8 year absence. And it doesn’t feel like home. Maybe this post explains some of it. Maybe not but I still feeling a little melancholy being back in the UK. I hope that this changes as I have so much to look forward to this year.

This is how is was.

I guess it has happened to all of us at sometime in our lives.

You wake up one morning and something just doesn’t feel quite right; you’re not quite sure what it is but something definitely doesn’t feel right. So you ignore it, go on admit you this is how you deal with it when you know its not quite right but you can’t put your finger on it.

So you carry on hoping everything will be OK but somehow that nagging itch just won’t go away. You even try harder – you really want to be in love again. Indeed you go out of your way to look for all the good things, the words, the views, the deep meaningful glances that you’ve treasured for so long. But somehow that itch keeps needing to be scratched and whatever you do it just seems to be there.

So for a while you ignore everything negative, you’ve convinced yourself that it is something to do with you and therefore best to leave everything as it is. You go on as if nothing has happened and you feel happy, you look at everything with rose colored glasses and the world is a happy place again. You were right it was all your fault, you’re just feeling a bit down and missing the sun or something and really everything is OK.

The problem is that it isn’t. You know it and now so do your best friends. They can see that you’ve lost a bit of your desire and verve and that you’re just not quite as happy as you used to be. Even when they can still see how happy they are and really nothing has changed so you should be as happy as them, they know, they can tell, they can see it in your eyes. They even try to help. really its not that bad, it will get better, it will be better than it was.

The problem is that you know it won’t be.

So you begin to think about it, giving shape and form to this nameless concern, this feeling, this worry. It grows, begins to take over your days and all of a sudden a lot of the good things you’ve grown up with all of a sudden feel grayer than they did before. What was obvious yesterday becomes questionable. What was the bedrock of your being a week ago begins to suffer a series of quakes varying an increasing Richter scale number. Everything begins to shake and your solid base begins to liquefy and all of s sudden you’re afloat being tossed about and trying to find you’re way back to solid ground. You’re cross and angry; how could this have happened after all the work and effort you’re put in; of course you could have done more but you did enough.

YES I DID ENOUGH.

You eventually get to a place where the storms subside a bit and you get to think. Maybe everything isn’t quite as good as you thought originally. Maybe you do need to do something about it. Maybe the time is now, you never did really feel attached, you’ve always looked elsewhere. You look for justification of what you’re thinking and miraculously it is everywhere. It’s straight into your face 24 hours a day – how could you have been so stupid. Isn’t it obvious, it clearly isn’t right, its just got to change, you’ve got to do something about it and you need to do it NOW.

All of a sudden the way ahead is clear.

You’re friends can see you’ve changed. They know what is coming, they know they will have to help and get you through this whatever may happen. That’s what friends are for, even if they don’t like it they dust off their smiling faces and get themselves aligned to help.

But in this case there isn’t anything they can do.

I’ve fallen out of love with my home country.

At the end of the day I will always be a confused mix of English and British. I have a lot to be proud of coming from a nation that has done a lot of good (and a lot of bad that I am not proud of) but I simply don’t recognize the country anymore. I am not sure anywhere else is better but that’s not the point. I don’t feel happy with my home country anymore and maybe in a while I will tell you why.

Tags Englishman in New York, People, Travel

Communication Customers Uncategorized

Told you I don’t understand marketing

Post author By The Burble....
Post date January 3, 2016
No Comments on Told you I don’t understand marketing

Just went into a store to buy my wife a new all electric super whizzy toothbrush. As with most shops in Hong Kong they didn’t actually have what I wanted but they did in the warehouse.

Now in most countries something in the warehouse means it’s in Lithuania and if you order it now it should be with you for the next millennium.

Not In Hong Kong. No warehouse is more than 1 minute from the shop and they always have what you want. Always.

And so one minute later I was paying for the toothbrush and readying myself to face the nightmare of Sunday afternoon food shopping. But this being Hong Kong you get free stuff with your purchase.

A set of sore brushes and some toothpaste. Great. And Dettol. A bleach for cleaning toilets and floors.

Now I really know I don’t understand marketing.

Tags Business, Communication, Experience, Hong Kong