The Brightest Future Ever…But
A good friend of mine sent me this link today about the future of the work world, asking me if I thought that the predictions would come true. The executive recruiting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas has peered into its crystal ball to predict the future of our work environments. According to the Information Week Blog, the recruiting firm expects:
- More employees will work from home
- Cubicles will be phased out by shared communities via wireless devices
- Free agency will flourish
- The US will increasingly target recruiting efforts oversees
- Companies will offer more of their own educational programs
- A four day work week will become more common
- Companies will provide less health benefits to employees
A lot of these predictions make sense. In light of the proliferation of novel productivity tools, they actually are very reasonable expectations. But will these predictions actually bear out?
NOT SO FAST
Well that depends on many factors, including:
- Global economic conditions
- Geopolitical catastrophes
- The degree of corporate allegiance to 20th Century industrial mechanics (e.g. The Short Snout)
- The willingness of businesses to adopt distributed collaboration over centralized command
- The advancement of entrepreneurial deployment along the Long Tail
I’m not so sure that the Short Snout is all too willing to hand it over to the Long Tail. Chris Anderson has the right idea about the general trend of inventories becoming freer. But those Short Snouts clustered around the Small Head don’t give up the bone easily. Swiss Bank Socialists: they will cry Mommy after dropping the ball on their own foot.
(Incidentally, there’s now some controversial evidence out of Harvard Business School that sort of challenges Chris’ theory, of which his analysis you can read about here).
Although these predictions were made a decade ago and still have yet to become major trends, I do believe the technological and cultural changes that are taking place right now will in fact bring some of them true within another decade.
It just doesn’t make sense for businesses to ignore Moore’s Law, nor for people not to exploit the benefits of sleeker means of community inter-reach. Moore’s Law is making tools increasingly more powerful and robust while diminishing their relative and absolute costs.
No, the problem, as I see it, is that the changes are themselves changing so fast that it’s hard to keep up. Businesses, less and less, can project with a straight line. Their vision has be be curved through the space-time warping that is Moore’s Law.
HIKING
If you’ve ever hiked up Mount Rainier or Half-Dome in Yosemite, you know that the beginning trek is a pleasent stroll. You’re excited about your journey. You hike for hours and you feel great. You enjoy the views as you stop for a break.
But then a curious thing happens. Your feet feel a bit heavier. And pretty soon your huffing up steep edges, rough woods, through cold air. The view is spectacular, but you wonder if you’ll get to the top. It seems much farther now that you’ve gotten closer.
That feeling that things are getting rough… Well that’s the feeling of hitting the inflection points along the metaphorical curve of Moore’s Law. And if you don’t know that you’re climbing up a mountain, and not just a small hill, you’re less likely to make it. You’ll be psychologically blown down. At that point, businesses will either have to get huffing very fast, or they’ll just stop in their tracks and be done.
VISION and CLEAR FOG
Even the smartest of large enterprises sometimes vastly underestimate the Tao of Change. Years or decades of financial boom and comparative advantage tend to make the Short Snouts blurry-eyed with reverie. When startled awake, gluttony seizes everything around.
A 13,500 ton ship is no way to sail down the river of change.
We can all predict wonderful things as our technologies become increasingly refined, more potent and cheaper. But if millions of people continue to work in organizations that see the world through clear fog then we’ll continue to see much of the same as we see today: cubicle on cubicle, cog-job after cog-job and clinical depression to accompany the economic malaise that follows dysfunctional social traditions.
Overall, I’m optimistic about our opportunity along the expanding Long Tail. As should you. Optimism breeds itself.
For perhaps the first time in history, we all have the chance to manifest our entrepreneurial visions on the side. Moonlight Entrepreneurship might be in the cards for those who can’t yet quit their cubes. Which means that those predictions which Challenger is making might come true only if individuals take the initiative to make them come true. It could be a nice future, the brightest ever.
…But: never take your eyes of the Short Snouts. History has a long tail of them ruining promising things.
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Seth’s Advice on How to Enjoy Every Bite of Your Apple
All of us are marketers. That’s what you need to keep in mind when expecting customer service that gets results. This applies as much to Apple products as it does to medicine, critical care nursing or disaster relief.
If you own a Mac (or any other modern contraption subject to entropy), Seth Godin has sixteen very useful tips in Working with Apple Tech Support.
His list may be specific to Apple, but I think it’s got practical advice that shows us how to take responsibility for customer service. Customer service is about more than consumer satisfaction. It’s about bringing forth the best in us all. Customer service is also a mutual experience. Pay attention to step #14 if the list still doesn’t work for you.
Go to Seth’s blog, blookmark his post, and do yourself a big favor: buy The Dip. It just might save your life or help you get through the next disaster in your life, big or small.
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Multiple Choice Question on Hell
Many business leaders and consumers are concerned about an economic recession. Regardless of what’s happening, here’s a question for you to work on:
Which of these is the only way to deal with Hell?
- Around
- Over
- Under
- Through
Please put your answer in the comments.
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Groundswelling Corporate America
After listening to the webinar presented by authors Chjarlene Li and Josh Bernoff of groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies, I have more faith that more of Corporate America will embrace the promises of the new marketing approaches possible with Web 2.0. Groundswell offers a good segue into social marketing for businesses that have yet to catch up.
I listed some of the key points the presenters made over at ReadWriteWeb. Essentially, they advocate an approach to marketing that emphasizes people first followed by clear objectives with an intelligent strategy using appropriate technology. Their acronym for this approach is POST. (I guess when you blog, your POSTs should keep these steps in mind–not a bad meme for blogging general by the way.)
They also discussed the analogues of the roles of traditional marketing with the objectives of groundswell:
- Research by listening to your customers on your blogs, forums, groups, etc.
- Market by talking with your customers on your chosen web platforms
- Sell your products or services by energizing your customers
- Support your efforts and customers with the right kinds of supporting technlogies
- Develop your business needs by embracing your customers through the new platforms
All of this is common sense really. But Forrester Research, the firm that Charlene and Josh’s represent, provides a remarkable service to business executives who need to get up to speed with the merciless curve of change coming down on all enterprises.
I’d love to see more of the kinds of services emerge because those businesses which “get the web” (e.g. those who “get” Seth Godin’s attitude on marketing) will thrive. Heck, I’d love to get into this business myself because I really want to see the fundamental projects of capitalism and democracy succeed.
An acquaintance of mine recently attended a presentation by the Charlene and Josh and came away very impressed with their personable, approachable style and felt that her company could greatly benefit from what they have to say. Ultimately, successful adopters will realize the enormous potential offered by the socialization of billions of people and the dangers of misplaced attempts.
Groundswell is an excellent start for newbies and pros. I plan to offer a succinct review of their book in a future post. In the meantime please visit their sleek blog and start your groundswelling campaign the right way.
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Clockwork Orange Marketing
One of my purposes in blogging is to evangelize our need to promote remarkable capitalism in a time of unremarkable consumerism. As a registered nurse and a former accountant, I think I have a unique perspective on just how vital ethical customer service is to the well-being of us all. And it’s my belief that marketing is everything. To that end, I’d like to talk about something we are all (sadly) familiar with: terrible customer service. It’s a critical topic because it infiltrates everything we interact with: businesses, careers, healthcare, government, religion, even dating.
While posting a comment on James Lowery’s Performancing on how some blogs are now tyring to force readers to view advertising or pay a subscription for the privaledge of ad-free reading, a metaphor for 20th century marketing inspired by Stanley Kurbrick’s 60’s classic hit me.
I call it Clockwork Orange Marketing. It’s really interruption marketing but with a little more force added to it. You know what Clockwork Orange Marketing is. It’s when businesses decide that the only way to generate cash is to force customers to watch a video, join a mailing list, tolerate telemarketing calls at dinner, deny website/blog visitors entry if they use AdBlock Plus, or a mind-numbing array of suicidal marketing weapons businesses feel obligated to point at every prospect.
Businesses, I suppose, generally have a right to commit these blunders. But nobody climbs Mount Remarkable just by stepping over their own rights. No, the way to the top is difficult and the only way there is through doing the hard work of pacing the whole way up. It requires vision, discipline, creativity, pliant focus, awareness and gratitude to teachers and other climbers along the way. Clockwork Orange Marketing requires none of these virtues. Why do the remarkable when you can strap on black boots and kick your customers into submission? It worked for 20th Century Fascists…until American air power leveled them all. So much for force as a long-term strategy for running a state.
The whole point of business, its fundamental going concern, is all about one word: awareness. That’s what marketing is about. That’s what hard work is about. That’s what customer service is about. If you’re not aware, then what are you? Isn’t the whole business of life all about awareness? How can any of us have fun just by being replaceable cogs in mindless contraptions? How much better would business be, would our economy be, our educational system be, our religious institutions be, our lives be, if we ditched the fear-driven paradigms that run most of what we do?
Fear is not a strategy. It’s a fallacy. And yet most businesses run on fear: fear of losing customers if they don’t forcefully funnel them into their offerings; fear of taking risks on better ways of doing things; fear of losing a few points in the stock market at the expense of long-term wealth. Risk is for grownups. Safety is for kids.
And so what is a common response in businesses to this sense of fear: Clockwork Orange Marketing.
But the problem is this. In this century, when customers can find your competitors online, through social networking, through blogging, and down along the Long Tail, forcing your customers to do things without even establishing their trust in you kills all of your chances at outsourcing your marketing department to your customers. Isn’t that the kind of outsourcing every business leader should have as a primary goal? Just how much of our business leadership has deep-seated effects rooted in child-abuse? (You’d be surprised.)
If you’re reading this post, would you do our world a favor? Would you please blog about Clockwork Orange Marketing? Could we spread this meme around the web? I want this world to be more remarkable than it is so that my toddler will be able to bring forth remarkable things into this world instead of having to fight his way out of a Stanley Kubrick nightmare.
Please tell the world about the war we need to fight against Clockwork Orange Marketing. We and our youth deserve much better.
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