Category: Innovation

Wednesday, 9.00pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a lot of stuff happening in the world right now – people are scared and fearful and worried about what’s going to happen to them, their families, their livelihoods.

And they’re talking about this – about the impact it’s having on them – millions of voices having their say.

And it feels like other people are listening.

When you think about the hard choices that governments are making – you get a sense that the response, in fairness, is on the right track – that there is method behind what is going on.

What people do for work seems to be recognised in terms how it can be done – rather than how a manager wants to do it.

Some services are ones that need people to be in certain places at certain times – healthcare, retail logistics, bin collections – and so we need to organise society to make sure they can get to work if they can.

Other work can be done from anywhere – and it makes no difference to these people whether they work at home or not.

In fact, all things considered, they might prefer to work from home but suffer through a commute because their boss comes from a generation that believes that work happens in the office.

And then you have work that’s affected by the policies that have been put in place to contain the spread of the virus – the entertainment industry, travel, hospitality, child care, construction – where work simply cannot be done.

Now, what’s going to happen is this.

People who need to be somewhere will be helped to get there.

People who can work from home will start doing so.

People who are in difficulty because of what is happening will be helped.

And, in several months, things will be back to normal.

And during that time, the damage will be covered by the state.

Hopefully.

Now, when we go back to normal – will we return to a world where a virus can stop everything functioning around the world in a matter of months?

Or will the new ways of working we put in place – ways of working that, one assumes, are more resilient in the event of this kind of threat – stay in place?

Will we see a wholesale shift from office based work to home based work?

Will that result in demand for different kinds of spaces?

Will the main reason we go out become because we want to socialise – and will the entertainment industry get a boost from that, while office space takes a hit?

There are lots of people who believe that working from home is the wrong thing to do – that people need the social and control structure of the office.

This assumption is about to be severely tested over the coming months.

The SAAS world will see a surge in interest in off-premise solutions.

Commutes, for those who have to, will become easier as the roads empty of non-essential traffic.

Carbon should go down.

This is a difficult situation for many – there is no doubt about that.

Some people will see this as judgement day, as doomsday, as something that is punishment for the way we live.

Others will be more optimistic – believing that society is better placed to weather this storm than we have ever been in the past.

I am in the optimistic camp.

And I would hope that once we go through this hard reset on our nineteenth century attitude to work – we make the choice not to go back.

Because the new way is better for us as individuals, as a society and for the planet.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Tuesday, 7.42pm

Sheffield, U.K.

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. – Benjamin Franklin

Day 1 of self-isolation and it’s a window into a new world – is it one that we will embrace or is this the end of civilisation as we know it?

Times like this bring out the basic instincts in us.

We respond with fear and greed – and much of what you see on social media falls into these two buckets.

People are afraid, for their jobs, their industries, their future.

Others are looking for opportunities, pushing their services, angling for position working out new scams and profiteering.

So far, so natural.

And then you have behavioural responses – social, cultural ones.

These are empathetic acts – where you reach out to those who are afraid and reassure them.

Or more practically you organise into local support groups, helping those affected by restrictions on movement or those that are more vulnerable.

People rail against the selfishness of others – but also marvel at the unselfishness and community spirit of even more.

And then you have the responses of governments – and that’s a different kind of approach depending where you are and the kind of economics they believe in.

We’re seeing at least three kinds of responses then – instinctive, cultural and economic.

What should we make of all this?

The instinctive response is the one that has worked for many millions of years – find a safe place, keep a stockpile of stuff you need – depend on yourself and try to survive.

This is the world of the doomsday cults – the ones who believe that the world is going to end and that this is divine retribution.

Or, in a less extreme fashion, they’re conservative.

The kind of people who live within their income, have a decent savings pot and know they can ride out three to six months without an income.

But they’re probably in the minority, in developed economies anyway, because of the link between consumerism and economic growth.

Developed economies depend on people going out and spending money, keeping money circulating.

That stop in money circulation is devastating for individuals and industries.

It’s a connected web and while we all have a place to stand, things are ok – we keep bustling along and living our lives.

But what the people in charge know is that all this is built on a web of confidence – on the belief that we can live this way.

The social reaction to people in trouble is to reach out and help.

But not all the time – most of the time we ignore what’s going on.

The fact is that lots of people fall off our social web all the time – some were never on there in the first place.

We respond with social action – we raise money to help, there are charities that do what they can and philanthropists who spend money to solve the biggest problems.

But when we have a crisis, like the one we have now, the biggest thing a government has to do is maintain confidence.

And the way they do that is by not allowing anyone to fall – by helping them through this difficult time.

And you can see that happening – with loans and payment holidays and help of various kinds.

Help, you should note, that is given now but will need to be paid back later.

That way it’s not a handout but help to put people back on their feet – so they can carry on participating in the confidence game we call a modern economy.

What’s going on right now is a forced social experiment in creating a post-industrial society.

This is one where we work at home, get everything delivered and only go to a place of work when we have to be there because it’s critical for operations.

But we’re probably going to realise that there are few of those situations.

Most factories, docks, warehouses and places where things happen can be managed with a small staff – only a few of whom have to be on the premises.

A lot of things run themselves these days – and what we’re seeing at the moment is a good reason to make more things that way.

If you live in a modern economy it is probably a scary time, especially if you aren’t in a situation where you can survive on your own resources for very long.

And the thing people should realise is that it isn’t their fault – these kinds of shocks are a characteristic of the system they live in.

And it’s the people who are in charge of the system who need to make sure that a short-term shock does not result in a long-term impact on the people living in that system.

There are many reasons why this needs to happen – but the simplest reason is that people have long memories.

If you fire your staff now or make them take pay cuts when times are bad now – then when times get better you’ll find that they’ll get even by leaving.

Look after them now and they will repay you with loyalty in the future.

This is counter-intuitive behaviour for our basic instinct.

That just wants to run and hide, cut away the costs, pare to the bone, hunker down in order to survive.

Which is a little last century, perhaps even Jurassic.

What we now need to do is make sure no one falls off the web – by helping now.

Well – governments – the owners of the system need to do that.

Because this crisis will last a short time and then there will be a long period of growth and recovery.

That’s how these things work.

And why should governments act this way?

Once again – because people have memories.

A government that fails to act to support the system it manages will not stay in government very long.

So, there are two things we should remember.

There will be – there has to be – a safety net for people who are in trouble.

But you also need to help yourself – the changing economy will create new opportunities – for new products and services delivered remotely or by post.

The online economy will accelerate along with all its support services – see this post for the list.

Here’s what it comes down to.

You aren’t going to be allowed to fall – governments can’t afford for you to fall.

Not these days, with everyone watching them – urging them to do the right thing.

If you fall, we all fall.

So stop being afraid.

Take a helping hand, if you need to – and start thinking about what you’re going to do next to participate in the economic and social web we’re all clinging to.

Because that’s what matters now.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Friday, 8.24pm

Sheffield, U.K.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge. – Albert Camus

How do you react when you first see something new – a new service or a product or an idea?

Do you react with cynicism, with scepticism – perhaps a view that it will never work.

Or do you eagerly try new things, knowing that if you don’t you won’t find those gems hiding among the stones?

Fear, uncertainty and doubt are our friends – they help keep us alive.

Our brains are wired to distrust the new, the unfamiliar until we’re sure it’s not going to eat or sting or poison us.

But we’re also social creatures, evolved to live together while constantly engaging in fractious tussles for turf and power.

And we’re not very different from our ancestors in that respect – monkeys have a strong sense of social hierarchy and status – and it governs much of what they do every day.

Now, what does that tell us about the way we work together – or more importantly, the way we should work together.

Let’s take any business, for example – probably one that’s based on an individual skill.

The other day I read a LinkedIn post where a provider of a particular service was called by a prospective customer asking for prices.

Later, when the provider researched the prospect it turned out that the prospect was actually a competitor – who then advertised the same service at a slightly lower cost.

You might argue that what the competitor was doing was smart market research, or you might feel that it was unprofessional behaviour.

Regardless, what it tells you is that the competitor saw the service they were providing as a commodity, something that was interchangeable with what someone else did.

And that leads to a problem.

If you’re selling something that is no different from what a number of other people are selling then the only difference is price.

In such markets the lowest cost operator will win.

You might be able to maintain margins for some of the time – but eventually many markets end up being dominated by a large commodity trade and a small luxury trade.

Take glasses, for example – the things that you wear.

You can pay a lot of money in a shop, even more if you’re buying a brand or treat it as an item of jewellery.

But you can also buy it for not very much through online services.

But the thing about being a commodity is that it’s as much about the way you see yourself as what’s actually happening out there.

If you see yourself competing in a crowded, jostling market, selling things that anyone else could sell then you’re not going to have much fun running your business.

It will feel crowded and you’ll always be limited in what you can charge and how much you can grow.

At the other extreme you may have something unique but if it’s too different, too out of the ordinary, then you won’t have customers willing to take a chance on you.

That’s a lonely place – the kind where inventors who fall in love with their products go – when they stop listening to their markets.

A workable business, on the other hand, probably has principles of community at its core.

If you provide a service then you probably want to be in the company of other professionals who care about their subject enough to be expert at it.

More importantly, they need to have spent enough time on their craft to develop their own unique approach – one that doesn’t compete with your approach but that makes the whole field richer.

Take any industry, for example, say graphic design.

Graphic design is a field where a designer could have free rein to create amazing designs that delight customers.

Or they could turn out the same basic patterns again and again for different customers.

Or they could create pure art that no one really understands and therefore no one buys.

In that field you have people who experience business in all three ways: too crowded, too lonely and just right.

But it’s the same field.

What’s different is the approach and attitude they bring to their business.

All too often people blame the market for their lack of success.

Perhaps we should be asking ourselves what we bring to the market – what’s unique, rare, different about what we do?

Because the market, at its core, is the aggregation of lots of little decisions made by buyers and sellers.

Individual decisions.

Like the ones you make about whether to be a commodity or to be much much more.

To be part of a community.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Wednesday, 9.43pm

Sheffield, U.K.

information is the primary basis of value in knowledge work, and it must flow to the right person in the right form at the right time at the lowest cost with the highest quality possible. – Matthew May

I’ve been thinking about the challenges we have as individuals and as managers in organisations when it comes to knowledge work.

Work based on knowledge has really only been a thing for a few decades or so.

And before that, you have to remember that work based on manual effort is also a relatively recent thing.

Yes, people toiled, in fields or for others or as soldiers, but modern manual work is a relatively recent thing in human history.

What makes this kind of work different is that it’s industrialised, professional and treats workers better than they were treated in the past.

That’s the kind of work a lot of people did after the Second World War, as the productivity of each worker increased massively.

Because the methods that made manual workers were so successful, they have seeped into our consciousness as the “right way” to do things.

And so we use the principles developed to do manual work better to try and manage knowledge work as well – and find that it just doesn’t seem to do the job.

Why is that and what should we be doing differently?

To answer that question a paper by Peter Drucker called Knowledge-Worker productivity: The biggest challenge is worth a read.

The first thing that’s interesting is that Drucker argues that there was a period Before Taylor and a period After Taylor.

Frederick Winslow Taylor was the guy who studied how work was done and broke it into a sequence of simple, repeatable steps and effectively put in place the foundations of all “developed” economies.

What’s slightly startling is that Drucker says that all methods since then including Deming’s work and the Toyota Production System build on the system of thinking – the principles – that Taylor put in place.

Taylor said that you should look at the task and break it down into its components.

Get rid of stuff that isn’t needed, reorder steps so that they are simple and easy to follow – create a job that can be done again and again – and then redesign your tools to make it even simpler and faster to do the job well.

Manual work is all about how to do the job – and how to do it better and faster with less effort.

So, we apply this approach to knowledge work as well – we tell programmers how to set up their frameworks, we create processes for administrators to follow.

But in knowledge work the main issues is often figuring out what the task is in the first place.

And that requires a different set of skills – it’s more about listening and exploring than about doing and organising.

When it comes to actually doing the work, manual work is about meeting standards.

If you make a cup you want each cup you make to be about the same.

If you’re making steering wheels, every one that you make has to be within a certain tolerance if you want it to fit.

With knowledge work, on the other hand, you want the best quality you can get.

You don’t want an OK surgeon – you want someone who is very good at what they do.

The same goes for teachers and programmers and managers.

Quality in manufacturing can be measured while quality in knowledge work is often only seen through the experience of the customer.

Finally, when you’re looking at manual work you see it as a cost.

Ideally, you’d like to do three times the work, with half the people being paid twice as much – because people in this situation are costs that you need to reduce.

Knowledge workers, on the other hand, produce more the more they know, and are more valuable the better they get.

Having the best professors or the best surgeons on your team lets you raise your prices and get the best customers.

The thing with manual work is that an organisation has to take responsibility for developing its workers – managers have to work on the system to help them do their best work.

With knowledge work it’s perhaps more dependent on the worker to learn and develop – the company can give them projects and training but they have to really want to become the best they can be.

Companies that support this well become places knowledge workers want to work at – and that gives those companies a competitive advantage over those who think of them in the same way as they do manual workers.

When it comes down to it knowledge is about using information to create value.

And we’re all in the business of doing that these days.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh