Something else that’s pretty epic, is dubizzle UNO. Anyone who has lived in the UAE (or MENA at large) would have likely run into dubizzle.com (or later on OLX after the company was acquired by Naspers). This fantastic company was founded by 2 smart and driven entrepreneurs that grew the company into one of the first wave unicorns of the Middle East. 

However, this blog post is not about the dubizzle story, as this would best be told (and probably will, one day) by the founders. This post is about dubizzle UNO, which if it wasn’t for former dubizzle Head of Design saving this content on his personal website, it would likely have gotten lost outside the Internet Archives. 

Throughout the years, I’ve had the opportunity and privilege of being involved in various amazing startups. One of these was definitely dubizzle and the dubizzle UNO project is a master class example of work that was fuelled with purpose, culture, creativity, storytelling and strategic insight. 

As dubizzle was growing in staff and regional footprint, it was important to ensure that the original vision set by the founders could be articulated, understood and embraced across the entire organization. This vision also needed to set the framework for culture, purpose, strategy as well as operational execution across the various centers of excellence within the company. As we embarked on this company-wide soul searching journey, we used Simon Sinek’s WHY, HOW, WHAT framework as a guide for our travels. Later on, we added the WHO element, as this part was really the yin (or the yang) of the WHY. 

The reason for coming back to this work and sharing it with the wider network is simple. It’s still extremely relevant and useful. Throughout multiple engagements with CEO’s, board members, founders and leadership teams around the world, I still believe that dubizzle UNO is a best in class example of how purpose, culture, strategy and execution come together under beautiful and actionable design principles and company values. 

Spending a few minutes exploring the work will definitely inspire you. The question that remains: instead of Waldo, can you find ken and barbie?

As I was packing my bags and getting ready for a week of insightful, inspiring and networking driven interactions, I began to further reflect on the conference theme itself. As we are talking about a golden opportunity for golf, community, participation and evolution immediately came to mind. Naturally, this opportunity cannot be reflected upon without taking into consideration what is happening around us. 

The World has undergone a massive digital transformation throughout the past 25 years. The pace of change seems to constantly accelerate and natural, evolutionary disruptions are taking shape across multiple industries. 

Before going deeper into the digital transformations around us, let’s take a moment to look at the impact technology has had on our lives throughout, well, the history of humanity. 

Technology as a catalyst for change

Technical inventions have played an important role in the formation of networks. Networks are dependent on two critical factors: access and distribution. If we have access but no distribution, the network isn’t vital and vice versa. 

A network with access and distribution can then serve as a birthplace for an ecosystem. In a similar manner, the pillars of a vibrant ecosystem rely on the access and distribution of a network but start to evolve around founding pillars of its own: utility and community. In other words, a vibrant ecosystem serves the social practices of its members through value creation. An invention is the spark but innovation evolves from how this invention is used to co-create value.

Some great examples from our history immediately come to mind:

The railroad 

When the railroad network was built across the United States, it enabled multiple inventions as well as new ecosystems to form. Before the connected railroad, cattle used to be transported by cowboys across the prairies to reach their final destination. With the railroad network in place, the meat could be packaged anywhere within the grid and transported to any destination. In addition to the railroad itself, another great invention made all of this possible: the refrigerator cart. Without the network it was useless but within the network, it was able to generate immense value and was transformative to multiple industries. 

The railroad network also allowed for a completely new business model to emerge: the catalog business. This analog version of Amazon allowed a new and more efficient form of a demand/supply chain to emerge. Not sure if they had free returns back then though…

Electricity

In a similar manner, the industrial revolution was fuelled by the abundance and supply of electricity along the electrical network. Instead of being forced to build factories close to water fuelled power sources, factories could be placed anywhere along the electrical grid. This marked the birth of industrial zones with higher efficiency in access to the respective bill of materials, but also allowed for innovation to happen as access to electricity became more of a commodity instead of luxury. 

In both cases, we can see how a technical invention paved the way for the formation of networks. By having access and distribution we also witnessed how new business models and even ecosystems began to form.

The Internet

Just as electricity, access and distribution to the internet has pretty much taken place across most parts of the world. In its infancy, the 1.0 version of the Web allowed for people to access a set of “isolated islands” known as individual websites. Access and distribution was in place, but certain fundamental utilities as well as community was missing on a mass scale. 

Here comes 2.0

The emergence of Web 2.0 was marked by the invention of search engines to help collate the content across the network. In a similar manner, API’s enabled content to flow more seamlessly across the various nodes of the network and you could begin to embed for example Google maps or YouTube data into your own personal blog. In many ways, Web 2.0 could be labeled as the era in which utility/content driven ecosystems emerged. 

People want 3.0 

As access and distribution were in place and content began to flow more seamlessly through utilities across the Web, Web 3.0 really marked the emergence of social networks. These human connection fuelled ecosystems would stride from content/utility and community coming together to serve the social practices of its members. 

The internet has obviously continued to evolve and with IOT and AI paving the way for future stages of evolution, but I will pause here and come back to the industry and opportunity at hand. 

The golden opportunity for golf

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the golden opportunity for golf (from a digital perspective) is to look at another industry where this transformation has already taken place at mass scale. 

Case Amadeus

Decades ago, flight bookings were primarily made via travel agencies or by contacting airlines directly. Flight inventory was managed in large booking halls in analog fashion. As flight traffic continued to increase, it goes without saying that this method was immensely time and labor intensive as well as prone to human error/miscommunication. 

What happened next was something that paved the way for a new kind of network and eventual ecosystem to be formed. Amadeus, along with a few airlines, created a central registry (GDS) for flight information. This system could then be accessed by travel agents around the world, to manage flight bookings and inventory. 

This central registry continued to evolve and throughout time, it enabled a new form of ecosystem to form, in which airlines, online travel agents and even businesses based on meta search engines could expand the market further into the b2c space. This central registry and the access and distribution into this network of information was the cornerstone for advancement in service levels, efficiency and overall innovation. 3rd party businesses were able to leverage this registry data to build service layers that would fulfill the needs of travel agencies, travelers as well as airlines.

The digital ecosystem in golf

As we look at the overall golf industry, there’s a massive opportunity to transform the digital landscape within the game and to create a vibrant ecosystem that will grow the game, drive participation and serve as a vital utility as well as catalyst for community. However, the groundwork still needs to be done.

WHS

The governing bodies of golf have introduced the World Handicap System (WHS), which ultimately aims to bring all golfers with a handicap (HCP) under the same umbrella. This initiative in itself is absolutely fantastic. Golfers around the world will have a unified way of managing their handicaps and participating in international golf tournaments. 

The downside with the practical execution of this initiative is that instead of building unified access and distribution, the industry has gone about with building isolated islands for updating and maintaining individual handicaps. Although the rules for maintaining a WHS HCP are universal, most local and regional governing bodies have started building their own WHS systems that are not connected and cannot be synchronized across borders. 

One might be wondering why any of this really matters. Well, firstly, building these isolated systems is really expensive for the industry at large and minimal economies of scale can be achieved if operating in this manner. Local unions and federations are not technology companies, yet alone experts in building utility or community. Why not enable the creation of a central registry (golf’s version of GDS) and make this available for all golf federations and unions around the world? 

In addition to cost savings/ economies of scale related to money, time and knowledge, by having a central system is place a vibrant ecosystem can be born. With the needed API’s, the golf industry will not only provide a universal network for golfers all around the world but also welcome the best 3rd parties to invent utility and community driven solutions that will increase participation, engagement and interaction within the golf industry at large. 

Virtual challenges in which people play golf on different golf courses, yet compete through a digital platform already exist. Just imagine how this could further drive participation if WHS would also become a global standard across digital platforms? Global audiences could join virtual activation programs that allow for local play and global engagement. A great example of this is The Open virtual challenge, which was launched in partnership by The R&A and Golf GameBook.

Governing bodies globally, regionally and locally should not be concerned about losing their authority or control by doing this. On the contrary, the GDS as a universal technical standard/solution will unify the game, enforce quality standards and data integrity/privacy, whilst enabling the market to decide which service/solution they would like to use to input their HCP related data. 

Club data 

In a similar manner to having a central database for maintaining WHS handicaps, the industry still lacks a central database for golf course data. Insurmountable amounts of human power is spent annually with updating golf course slope data, GPS coordinates and other golf course related data. Why not enable a universal registry for all official golf clubs and courses around the world? By having a central database that is updated once for launch and then on a case by case basis, you would allow 3rd party businesses to build upon this information. If cost is a concern, why not offer this on a usage based license model and share the revenues through local golf authorities back to the respective golf clubs. 

The benefits for the industry as well as the clubs and individual golfers would be immense. They could choose the best digital scoring solution to update their HCP. Because of the WHS and golf course data connection, the slope data would always be up to date and local unions and federations would still receive the respective scoring data from the user. In similar fashion, GPS points of golf courses would be universal and instead of spending thousands of hours updating GPS data points, 3rd party providers could focus on further developing connected GPS devices with for example other utility and community elements. 

The road ahead

As we come back to the theme of golf’s golden opportunity, the road ahead from a technology point of view is filled with opportunity. Governing bodies of golf have a unique opportunity to bring the needed skill sets together to drive change. In an era which the golf industry is perhaps marked more by its internal arguments and different points of view, perhaps an opportunity has emerged to bring people together and enable the creation of an accessible network that can fuel a utility and community driven ecosystem to take this beloved game to new heights.

When it comes to golf, it’s hard to find another sport that can accompany you throughout pretty much each stage of your life. Whether you picked up your clubs when you were 6 or 60, the game has something to offer for everyone.

Throughout the past 20 years, technology has had a profound impact on our day to day lives. Mobile phones are inextricably bound to us and they’ve started to perform functions that we no longer need to bare the effort of doing on our own. A great example of this is the simple act of remembering the phone numbers of those closest to you. Before the whole mobile phone era, we would memorize the most important phone numbers, as we needed to have those in case we needed to make a phone call while on the road. Today, our mobile device handle the burden for us, and beyond.

Throughout time, people have collected experiences, documented those as physical photographs (or video) and created family photo albums that can enable moments and experiences to be re-lived further down our life journey’s. In today’s time and age, this craving for new experiences continues strong and modern technology is enabling us to store and re-live these moments in easier ways than ever before. We see social media communities re-populating our feeds with memories from the past, search results being optimized on past queries and several forms of AI optimizing user funnels based on behavioral predictive modelling.

This collision of the physical and virtual worlds present amazing opportunities for us to enrich our daily lives and bring deeper substance and longevity to our daily endeavors.

Golf is the most social game on the planet, and it represents so much more than just a game of skill. Lifelong relationships are formed and nurtured on the golf course. It’s a game of character, integrity, skill and constant self-discovery. The places and people we play with, along with the moments or brilliance (and insanity) all create a lifeline of memories that become stories we can carry along with us. Whether it’s your first round of golf with your child, that “once in a lifetime” trip to the Old Course or that time you beat your arch enemy on the golf course, it all builds onto your personal story around the game.

Golf GameBook has always been about making the game more fun and leveraging technology in a way that we can get more out of our golf experiences both on and off the course. As you embark on your experience treasure hunt, Golf GameBook will keep track of where you play, who you play with and how the match ended. Each time you head out to the golf course, a new golfing story is about to happen. By having a virtual companion to help you to document these adventures, you will soon witness that a trip down memory lane starts to form. Each golfer deserves a gallery or friends whenever they play and a diary where these memories can be stored. We are all passionate about the game. We all have a story to tell. Now start co-creating your own.

Relevant links:

www.golfgamebook.com

www.golfxyou.com

The slide share below goes into a bit more detail around this. I shared this while giving a talk at the Social Media Forum 2012 here in Dubai.

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Throughout the last 12 years on the client side of things, I’ve always been amazed at how many companies outsource their “soul” by assigning critical customer facing tasks to external agencies and consultants. Customer service and call centers are operated by external providers with heavy cost reduction pressure on them. Social media presences are managed by social media agencies because brands are afraid they don’t understand the “social space”. Creative agencies are used on a case-by-case basis to communicate (and often dictate) the brand essence of the company.  SEO & SEM tasks are outsourced to media or specialist agencies with no client interest of delving into the topic. The list goes on…

This needs to change. The Internet has brought along some major disruptions to the media landscape, along with it a fundamental shift in control. Brands are no longer able to control the message across the touch points, but rather live in a scenario in which the brand perception is a hybrid between company and customer perspectives. Customers are more in charge than ever before and the traditional media landscape (as it used to stand) simply no longer exists. Before the Internet, mass media dominated the audiences. This led to corporate ways of working in which the brand used mass media to broadcast its message and the “conversations” were outsourced to agencies behind a phone line or repair centre to deal with. In today’s time and age, these “conversations” and their amplification possibility has caused this shift in control. It is now more important than ever, to engage in these conversations, co-create value with customers and fuel your brand presence through advocacy, not mass communication.

In marketing and advertising, the old broadcast paradigm still seems to hold many corporations down. Most of the marketing budgets are placed on bought media and the conversational marketing costs are always questioned. Mass media still prevails, merely because of engrained habits, but also due to the same paradox in which brands outsource their souls by replacing time with money. In today’s time and age, time cannot be replaced in the manner it was replaced during the “mad men” times. Time is the “new money” as brands need to take the responsibility and accountability of interacting with its customers. Social media and community managers are often the core voice of the company towards customers. Call and customer service centres are not merely “cost centres”, they can become significant profit centres when positioned and managed properly.

Advertising is also evolving. Going from seasonal campaigns only, into continuous engagement and “always on” marketing efforts, allows brands to deepen their relationships with customers. These kinds of changes require brands to rethink their strategies but also their budgets. The notion of human media becomes a cornerstone of an engagement platform. Instead of funnelling money to outside agencies and bought media, brands should first look at investing the proper amounts of resources to handle their customer facing engagement roles.  Once these roles exists, brands will get much more mileage from the creative and media agencies as the same co-creation principle applies just as much in a client – agency relationship, as it does with end customers. This calls for brave CMO’s and marketing managers.

Why is it so easy for brands to invest hundreds of thousands of Dirham’s into TV advertising, while hiring a few full time social media managers seems to require more approvals, amendments and bureaucracy than passing a new law in the UN? The reason is simple. In most companies, human media is still perceived as a non-working cost from a financial perspective. Marketing headcounts are kept low, because most of the actual work is done by agencies and over 70% of the budgets go to bought media on various channels (aka working media). With the emergence of digital channels, all of this has changed. 70% of your budgets should not be going into bought media alone. By investing more time and money into your creative/brand, you ensure you give your brand presence a continuous voice. Hiring internal resources to manage your “always on” performance media and social presences, is just as much working media, than buying TV spots.  By having this human media inside your organization, you ensure that you have accountability as well as a proper workflow of knowledge gathering and sharing. Continuous engagement strategies stride on co-created value with the customers. Co-created value fuels advocacy and advocacy fuels positive WOM or earned media. This is like steroids for any brand.

The marketing organization of the future is one that understands the importance of its human media as well as the importance of cultivating conversations with customers. In-house conversational marketing teams will become more and more popular as they end up driving cost efficiency as well as a whole new degree of accountability and customer engagement.  External resources are not seen as agencies, but rather soul mates. With the digital revolution that the Internet has provided us, customer-facing roles and channels have grown and the need for continuous dialogue, interaction and engagement become a standard part of how brands interact in this space. Customer engagement is much more conversation driven, in which dialogue and engagement begins to provide a shift away from a bought media and broadcast driven marketing alone. Internal creative agencies, customer service centres, community managers and brand architect’s begin to drive a fundamental transformation in the industry. An industry fuelled by your soul: the human media. Don’t outsource your soul.

 John Maeda often talks about creative leadership vs authoritarian leadership. In many ways, these 2 leadership types or styles stem back to the early days of culture and are described on many levels by cross cultural experts like Trompenaars, Hofstede and Edward T. Hall , as power distance. In certain cultures, leaders were considered as “demi gods” who had absolute power and were never to be questioned. In other cultures, leaders were chosen through a collectivist approach in which the overall community assigned their leader but also played a part in the overall decision making.

In business, the traditional leadership styles of the “authoritarian leadership camp” have been dominant throughout the century. This has been the preferred school of thought and used as the nucleus of management education for decades. As societies and cultural landscapes evolve, so do the technological enablers around us. Whether it’s the emergence of radio broadcasts, TV, the internet or mobile communication, these have profound impacts on societies as well as overall cultural norms. These technological disruptions are also forming interesting paradigm shifts within societies, allowing us to witness an interesting generation shift in not only societies, but also in how the notion of a leader is shaping and evolving.

Authoritarian leadership relies strongly on avoiding mistakes. This kind of leadership strides and continues to be relevant in certain circumstances. For example, the military or car factories rely on everyone playing exactly their part in the picture, responsibility is divided in vertical hierarchy and “the parts of the machinery” are expected to perform (and stick to) their task. The leader is the person who asserts his power, accountability and possesses all the answers. It is very much about being in control and managing through authority. There is a striking resemblance between traditional media and authoritarian leadership. It is very much about the brand broadcasting (and controlling) the message across the numerous media touch points. In this scenario, then brand is in control and the message is very much crafted from a company perspective. However, as we all know the media industry in undergoing a massive transformation. The emergence of the internet has led us to scenarios in which brands are no longer able to control the message, consumers are more and more in control and successful brands are those who are capable of adding value to their customer through serving their social practices. These disruptions cause for a fundamental rethink on engagement strategies, and leadership.

Creative leadership stems from a different set of values. It bubbles from uncertainty, from creativity and experimentation. These types of characteristics coincide with the way in which the overall internet landscape has come to being. When thinking about the overall evolution of the internet, it has always been one that supported open standards and information sharing. Where in the past good business ideas were kept secret, these days they are shared openly across virtual networks in hope of recognition and collective assurance, acceptance and collaboration. Because the internet landscape is evolving so rapidly, it becomes more and more difficult for anyone to really become a guru in this space. Previous titles and merits are important, but being successful in this space requires people to go through a continuous rebirth of knowledge, just as a Phoenix bird goes through a rebirth every thousand years (except internet cycles are probably closer to 1 year instead of 1000 years). Relying on legacy and a “what has worked in the past, will work again” mentality is detrimental in the online space.

This is where I believe the fundamental generation gap in leadership is coming to life. It is not a generation gap that is related to age, but to mind set. Your personal equity as a leader relies on your ability to deal with ambiguity, uncertainty and a rapidly changing landscape. You need to prove yourself every day, not only to yourself but especially to your team. As it is impossible to be an expert in everything, you become more dependent on your network and in the end, what you know becomes irrelevant. It’s important to know, “who knows” and that the person “who knows”, respects you and shares your vision. Creative leadership strides in the digital era, not only because it shares common characteristics to the evolution of the web, but also because it shares many of the same values that enabled the internet to become what it is today. The true power of creative leadership is that it creates a following which is based on mutual goals, a shared vision that unites people not only from a rational perspective, but also from a heart and “gut” perspective.

Just as brands need to rethink their engagement strategies with their consumers, overall leadership practices need to live up to the changing times. Is your mind, heart and “gut” ready?

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to take part in the MENA Cristal Awards in Mzaar Kfardebian, Lebanon. As a Finn, it was fascinating to take a 3 hour flight from Dubai and be in a chalet type environment with a view of the ski slopes from your hotel window. If you ever have a chance to visit Lebanon, check out the Intercontinental in Mzaar. In any case, enough of the tourist guide stuff

The reason for my visit was to participate in the MENA Cristals, which represents the “cannes lions” for the MENA region. It was fascinating to take part in the seminars as well as see the work that was rewarded along the way. I was particularly impressed with the quality and innovative work that FP7 from Bahrain had conducted. Check out some of their work here .

One of the most interesting sessions I had the chance to join, was a presentation from JCDecaux, where mr Decaux himself gave an overview about his company’s ambitions to transform outdoor media to the next level. What struck me during his presentation was yet again a notion of the silo approach many of our media channels are taking when expanding their reach. For sure, with the urbanization of societies and the increase in flight traffic, outdoor media plays an important role in the overall media landscape. However, instead of seeing other channels (such as digital) as competition, I’m surprised how little companies like JCDecaux are embracing digital capabilities to drive a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Digital is seen as a separate medium, when it should be seen as the future of ALL media. I’m not saying this because I happen to work in the digital field. I’m saying this because technology is enabling more and more media channels to become measurable as well as targeted. Think of outdoor and digital capabilities from a different angle:

The cost of changing outdoor ads as well as printing ridiculous amounts of paper must be substantial costs for the company (and the environment). This analog form of media is static and is usually changed on a monthly basic, due to its logistical challenges. Think about combining the best of both worlds. Why are companies like JCDecaux not working with digital media agencies and providers to bring digital media types of advertising features into the outdoor networks of this world? Most outdoor ads are situated in either urban environments which are monitored (just ask Banksy how many CCTV’s there are in London), or in locations that cannot easily be reached by pedestrians (or better said, graffiti artists). What better locations to explore possibilities of utilizing digital screen technologies that are coming cheaper by the day, along with environmentally friendly solar powered solutions that could either power the wireless connectivity needed, or the screens themselves? As an example of solar efficiency, I recently met with a telecoms network engineer who mentioned that solar powered base stations are already in use across some markets around the world. The picture starts to look a little different. When there’s technology that enables and there’s a will for change, the benefits begin to emerge. Think of a digital ad network that is located in physical spaces. That’s the future, but the future is more and more here.

Instead of brands booking a billboard for 1 month, they can decide to book “the afternoon traffic”, or “the morning show”. Opportunities for targeting explode exponentially. Media providers cash in because they can run multiple flights a day, instead of risking their employees losing a leg when changing the paper print from a 10 meter high billboard every month. Again, the fundamental issue in this picture is that each media provider is stuck in their own silo. While JCDecaux is building their outdoor “empire” and Yahoo! (or any other digital media outlet) is expanding their digital footprint, they are not seeing the benefits they could yield by partnering to bring the best of both worlds into the picture. What if a digital media provider would bring in their ad serving capabilities, knowledge and infrastructure into the mix, while JCDecaux would continue to leverage their understanding of the efficiency of outdoor placements, physical formats and locations? In my opinion: a scenario where clicks will start to meet bricks.  (and yield a heck of a lot or ROI & efficiency).

As the digital landscape continues to shape the way consumers and brands interact, a further evolution of this “media trinity” might be welcomed. Own/Bought/Earned (OBE) gives a good overview, but there are a few dimensions that perhaps need to be called out more prominently in order to bring a holistic view to the picture. McKinsley recently took a stab at this by introducing “sold” & “hijacked” media into the mix. I’ve been working on something similar during the last few years, with one important additional “enabler dimension” i think the McKinsey model fails to point out. Human.

OBE evolves

OWN media.

Own media is the foundation of any brand. One could say that it consists of all the outlets a brand has in its control. These extend across multiple online properties, (both fixed and mobile) as well as different functional presences related to care, sales, comms/pr, marketing as well as human resources. In addition to digital channels, own media extends to physical spaces such as retail and care outlets as well as the product a brand itself is selling.

BOUGHT media

Bought media is quite self explanatory and consists of the presences/visibility a brand acquires through monetary exchanges with the media owners. These range across digital and physical spaces and are unified by the same principle: a brand pays (or bids) for having their product or marketing message displayed across a particular advertising real estate.

EARNED media

Earned media is a consequence of what a brand does, not something that a brand can buy or control. It is fueled by consumer satisfaction and advocacy, thus becoming a powerful vehicle to those brands that have earned their space in their advocate’s hearts. The biggest misconception I often run into, is that many marketers interpret earned media as having a Facebook page. A Facebook presence is own media, just as their .com or .mobi corporate sites are. Earned media is unprompted and driven entirely by sources that are not controlled by the brand. Brands can facilitate the dissemination of content by creating social features to their own media as well as engaging in conversations with its customers, but in the end, earned media is an end result delivered by the customer.

BURNED media

Just as great brands strive on the earned customer advocacy, modern digital channels make it increasingly easier for consumers to voice their negative brand experiences. Burned media consists of consumers that are voicing their frustrations about a bad experience they have had with a brand. This is also a consequence of what a brand does, not something a brand can pay to avoid. In this light, it becomes increasingly important to have the care and PR teams involved in crafting overall engagement strategies as well as frameworks that enable brands to quickly react to negative WOM as well as proper empowerment that enables community managers and care agents to solve any issues that are emerging.

TRADED media

In today’s age of collaboration, it becomes more and more evident that brands cannot do everything on their own. Collaboration amongst brands is needed and healthy ecosystems encourage a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mentality. Many brands fail to leverage the value of their own media and go out paying for media, when they could achieve more through clever partnerships where media is traded, or by allowing 3^rd parties with no conflicting interests to buy real estate on the brands own web sites.

HUMAN media

Perhaps the biggest media evolution we have witnessed in the past years, has been the shift from broadcast media to conversational media. Along this chain of thought, a fundamental piece must also evolve. Conversations cannot be automated, they need a human interface that can understand the human emotions as well as cultural contexts that a particular engagement unfolds around. The earned and burned media streams unfold around conversations that need human interpretation as well as interaction to solve. The media mix that a brand evaluates, needs to start taking the core asset of any company = the people, into account. In the past, media was paid. In today’s world, it’s a combination of time and money, controlled and non-controlled spaces as well as an industry that’s still trying to find the right balance for shifting budgets (and people) accordingly.

In today’s hectic living environment, we get squeezed with constant deadlines, action items, duties and commitments. Years seem to go by and we often don’t take the needed time to reflect what it really is we want from life. We daydream about winning the lottery, we make promises on new year’s eve about starting from a clean sheet of paper and being better human beings. Then we go back into the same rabbit hole we came from. Daydreaming and sporadic new years resolutions are not about personal development. Personal development is a mindset and a series of ongoing behaviors that yield positive results over time.

Let’s try something out. Take out a piece of paper and a pen. Go on, try it out, i know it’s analog media, but it’s cool to get your hands “dirty” sometimes. Set? Ok. Now draw a circle to the middle of the page and write your name into the middle. This exercise is all about you, and the more you invest into it, the more YOU will benefit from it.

Cool. Now draw a line from the circle and label it “dreams & aspirations”. These can be work or personal related and they can branch out to as many layers as you feel are needed. Think about what you really want from life, work, health, wealth etc. Think short term, long term the full spectrum.The most important thing is to just embark on that journey of reflection and pursuit of happiness.

Next, draw another line to the circle and label it “strengths and skills”. You can either list down what YOUR core skills and strengths are, or list down what skills and strengths are needed to ACHIEVE the dreams and aspirations. Again, you can do this from a work perspective, life perspective or even as a reflection of your current golf skills. You decide.

Great. Now draw a third line and label it “my learning path”. This is not about listing what you are bad at, but more to list what are areas that you would like to learn more about or develop yourself within. Also think about how your learning path will help you develop the skills and strengths you need in order to achieve your dreams and aspirations.

Time for another line. Label it as “network”. In today’s world, the importance of your network is invaluable. Tools like LinkedIN and Xing help us connect business contacts, while Facebook is more about friends and acquaintances. For the sake of this exercise, think of your network in the context of your dreams and aspirations. List down as many names as you want, but please also take some time to profile these contacts to different tiers. For ex. Bob from ad agency: Can help me to cost efficiently setup my startup’s website. Linda from university: Expert on the Chinese market, good contact to help us expand our business there etc. Once you get into the habit of doing this, start keeping a constant diary of the people you meet, work and play with and list down the context around your relationship. This will become an extremely valuable asset for yourself. However, please also remember that you need to “give love to get love”, and the relationships you build and maintain, need to go both ways. Nobody appreciates a free rider.

Ok, last line and then you’re set. Label this as “lifeline/CV”. We often only update our CV’s when changing jobs and too often we don’t even remember most of the stuff we’ve learned along the way. When you consistently document what you have been learning and achieving, you begin to realize all the progress (or lack of progress) you’ve made in the past years. It’s not really about keeping your CV fresh, but more a tool for you to really keep track of how you are developing as a human being.

These are 5 simple dimensions of your “ME” mind map, that will enable you to identify your dreams and aspirations, weigh your skills and strengths against these, as well as identify how you will need to develop yourself and what kind of network you will need to build around you. Lastly, by documenting your lifeline progress, you will be able to measure how well you are making progress. There are some quite nice tools available for doing this digitally, a simple Google search will get you along really well.

Now back to the rabbit hole

PS. Below you can find the slideset on Slideshare

UI

There’s no doubt that the UI of a website plays a critical role in the overall experience a visitor has to your website. UI defines the ease of use, as well as the discovery of the core elements an online presence wants to present to the user. A good UI might be web based (as the Google presences mostly are), or a combination of an application and cloud (as for ex iTunes would be). Whatever the case, the UI serves as a gateway to the experience and aims at delivering the core proposition an online presence may have. Often brands might have a killer idea, but lose their consumers due to bad web design, information architecture and navigation.

AI

A website should be like a machine that learns more and more about you as an individual. Gaming companies know the depths of AI, but these same principles can and should apply to the “regular” online presence. Your metrics should reveal the recency and frequency of your visitors and your CRM tools should enable you to profile your consumer base in order to provide (and learn to provide) the right information as well as context sought to by the individual consumer. A search engine that not only provides information on an overall algorithm but also through user specific cookies, starts to takes steps into this direction.

IQ

Despite all the automated tools that are available, nothing beats the context and creativity that a human brain can bring to the picture in any given context. You can get the best “social media listening platforms” to crawl the web, but unless you have a human interface to validate and extract meaning from the data, we’re not full realizing the potential of what can be done. It’s like an autopilot on an airplane. Automated tools can “run the business” to a certain point, but they are not programmed to think about exceptional circumstances yet alone to spot areas of development that need creativity. Social features on a website play a critical role in giving the right context to the information presentation. A tool can ping for overall volumes of discussions around a certain topic, but nothing beats a human-to-human recommendation/like around particular topic. Social features on a site can enable the value creation of IQ, but the source is always human, not machine. The machine is merely a smartly programmed intermediary that allows human-to-human value creation to come to life.

EQ

The last dimension, (yet the most fascinating in my opinion) is about EQ. In traditional business environments, I would dare to say that overall quantitative values derived from sheer IQ, still prevail. EQ is a topic covered in management courses as a “later thing in Moslew’s hierarchy of needs” but in the end, the hard numbers and quantitative data prevails (as a generic opinion). The Internet possesses an entirely new playing ground for anthropologists. Derived meaning from a web presence is bound to certain natural characteristics a human being has. Traditional advertisers have investigated these cross cultural differences for decades, but it always surprises me how little cross cultural thinking is being placed on modern web presences built across the Internet. Most of these cultural “clicks” can be derived from simple listening to consumer’s feedback and behaviors as well as simply having the courage to seeing the “niche as the new norm”. I currently live in the UAE and have found it surprising how few of the multinational brands take into account the local traditions that impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The UAE is a Muslim country. Now we live the period of Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims across the world. Yet, few brands have the flexibility (or courage) to reach out the their consumer base to participate from an “EQ” perspective. These “soft” values will play an increasingly important part for online presences as despite the globalization of the economy, people still identify themselves by whom they are not. Culture plays a big role in the identities of human beings as well as their buying behaviors. In the end, it is said that a purchase decision is very often emotional, not rational. EQ is all about the sphere of emotions that impact a human beings perception on life. Brand should be thinking about this in significance.

Very few brands have gotten this equation of UI, AI, IQ and EQ right. Does any particular example spring to your mind?