My goodness, a lot has happened since last week’s update. Just as people were starting to read my article at 10.00 am last Saturday, Donald Trump was announcing “major combat operations” in Iran. Here we are seven days later, and thousands of munitions have been used, while more than a dozen countries have been brought into the conflict. Worse still, according to The Times, more than 1,230 people have lost their lives.

All week, commentators and reporters throughout the media have been asking, “What’s the plan”? They want to know how this will all end. Sadly, the White House has provided contradictory and vague statements about the “end game”. That may be deliberate. Confusing your opponent can be a tactic in itself. Or it may suggest that the consequences of these actions have not been fully thought through.

That is not just a problem for world leaders. It is a feature of leadership more generally. I am sure you have worked for companies where the bosses come up with a plan and passionately follow it through. All the time, members of staff say, “This will never work,” and chat among themselves about the consequences of the changes implemented by the boss. 

Indeed, the former CEO of BrewDog recently admitted to making such mistakes. The British brewer and pub chain that he founded went into administration this week, resulting in the loss of 484 jobs after a takeover by the American cannabis brand Tilray. It appears that BrewDog did several things without fully thinking through the consequences.

The fact is that when we lead, we can become overconfident in our ideas and blind to data that contradicts them. We are cognitively biased toward our own suggestions. This means we do not fully explore the consequences of our actions.

Just think of the case of Mario Costeja González. He is the Spaniard who got into financial difficulties in the late 1990s and later took legal action against Google, arguing that links to details of those problems should no longer appear in search results. His case became central to what is now widely known as the “right to be forgotten”. Yet the consequence of his action is rather ironic. In trying to become less visible online, he became internationally known precisely because of the legal battle over his privacy. I doubt that was the outcome he had in mind.

It is really easy to think you are doing the right thing when the consequences of your action could be the reverse of what you were intending. Leaders often focus on the immediate objective and congratulate themselves for decisive action, only to discover later that they have created a fresh set of complications.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a world leader or the head of a small team in your office, the chances are you will not fully think through the consequences of your actions. However, there are some steps we can take to make it more likely that we can predict the consequences.

First, remember that much of human behaviour is more predictable than we might like to think. People tend to respond to change in familiar ways. They worry about what they might lose, they resist uncertainty, and they interpret events through their own interests. That means the real challenge is not to focus only on the responses you expect, but to consider the unusual and awkward reactions you may be overlooking.

If you can form the habit of imagining the strangest and most awkward reactions to your plans, you are more likely to spot consequences that would otherwise escape your notice. When you focus on the expected responses, you are only helping to confirm your cognitive bias about your plans. 

Another thing you can do is known as “wicked testing”. In this, you consider the most self-centred and socially reprehensible things people could do if you were to implement your plans. That can open your eyes to factors you may not have considered.

One other way you can consider potential consequences is to do a “pre-mortem”. You do this by assuming your project has already failed. Then you analyse what could have gone wrong. You work backwards from your project’s “failure” to determine the potential reasons why.

Thinking through the consequences of our actions and ideas is possible. You just have to get into the habit of doing it. Otherwise, you will fall into the habit of assuming that your ideas will produce only the outcomes you want to see. Now, who could possibly have done that recently?

If I were to ask you to name the planets of the solar system in order, could you do it? If you are of a “certain age”, the answer would probably be positive. I remember having to learn them at school by reciting them for what seemed like hours on end. If you want to test your memory, stick your head out of the window tomorrow evening around dusk, and you’ll see six planets in a straight line in the sky, when there is a rare planetary alignment above the UK. These days, of course, there is no need for children to learn the order of these planets. Google can tell them in an instant. The offloading of the need to remember things to an online system means we are not always exercising our mental muscle of memory. 

Added to this is the idea that as we age, our memory starts to falter. That’s not strictly true. It is partly reinforced by a social belief in which we stop actively trying to remember things because “there is no point,” assuming we’ll forget them as we age. We remember less as we get older, partly because we actively stop trying to store memories. Though it is true that the speed of cognitive processing does decline. 

However, in the AI-enhanced world of the future, we are going to need our memories more, not less. To interpret what AI is telling us, we will need higher levels of analytical thinking. And that depends on memory. You can’t analyse the output of ChatGPT, for instance, if you can’t remember anything that will help you counter what the AI is telling you. For example, AI can surface data. It cannot supply lived experience. It cannot recall the failed strategy from 2009, the 2013 regulatory fine, or the cultural backlash from 2018. Only human memory can do that.

Enter then, the world of the “SuperAger”. These are elderly people with remarkable memories who can recall things much more easily than people 50 years younger can. In a study published this week in the scientific journal Nature, researchers at the University of Chicago have discovered a significant finding about older people with great memories. 

These “SuperAgers” are producing new nerve cells in an area of the brain known to be involved in memory formation. People with poor memories tend to lose brain cells. Back at the start of the 20th Century it was widely believed that we are born with a fixed number of brain cells and that new ones could not be made. We now know that is not true. Thirty years ago, we discovered that our brains are capable of “neurogenesis”, in which new brain cells can be created at any time in our lives.

If we are to make the most of artificial intelligence without being controlled by it, we will need brains that remain capable of renewal. We will need to have “SuperAger” capabilities of storing memories so that we can interpret AI effectively. So, what do you need to do to make sure your brain continues to develop?

It turns out, like many things to do with human biology, to be remarkably simple. Research shows that there are just a few things we need to do to improve our memory by encouraging neurogenesis. These are getting more exercise and reducing stress. Being social, rather than isolated, is also a key factor. 

These are also the activities that reduce the risk of heart disease and long-term conditions such as diabetes. And guess what, those health issues are also linked to poor neurogenesis. It is almost as if the body is an interconnected set of systems that require “healthy living” practices to function properly. Who knew? Well, neuroscientists at Harvard, for a start, who five years ago proposed a new field of healthcare called “preventative neurology”. 

Our brains are capable of so much more if only we cared for them to encourage neurogenesis. It is surprisingly simple to achieve that – live a healthy, social life. 

The chances are some people will have forgotten the order of the planets because some of their brain cells have disconnected due to a lack of use. We cannot allow that to happen in the AI future. Otherwise, your business will be led by artificial intelligence, rather than you and your colleagues. Artificial intelligence will not take control of your business. But intellectual laziness might allow that. In an AI world, cognitive fitness is no longer optional. It is a leadership responsibility.

Well, what a week it has been. We can’t move for people breaking the rules. Yesterday, the Supreme Court in the USA ruled that President Trump’s tariffs were illegal. The day before, the former Prince Andrew was arrested on suspicion of breaking the rules while serving as a Trade Envoy. And the day before that, the Canadian curling team was accused of cheating during a game at the Winter Olympics. It rather looks like rule-breaking is “on trend” at the moment.

Except it’s not. Breaking the rules is commonplace and has been around forever. Indeed, yesterday the Royal Mint revealed that it was celebrating one of the world’s most famous rule-breakers on a special new coin. In recognition of his 75 years of rule-breaking success, the new 50p honours “Dennis the Menace”. That naughty boy has been in the Beano comic since 1951 and is still entertaining children today. 

Dennis is a “loveable rogue” who falls into the category of rule-breakers we don’t mind. Yet he still breaks rules, just like President Trump and (allegedly) Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. We clearly forgive some people who break the rules but want others punished. 

In your office, as in mine, some people break the rules and seem to get away with it. In contrast, others do something wrong and get hung out to dry over it. The issue is, why are we so inconsistent? 

Studies show that we allow people to break the rules when we perceive their behaviour as prosocial or moral, as in the case of Rosa Parks. If we think rule-breaking is for the greater good of our friends or colleagues, we do not mind it. We also tend to forgive rule-breakers if their behaviour is seen as creative, as in entrepreneurs. In other words, we don’t mind people breaking the rules if there is something in what they do “for us”.

However, the tables get quickly turned when we think the rule-breaker is in it for themselves. As soon as we think the person breaking the rules is doing so to exert power or does so from a position of arrogance or entitlement, we get cross. Think ex-Royals or Presidents here.

We want such people punished as an example. However, research from Germany shows that we tend to punish people closer to us more harshly than those in distant relationships. We judge those in our immediate circle more harshly because their behaviour reflects on us. No matter how much you might want to punish a transgressing ex-Prince, his family would want him hit harder. 

Here is the problem for us in business. We allow some people to break the rules because it seems there is some benefit for the office. We let others do wrong because “everybody knows” they are creative. But then, when someone does not fall into these categories, we want them punished and publicly shamed, especially if they are in our team and not at some remote office where we hardly know anyone. It is this inconsistency that leads to conflict at work. It also leads to perceptions of unfairness, thereby reducing trust in management. When staff cannot predict how rule-breaking will be treated, they become cautious and defensive.

The solution is surprisingly straightforward and one that has a spin-off benefit in terms of job satisfaction and resulting loyalty to the firm. Research at a Japanese bank found that when you give your staff a variety of tasks, they are more likely to follow the rules. This implies that job boredom and repetitiveness are key triggers in rule-breaking.

Perhaps you should not be so tough on your employees, particularly those close to you, when they bend the rules. Rather, you should look at the way you have designed their jobs. When was the last time you redesigned a role rather than reprimanded a person?

Obviously, with today being Valentine’s Day, I was going to mention love.  However, over in the USA, it appears that people are falling out of love with celebrating today. The National Retail Federation’s “Valentine’s Day Data Center” shows that fewer people plan to buy gifts today than in previous years. Worse still, they aim to spend less when inflation is taken into account. Over the past 20 years, fewer people have celebrated Valentine’s Day, down from 63% to 55%. That’s not good news if you are a gift company or a florist. 

Part of the reason for falling out of love with Valentine’s gifting is that we have “commercialisation fatigue”. We are simply fed up with the constant advertising for chocolates and flowers. Of course, there is the cost-of-living crisis to consider as well. Plus, there are significant demographic shifts, with more people living alone than before and a rise in the number of people still living with their parents into their mid-30s. That makes it tough to be romantic. 

According to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, love depends on three things. These are passion, closeness and commitment derived from Sternberg’s Theory of Love. It’s hard to be close and passionate when your mum and dad are sitting opposite. And if you are living alone, closeness to others is not easy either. Solving such problems involves costs, such as booking a hotel room. That’s tough when financial pressures are high. So, it is hardly surprising that fewer people want to celebrate romance than they did 20 years ago.

Interestingly, though, people are increasingly celebrating their love for the products and brands they admire. Social media is full of people declaring their love for a brand. Indeed, 94% of us say something positive about our favourite brands on social media. Just try stopping an iPhone user from uploading an image of their device to some social network. Or see the look you get if you criticise a Nike footwear fan for telling the world how comfy their feet are. You do not have to go far in your journey on social media before you bump into someone telling you about the latest product they have fallen in love with. 

In a recent study, YouGov investigated the Top 50 Brands across 28 global markets. This research showed that the brand the world loves the most is WhatsApp. Yet in the USA, it does not even feature in the list. That’s because even though the rest of the world loves WhatsApp, the vast majority of people in the USA regularly use Apple iMessage instead. You might notice a “love factor” from that Norwegian research here. Closeness. The brands people are closest to are the ones they love most. Here in the UK, for example, the most loved brand is Marks & Spencer. You can’t move for M&S in garages and service stations up and down the land. Most of us are never far away from M&S. Closeness again. But closeness is not just physical. It is a habitual presence in daily life.

There’s another of those three love factors in play again here. Commitment. Repeated use of WhatsApp or Apple iMessage, for example, shows a commitment to the brand. No wonder you love it. Equally, the convenience of M&S or that Amazon app, for example, means you gain commitment and thereby start to fall in love with the brand. 

That only leaves passion. You are probably not passionate about an M&S egg, tomato and salad cream sandwich, even though it is tasty. But you cannot mistake M&S’s passion for food. It helps build the “romance” and confirms your commitment to the company.

The question, therefore, is what you can do in your business to demonstrate you love your customers. First, show some passion for your company and its products and services. None of your customers is going to fall in love with your firm if you don’t show them you are enthusiastic about what you do. Secondly, get closer to your customers. Never miss an opportunity to meet, talk to, or engage with them. Third, demonstrate your commitment to them. You can do this with exemplary customer service, for example. In “business speak,” this means passion is your internal culture. Closeness is your distribution and engagement strategy. Commitment is about service reliability and trust-building.

If you are among the majority and do not celebrate Valentine’s Day by showering your loved one with chocolates and flowers, you could use the occasion to start a new romance instead. Be passionate for what you do, get closer to your customers, and show them you are committed to them. Before long, you will have something far more valuable than Valentine’s flowers: customers who choose you repeatedly.

As you read this, somebody somewhere is busy trawling through a long list of files, going “only another 2.9m to go”. I pity the poor people who have to wade through the enormous amount of information released by the US Department of Justice regarding the Epstein scandal. 

Even though reporters have only been able to review a tiny fraction of the material, it has already had dramatic consequences. A former prince has had to make a hasty retreat to the Norfolk countryside. A former lord has had the police knock on his door. And a former law firm chief has taken a hasty exit. Before long, we might also be talking about a former Prime Minister.

While we were all aghast at what the documents revealed, it became clear that the position of those involved could no longer be defended. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had insisted for years that a picture of him had been “doctored” and was fake. The Epstein files revealed this week that it was a true picture, and therefore, the former prince was economical with the truth. 

At the same time, Peter Mandelson was shown to have been lying about his involvement and was literally caught with his trousers down. 

On Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer tried to avoid answering a question about what he knew, only to give in and tell the truth after three attempts to get him to open up. 

That’s three men all trying to stick to a particular position, even when the game was up. 

But it is not just the Royals and politicians who refuse to budge on what they are saying. We see it in businesses every day. Somebody in a meeting, despite the mounting evidence against their ideas, will stick to their view, digging in further. Surely they know that it’s time to stop defending their position? Obviously not. Eventually, it ends in embarrassment for them, with the rest of us grateful the conflict is over but wondering why they took so long to change after digging in their heels.

Welcome to the murky psychological world of fragile egos. At the heart of this problem is self-esteem. When it is low, this leads individuals to distort reality in their minds. It also fosters a sense of entitlement, particularly among men when they have very high self-esteem. Add in a sprinkling of cognitive dissonance, a dash of sunk cost fallacy, and a spoonful of “fight-or-flight”, and you have the perfect recipe for someone to continue to defend the indefensible. It is a complex mixture of psychological factors.

Of course, none of us wants to be that person in the room who has dug in their heels and is not prepared to move on their position. So, how can we guard against doing that?

The first step is to buy thinking time under pressure, before fight-or-flight kicks in. Controlling your breathing and slowing it will alter your blood chemistry, helping reduce the anxiety that affects your desire to defend your viewpoint. Focus on your breathing for a couple of minutes. Breathe in slowly while mentally counting to five. Hold your breath for another five. Breathe out for a further five. Do this, and you will reduce the chances of stress and anxiety forcing you to dig in.

The next step is to focus on thinking about the future in relation to the topic you are discussing. By constantly looking backwards, you increase your susceptibility to the sunk cost fallacy. At the same time, instead of making statements about your position, ask others questions about their viewpoint. This will help you reduce the likelihood of fixed-mindset ideas taking hold.

Finally, try to concentrate on one idea or theme at a time. When we try to defend our perspective, we often aim to “cover all bases” and start talking about every angle we can think of. That’s distracting and helps increase cognitive dissonance. One idea at a time can be a tremendous help.

Also, if your self-esteem is on shaky ground, consider seeking therapies such as mindfulness or cognitive behavioural therapy. Both can help alleviate self-esteem issues. Do that, and you will not keep trying to defend your position when it is not necessary. You should stop defending your position the moment defending it becomes more important than getting to the right answer.

However, if you are not the person who is always defending the indefensible, then some gentle advice to those who do that could help reduce conflicts at work. If you are not sure how to advise them, please forward this newsletter and suggest they read it…! But please do not connect me with a former prince or a former lord, thank you.

Now, don’t be scared, but I want to talk about ghosts, even though I don’t believe in their existence. After all, how is it possible that a dead medieval knight, for example, can be seen riding his horse in full armour, when he probably died in bed from an infection? And presumably his horse had to die simultaneously. Bonkers.

Millions of people, though, maybe you included, claim they have seen ghosts. Indeed, the horror movie The Exorcist is based on a supposedly true story in which a ghost inhabited a teenager’s body. And this week, the NHS in Norwich called in an exorcist to rid a hospice of the ghost of a child. 

From a psychological perspective, several ideas relate to the visions people have. One is that stress or trauma triggers the notion of an apparition. Growing up in a family that believes in ghosts also makes it more likely that an individual will become a believer. It is classic social constructionism at work, which brings me to your office.

At work, your brain starts to construct a reality based upon the ideas discussed by you and your colleagues. Eventually, everyone has the same belief about what is right. Part of this is because if we do not believe in what our colleagues say, we become “out group”, which is where we are seen as a maverick, an outsider. That doesn’t feel good to us, so we conform to prevailing beliefs. Eventually, we believe in the common truth in the office. This is an essential component of social psychology. If this did not happen, every group of people would be in constant conflict.

The problem, though, is that this normal psychological process creates ghosts. These are illusions from your past thinking that have become established and keep reappearing when you want to change something. Change triggers stress and, in turn, that brings up recollections of the past – those apparitions that get in your way.

Take British higher education as an example, the area in which I work. It is undergoing a major upheaval at the moment because the Government has changed the funding process. Instead of students being able to get a loan, they will get a “Lifelong Learning Entitlement”. That’s a fund they can use for all kinds of education, including degrees and short courses. The problem for universities is that the LLE system requires all teaching to be broken up into 30 units. Most courses across the UK are 10, 15 or 20 units. That means that almost every module taught in UK universities has to be completely rewritten to accommodate the new funding model. Oh, and the Government has given us the handy deadline of June this year. Six months to rewrite the entire undergraduate higher education system of the UK.

This is causing stress and trauma at universities across the country. Even though this is a major opportunity to radically overhaul tired old courses and make them fit for the AI future, there is plenty of chatter about the past. Those ghostly apparitions are appearing. 

I witnessed this in a discussion with colleagues this week. One asked how we fit in tutorials to the grand scheme of things. My response was, “Who said we had to have tutorials?” Tutorials are more than 800 years old. Could it be that we now have the opportunity to switch to something more useful for students and better suited to the modern age, such as using Google’s NotebookLM? But that ghost from the past is entrenched in people’s minds through social construction. Indeed, a group of European business school researchers published a paper using ghost stories as a metaphor to show how the concept of capitalism remains unquestioned in business schools. 

I have worked in organisations where I have been told that “this is the way we do it because it has always worked”. That’s even happened after I have demonstrated a better way. The ghost in their office is more powerful because it is embedded in the collective minds of everyone who works there. 

Yet we are in a time in human development where we need to exorcise those ghosts of the past. Stressful change is coming rapidly. The Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton has predicted this week that ALL jobs will be wiped out in 20 years. The boss of the AI company Anthropic is similarly gloomy, suggesting half of all entry-level jobs will disappear within five years.

This is stressful and traumatic for office workers. The ghosts of the past will make their presence felt, and the necessary changes in many offices will be delayed or not occur at all. Those ghosts need exorcising. 

To do that, you need to use social constructionism. This exorcism process starts by deconstructing the current ideas in your business. Encourage more questioning of existing ideas. Once you have done that, change the language you use. For example, in education, we could rename “tutorials” as “clarification sessions”. That then reframes what you might do. After changing the language, create some “champions”. These are the initial small groups that see the new idea and start to spread it around the organisation, initiating the process of establishing it. This is exorcism in the office, and you need to use it now if you are not to become a victim of the changes about to rain down on us.

With newspapers around the world dominated by the idiotic, ignorant and insulting ramblings of an older man past his prime, you might have thought I would start this week talking about him. Instead, I want to focus our minds on something that has remained stable in British society for centuries, the good, old-fashioned pub. I want to do this because the world’s headlines have been so dominated by one person that the newspapers were unable to find space to report a significant and historic event in the UK. The Tamworth Tap in Staffordshire has been awarded “Pub of the Year” for the third time. This has never happened before.

To achieve this extraordinary effort, the pub had to do much more than provide good beer. The Campaign for Real Ale, which gave the award, said that one of the reasons for the victory was the fact that the pub is “the centre of its community, becoming a social hub by hosting a huge range of daily events”. 

It reminds me of the pub in our village, The Hinds Head. It is a community hub that also serves fantastic food. Indeed, when we hear that so many pubs are closing due to unaffordability, it’s interesting to see that where I live, there are two pubs that are highly successful, the other being The Butt Inn. Both focus on providing great grub, but also focus on community. You have to wonder if the failing pubs are missing out on something important.

The Pub of the Year and my two locals thrive on bringing people together and being at the heart of the community. Indeed, that’s what the traditional British pub has been about forever. 

But the same feature is also central to many successful businesses. Take Apple, as an example. It has just 28% of the global phone market, with Android dominating. Worse still for Apple, its computer market share is less than 4%. In short, the vast majority of phone and computer users worldwide do not use Apple products. Yet, despite these dismal market share statistics, Apple is the second-most-valuable business in the world, ahead of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. One of the keys to their success is building a community of users. Apple users are so proud to be part of that community that there is no need to enquire whether someone uses an iPhone; they’ll tell you before you even ask.

Other brands have also established significant communities. Harley-Davidson, Gymshark, LEGO, Peloton and Salesforce all have thriving communities that bind customers together and help ensure future loyalty to the brand. Research published last year in the International Journal of Social Impact underlines the fundamental value of community in profitability. 

We are living in a world of increasing division. Indeed, research from King’s College London last year showed that 84% of people in the UK believe the country is more divided now than before. Half the country is nostalgic for the past, say the researchers. But it is not the past people really want. What they mean is that they want to reduce division and feel bonded together again. They want community.

So do your customers. They want to feel part of a group that “belongs” to your business. Part of that is the need for reassurance that they have made the right decision in buying from you. By creating a community of customers, you help achieve that, and with it, lasting loyalty to your firm. You should be just like a pub landlord and not like a geriatric rambler who merely seeks to divide. He might not have noticed, but in trying to divide, he is actually creating communities of people joining together in their common goal of showing just how ill-informed and ignorant he is. Now you have to guess who I am talking about.

There can be no doubt that human beings can be extraordinarily resilient. This week, I listened to a radio interview with a resident of Kyiv, Ukraine. He explained that Putin’s bombers had destroyed the local heating system. Despite temperatures that were minus 15, people carried on as normally as possible. They found ways to keep each other warm and to ensure that the vulnerable were well cared for. 

Meanwhile, over in Iran, thousands were being murdered by their rulers, yet people still protested against the brutal regime. In response, the despots in charge switched off the Internet in the hope it would stop people from organising protests via social media or messaging services. However, human resilience stepped in, and people found other ways of communicating. The Internet is slowly being restored in Iran, but there appears to be a plan only to allow certain kinds of people to use it.

Here’s the problem with switching off essential services. If you switch off heating, as in Ukraine, people can create other forms of warmth. If you remove Internet access, people can still communicate in different ways. The regimes that think that removing such services will force people into surrender haven’t taken into account human resilience and ingenuity. More importantly, as the Iranian regime discovered, you cannot switch off the Internet entirely. If you do so, you stop essential services from running. These are also the services that you need to rule if you are despotic. 

Therein lies the problem for all of us. The Internet is so fundamental to everything we do these days that society could collapse without it. For a start, you could no longer read this newsletter…! How dreadful…!  But you might also not have access to many healthcare services. At your local hospital, much of the information the medics rely upon is transmitted across the Internet from diagnostic centres, for example. Similarly, the control of your electricity or water supply is hooked up to the Internet. As for shopping, forget it. You would have no means of digital payment, and you couldn’t withdraw cash from an ATM, as that requires an Internet connection. Without the Internet, life as we know it ceases to function.

This might all sound rather doomsday. But don’t blame me for thinking about it. Tech experts say several scenarios could lead to the collapse of the Internet as we know it. Even if the entire thing does not collapse, those Russian subs circling our undersea cables only need to cut a vital link, and we could be without the Internet in the UK for weeks. 

Of course, human resilience would step in, and we would find ways of coping. True, it would be inconvenient and frustrating. But not being able to communicate with your customers for a few weeks is hardly a problem compared with being frozen to death by a foreign dictator or murdered by your own country’s rulers. 

There is no point in worrying about these “end of the world as we know it” scenarios. We can’t do anything to stop them from happening, unless you are in the Royal Navy and are heading off those Russian submarines, for instance. However, considering what we would do without the Internet is a worthwhile business exercise. 

We have all suffered some kind of Internet outage. A server goes down, and it’s a day before it’s back up and running again. Or, your broadband supplier has a cable issue, and they can’t get you back online for several hours. Most people I have spoken with tend to find a positive in these frustrating situations. For example, it means they can get on with finishing some work without constant interruptions from emails and digital messages.

But what if such temporary Internet outages lasted longer? What would your business do without the Internet for a week? Or a month? True, these are low risk, but they are high impact. Often, we do not plan for low-risk issues. What’s the point? They are unlikely to happen. 

It’s not the risk that matters, but the impact. Your business can reduce that impact by planning for the possibility that things might go wrong. Indeed, that’s the advice from experts on business resilience. Yet, 75% of small businesses have no disaster recovery plan. The lack of data backups has plagued businesses for decades. Without them, you dramatically reduce your resilience. Similarly, without a plan to handle major Internet outages, your business will suffer significantly. Don’t cry about the risk being low when the problem occurs.

True resilience requires forward planning. I would hazard a guess that people in Ukraine have stockpiled blankets in case the heating breaks. Or that people in Iran already had plenty of marker pens and paints ready to create posters and handouts to communicate without the Internet.

Our businesses also need to prepare for a complete lack of Internet access. Yes, it is very unlikely to happen, but if it does, the impact on your company would be huge. Unless, that is, you have planned to be resilient. If your Internet went down tomorrow, would your business survive the week?

On Tuesday evening, I was wandering across Leicester Square in London’s West End, having just had dinner and then seen a theatre show together with my son. As we headed for the tube station after a lovely evening together, a large, hooded figure walked towards me, stretched out his arm sideways and pushed me forcefully to the ground. I was shaken, my knees hurt, and my shoulder was sore. My son said some very rude words indeed about the chap who shoulder-shoved me. I was less rude but took the opportunity to report the incident to the Metropolitan Police, who have now told me they are investigating the incident as an assault.

It turns out that I was the victim of the latest social media craze called “body slamming”. It started in Japan a few years ago and was specifically about men pushing over women as some kind of demonstration of power. It has now widened beyond that to people randomly toppling others over for a giggle. They get video recorded by their mates, and they all enjoy a good laugh together at seeing people get pushed over. 

Online trends, like this, are nothing new. Years ago, we had the “cinnamon challenge”, where people were encouraged to swallow powdered cinnamon without any liquid. That activity leads to pneumonia. Worse was the “choking challenge”, where youngsters were asked to choke themselves to the point of passing out. That caused death. Body slamming is now increasing in incidence here in the UK and causes minor injury as well as anxiety and stress.

While all this is going on, if you have a premium account on X, you are now one of a select group of people who can participate in another online social media trend of “undressing”. You can use Elon Musk’s Grok artificial intelligence software to remove the clothes from images of anybody you like, including children. Yes, that’s right,  you can use this social media service to create pornography. I, for one, have departed from X as I have no desire to be associated with this disgraceful firm. Is your business happy to be on X any more? It’s a question worth asking.

However, there may be another reason to reconsider an organisation’s use of social media. According to the Financial Times, social media usage has been declining steadily for the past three years. The biggest falls have been in younger age groups. Parents are increasingly concerned about the impact of social media usage on their children. The EU is proposing similar legislation to that pioneered in Australia, which banned under-16s from social networks. Other countries are lining up to do the same, including the UK and Malaysia. These bans will inevitably affect future social media uptake. 

What is evident, though, is that networks that create a sense of community and shared values are the ones that are working best. Just consider how many WhatsApp groups you are in. Most people are probably doing more social activity in them than on Twitter, for instance. Similarly, on LinkedIn, with its wide variety of specialist groups for different professionals, there is a real sense of community. That is not present on places like TikTok or Instagram, where the emphasis is on “media” rather than “social”. Plus, there’s a real desire by the owners of these networks to fill your timeline with advertising supposedly focused on your needs. Just type the following into a search engine, “do old ladies wear gloves in winter”, and see what your Instagram or Facebook feed looks like later. You won’t be interested in any of the adverts, but the algorithm is convinced you will want to click. Annoying advertising is another reason people are giving up on social media – unless, that is, you want to pay to stop the adverts.

Several factors are combining to make social media much less appealing than it was in the past. In turn, that means it will provide less benefit to your business. At the same time, getting any value from social media will become harder as users engage less.

Yet, as research on digital marketing trends for 2025 shows, businesses are still betting that social media will be fundamental to their business in the year ahead. I beg to differ, and I rest my case on the information I received from a “social media influencer” this week. They had achieved significant numbers of “likes” and “followers”. But how did they get all those people to do that? Their number one method, by a long way, was to wander around town and hand out flyers inviting people to visit their social media page. Yes, that’s right – they did not use social media to get their “engagement”, they used old-fashioned printed promotion. 

That just shows that people live in the real world and respond to real-world activities. Businesses love social media because it can give them a host of statistics that help their fragile egos with charts and graphs of “likes” and “shares”. Meanwhile, there’s a real world out there. The less that businesses focus on social media and the more they concentrate on people, the better. At the same time, lower social media usage will reduce the likelihood of those negative trends gaining much ground. Hopefully, that will also cut the number of people being pushed over by bodyslamming “twits” (I changed the vowel from the one my son used).

On Thursday evening, New Year’s Day, a friend of mine posted on Facebook: “Is it me, or is Dry January dragging a bit this year?” He received several “laughing” emojis as people got the joke. Sticking to the goal of not drinking alcohol for a month can be tough for some people. 

In reality, of course, abstaining from alcohol for just 31 days is only a small goal. Indeed, it exemplifies a SMART goal. It is Specific – do not drink alcohol. It is Measurable – you count the number of drinks. It is Achievable – unless you are an alcoholic, going without alcohol for a month can be done. It is Realistic – nobody is asking you to give up for life. And it is Time-bound – it will end in 31 days. Yet many people struggle with the concept of Dry January, even though it is clearly a SMART goal.

However, that’s the problem. No matter what you have been taught on business training courses or learned from books on goal setting, there is plenty of research to show that SMART goals are not good enough. The concept is entirely flawed. Indeed, researchers have proposed new ways of setting goals that are superior.

The problem with SMART goal setting is two-fold. First, people overestimate the time it will take to achieve things. As a result, people tend to reach the goal sooner than expected. That makes them think the goal-setting idea has a weakness, so they stop setting goals. Secondly, people underestimate what they can achieve. As a result, when they reach the end of the SMART goal, they realise they could have done more. This reinforces the belief that the target was too low and the process was weak. Ultimately, people disengage from goal-setting, which is a bad idea, as people who set goals tend to outperform those who do not. 

Another issue with SMART goals is that people are confused about the difference between “Achievable” and “Realistic”. Surely, if it is achievable, it must be realistic? There are other problems with SMART goal-setting, as German research has revealed. SMART goals do not work well in complex or dynamic situations, nor when an individual is not motivated by goals (that’s most people, by the way…!). If you look closely enough, you’ll find significant research showing that SMART goal setting is poorly suited to complex, long-term change. No wonder so many people give up on Dry January before the 31st. 

None of this is news to my friend David Hyner. He is a motivational speaker who says that SMART goals “set us up for mediocrity…at best”. His research has shown that “massive goals” work way better than “SMART” ones. This week, I was looking at some old research articles and discovered one from a couple of years ago that adds support to David’s notion of “massive goals”.

The study from the University of Oregon showed that when people are set challenging goals to achieve, their attention and associated performance increase. However, when the goals are easily achieved, lapses in attention increase and people drift away from what they are meant to focus on. It’s really easy to lose sight of a small goal, such as a month without alcohol. But if your target were to give up for six months, for instance, you would pay more attention and thereby be more likely to achieve and, incidentally, have less fatigue in doing so.

So, here we are at the start of 2026, and you will doubtless have thought of some things you would like to achieve before 2027 begins. However, I’m sure you also know that almost all resolutions fail before the end of January, assuming they get started in the first place. Indeed, if you are among the army of people who bought a new gym membership for the start of the year, there is a significant chance you’ll never walk through the doors. 

Two-thirds of gym memberships are never used, and among those who do turn up, half have given up before summer arrives. The goal of “getting fitter” or “losing a few pounds” is simply too easy, and therefore, people lose focus. Becoming an “Ironman” competitor or completing several marathons before the year is out sounds unrealistic and definitely not SMART. But if you set such a massive goal, you are more likely to achieve it than a much-reduced SMART goal.

One of the main reasons we do not meet our New Year’s Resolutions is that they fail to set us anything truly ambitious. Setting those SMART objectives at the start of the year is a DUMB idea. In fact, according to the high-performance coach, Brendon Burchard, your goals would be better off if they were DUMB – Dream-driven, Uplifting, Method-friendly, and Behaviour-triggered. In other words, it’s best to start the year being super-ambitious rather than being SMART. 

DUMB goals, rather than SMART ones, could also work well for your entire business, as well as for you as an individual. For example, are you intending to “improve the organisational leadership” in 2026? Or are you seeking to become “sector-defining” leaders? Ambition is not just for individuals, but for organisations too.