On Wednesday evening, I was in the local pub. There, I admit it, I was out with friends in the middle of the week. Shocking. It’s a large pub, and it was packed. As we sat there tucking into our evening meal, we discovered why. In a separate bar area known as “the lower bar”, we could see a small crowd gathering, wearing orange aprons. They sat down, and on the tables were small easels and some paints. The people had assembled for an evening of painting organised by Brush and Tipple. 

From where we sat, we could see a couple of pictures being created, and gradually, stroke by stroke, a colourful picture of a cockerel emerged. It turned out that some people at the event were our friends. So, after they had completed their work, they brought their paintings to show us. They were rightly very proud of their final artworks, which they were going to take home to frame. 

One member of our group, however, said she couldn’t do such fantastic artwork because she wasn’t creative. The successful painters told her that was nonsense and that the professional artist leading the session had given easy-to-follow instructions. 

It is a common misconception that only some people have creative abilities. We look at fantastic artworks and think, “I could never do that”. Or we wonder where the architects of amazing buildings got their ideas. And we are amazed in the cinema by the creative geniuses that keep us entertained. Yet, most of us think we don’t have that creative spark to achieve any of these things.

We are, of course, wrong. Those creative individuals are just people who had pretty much the same basic education as the rest of us. No specific set of genes makes you creative. Each of us has the opportunity to be creative, even you. 

In fact, new research suggests adults are more creative than children, despite the popular view that youngsters have more creativity. Researchers at the University of Graz found that adults produced more original ideas than preschoolers, yet felt less confident and more anxious while doing so. That was exactly my friend’s situation on Wednesday. It wasn’t that she lacked creativity. Rather, her confidence was low. 

In business, this suggests that many people can come up with creative solutions but hold back from trying them because they lack confidence. That’s a problem because, as research from earlier this year in the USA showed, the main required outcome of creativity is increased sales. Three-quarters of marketing professionals measure creativity’s effectiveness by sales or conversions. So, if you hold back on your creative ideas because you lack confidence, you could be reducing your business performance.

Businesses are responding to the need for more creativity by investing in “creative intelligence”. This integrates artificial intelligence and data analytics to deconstruct, measure, predict, and optimise marketing. Yet, according to a report from the consulting firm Winterberry Group, only 11% of businesses do this at a significant level. Still, the idea behind “creative intelligence” is to identify which creative work performs best. 

But if you think about it, “creative intelligence” isn’t really the right phrase. There is no creativity here. Instead, it is data analysis using artificial intelligence. An alternative meaning for creative intelligence is where AI itself is creative. For example, you can use tools like Canva or ChatGPT for intelligent image generation. Perhaps we let them do the creativity because we don’t feel confident. 

Now, be honest, I’m sure you have tried the creative genius of artificial intelligence. You might have asked it to produce some presentation slides for you, for example. It whirred away and produced some impressive results. But were they as creative as you could have produced if you had the time?  We ask AI to help us produce slides for two reasons. One is to save time, but the other is a lack of confidence. I am sure you have seen presentations and remarked how good the slides were and then said, “I wish I could produce slides like that.” You are revealing a lack of confidence, not a lack of creativity.

Creative intelligence might help you do some business analysis. AI tools like Canva could help you create impressive images. But in business, what we need is a confidence boost. You can be creative and drive additional sales if only you would try. You just need to trust yourself and remember you are more creative than a child.

So, here’s how to boost your creativity by building your confidence. First, set a five-minute time limit for work on a project. Just produce anything in those five minutes, even if you think it is rubbish. This starts the habit of being creative. Second, accept anything less than perfect. You are not going to be instantly brilliant. Third, keep your early attempts private and don’t share them with anyone. Over time, you can look back on what you have done and see that you are making progress. Finally, keep a logbook of what you are doing so you can see that there is creativity inside you. You can find out more about building creative confidence, rather than creative intelligence, at Psychology Today. And who knows, once you’re more confident, I might see you at the pub in your orange apron.

The post Do you lack creative intelligence, or do you just need confidence? first appeared on Graham Jones.

Yesterday, I went to Oxford, eager to attend the Professional Speaking Association’s annual Speaking Business Summit. Shortly after I arrived, I realised my enthusiasm to get on with the day had made me forget something basic. As I sat down in the conference room, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I took it out for a quick glance and saw the message was from my car’s app. It said I had forgotten to lock the doors. Luckily, the app lets me control the car remotely, so I could fix my mistake right away.

This is the kind of convenience that many of us are used to these days. For example, you might have an app that lets you control your home heating system. Or you might have a remote-access doorbell so you can tell a delivery driver to leave the parcel behind the gate while you sun yourself on a far-flung beach. 

However, as I sat in that conference room yesterday smugly congratulating myself on my use of remote technology, a thought crossed my mind. I was reminded of the recent attack on fridges in French supermarkets. Remotely-controlled fridges in hundreds of stores were hacked by an as-yet-unknown party. The cyberattackers turned up the fridges, causing them to run hot and destroying significant amounts of food.

The software company that created the remote-control system said the attack mostly affected older fridges that couldn’t be updated. The company knew about the vulnerability a year ago and warned customers in its October 2025 newsletter. 

Clearly, even though there was a software fault, companies that didn’t upgrade their fridges must bear some responsibility, even if they contracted a maintenance firm to do the work. They were warned, but took no action. Only since the attack have most French operators taken their systems offline.

A similar issue could have affected my car. A few months ago I got a notice from the manufacturer saying the software needed a security update. Because my car was already booked in for a service, it meant I could get that patch almost immediately. However, recent research shows that many people don’t follow up on such recall notices. That leaves a sizeable proportion of cars on the road open to potential problems, including cyberattacks. 

With computers and mobile phones, we are used to upgrades and security updates. Most systems update themselves regularly, and the most annoying thing is getting a notification that we must restart the device. Many businesses conduct regular system reviews and upgrade their computers at set intervals. They look for new features and speed improvements, but they also know older systems are more vulnerable to attacks, so they replace them regularly.

However, it is not just computers that are connected to the Internet these days. Billions of other items, known as the “Internet of Things” (IoT), are connected. French fridges are IoT devices. My car is a “thing” connected to the Internet. So are the lightbulbs I control via an app, my office heating, and my doorbell. All of these could give a hacker access to my home network and a backdoor into my computer. I am not alone. 

According to a recent Statista study, only 20% of homes in the USA lack smart home technology. Most homes have multiple Internet connections that aren’t computers but “things”. And it is going to get worse. This summer, market intelligence and advisory firm Omdia published data showing a significant rise in satellite-based IoT connections. They say this is because companies need more “things” connected globally.

Attacks on “things” are increasing. Apart from the French fridges, several others have been documented. The Internet security company ESET warned people about the problems in a blog post earlier this year.

So, what can we do about this? In a Times Radio discussion on this topic earlier in the week, one solution suggested was to go “analogue”. The idea was that if we gave up the technology, we would also get rid of the problem. That’s not possible for many businesses. Their landlord’s heating and their payment terminals are already connected to the Internet. Opting out personally and going analogue with your own systems doesn’t remove the exposure.

Also, IoT offers significant benefits beyond locking my car remotely. For example, there are early-warning fire detectors. Plus, a wide range of IoT medical devices can help save lives. Equally, remote-controlled fridges help companies save money by maintaining better temperature regulation without needing to employ hundreds of people just to check the settings. 

People who don’t upgrade their car software when they’re prompted, and supermarkets that don’t update their fridges, tell us one thing. IoT software companies aren’t the whole issue. Human behaviour is the problem. We can’t keep ignoring that IoT is a real vulnerability in our homes and offices.

So, start this weekend. List every connected item in your home and office, when it was installed, and whether it still receives updates. Switch on auto-updates wherever you can. Then ask your landlord, maintenance contractors, and suppliers to do the same for the equipment they run on your behalf. Put replacement dates in the diary, just as you would for your computers.

The French supermarkets only acted after the damage was done, and most simply unplugged their systems rather than update them. Meanwhile, operators in other countries carried on as before. That is optimism bias at work, which makes us believe these attacks will happen to other people, not us. 

Yesterday, my car told me I’d left the doors unlocked. Most of the “things” in your building will never send you such a message. You have to go and check. Otherwise, you risk a cyberattack on your home or office. 

The post Do you need to check if your things can still be safely connected? first appeared on Graham Jones.

On Monday afternoon, my wife and I headed to London for a book launch at “The News Building” at London Bridge. We were looking forward to the event hosted by The Times newspaper and Times Radio in the home of HarperCollins, the world’s second-largest consumer book publisher. It was all very exciting.

As we arrived at the imposing building, in the shadow of The Shard, we noticed a small queue outside. A couple of security staff stood next to a sign which read, “Due to unforeseen circumstances, the book launch has been cancelled”. The staff were very polite and explained that they only knew what the notice said; they had no other information.

My wife and I headed back home, somewhat disappointed and concerned. We hoped that nothing dreadful had happened. Imagine our shock when we got home to the news that the person we were due to see, Jeffrey Archer, had suddenly passed away that afternoon between writing sessions.

Back in February, I met Lord Archer and had a good chat with him after the ceremony in which his wife of 60 years, Dame Mary Archer, was “installed” for a second term as Chancellor of the University of Buckingham. I was one of the speakers at the ceremony as University Orator. As I gave that speech, sitting right in front of me in the first row was Lord Archer.

So you can imagine I was keen to see him again at his book launch. I also wanted to see his wife, Dame Mary, with whom I have shared the stage at several events where we both gave speeches. Sadly, it was not to be.

Inevitably, that night and the following day, the news bulletins and newspapers were full of tributes to him. Naturally, they all included the time he was sent to jail for perjury. When I met Lord Archer earlier this year, a couple of students also came over to chat and asked him about his life with Dame Mary. He was full of praise for his wife, whom he clearly adored. But he added something that I wasn’t expecting. He told the students, who may not have been born at the time, that “due to my own stupidity” he had ended up being apart from her for a couple of years. 

His honesty about his criminal past extends to the fact that it is even included on his own website about his career. Interviews played on TV in the hours after his death included him saying that he’d made a mistake, but that you can’t dwell on it.

That’s the first part of Jeffrey we need to be like. We need to admit when we’ve made a mistake. We have probably all been to meetings where someone who has made an error doesn’t own up to it. Or worse, they try to cover it up. We all make errors. Own up, say sorry, take your punishment and move on. As was shown in the Watergate scandal, “The Coverup is Worse Than the Crime”. Indeed, it was an attempt to cover up that led Lord Archer all the way to Belmarsh prison. 

Another aspect of Jeffrey that many people should copy is getting on with things. As he explained in a 2008 interview with The Times, he just got on with life. I meet people in business who still moan about their poor decisions made years ago. Or they keep looking back on their lives, reflecting on memories but doing little now. Lord Archer’s positive thinking appears to match that of the author Paul McGee, whose book called “SUMO (Shut Up Move On)” explains that success is connected to getting on with things and not constantly revisiting the past. 

The final part of being like Jeffrey is to keep working by making it a routine. He wrote at regular times during the day. It’s like he had an appointment with his pen. As a result, over a 50-year writing career, he wrote 32 novels, 92 short stories, 11 children’s books, three prison diaries, and three plays. His 32nd and final novel, Adam and Eve, was published the day after he died. Yet I know a handful of people who told me over 20 years ago they wanted to write a book. None of them has written anything yet. Unless they sit down every day and write something, the book won’t conjure itself out of thin air. Lord Archer showed that success depends upon doing your work routinely. 

Of course, in the past week we have heard critics of Lord Archer say negative things about him. But that does not mean we should dismiss what we can learn from his life. Own your mistakes, get on with things, and keep up a routine, and you are very likely to succeed. 

This week, you could name one old mistake you’re still carrying and let it go. Then book a fixed daily slot for the work you keep putting off. Lord Archer kept his appointment to the very end. Maybe you could make an appointment with your pen, too.

Image montage created by ChatGPT from works by Edwardx – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=156128645 and by Stephen Craven / The Place, south side / CC BY-SA 2.0

The post Are you ready to be more like Jeffrey? first appeared on Graham Jones.

Yesterday, I was shocked to read the news about a leading TikTok influencer with 9m followers, a Netflix series to her name, and a $20m net worth. She is Alix Earle, and she caused a bit of an internet kerfuffle this week when she said that in her 25 years on the planet, she has never read a book. Not one. None. Zilch. Well, apart from the fact that she thinks she might have read something by Dr Seuss.

Unsurprisingly, she received something of a backlash. One commenter said, “Not having read a book since elementary school is not ditsy and cute, it’s embarrassing.“ Another commented, “That can’t be true. You went to college; you read books then surely.” The suggestion made by Alix Earle might or might not be true. The statement may have been designed purely to attract publicity. In which case it worked.

However, it has raised the fact that many commenters supported reading, although a few praised her for dispensing with books. Despite the growth of a variety of forms of entertainment, including a never-ending stream of TikTok videos, it appears that many people still love reading.

Indeed, according to the Publishers Association, we have recently had a record year for books. Sales are up and the book market continues to grow. Alix Earle might not be reading, but plenty of people do.

Even so, some issues are worrying. According to a YouGov poll last year, four out of every ten people hadn’t read a book in the previous 12 months. Similarly, data released by the National Literacy Trust show that in the past decade, reading among younger people has been dropping.

Reading is good for you. It doesn’t matter too much what you read. Reading itself seems useful. A review just published in the journal Psychological Medicine shows that reading brings health benefits. These include lower stress levels, a reduced risk of dementia, and slower cognitive decline. In addition, the authors showed that reading improves attention and memory, as well as “executive control”. That’s the way the brain organises everything it needs to do. Furthermore, neurological studies show that reading positively changes the structure of your brain. There is a significant link between reading and good mental health.

It has long been known that reading helps improve exam results. Research in Australia and the USA found that children who grow up with books around them at home do better across a range of skills. Other studies have shown that when children read for pleasure, their maths skills improve too.

Reading clearly has a range of benefits, from improving educational attainment to developing skills and supporting overall mental wellbeing. We all started to read when we were at school – unless you are a TikTok influencer, perhaps. Yet in adulthood, only around half of the population reads regularly. Despite a small recent uptick, the Reading Agency says reading has declined over the past decade.

It is possible we could see a further decline, as more and more people use artificial intelligence to summarise things for them. The very tool that provides such convenience could also be reducing our skills while harming our mental wellbeing.

A far better way of using AI is to ask it to recommend books for you to read. Tell it your preferences, give it examples of books you have loved, and it can tell you what else might interest you.

You could also use AI to help you schedule regular reading. One reason people tell me they don’t read as much as they used to is a lack of time. But there is no lack of time. We have the same number of hours in the day as we did as children, when we read books daily. What has changed are our habits. Instead of reading every day, we have replaced that habit with something else, like scrolling endlessly through TikTok. The habit you learned at junior school has not gone anywhere. It is simply waiting for you to pick it up again. AI can help you choose the book. The reading is up to you.

Just finding half an hour a week to read will help you think more clearly and cope with work pressure better. And it is linked to a healthier brain as you age. So here is a small challenge for this weekend. Tell an AI tool about two books you have loved and ask it to suggest three more. Then put 30 minutes in your diary on Monday to start the first one, and treat it like any other appointment you would not cancel.

If you want to pass the habit on, you could do no better than support the late, great Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. It sends a free book every month to children from birth until they start school. Its whole purpose is to make sure no child grows up with just one half-remembered Dr Seuss book to their name.

The post Is it time to get AI to reignite one of the habits you learned at junior school? first appeared on Graham Jones.

At home, my office is near the kitchen, and the other day, I decided it was time for a sneaky snack. But as I took the few steps from my office towards the cake tin, I realised my knees were hurting. Normally, my knees don’t hurt, so I wondered what had gone wrong. My wife quickly diagnosed the issue. She said, “That’s the first time you have moved from your office all morning. No wonder your knees hurt.”

It is a reminder of that phrase, “use it or lose it”. A completely sedentary lifestyle is not good for our muscles or our heart. Sports scientists have pointed out that when people stop playing professional sport, several physical issues tend to crop up because of the lifestyle change. Staying physically active helps prevent illness in such individuals. 

The same appears to be true for our mind. Over a decade ago, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota found that we protect our brains from age-related decline if we keep using them. British researchers confirmed a few years ago that keeping our brains sharp reduces the likelihood of later-life memory loss or thinking decline. In other words, keep using your brain, and it protects you psychologically. The “use it or lose it” concept applies as much to mental well-being as it does to physical health.

Worryingly, the World Health Organization predicted that the increased sedentary lifestyle we are living is likely to lead to 500m cases of preventable disease by 2030. The WHO also says that increasing physical activity could avoid up to 5m deaths each year.

It is worth thinking about what would happen if we also stopped using our brains at the same rate we have been stopping physical activity. Our bodies are functioning less effectively because we lack movement. The chances are that we’ll also end up with psychological and neurological disorders if we stop being active with our minds.

And guess what? We are already losing our minds. Every day I witness people who have given up thinking. They are using artificial intelligence to do their thinking for them. They don’t question what AI has given them. They just use it because it is convenient and saves time. 

When I was at school, we had to remember things “by rote”, reciting things over and over again until they were embedded in our brains. But what is the point of a child trying to remember the names of the six wives of Henry VIII when a quick Google search will tell them? Come on, admit it. You have outsourced your memory to Google. You don’t even bother to remember things because you know Google is your extended memory. Indeed, a Columbia University psychologist found that Google has actually changed the way our memory works.

So what if we all start doing the same thing with artificial intelligence? What if we outsource our thinking to AI? Some people are already doing this. And even if you are not doing it yet, you will soon. After all, when Google came out, you still tried to remember things until you realised that Google could do it for you. We are likely to go the same way with AI. In fact, it looks like we have already started to transfer thinking to AI systems. Researchers at Microsoft found that when we trust artificial intelligence, we think less critically.

I was pondering this issue yesterday when this Guardian article landed on my desk. In it, an Edinburgh academic has raised the same problem. Professor Devi Sridhar wonders what will happen if we all give up thinking. 

Of course, this concern is nothing new. Plato has Socrates warning that writing would destroy people’s memories. When calculators arrived in classrooms, teachers thought children would never learn arithmetic. Each time, the doom-mongers were largely wrong, because handing off a routine task freed our brains for something more demanding. So why should AI be any different? Because this time, what we are handing over is not the storage of facts or the donkey work of sums. It is the judgement itself. Google gave you the names of Henry VIII’s wives, but it still left you to decide what that meant. AI will happily do the deciding too, if you let it. 

None of us can change what society at large will do about this. If we wait for something to happen, we may well have damaged our brains. So we have to look after ourselves now, because nobody else will.

That means we have to start arguing with artificial intelligence. When you get it to do something, cast a critical eye over it and don’t just accept what it says. This will not only help you maximise your returns from AI, but also keep your brain engaged. 

I work with a variety of AI tools every day. They might be getting fed up with me because I keep challenging them. I have a think about what they say, sometimes tell them they are wrong, or argue a point with them. I don’t usually treat what AI produces as the “complete answer” but as a starting point for a debate. It is what we do with human colleagues, so why would we not do it with AI? It certainly means I have to keep thinking.

So here is your challenge for this week. Next time AI hands you an answer, do three things before you use it. Ask yourself what it might have got wrong. Check one claim independently. And rewrite the key point it has made, in your own words. If you run a team, make these rules for them too. It takes a couple of minutes, about as long as my walk to the cake tin. And just as my knees told me that I hadn’t moved all morning, the first time you argue with AI, you might notice how long it’s been since your brain had a proper workout. Tell me in the comments how you get on. See how generous I am being with your brain by asking you to think for a moment?

The post Is it time you started arguing with artificial intelligence? first appeared on Graham Jones.

The other evening I went to a comedy club in Clapham, London, to watch the top TV comedian and winner of “Strictly Come Dancing”, Chris McCausland. He was performing alongside Rachel Parris, another skilled comedian trying out fresh material. At first, I couldn’t understand why the tickets were only £8 when, in London, you typically pay around £35 to see just one live comedian. 

At the start of the show, it became obvious. Chris told this small audience of just 40 people crammed into a tiny theatre above a pub that he was rehearsing for the recording of the Christmas special of a TV show the next day. During the run-through of his material, a couple of times Chris paused and said, “OK, I need to work on that a bit more”. He was clearly gauging the audience response and realising that his joke needed improving in some way. 

It’s not unusual for leading comedians to practise their new material before they go out on “the circuit” of theatres and comedy venues around the country. Indeed, The Comedy Store in London’s West End has a regular “Old Rope Night” where you can watch major stars practising new material for a ticket around a tenner. 

Before the Clapham comedy show, I had been talking about one of my previous jobs as a stage electrician in a regional theatre, The Yvonne Arnaud, in Guildford, Surrey. There I worked with the TV actor John Inman during the pre-West End run of the play “Charley’s Aunt”. After he had already been through weeks of rehearsal, I asked him why he was doing yet another one late on Sunday night, before the show opened the next day. He agreed that he had rehearsed the play many times over, and then added, “But I have never done it here”.  He went on to explain that he wanted to get used to the building’s acoustics, the size of the stage, the timing of the walk to the dressing room, and so on. 

After my theatre days, I worked in PR at Polydor Records and met some of the world’s leading pop and rock stars. You might imagine a world of “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll”. But the real stars let outsiders think that. In truth, they spent hours practising. 

Now, I hope you can forgive me for reminiscing like this. But there is a point. In conversation with some students last week, they asked me how I managed to write several books. They wanted to know how I could just sit there and let words pour out onto the paper or screen. They asked because I was quizzing them on the process they used to write their assignments. 

They told me they often faced a blank screen and didn’t know what to write. They admitted they could do that for hours and then had to rush to finish their work close to the deadline. I suggested this was inefficient, as it inevitably would produce poorer results. I told them about one book I wrote in just one week. “All I had to do,” I said, “was write about 10,000 words a day”. That prompted their questioning about how I could do that.

My answer was simple: “Practice”. I can write quickly because I have written millions of words over the years, often to very tight deadlines. I practise it every single day. When all a student does is try to write a 2,000-word assignment, and that is the only writing they have done all term, is it any wonder they have trouble?

Whether you are a writer, a pop star, a theatre actor or a comedian, you cannot make progress without plenty of practice. Plus, as I have observed, the people at the top of their game are the ones who practise the most. 

Yet, as a Gallup study revealed a few years ago, business leaders tend not to practise essential skills. When it comes to feedback for junior colleagues, team leaders typically do so annually. How good are you at something when you only do it once a year? Be honest..! Yet, employees want feedback every week. Doing that weekly means business leaders get more practice and therefore improve their skills. It is not difficult, is it?

There are many things we are required to do in business that we do not practice enough. Data analysis might only happen once a quarter when you review recent results. Strategic planning seems to happen annually at best, and for some businesses, only once every five years. Time management pops up only once a year when people set their New Year’s resolution to manage their time better. I am sure you can think of other examples.

Now, you might be thinking you simply don’t have time to practise data analysis or strategic planning every day. But practice does not mean doing the whole thing each time. A comedian doesn’t rehearse an entire tour every night, and a pop star doesn’t record the full album at each session. They work on it one bit at a time. 

You could start right now by listing the skills your work depends on and how often you actually use them. Any you do only occasionally could improve if you make them part of a regular routine, ten minutes at a time. Practise these things a little each day, and you’ll soon get better at them, and so will your business.

The post How much time do you devote to practising your skills? first appeared on Graham Jones.

The other day, I received a lovely email from a colleague at work, telling me how much I had helped them. It was a touching note and stood out from the usual bunch of messages, such as those that ask when a report will be delivered or demanding a meeting. Indeed, the email was so unusual that I printed it out to keep. 

Having those words in print makes them seem more permanent. I can put the document in a folder and see it on my shelf. If I just left the email in the system, it would head into the frightful farrago that is Microsoft Outlook. I might never see it again…!

As I printed it out, I was reminded of a consultancy client from several years ago whose CEO printed every email that came his way. He would then handwrite his answers beneath the message and have his PA type them up as his reply. You might think this was rather quaint and old-fashioned. But it was a system that helped him lead a £250m business. 

I asked him why he used such an antiquated method of communication, and he said that emails were “not real” when they were on the screen. He suggested they were just temporary impressions flashing before his eyes. When they were printed out, they were “real”. 

Gen Z expresses a similar idea these days. Of all the generations, they print out more pictures than any other. A recent blog post on the Kodak Printer website said demand for printing photos taken with smartphones is so high that Fujifilm has to build a new factory. The market is predicted to grow to $6 billion in the next seven years. And you thought the days of printing out pictures were long gone.

Think again. It’s because the picture on your phone is transient. Besides the fact that it can be accidentally deleted and the memory lost forever, the temporary nature of the image on the screen has little meaning. It’s here now, and a second later it is gone as you swipe past. 

Talking to students recently, I was reminded of the need to create meaning through permanence. During my classes, I give them plenty of exercises and practical things to do. The last thing they want is to hear me droning on for two hours!  In recent weeks, I have been running workshops and giving students printed workbooks with “fill-in-the-gaps” sections. For decades in the training business, that’s just been “normal” for me. At the end of a lecture recently, one student asked if they could take away the worksheets they had completed. 

When I told them that was the whole point, they said it was really helpful, since they would have a written reminder of the workshop. They said it made the in-class exercises more memorable to them that way. 

New research from the University of Chicago has now confirmed the value of doing things that add meaning. They found that adding the option of permanence made anything more significant to the individual.  People who were asked to draw something were more motivated by the greater significance if they knew their artwork would be saved. If the art was going to be transient, it had no meaning, and the participants in the study lacked motivation to create it. 

That explains why a CEO wants to print emails and why Gen Z members need their photos printed. Without permanence, the items become less significant and lose their real meaning.

This should come as no surprise. Humans live in a physical world, and to help us navigate it, we have four million touch sensors in our bodies. We are primed for physicality. Yet we spend much of our working day in a virtual existence. A PDF is not really a document, is it? But when it is printed and bound, then it becomes real. Ever since we have had computers, total paper demand has increased. The forecast for paper used by computer users is that it will grow by a further 8.5% by 2030. This further indicates that even though we don’t need things printed because they are on our computers, we still print things out to help us derive meaning.

In the workplace, we can make small changes that help people attach significance and meaning to what they do, thereby increasing motivation. For example, “workbooks” or “activity sheets” for regular meetings could help. They can make discussions and associated notes feel real. Of course, printing can be wasteful, clutter an office, and reduce your company’s sustainability. If people worry about the sustainability of paper use, then the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) offers plenty of good advice.  

We can also make other small changes to help people create more meaning through a sense of permanence, with less paper. Badges and stickers to associate people and tasks may help. So could photos of events and meetings displayed on the office walls. Here is one thing to try this week: at your next team meeting, print a single page that captures what was decided and who owns each action, and pin it where everyone passes it. It costs one sheet of paper, yet it turns a meeting discussion that could have evaporated into something people can see, touch, and return to. That is the whole point. Permanence is not about printing more. It is about choosing the few things worth making real.

The post Can you make tiny changes at work that add the simplest meaning? first appeared on Graham Jones.

Last week, I watched BBC Newsnight when Lord Toby Harris said we should all be stocking up on tinned food and bottled water. Lord Harris chairs the National Preparedness Commission, which advises the Government and the Civil Service on how the country should prepare for emergencies. On Newsnight, Lord Harris said most of us are unaware of the significant risk to daily life in the UK from Russian drones, for example. He said we were closer to a major war in Europe than at any other time in the past 60 years.

That all sounds rather scary, so most people do the proverbial “fingers in their ears” and sing “La, la, la” while hoping it all goes away or that somebody else will sort things out. Yet conflict isn’t the only problem. We’re facing major changes, with disasters like avalanches in Europe and floods in Nepal attributed to global warming. And that is before you even consider the growing number of attacks created by artificial intelligence, which are starting to appear uncontrolled. Some worry that AI is “going off the rails”, which could lead to chaos.

Then, yesterday, the UK Government announced that we should stock up on food because significant weather events are likely in the coming months that could prevent us from leaving our homes for several days. And the Dutch Central Bank has moved billions of Euros of Gold in preparation for an impending crisis. Perhaps it is time to invest in a new book, Disaster Prepping For Dummies.

Has the world gone bonkers, or should we be worried? Research from the University of Houston found that people likely to worry and be “preppers”, ready for a doomsday scenario, appear to have a specific personality type with low levels of “agreeableness”. This is one of the five personality components that tends to make people blunt and self-interested. They get triggered by anything that could threaten them as individuals. The rest of us, with higher levels of agreeableness, want to rub along well with others. As such, we are unlikely to want to “prep” because it would demonstrate self-interest over the common good.

In business, this means leaders are also unlikely to want their companies to prepare for impending doom because it would show they care more about themselves than their colleagues. At the same time, you’d probably aim to prevent panic among your staff.

However, you also wouldn’t want your business itself to be in a state of panic should these emergencies materialise. After all, a senior power engineer revealed yesterday that power cuts in the UK are only a matter of time. Is your business ready for several days without power?

Ultimately, it is all about language. “Preppers” are preparing for “disaster”. But a business leader who does the same thing would call it “being agile”. Similarly, a “prepper” is doing a one-off act of preparation for a specific emergency. However, a business could frame it as a routine item, as regular as a financial audit or a software update. 

Another way to deal with potential disaster in a business is to focus on the impacts, not the emergency itself. Data on “downtime” or “service levels” will help employees consider ways of ensuring these are not negatively affected. They are “prepping” without thinking of it that way.

You can also help staff be ready for problems by building different ways of doing things into a routine. For example, you can set aside half an hour each week to do a particular process on paper, rather than on a computer. This provides some relief from the tedium of being online all the time. It also builds resilience into the organisation. When the power goes out, people are ready and able to do things on paper. 

Preparing for disaster does not have to focus on a negative idea. Governments and local authorities worldwide say we will face real emergencies soon. But we need to be ready without panicking. We might need to stock up on food and water, but there’s much more we can do in business to prepare for problems. Think of it as building an agile company that is highly resilient. That’s much more positive than preparing for impending doom, even though it’s the same thing.

The post Is now the time to prepare your business for impending doom? first appeared on Graham Jones.

This weekend I will avoid going into the centre of my local town, Reading. That’s because it is “Reading Festival” weekend, when over 100,000 visitors descend upon the place. At an average of £300 a ticket, they must really love being with one another in a muddy field. 

People who go to the festival want to experience live music with other loyal fans. They form a community of music lovers who will share festival experiences for years to come. Indeed, I still recall being with friends listening to Mungo Jerry play In the Summer Time, when they headlined the first-ever “Surrey Free Fest”. The reason for my recall of this occasion is revealed in new research from Australia. It has demonstrated that our memory of specific personal events, known as episodic memory, is better when we are in a social situation. 

No matter how many individuals spend their days with their heads bent over their phones in some isolated world, humans still crave being in groups together. That was highlighted this week in the latest episode of the BBC TV series Dragons’ Den. Towards the end of the programme, Louise Truman pitched her business, Plotpackers. It is a travel business that lets solo travellers join a group of like-minded people. 

The idea for a community of travellers was borne out of a need for safety for people travelling alone, following Louise’s experience of being assaulted while she was on holiday by herself. During the questioning by the “dragons”, Steven Bartlett said that he had been looking for something that could help create community during what he called “a loneliness epidemic”. Along with Deborah Meaden, they snapped up 10% of the travel firm for £120,000. Clearly, multimillionaire businesspeople see significant value in community.

I emphasised this in a session this week with students doing a work placement project.  I asked how their placements were going and what they had learned about doing business. One student was working with a local gym. She told me the business owners continually emphasised that their members were part of a community of people who preferred that gym to larger establishments where they felt isolated. Another student said the cake-making company they worked with depended almost entirely on a local community doing word-of-mouth marketing. A further student pointed out that the beauty firm she worked with focused on building a community of like-minded customers.

I asked the students what one thing they learned from their companies they could carry forward into their own business careers. Everyone in the class said the same thing – create and use a real-world community of customers. The students had realised that being with others, “IRL” (in real life) and sharing common experiences is a powerful force in helping businesses thrive.

Many business people I speak with, though, believe they can create their “community” using social media. But that’s not real. When we scroll through Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram, we are spectators, not participants. We watch other people’s experiences from the outside instead of living one together. A shared experience creates a memory you both hold. A post you scroll past creates nothing you keep.

Indeed, this is reflected in the latest data on social media usage from Statista’s recent analysis. It shows that the main reason people use “social” media is pure entertainment. Social interaction and meeting people rank near the bottom of the list. 

So, rather than trying to improve your “number of likes”, your “impression number” or your “engagement score”, perhaps it is time to reconsider “IRL”. Indeed, a recent YouGov study has shown the significance of real-world advertising, such as posters on billboards. It found that real-world advertising experiences were a powerful trigger for talking about the company or product with family and friends. In other words, those real-world advertisements were a talking point within a physical community, not an online one.

We all need a community of friends for a laugh or support, and we can all recall past events we shared with a community of others. That’s why, as my students discovered this week, a real-world community of customers can be the foundation for a thriving business. So this week, do one thing to build yours. Host a customer evening, run a workshop, sponsor a local event, or simply get your best customers in the same room. Start with one gathering. Unless, of course, you are at the Reading Festival and are too busy sharing the musical experience.

The post Could you harness the power of a real community for your business? first appeared on Graham Jones.

The world is drying up. Yesterday we learned that the mighty Danube is so low that there is not enough water to cool nuclear power plants along its course. The day before, we were told that the drought in Central America is taking greater hold, causing problems in the Panama Canal. Much of the UK has been officially in a drought for several weeks. However, I thought rescue was on the way when I heard a water company director being interviewed on the radio.

He proudly announced that work should start soon on building a new massive reservoir in Oxfordshire. Whoopee, I thought. But the answer to the interviewer’s next question stopped me in my tracks. “When will it be delivering water to the system?” he asked. The director’s answer was “In 2040”. I thought I had misheard, but the radio presenter confirmed my thinking by asking why it takes 14 years to get water from a reservoir. The water company boss appeared to avoid answering the question.

I know it is complicated, but a reservoir is not much more than a big hole in the ground. Why does it take 14 years? You could ask the same for HS2, the UK’s new “high speed” train line. It will save travellers between London and Birmingham less time than they might queue in the buffet car for a coffee. Yet it will not be open to passengers until 2039, some 27 years after it was given the go-ahead. Compare that with the world’s longest road tunnel in Norway, which was built 30 years ago in less than five years.

The problem here is not bureaucratic Britain. Nor is it the time taken for legal challenges, nor “health and safety gone mad”. But beneath all those explanations lies another problem: accountability. Nobody, other than a journalist on the radio, seems to question why a reservoir takes 14 years to deliver some water. As a result, not a soul appears to be held accountable. Delays in the construction of HS2 are bound up in decisions made by groups of people and an array of committees, meaning that nobody is really accountable.

True, bosses often say “the buck stops with me”. But they are not really accountable for the plethora of small delays that ultimately create bottlenecks and hold-ups. The people really responsible have a boss who takes on the accountability and passes that to another boss who then becomes accountable to a manager up the line and so on. The result is that the person who ought to be accountable for delays and problems has passed that accountability to someone else who can’t actually deal with the difficulties causing the lengthy delays. The project is swimming in treacle.

You’ve probably worked out by now that I get annoyed by delays and problems for which people seem to have no accountability. “Nothing to do with me,” is the mantra in many workplaces. However, my level of irritation seems to be shared by many.

According to a recent Ipsos study of “digital authenticity”, a lack of accountability is a significant problem. The study showed that “human accountability” was required by 95% of people. However, only 56% of respondents felt brands achieved accountability. This 39% gap between expectations and experience was the biggest issue for brands, according to the study conducted for the software company, Sitecore. The study also found accuracy and honesty to be significant customer concerns. They do not always perceive honesty, with a 23% gap between expectations and reality.

The research shows that our customers want us to be honest and accountable for what we do. That should come as no surprise. What is concerning is the level of the gap between what customers want and what they experience. Customers do not always perceive businesses as entirely honest, and the accountability gap is even more striking. As businesses hand more decisions and customer interactions to AI, knowing which human is ultimately accountable becomes more important, not less.

Earlier this year, the Center for Creative Leadership explained how to create a culture of accountability. Managers of large infrastructure projects, in particular, might enjoy reading it. One element of increasing accountability, the article says, is allowing staff to experiment and innovate. Who knows, by doing that, they may discover how to dig a hole in the ground quicker than 14 years.

The post Would you be accountable for digging a big hole? first appeared on Graham Jones.