Jonathan MacDonald

The Signal Path To Success - The Next Web Conference 2013

2013-05-13T19:02:00.000+01:00

Below is a talk I gave at The Next Web Conference on 26th April 2013 in Amsterdam.

You can download the slide deck and script from here (http://thisfluidworld.com/jmacdonaldtnw13.pdf), which is also published in full below:

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back"

This is one of my favourite Plato quotes of all time.

When another heart whispers back there's resonance. That's the connection.

It's magical, unexplainable. It just happens.

Back in the business world, launching products or services into market has always been about resonance too.

How your offering makes sense to people and connects with their hearts.

As people decide in groups, herds or tribes, the ambition for individual understanding we see around us in marketing today is largely mistaken. The reality is that it's far more effective to resonate with how groups feel, believe and care.

The good news is that today it's theoretically more possible to interpret what people care about, the bad news is that we tend to think that a click equals a like, a like equals a love and a purchase means a preference.

None of this is resonance. Almost all of it is noise. Meaninglessness dressed up in a funky mobile app.

It's our very own dirty little secret.

Deep down we might actually know it's not 'signal' - i.e. what really matters - but we act (and some are paid to behave) as if it does.

We've classed the noise as signal and provided no-one says it too loud, we'll get away with it as long as possible right? :)

Alternatively we can look at what the opportunities could be if we truly set out to resonate in the long term - not a shooting star success story but a long term, meaningful impact.

No, I'm not talking about being all charitable, or some new-age mission to save the world, I'm talking about enabling our signal - our ultimate purpose - to resonate with the signal of others.

This should have always been the mission, but now something has fundamentally changed.

In the past you could say something that resonated with the public and act in a totally different way.

Marks & Spencer's "Plan A because there's no Plan B" was fine for an environmental campaign if it wasn't for the CEO being spotted in a gas guzzling Bentley.

Look around today and you'll see many examples of companies or representatives of companies, acting in ways that don't remotely match what they say they stand for.

Celebrities who aren't necessarily as squeaky clean on the inside as they claim to be on the outside.

The issue is that due to all our interactive technology, organisations/celebrities/Governments can no longer hide in the way they used to.

The result?

Increased transparency at every level.

We're carrying micro-journalism devices, weapons of mass communication and digital samurai swords.

If you do what you say and say what you do, everything's great.

If you say what you do but don't do it, you'd be right in being massively paranoid.

So, to have a resonant signal externally, we now have to be resonant signal internally, which means we have to start by removing the noise within ourselves to find the signal that then can be expressed out as true signal searching for a resonant connection.

I call this process: de-noise.

In business, as in private, we have to de-noise on 3 levels:

1. within ourself for resonant signal

2. between us and others inside our organisation for resonant signal

3. between us and others outside our organisation for resonant signal

The final one we probably know most about as it is (or should be) best practice in business.

Now though we need the first two in place for the 3rd to actually work.

You can't buy resonant signal within yourself, or your organisation. You can't train it, you can't learn it, you can't choose it…you can only be it.

I've spoken about this before (http://www.jonathanmacdonald.com/2013/04/de-noise-tedx-oporto.html) but in summary, our signal is always within us, it's just hard to find due to all the meaninglessness noise that fills up our lives.

Amongst this increasingly noisy world of distractions, where we're addicted to what technology is rather than what technology does, it's increasingly hard to find out what matters to us.

But we should prioritise finding our true purpose now because whatever we're showing as signal is visible to everyone now - even if what we're showing is actually noise.

However, this isn't the only reason.

I'm hear today to tell you it's possibly one of the biggest business opportunities any organisation has.

Here's why.

According to Gallup, unengaged or actively disengaged employees make up 74% of an average organisation's workforce.

In the US alone, that means the economy loses up to $350 Billion in lost productivity.

Yes, that's $350 Billion with a 'B'.

That's just in the US, and doesn't even account for the costs of lost opportunity, lost customers who've had terrible experiences, or acts of sabotage and revenge.

You may wonder, what's changed with people? Aren't people just happy to have a job or career progression?

Last week a Harvard Business Review article (http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/what_job_candidates_really_wan.html) stating: "What talented people want has changed. They used to want high salaries to verify their value and stable career paths to allow them to sleep well at night. Now they want purposeful work and jobs that fit clearly into the larger context of their career"

And that's not all.

A 2012 Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey found that 60% of CEOs did not believe they had the talent they needed to be successful.

Studies also show that engaged employees are 50% more productive...

...and 33% more profitable.

They are also responsible for 56% higher customer loyalty scores...

...and correlated with 44% higher retention rates, leading to great gains in productivity over the long run

According to Kotter and Heskett, over a period of 11 years, average organisations increased revenues by 166% and Profits by only 1%.

Exceptional organisations were able to increase revenues by 682% and increased profits by 756% [Source - Corporate Culture and Performance, Kotter & Heskett]

Naturally you'd want to look inside what makes these remarkable organisations so remarkable right?

Well, if you read the studies and download the reports, there's a common theme that runs throughout. Every summary of key characteristics refers to the same thing:

A clearly defined purpose that people believe in

"High performance organizations display a strong sense of purpose through shared values both inside (among employees) and outside the organization (among customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders)." (source: Gartner)

"High performance organizations have well-defined missions that convey the reason for the organisation’s existence and inspire others to join the cause." (source: Gartner)

Yes, de-noising to a resonant signal of purpose is the common driver of commercial success.

A clear purpose means you're not wasting a heap of money on people who don't care a damn about you or your personal mission to get rich.

A clear purpose enables you and your employees to know what's expected of them. What they should be developing, managing, hiring and so forth.

It automatically de-noises everyone attached to it and you're left with a signal machine.

People don't want to leave, regardless of pay, why would they?

People operating with signal are ridiculously empowered and productive.

They're fighting for a cause they believe in. It's unstoppable.

That, my friends, is what drives the 756% profit increases.

You want the big success? You need to de-noise down to the signal that resonates.

It is an empirical fact.

The 3 things to take away from this are as follows:

1. To have a resonant signal externally we need a resonant signal internally even in this increasingly noisy modern life

2. There's a fundamental impact in business if your organisation can de-noise

3. Attaining your resonant signal and acting upon it is the absolute priority for you, your staff and your business

That's what success looks like.

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back" said Plato.

Absolutely.

De-noising Google Glass Privacy

2013-05-02T03:31:00.000+01:00

Recently I sat opposite Robert Scoble (http://scobleizer.com/) who was wearing Google Glasses (http://www.google.com/glass/start/) and as we spoke he made a gesture on the Glass frame that may or may not have taken a picture or recorded the subsequent conversation. Alternatively he may have checked an incoming message, been toying with his new gadget or all of the above.

Knowing him a little bit I'm not actually concerned either way as he isn't a sociopath. Plus, everything I may have said to him I'd be comfortable with being on the record.

Either way, the Google Glass privacy subject has become a debate...to a mass debate level.

Here's a sample from The Next Web 2013:

Without commenting on any particular commentators (other than Scoble who has treated me and others with ongoing respect) the debate is now centred around whether a wearable technology (in this case Google Glass) is capable of recording private lives and is that OK? What does it mean and is privacy over? Etc.

On one side of the debate there's an argument that we now live in public and should assume everything is recorded, on the other there's an argument that our lives are mainly mundane and there's no point in recording our pointless existence.

To add a dimension to the Google Glass privacy debate, there's an argument that the technology isn't capable of being as sneaky as we fear, however some also argue it already is.

At the time of writing the debate of Google Glass and privacy is gaining such momentum it has reached a point where the commentary is so nuanced it may be hard to historically un-pick the context of what was (is) being said.

So here's a de-noise of the Google Glass privacy debate. For the record.

As of May 2013 the debate has inadvertently transcended into two of Aristotles non linguistic fallacies.

Yes, the conversation itself is fundamentally flawed in its reasoning. Here's how:

The Non Sequitur

This is also known as 'Affirming the Consequent" and is an incorrect assumption where A means B so B must mean A.

"If I'm in London then I'm in England so if I'm in England then I'm in London"

Put into the context of Google Glass:

"If privacy can be exploited with Google Glass then Google Glass exploits privacy"

Secundum Quid Et Simpliciter

This is also known as 'In Certain Respect' and is an incorrect assumption based on A being an attribute of B so therefore A is an attribute of C.

"There is money in my pocket, so there is always money in my pocket"

Put into the context of Google Glass:

"If glass can't record private conversations easily today then it's not a risk to privacy in the future"

-

Due to these two fallacies the current argumentation is fruitless to follow and to reason.

In reality the Google Glass and Privacy question is a question of ethics.

Assuming it is possible, is it right to record data without the other person or entity knowing?

This singular question is purely subjective and contextual, thus infinite and non-conclusive.

As far as to whether Google Glass can be instructed to perform 'privacy invading stuff' now or in the future, the question remains in place regardless due to the fact that the product does not instruct the 'privacy invading stuff'.

The rest is noise, leaving only the ethical question as signal upon which to discuss, remembering there is no conclusion as each person's ethical values are individual.

Google Glass Privacy De-Noised.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Transcript of secret meeting between Julian Assange and Google CEO Eric Schmidt

2013-04-22T06:26:00.001+01:00

On the 23 of June, 2011 a secret five hour meeting took place between WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who was under house arrest in rural UK at the time and Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Also in attendance was Jared Cohen, a former Secretary of State advisor to Hillary Clinton, Scott Malcomson, Director of Speechwriting for Ambassador Susan Rice at the US State Department and current Communications Director of the International Crisis Group, and Lisa Shields, Vice President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

This is re-published from the WikiLeaks site that claims Schmidt and Cohen requested the meeting, they said, to discuss ideas for "The New Digital World", their forthcoming book to be published on April 23, 2013.

Below is the start of the verbatim transcript of the majority of the meeting which can be read in full here: http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt

[beginning of tape]

ES

Well do you want us to start eating?

JA

Well, we can do both.

ES

Yeah, is that ok?

JA

So this is... what's the date?

LS

June 23rd

JA

...June 23rd. This is a recording between Julian Assange, Eric Schmidt and...?

LS

Lisa Shields

JA

...Lisa Shields. To be used in a book by Eric Schmidt, due to be published by Knopf in October 2012. I have been given a guarantee that I will see the transcript and will be able to adjust it for accuracy and clarity.

ES

Can we start... I want to talk a little about Thor. Right. The sort of, the whole Navy network and...

JA

Tor or Thor?

ES

Yeah, actually I mean Tor. Uh...

JA

And Odin as well.

ES

That's right, sorry. Tor, uh, and the Navy network, and I don't actually understand how all of that worked. And the reason I'm mentioning this is I'm...I'm fundamentally interested in what happens with that technology as it evolves. Right. And so, the problem I would assert, is that if you're trying to receive data you need to have a guarantee of anonymity to the sender, you need to have a secure channel to the recipient, the recipient needs to be replicated, you know... What I'd like you to do is if you could just talk a bit about that architecture, what you did in WikiLeaks technically, you know, with the sort of the technical innovations that were needed and maybe also what happens. You know, how does it evolve? Technology always evolves.

JA

Let me first frame this. I looked at something that I had seen going on with the world. Which is that I thought there were too many unjust acts.

ES

JA

And I wanted there to be more just acts, and fewer unjust acts. And one can sort of say, well what are your philosophical axioms for this? And I say I do not need to consider them. This is simply my temperament. And it is an axiom because it is that way. And so that avoids, then, getting into further unhelpful discussions about why you want to do something. It is enough that I do. So in considering how unjust acts are caused and what tends to promote them and what promotes just acts I saw that human beings are basically invariant. That is that their inclinations and biological temperament haven't changed much over thousands of years and so therefore the only playing field left is: what do they have? And what do they know? And "have" is something that is fairly hard to influence, so that is what resources do they have at their disposal? And how much energy they can harness, and what are the supplies and so on. But what they know can be affected in a nonlnear way because when one person conveys information to another they can convey on to another and another and so on in a way that nonlinear and so you can affect a lot of people with a small amount of information. And therefore you can change the behaviour of many people with a small amount of information. So the question then arises as to what kinds of information will produce behaviour which is just? And disincentivise behaviour which is unjust? So all around the world there are people observing different parts of what is happening to them locally. And there are other people that are receiving information that they haven't observed first hand. And in the middle there are people who are involved in moving information from the observers to the people who will act on information. These are three separate problems that are all coupled together. I felt that there was a difficulty in taking observations and putting them in an efficient way into a distribution system which could then get this information to people who could act upon it. And so you can argue that companies like Google are involved, for example, in this "middle" business of taking... of moving information from people who have it to people who want it. The problem I saw was that this first step was crippled. And often the last step as well when it came to information that governments were inclined to censor. We can look at this whole process as the Fourth Estate. Or just as produced by the Fourth Estate. And so you have some kind of... pipeline... and... So I have this description which is... which is partly derived from my experiences in quantum mechanics about looking at the flow of particular types of information which will effect some change in the end. The bottleneck to me appeared to me to be primarily in the acquisition of information that would go on to produce changes that were just. In a Fourth Estate context the people who acquire information are sources. People who work information and distribute it are journalists and publishers. And people who act on it... is everyone. So that's a high level construct, but of course it then comes down to practically how do you engineer a system that solves that problem? And not just a technical system, but a total system. So WikiLeaks was and is an attempt - although still very young - at a total system.

ES

For all three phases?

JA

To deal with... not for all three phases but for the political component, the philosophical component and the engineering component in pushing out first component. Politically that means anonymizing and protecting... Sorry. Technically that means anonymizing and protecting sources in a wide variety of ways. Politically that also means protecting them politically, and incentivizing them in a political manner. Saying that their work is valuable, and encouraging people to take it up. And then there is also a legal aspect. What are the best laws that can be created in the best jurisdictions to operate this sort of stuff from? And practical everyday legal defense. On the technical front, our first prototype was engineered for a very adverse situation where publishing would be extremely difficult and our only effective defense in publishing would be anonymity. Where sourcing is difficult. As it still currently is for the national security sector. And where internally we had a very small and completely trusted team.

ES

So publishing means the question of the site itself? And making the material public?

JA

Yeah. Making the primary source material public. That is what I mean by publishing.

ES

So the first step was to make that correctly.

JA

It was clear to me that all over the world publishing is a problem. And... Whether that is through self censorship or overt censorship.

ES

Sorry, just you're gonna have to... is that because of fear of retribution by the governments, you know? Or all...

JA

It's mostly self censorship. In fact I would say it's probably the most significant one, historically, has been economic censorship. Where it is simply not profitable to publish something. There is no market for it. That is I describe as a censorship pyramid. It's quite interesting. So, on the top of the pyramid there are the murders of journalists and publishers. And the next level there is political attacks on journalists and publishers. So you think, what is a legal attack? A legal attack is simply a delayed use of coercive force.

ES

Sure.

JA

Which doesn't necessarily result in murder but may result in incarceration or asset seizure. So the next level down, and remember the volume... the area of the pyramid.... volume of the pyramid! The volume of the pyramid increases significantly as you go down from the peak. And in this example that means that the number of acts of censorship also increases as you go down. So there are very few people who are murdered, there are a few people who suffer legal... there is a few number of public legal attacks on individuals and corporations, and then at the next level there is a tremendous amount of self censorship, and this self censorship occurs in part because people don't want to move up into the upper parts of the pyramid. They don't want to come to legal attacks or uses of coercive force. But they also don't want to be killed.

ES

Right. I see.

JA

So that discourages people from behaving... and then there are other forms of self censorship that are concerned about missing out on business deals, missing out on promotions and those are even more significant because they are lower down the pyramid. At the very bottom - which is the largest volume - is all those people who cannot read, do not have access to print, do not have access to fast communications or where there is no profitable industry in providing that. Okay. So we decided to deal with the top of this censorship pyramid. The top two sections: the threats of violence, and the delayed threats of violence that are represented by the legal system. In some ways that is the hardest case. In some ways it is the easiest case. It is the easiest case because it is clear cut when things are being censored there, or not. It is also the easiest because the volume of censorship is relatively small, even if the per event significance is very high. So in... Before WikiLeaks had... although of course I had some previous political connections of my own from other activities, we didn't have that many friends. We didn't have significant political allies. And we didn't have a worldwide audience that was looking to see how we were doing. So we took the position that we would need to have a publishing system whose only defense was anonymity. That is it had no financial defense, it had no legal defense, and it had no political defense. Its defenses were purely technical. So that meant a system that was distributed at its front with many domain names and a fast ability to change those domain names. A caching system, and at the back tunnelling through the Tor network to hidden servers...

ES

So... if I could talk just a little bit about this, so... You could switch DNS... your website names very quickly, you use the tunnelling to get back... to communicate among these replicas? Or this is for distribution?

JA

We had sacrificial front nodes, that were very fast to set up, very quick to set up, that we nonetheless did place in relatively hospitable jurisdictions like Sweden. And those fast front nodes were fast because there was no... very few hops between them and the people reading them. That's... an important lesson that I had learned from things that I did before, that being a Sherman tank is not always an advantage, because you are not manouevrable and you are slow. A lot of the protection for publishers is publishing quickly. You get the information out quickly it is very well read, the incentive for people to go after you in relation to that specific piece of information is actually zero. There may be incentives for them to go after you to teach a lesson to other people who might defy their authority or teach a future lesson to your organization about defiance of authority.

ES

So, again, in constructing the argument you were concerned that governments or whatever would attack the front ends of this thing through whatever... denial of service attacks or blocking, basically filtering them out, which is essentially is commonly done. So an important aspect of this was to always be available.

JA

Always be available in one particular way or another. Now that's not a.. it's a battle that we have mostly won but we haven't completely won it. Within a few weeks the Chinese government had handed us to their ban list. We had hundreds of domain names, of various sorts, the domain names that were registered with very very large DNS providers, so if there was IP level based filtering it would whack out another five hundred thousand domains and that would create a political back pressure that would undo it. However DNS based filtering still hits us in China because the most common names - the ones that are closest to "WikiLeaks" - the name that people can communicate easily - they are all filtered by the Chinese government.

ES

Of course they are.

JA

And any domain with "WikiLeaks" anywhere in it, no matter where it is, is filtered. So that means there has to be a variant that they haven't yet discovered. But people... the variant has to be known widely enough for people to go there. So there is a catch 22.

ES

That's a structural problem with the naming of the internet, but the Chinese would simply do content filtering on you.

JA

Well, HTTPS worked for about a year and a half.

ES

Okay.

[background noise. JC entering]

JA

Worked quite well actually. And then changing up IPs, because they were... the Chinese internet filtering system is quite baroque, and they have evolved it... sometimes they do things manually and sometimes they do it in an automated way, in terms of adding IPs to the list based on domain names, and then we did... we had a quite interesting battle where we saw that they were looking up our IPs, and we see that these requests came from a certain DNS block range in China. Whenever we saw that we just then returned...

Read the rest of the transcript here: http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt

De-Noise - TEDx OPORTO

2013-04-14T17:22:00.000+01:00

Below is the talk I gave at TEDx OPorto on the 13th April 2013.

When the video is published it will also be here, but until then, below are the slides and basically what I said:

Throughout history it has been proven that controlling populations is most effective by controlling the information the population has access to.

A current example is our modern education system, founded with the intention of controlling what parts of society could learn, so the system could produce more compliant factory workers.

To this day, the system is to discourage personal curiosity and creativity, and there are many other systems in place to ensure compliance.

Society continues to be engineered so it can be controlled. Otherwise, it is thought, there would be chaos.

As it happens, the controlling mechanisms are benefiting today by the sheer volume of meaningless noise that we produce.

In fact, we're now compliant to the noise.

Our signal, i.e. our higher purpose and true self, is often nowhere to be seen.

It may be right in front of us, but it's shrouded by so much noise we don't know which parts matter anymore.

That’s what noise does.

Noise is needy. It takes away from us and it drains our attention and passion.

Signal, on the other hand, gives. Signal gives us truth and direction.

We've become so addicted to noise that the systems in place don't need to do a great deal more to ensure we are paralysed into complacency. The noise does it instead.

The systems couldn’t have dreamt of a better scenario.

We're too busy tweeting, facebooking and talking about stuff rather than doing anything that matters to our true self and higher purpose.

We've become critically distracted by throwing birds at pigs...

... and celebrating people with partial talent who become heroes to our children whilst singing about drunken sex...leaving us parents to explain to our kids that it isn’t a good thing to aspire to, even though their idol says so.

I'm on record talking about what would have happened if Mandela had tweeted or if Che Guevara had mobile…a part of me is grateful they didn't. The irony is they may have been too busy tweeting or downloading game apps.

Their signal may have been sucked up by noise.

I said it didn't matter what is in your hands, in terms of technology, as it's what is in your heart that counts.

The problem is, our hearts are running the risk of getting kidnapped by Grand Theft Auto.

The media we consume fuels our fascination. We envy those who have things that we don't need.

We desire to be thinner, richer, more popular and more like anything we can't attain. We’re not trying to be ourselves, we’re desperate to be anyone else. The noise takes away our identity.

But that's the point isn't it?

We're meant to be in this holding pattern of mediocrity. It makes us obedient and happy with our role.

It makes us think this mediocrity is our signal. As if this is our calling.

We’re grateful for the noise. It gives us reality TV, false idols, and one version of the truth.

It’s taken away everything that matters.

We could collectively change so much with our weapons of mass communication but we won't revolt, we won't challenge, we won't question too deeply. We wouldn't be obedient workers otherwise right?

The noise takes away the height of the bar leaving it set so low that when we feel that amazingness has been achieved, it is in fact fairly ordinary, as one can see when comparing it to something truly amazing.

Yes, there are pockets of people and individuals who can and do...but the masses?

No, we remain comfortable in the noise that takes away rather than gives.

We're comfortable with limited curiosity and limited creativity.

I tell you this my friends, if we'd prefer to maintain our current situation, the answer is to do nothing but maintain our addiction to the noise.

Maintain the love of the mediocre.

Maintain the resistance to change.

Maintain the lack of action.

I can guarantee you that under these circumstances the very last thing that will happen is anything extraordinary.

Is that what we want?

Is. That. What. You. Want?

I stand here today to say that it is our individual responsibility to break out of our collective holding pattern.

It is our individual responsibility to discover our signal and to act upon it, not to get seduced by the things that take away from us.

It is our individual responsibility to de-noise.

Remember though, it is likely the systems around us won't encourage this ‘rebellious behaviour’ (i.e. being truly human) so the rewards here will go to those with three things:

1. Clarity. To find absolute clarity in what matters to you the most. It's not that it's not there. It's just covered with distraction.

However attractive the noise is, it's still noise. It may look, smell or feel like signal but it isn't. Be absolutely certain you know what it is you are building, admiring, loving and buying.

2. Persistence. We must be persistent in our pursuit of the real deal. Always. Even when we’re tired after a long day in a dark room. We must be courageous is knowing that:

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

3. Inspiration.

On my journey a major inspiration to me has been a specific poem.

The words were written in 1927 by an American poet and lawyer called Max Ehrmann. It's called "Desiderata" which is Latin for "Desired Things".

I tracked down one of his last living relatives called Gretchen, Max's niece, who gave me her personal blessing for me to read some of his thoughts to you.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be careful. Strive to be happy.

This, my friends, is signal. To me, anyway.

Perhaps your inspiration will come from other places, but for me, these words truly resonate.

These are the words I’m passing down to my kids.

That’s what signal feels like.

The things you’d like to leave behind for the next generation.

Not things that take but things that give.

With our clarity, persistence and inspiration, we must always be assessing what is noise and what is signal?…our human ‘signal to noise’ ratio.

Then we can de-noise...filtering out what doesn’t matter.

We have the ability to do this, it’s something within us, but most of the time (due to the noise) we have tuned it out.

Let me explain.

You know when you’re in a relationship with someone and you begin to feel in your stomach that things aren’t right? You feel that something is kinda being taken away from you?

The relationship has become more noise than signal.

When you’re in a meeting, leaning forward, there’s positive vibes, everyone is genuinely buzzing, you’re thinking “finally, this is what matters, this is the thing”

There’s signal in the air.

When you spend ages looking at various sports cars and trying to work out which one will make your friends envy you the most, or which one will make you more attractive.

You’re in a vacuum of noise my friend.

When you turn on a TV show and even though it’s 2am, you’re really tired, you’ve got a talk on stage the next day ;) …but there’s something that glues you to it. Not because of fantasy, or some shallow purpose, but it’s as if the programme is speaking to your soul. It’s a deeper level feeling. It isn’t trivial.

You’re tuned in to your signal.

Every single thing that happens to us can be assessed by our instinct as to whether it is noise or signal.

Every single thing that happens from us can be assessed in the same way.

Our instinct is the only thing that can’t be affected by the system, or the noise.

That’s the key.

Our instinct is the mood of our soul.

Our instinct is the personality of our signal.

Our instinct instructs how we can de-noise.

The net result is what we leave behind for the next generation.

Here's something to keep in your head for assessing experiences:

Noise takes.

Signal gives.

Instinct guides what legacy lives.

What We Don't Know - TEDx Warsaw 2013 Talk

2013-03-21T08:00:00.000Z

Below is the talk I gave at TEDxWarsaw on the 21st March 2013.

The above picture is an artists illustration of what I said, and the slides and script are below...not that I strictly stick to it you understand ;)

--starts--

Comfort zones are self-created mental boundaries that allow us to operate in an anxiety-neutral condition, usually without a sense of risk.

Our comfort zones are commonly made up of stuff that makes us feel positive things such as security, happiness or love. Comfort zones are things we know...and you know what? We know what we like, and we like what we know.

This is a story about how my personal comfort zone was poked and what I did about it.

For me, one of the main things that made my comfort zone comfortable was knowing stuff.

You can't see from there but I've got a head full of useless information.

When I know stuff I feel more comfortable about things. Plus, I'm lethal in pub quizzes.

As I got older I tried to find smarter ways of finding out about stuff, and technology has been really useful in this journey. However, something really disturbing started happening.

I began to realise that the more I looked and tried to learn, the more I realised the less I knew.

Bearing in mind my comfort zone was basically held together by knowing stuff, having that part resulting in not actually knowing so much, became really, really uncomfortable.

Even though Confucius (the very wise Chinese philosopher) said "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance", my comfort zone had been hit by lightning and quite frankly, knowing that I knew virtually nothing wasn't helping much...

For example, I had just about got a handle on evolution and the origin of species, from creation to extinction, and then I found out about 'de-extinction' which is the practice of bringing extinct species back to life.

I found out this was true, as the half life of DNA had been realised to be 521 years, theoretically a DNA bond could be as old as 6.8 million years, however the oldest recorded sequence is currently about 500,000 years old.

Before you ask, dinosaurs became extinct around 65 million years ago so no, we can't revive them, Jurassic Park may only ever live on screen...for now anyway…but dodo birds and sabre tooth tigers are theoretically possible...and this isn't the skull of a dodo bird, I hope.

By the way, I'd advise anyone interested in de-extinction to listen to one of my heroes Stewart Brand talk about this (click on the skull), especially when he asks "what do you want to bring back to life?"

Another example was my comfortable level of knowledge about warfare and politics. I was really scared about those drones you see on TV, you know the ones that look like small pilot-less planes? But at least I knew quite a bit about them.

That comfortable knowledge was fine until I found out about the millions of mosquito nano-drones that can land, inject and leave your skin without being clearly visible. Even if this stuff is partially true, most of what is covered in the media about drones now seems like childish recorder playing in comparison to this Chopin level of terror.

I thought I had the whole Augmented and Virtual Reality thing nailed. I was the 'go-to-guy' about new developments and I knew pretty much everything about how advanced Google Glasses were…until of course I found out about Augmented Reality Contact Lenses.

Yet again, my comfort zone formed a crack upon the other cracks, and pretty soon things were starting to fall apart.

I won't even bother mentioning wifi spray paint that when sprayed onto a surface, enables the surface to become a wifi hotspot.

I formed this question in my mind: "Why are we unable to know enough, or at least, keep up with the changes around us?"

I decided that was the knowledge I wanted.

Over time it became apparent to me that our comfort zones are fundamentally threatened by what's called 'exponential growth'.

This type of growth means whatever we think we know, is neither static, nor finite.

Let me illustrate exponential growth using a popular example:

Imagine a magic tap.

It's magic because every minute the volume doubles.

So the first minute there is one drop, the second minute there are two drops, the third minute four drops, the fourth minute eight drops and so on…

Now, imagine a standard-sized football stadium.

In this stadium you are sitting on the seat at the very top of the stadium, with the best overview of the whole area.

The first drop from the magic tap is dropped right in the middle of the field, at 12pm midday.

Here's the question:

Remembering that this drop grows exponentially by doubling every minute, how much time do you have to leave the stadium before the water reaches your seat at the very top?

Think about it for a moment. Is it days, weeks, months?

The answer:

You have exactly until 12:49pm.

Yes, it takes less than 50 minutes to fill a whole football stadium with water.

But here's the kicker:

At what time do you think the football stadium is still 93% empty?

Take a guess.

The answer:

At 12:45pm.

So, you sit in your comfort zone and watch the drops growing, and after 45 minutes all you see is the playing field covered with water.

No big deal. Everything's fine. Very comfortable.

And then, within four more minutes, the water fills the entire stadium.

You thought you knew what was going on and that you had plenty of time left, whereas due to the exponential growth you really had to take immediate action if you wanted to have any chance of getting out of this situation…but you literally couldn't see it coming, and what you could see, probably seemed insignificant.

You thought your comfort zone was intact, even when it wasn't.

The conclusion? Comfort zones seem to be fundamentally incapable of dealing with exponential growth.

Once I had mentally processed this terrifying prospect, I slowly started to realise there's probably only 1% of stuff that we know we know.

There's maybe 1% of stuff we know we don't know.

And then 98% of stuff we don't know we don't know.

This was the final poke of my comfort zone.

Then I thought, what do we do about it then? Surely there must be a way of still having a comfort zone, despite everything fighting against it?

From my perspective I think there's probably a range of options. A spectrum.

At one end of this spectrum we could create a bubble of clarity to live inside, ignoring the things that (we think) don't matter to us.

I guess this is fine provided we are certain that what happens outside our bubble won't effect us at all...

At the other end of the spectrum we could attempt to access all the information in the world. In real-time, exponentially.

That's fine too I guess, Google certainly share your enthusiasm(!) but my advice is that a) you're human and b) you'll probably go as mad as a box of frogs in the process.

Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum we have a semi-satisfied/semi-restless state which is what I've started calling 'balanced curiosity'.

I've chosen that to be my comfort zone and I've realised 3 things that I now pro-actively do that continues to feed this comfort zone effectively.

1. Serendipity - Putting myself where serendipity can happen has transformed everything in my life.

Completely against my natural instinct, I now get lost intentionally without a map, and seek out and talk with people from totally different fields of interest and cultures.

I've realised this requires me to feel good about unpredictability and confident enough in not always knowing as much as possible.

To be honest, this has taken a long time to happen for me and it's something I work at, but slowly I'm becoming a better friend of randomness. We're now on speaking terms at least.

The result? Serendipity has made me more lucky.

People ask me how it feels to be so lucky quite often, yet for me the reality is that I had to allow luck to happen. When I started doing that, the luckier I became.

2. Reference - I work under the assumption that everything I experience has a way of positively impacting my life, even if it seems unconnected.

For example, if I find an article about architecture (a subject I am totally clueless about) I work out what I can take from it and apply to my life.

An expert window-cleaner can teach you a great deal about precision and focus, a tramp can teach a lot about how important it is to be warm and safe.

The result? Referencing has made me more humble.

It still amazes me what we can learn from people and places we wouldn't expect. I've realised that we all have an equally valid story to tell and there is insight everywhere you allow it to be. We can control how inspired we are.

3. Sharing - I've found it really valuable to share what little knowledge I have with others so they can apply the bits they resonate with to their own lives.

In our knowledge economy, I feel it's vital to recycle. Putting back as much as you take out so it's sustainable and neutral.

The result? Sharing has made me more happy.

I'm aware that giving out information is directly linked to receiving back, so I can basically earn comfort by sharing more with others.

For me that's a great equation.

In summary, my comfort zone is made up of serendipity, reference and sharing, and it makes me lucky, humble and happy. If any of this helps you also then I've achieved my objective and I'd love to chance to learn from you in return if that's ok?

--ends--

The Hidden Truth Of Social Media

2013-02-22T11:59:00.002Z

When a new invention comes along it is natural that we look for something tangible we can attach ourselves to. Learning a new subject is much harder if we don't bring it down to a real level. You may recognise this in learning a new language, the methods often include real-life scenarios where, for example, someone is asking directions or ordering a coffee. In my French lessons that person was always called Thierry and he had some strange fascination with the locating the library…but that's not important right now.

As technology became more affordable and was able to do more, the amount we interacted with each other, and the volume of content involved, increased exponentially. The channels upon which we interacted became an attractive proposition for media companies who published content for people to consume (e.g. newspapers), retailers who displayed items for sale (e.g. traditional shops that went online), and of course advertisers who wanted to encourage people to buy products and services.

Over the last 100 years or so these media channels were named and in due course the most recent opportunity took its name as 'Social Media': Lots of social interactions = big media opportunity.

One by one the industries started to create Social Media strategies that, unsurprisingly, were based on adjusting their other channel strategies to take into account the nuances of this new format. This wasn't in terms of simply putting a TV ad on Facebook, it was in terms of viewing people who are privately interacting in Social Media as a passive audience as they were when watching TV.

In short, the primary focus on Social Media was originally through a fixed lens of marketing communications campaigns, and I'm here to report this is still the case in most circumstances.

It is tempting for companies to look at the Social Media landscape through this fixed lens of campaigns and start with a channel perspective. In other words:

"What can we do with an app to promote our brand in this campaign?"

"What platform can we build so people engage with us?"

"What is technically possible so people can buy from us using digital?".

However there are two major considerations that place this viewpoint under extreme question:

1. The world of Social Media opportunities is a minor part of what is actually happening in society and business. The fundamental increase in the power that people have, manifesting often as the ability for anyone (authorised or not) to create, edit, publish and share, means that whether we like it or not, whatever an organisation delivers into public can be instantly adjusted, published and promoted. This removes the traditional levels of control and predictability a company once had over how people were likely going to think and behave. This effects the entire value chain…every single aspect of doing business. In plain English - whatever you think you controlled is now, at best, in shared control with the outside world who don't have any of your corporate guidance or governance

2. The opportunities in Social Media are likely to be under-exploited due to the misinterpretation of Social Media. Having a fixed lens of marketing communications and/or a priority of tool, platform or channel, means that the above reality is unlikely to be properly considered for what it is in reality a revolution-sized paradigm shift that impacts the entire value chain. Again, in plain English - if you want to benefit from the changes around us it is unlikely that a biased and limited perspective will produce the results you and your stakeholders are expecting

What validates these points?

The media is fundamentally different from what we've known before. The traditional media landscape was one of owned or bought media (i.e. on a site, in a film, on a page, in a search result or on a TV show). The new landscape is one of earned media which is within recommendation and within conversation. This earned media space runs on a different language than traditional media and that's a language of passion and belief. In simple terms - what people care about and what matters to their lives.

Earned media isn't something that can be bought, it can only be earned. The ways of earning the opportunity can only come from the ways humans earn belief and trust from each other. Typically this starts from positive interactions, then into consistency, developing credibility, authenticity, and finally trust and (the holy grail) loyalty.

There is empirical evidence of this, not only from the science of how we interact as humans, but also in the mixed fortunes you see around you today. You'll notice companies who haven't understood earned media as when something goes wrong for them in public, nobody sticks up for them - let alone their declining profits and increased concern from analysts in the City. Tesco is a current example (http://www.independent.ie/business/its-tough-surviving-at-the-top-as-tesco-profit-warning-shows-28957991.html). Industry experts and the company itself claims that changes in consumer behaviour is to blame…yet the reality is far deeper and the behavioural aspect is just one dimension of the paradigm shift.

Elsewhere you'll notice companies who have understood this paradigm because their marketing function, defence mechanism, and sales force aren't necessarily people who are paid by the company directly. No, these are people who believe. Adjacent to this belief are sales and profit boosts. Lego is a current example (http://www.dw.de/lego-reports-sales-and-profit-boost/a-16616912). Industry experts and the company itself claims that new product lines are the reason…yet, again, the reality is far deeper and releasing new product lines is the tip of an iceberg that runs through a wider strategy of citizen involvement http://www.digitalsparkmarketing.com/innovation/crowdsourcing-design/

If you're interested you can find dozens of other case studies and examples in this paper: http://thisfluidworld.com/branddemocratisation.pdf

What can be done about it?

How can we undo the terminology and mindset that has created this Social Media beast that drives massive valuations and numerous headlines? How can we reverse the effects and un-hire the heads of social, heads of digital and heads of mobile? Should we even attempt to change course? After all, we've made the investments and now we eagerly await the returns that seem to always be a 'maybe next year' promise.

The practical advice would be this: Take immediate action in fully understanding what's really going on and what it means to you in your life and to your company. From the drivers of change to the science of earned media. Not through a biased lens of any particular channel or discipline. Not from the perspective of a partner company who need you to think in a certain way so you buy more from them, but from an agnostic external perspective.

You can only make powerful decisions and relevant strategies from truly understanding what's happening.

After pondering on this for a long time and experiencing many companies over recent years misinterpreting Social Media (and related tools, platforms and channels), I've realised two things:

1. It's only natural that this new concept should adopt the existing mindset. Who knew the tide itself had changed? All we saw was that a new media emerged with lots of eyeballs to market to - little did anyone know that the playing field had been monumentally re-constructed

2. Failure will provide the realisation. The only convincer for those who question the above logic will be failure from misinterpretation and malpractice. I don't mean this to sound combative. I genuinely feel that under-performance against objective or expectation will speak for itself. Whilst the digital 'gurus' and marketing 'experts' promise the moon, the financiers expect results, and in a capitalist world, the results need to be delivered. But the money is only one side. As for the people, we in the public expect honesty and openness. We expect companies to have the same values as humans. The results we'd like is for a company to stand for something we can believe in, and truly mean it in everything they do (rather than just everything they say). When any of these results don't appear (or when a competitor does interpret the seismic changes appropriately), the fall-out will separate the competition in the natural order of evolution.

Take your seats my friends, it's going to be one hell of a show.

Echonomics

2013-01-24T12:41:00.002Z

We humans have a tendency to judge ourselves upon the feedback from others. This peer validation can be super important, especially in situations where it is vital that the other party accepts or admires you.

For example, if you are interviewing for a job you really want, it's very useful to know what you could be doing better, or what has resonated most. In personal relationships the same applies of course. Building something that works requires both parties to feel as if they are being valued.

Then, as we monitor reactions and pick up on clues that portray how we are being received, it's natural for us to try and change things in our own behaviour that may improve things. It's as if we are putting stuff out and listening to the echo back, adjusting as we go.

This is no news, we're social animals and the desire to fit in to our social environment is a principle part of our humanity. However, is it possible to change how we are to such an extent we surrender being our true selves?

We rapidly run in to a question of whether the changes we make are designing new versions of ourselves that are decreasingly linked to our core? Or is it as Perry Farrell from Jane's Addiction said: "You never really change like they say, you only become more like yourself".

Either way, it would seem our deep desire to be accepted has an impact on who we are and that makes me wonder about whether that is always such a good thing.

On one hand it is imperative for the non-pathological to fit in to society, but on the other I'd argue it's also desirable to discover who you are and be true to it - but not at any expense though - there's a balance to be set. In my mind I call this balancing of echoes 'Echonomics'.

Within the balance I think we need a filter that enables us to somehow decide who we would amend what for. I observe many instances of people who have developed behaviours to fit in with situations that they don't find particularly valuable. I have seen people (myself included) going through the motions to match expectations of others where there is no shred of mutual respect.

I fear that this behaviour is chipping away internally, leaving small scratches and sometimes large scars. Any 'sensible' person would determine who would be deserving of self-change, but sometimes other factors override our common sense and layer on justification that defies logic.

I suspect we should be more careful about what we're surrendering and for whom. I believe we need to work hard on our personal Echonomics so as to avoid the risks associated with imbalance - losing yourself for the sake of pleasing someone else who may not be worth it.

I think we should remember that even if someone or something seems like a worthy cause, the price of changing yourself may be higher than the potential benefit.

Ultimately, if we view our identity as the most important thing we have, we may react differently and more considerately to ourself.

The Effort Metric

2012-12-04T07:57:00.001Z

In the 1995 publication by John Kotter entitled "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" his research from over 10 years showed that only 30% of change programs are successful. Approaching almost 20 years on from then, McKinsey research showed that the figure is still around 30%.

Kotter found that unsuccessful change management usually failed during at least one of the following eight phases:

Despite this perfectly valid explanation of where failure happens, I think there is another dimension at play. McKinsey's view is that the "Missing Management Metric" is the assessment of organisational health in relation to certain elements of "management practice needed to improve performance".

Notably their assessment of performance is determined ultimately in financial terms, as seen from their "Five-step process that prioritizes management practices needed to improve performance" and as they say “doing more doesn't add much value and involves disproportionate, not to mention wasted, effort."

From observation across all industry verticals, I've realised that Kotter's eight phases are consistently and exclusively viewed through a lens of financial priority.

Counterargument

There is one condition the common mindset depends on: the absolute requirement of a defined outcome with a financial target attached. This condition is valid in times that are stable and predictable, but bearing in mind the combination of macro economic crisis, slowing consumption and globalisation, alongside the increasing capability and affordability of technology, empowered citizens and democratised value chains; the current and future business environment is anything but stable and predictable.

Rather than defining an end result before the journey starts, the end result will be defined during, and because of, the journey. All of a sudden, change management isn't a one-off process but rather a constant management of change, and Kotter's eight phases no longer run as linear but parallel to each other.

Faced with this situation, I'd argue the common thinking achieves the absolute opposite of performance today. Instead, I'd suggest it breeds fear and chastity in innovation, limiting people taking chances and accelerating the probability of the brave getting fired. It ensures organisations chase figures rather than opportunity and it limits flexible growth. I believe that performance management in uncertain times requires a more valid "Missing Management Metric".

Introducing The Alternative Metric

I propose an alternative metric to supplement financial bias in modern business: Effort. This is because effort creates the opportunities as we exert it – mapping out our path during the journey. Here are five tangible elements needing to be prioritised, each with their own ways of measurement:

1. People: Identify those who are most comfortable with uncertainty in senior enough positions (or place them in such positions) so as not to suffocate the chances that could be taken. Also, identify or acquire people with this characteristic. The measurement of effort for this element should be via continual people auditing using a grid that plots volume of people with the 'comfort in uncertainty' characteristic against the level of seniority.

What good would look like is if there is a high volume of people with the characteristic in numerous senior positions. It's unfortunately sub-optimal if only junior staff have that characteristic.

2. Purpose: Be extraordinarily clear on what your purpose and vision is, so that every single person inside and outside your organisation knows the mission you are undertaking. The measurement of effort for this element should be via regular checking of how well the purpose is understood within the organisation and throughout external partners. This should be added to by a layer that checks how it is understood externally in public, through monitoring and ideally involvement in conversations outside the organisation.

What good would look like is if there was a) very high understanding and b) a close match between external interpretation and internal aspiration and definition.

3. Finance: Separate innovative, un-proven activities in the balance sheet. Placing the risk of not moving forward as the exact same cost as the funding of exploration. The measurement of effort for this element should be in two dimensions - a) of the finance team/director's willingness and pro-activity in separating the balance sheet, assigning a tangible cost of risk through inactivity, and b) of the funding made available for the fourth priority coming up next.

What good would look like is if there was unarguable evidence of how the finances have been divided and maintained to be that way on an on-going basis, whilst continually assigning an amount for experimentation without formal targets.

4. Facilitation: Facilitate and reward those who are positively pro-active in trying to push things forward whilst enabling them to initiate flexible un-promised projects. Remember not link their activity to an expected outcome - however tempting. The measurement of effort for this element should be a) in the number of activities that facilitate momentum and b) in the regularity of rewarding the positive pro-active people in a way that they feel valuably and relevantly rewarded (rather than something that simply a token gesture).

What good would look like is if there was a high volume of facilitated activities with involved staff who feel permitted to experiment and rewarded in a way that made them want to strive to achieve more.

5. Learning: Learn from all outcomes regardless of what you may have once perceived as 'success'. A learning is as valuable either way. Feed this in to iterative projects for constant adjustment at the speed of change. The measurement of effort for this element should be a) in the volume of learnings/insights as an output of each activity and b) in the volume of learnings that have been visibly fed in to new efforts.

What good would look like is a direct link between output insights that feed into inputs.

Below is a graphical summary of the 5 elements and the associated metrics:

There would be significant benefits of this approach - not least of which is the belief from colleagues that your organisation can flourish so retaining the best staff will be easier, whilst collectively learning (in advance of your competitors) where the white space of opportunity is.

I believe that innovation would be properly fueled in an agile and relevant way, and that this framework would legitimately sit alongside the common frameworks of financial aspiration.

I suggest this presents a desirable way forward where financial opportunity comes as a direct result of applied, prioritised and rewarded effort.

Tesco Insciens Ad infinitum

2012-12-02T08:39:00.001Z

The above article was published in The Sunday Telegraph on 2nd December 2012.

For the record here is my take (from 19th January 2012) on the fundamental misunderstandings and questions that remain to this day, and in my opinion will continue to drive Tesco's fortune downward until sufficiently addressed: http://thejonathanmacdonald.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/future-of-tesco_19.html

The Big Data Disaster

2012-11-21T22:45:00.000Z

If you are eager to understand and exploit the magnificent promise of big data, this post is for you. Alternatively, if you haven't really thought about big data yet, this is an early warning system. If you think that big data is the biggest news on the block and that the leading journalists, consultants and analysts can't possibly be wrong, here's an alternative viewpoint. For the record.

Summary Of Predictions

I've written a number of posts about big data, individual identity and resulting business decisions, however I suspect these have been too abstract, too early, or simply too long-winded! From many conversations with CEOs down, across multiple industries and from reading countless articles and publications relating to this hot topic, I feel it's time to briefly summarise my thoughts and although I can't compete with the louder voices selling in the dream of big data being the opportunity (I'm naming no names, nor linking to any external content), I'd like this chance to make things as clear as possible. Here goes:

Big Data Prediction 1: The financial forecasts for the promise of big data will be wide off the mark, causing a tidal wave of shock amongst companies that are neck deep in the totally unrealistic advice they've bought in to

Big Data Prediction 2: Major expenditure will continue to happen despite targets not being hit, directors will be ousted, profit warnings will be common and eventually even the largest of company fortunes will plummet

Big Data Prediction 3: The very same people who extolled the virtues of big data will be retrospective experts in what went wrong and try desperately to come up with a new insight that covers over the cracks of what I'd generously term as malpractice

Big Data Prediction 4: Acquisitions made on the back of the big data promise will eventually be questioned for financial wrong-doing. Values will be written down and scandal will repeatedly hit the headlines, with analysts and commentators blaming accounting errors

Big Data Prediction 5: Then, the next hype cycle item will capture the imagination and boom, as we went from thinking it was all about digital to all about mobile, we'll go from all about big data to all about <insert next wave here>

Alternatively, every organisation has an option to stop this nonsense right now and take a long hard look at the multiple layers of fiction that numerous organisations are buying as fact. Unfortunately too many are so far down the path it will only take a disaster awaken the alternative. Organisations can either choose to change or have to change - most don't choose to and when they have to, they can't. There is across-the-board misjudgement of basic realities that are primarily considered either a) not as important as selfish financial gain or b) not as realistic as common understanding of how business works.

To answer in these in order:

a) Selfish financial gain isn't going to win out in public anymore. Yes, maybe it worked before (nice yacht by the way) but now the public is super-empowered and connected by weapons of mass communication. Under-estimate this at your peril

b) The business world is progressing through a paradigm shift where everything down to an organisations position in the value chain has been adjusted. No, I'm not saying what one knows about business is wrong - I'm saying the stuff one doesn't know about modern business is larger and more critical than one probably realises

Whether you agree with my thesis or not, please keep my predictions in mind as you read through the papers. Look at the pages of the business news today (whatever day it is you read this). Which company is showing one of the five predictions to be true?

I bet you there is one.

Which prediction have I mentioned that spookily is manifesting, like a David Blaine trick, onto the newspaper in your hand or on your device? Look at it now and see.

Abracadabra. Magic isn't it?

Except it's not really. It's a sickening reality of how deep into the mess we've fallen.

Summary Of Reasoning

It is commonly thought by instigators of research in big data that most companies seek to use big data to understand customers/consumers better, and most have misunderstood the stark difference between personal data and non-personal data. Data that is generated from activities and events taking place are different from personal information that we may willingly or unwittingly share. Either way, the basic fact is that the most accurate personal data is the most valuable, and (here's the key) that data happens to be the most private.

The fact that some companies think they can access or aggregate this now (without public concern), is no more valid than thinking you won't have a car crash in the future as you haven't had one in the past.

When I've talked about building trust through authenticity, I wasn't giving advice about marketing campaigns, I was talking about bullet-proofing your entire profit & loss.

When I suggested that soft science is now as important as hard numbers, I wasn't being some kind of afro-hippy, I was trying to save your company from alienating itself due to irrelevance.

This isn't trivial. This isn't something to think about next year. This is a decision you need to make right now.

What side are you on? You choose…

You follow the hype bubble of big data and think that it's going to make you/your company rich - divorcing your human head from your corporate head as much as you can.

You seriously consider the above words and ask yourself, as a human, are you in the game of exploiting information regardless of morality, or instead wishing to pursue a purpose that people can believe in, and by doing so enable relationships of mutual value that will bring you profits beyond your imagination?

Yes, this is a binary choice. Right now.

Your move.

Margiela with H&M - A Protest Against Authenticity

2012-11-12T19:04:00.000Z

Protest: a protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations.

Today (11th November 2012) I was passing H&M Oxford Street, London, when I witnessed the above scene. Dozens of people in white outfits, holding placards.

Crowds of passers-by with camera phones took pictures and published them to friends and followers. Instead, my immediate reaction was to ask:

"What are you protesting for…what do you believe in?"

Nobody was able to give me an answer so I searched online for the hashtag visible in the photo: #MargielawithHM

The search results presented an H&M page that had the same graphics on the bottom right corner:

Then I noticed Instagram had a load of uploads relating to the tag:

And finally, twitter confirmed that the protest was actually a campaign by H&M rather than a protest by, or against, them.

I then sent two tweets, one directly after the other (the lowest one was first):

This piece is covering why I asked the question (and potentially answers why the question hasn't been answered yet).

Here's the deal.

A study of 342 US protests covered by the New York Times between 1962 and 1990 showed that public protests and similar activities usually had an impact on the company's publicly-traded stock price. Perhaps the most notable aspect of the study's findings is that what mattered most was not the number of protest participants, but the amount of media coverage the event received. Stock prices fell an average of one-tenth of a percent for every paragraph printed about the event.

I have no idea whether some part of this insight drove any part of the campaign strategy, but it is quite a leap to imagine the reverse situation is possible (i.e. an increase in fortune if the protest is actually fake).

I'm not trying to be a party pooper here, nor attempt to liken H&M's activity to the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th Century, or the American Revolution in the 1770s, let alone the thousands of Kuwaities who are protesting against voting changes at the time of writing. Instead, I'd simply like to know what would H&M actually campaign or protest for?

If H&M's activity is any kind of protest, it's a protest against authenticity.

As I recently wrote in 'The Fallacy of Social Media', now more than ever, companies have a mandatory requirement in building trust outside the organisation. Trust comes from things like positive consistency, transparency and credibility that is earned over time. Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose.

Trust requires people to believe in what you do and what you say. Trust means you only have one face. Trust means that when you take action, you mean it.

You may claim that people trust H&M that's why they buy from H&M, and to that I'd say this:

1. Read 'Refuelling at Peace Time'. It's not only when things are going bad that you need to look after your troops. It's when there's no battle they need to be refuelled

2. There are significant missed opportunities when activities are purely selfish (e.g. big campaign to sell more products)

Let's address the second point as that's my main issue with this faux-protest.

Protests mean something. They're important. People standing for what they believe in. Taking action.

Protests aren't trivial.

And protests aren't a campaign tactic (well they shouldn't be anyway).

There are causes people are fighting for. There are things that are affecting lives. When people see a protest, people seek meaning. This campaign, just as the Bodyform campaign before it, just shows that companies don't feel the need to be honest.

This is a terrible idea in this day and age. Mark my words.

So what would good look like?

Well, assuming that H&M believed in something they'd fight for, the best version is for H&M not to be campaigning, but for the H&M fans to take action instead. That's powerful.

Good would look like the fans campaigning on behalf of the company. But for fans to campaign for H&M they need something to believe in right?

I've tried to find something. This article speaks of a 'strong corporate culture': http://about.hm.com/content/hm/AboutSection/en/About/Facts-About-HM/People-and-History/Our-Employees.html and here's a mission statement, notably introspective: http://stylehm.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/mission-statement.html. Eventually I found this: http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100912103845AA6NmjQ "...to sell clothing and accessories to the young adult demographic for a profit."

For the record, I'm not suggesting the company are bad, nor attacking the agency who created the campaign. I'm not saying it won't be 'effective' (assuming they've got some sort of metric), nor saying that the public were fooled.

What I'm saying is that this missed opportunity would have accelerated the actual power of the idea away from being a trick, a tactic, a transient moment.

It's disappointing that in this day and age, we seek to trivialise things that mean something, to create a proxy emotion in lieu of actual purpose.

Shame on you.

The Fallacy of Singular Personas

2012-10-24T10:58:00.002+01:00

Preface

In c.275 B.C Aristarchus had already calculated the earth was a revolving sphere in orbit around the sun. Around that time, Eratosthenes had correctly calculated the circumference of the earth and another guy called Hipparchus had worked out (within a few miles) the moon's diameter and it's distance from the earth. Then in A.D 259 all the Greek pagan schools were closed down and replaced with the learnings from Genesis 1 and 2. No longer would such heresy be spoken of in public, let alone taught to younger generations.

Big thinkers were ridiculed and laughed out of town - if they weren't burnt at the stake first. Those who rebelled with the 'new thinking' were seen as delusional and all the way up to 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the speeding up of his boat was considered to be due to sailing downhill across the flat earth, rather than anything to do with the planetary system. The fresh water in the Pacific wasn't due to the approaching land but the product of the 'rivers of paradise'.

I admire people Aristarchus, Eratosthenes and Hipparchus so much it hurts. I grew up with people like that as my heroes. I wanted to be like them. Now I'm older I realise I just want to be like me, so in the context of today here we are with fallacies that range from the profound to the commoditised. Every word I've written I believe in. The regular attacks I receive via email and in comments (mostly the former), are character building as they make me re-question what I believe in. The regular praise I receive on social platforms (and thankfully in person) are amazing and I'm seriously grateful.

I don't feel the need to be 'correct' in the heads of others, I need to express what I perceive to be the case in mine. I'm nowhere near Aristarchus, Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, but we're similar in our avoidance of trying to sell in a belief system to support some form of assembled structure considered to be 'what's best for the masses', or as we see so commonly, 'what's best for our company'. No, these writings are of findings. I hope you take mine as such. I'm not primarily expressing opinion, I'm primarily expressing findings. Then, on these findings, I build opinion, upon which I'm blatantly open to critique. Proper reasoning divides findings from opinion, as should argumentation. Thank you for the generosity of your attention, I truly appreciate it.

The Fallacy of Singular Personas

Definitions:

Fallacy: A mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound argument

Singular: Being only one

Persona: The aspect of someone's character that is presented to or perceived by others

The common thinking in big data, analytics and market research is that this modern world of mass connectivity presents a significant opportunity in gaining greater insights to the modern consumer/customer/user/individual.

Valuations of social networks through to investment funds into hot funky start-ups, increase as the spreadsheets show rising user numbers coupled with acres of big data. The advertising industry licks its lips in anticipation of a food bowl full of eyeballs to monetise, companies in the technology industry comfortably duplicate each others business models declaring uniqueness, whilst we, the general public, use the free services without caring that if a service is free then we truly are the product. The new volumes of information drive new volumes of companies such as word-of-mouth agencies and online influencer platforms, whilst every major consultancy publishes reports on how exciting the future will be when we grasp this data concept. With their multi-million dollar help no less.

Meanwhile a dark fallacy looms under the surface of data. A fallacy so pungent that the mere mention of it is the metaphorical equivalent of walking into any of the above offices and throwing all the computers out into the car park.

This, my friends, is the Fallacy of Singular Personas.

Here's the deal.

The basic view of personal data is that we have a few online profiles and behaviours that show our statuses and preferences. The view is that these are mostly coherent to the actual person in question.

The more advanced view is that we have numerous online profiles and behaviours that together will show our statuses and preferences. The extended view is that some of the information may be exaggerated or incorrect but even still, a view can be constructed so we can understand the actual person in question.

Both the basic and advanced views are based on the assumption that a persona is singular, in other words, that the person is the same person, even if their activity happens in multiple locations.

The methodology executed follows in a straight-forward way: To get a more complete user profile, one must aggregate multiple data sets and form a picture. You can look at this through different contexts (e.g. discovery mode, interaction mode, purchase mode, etc), but the leading thought is that when it all comes together you get an overall idea of who a person is, what they want and how they operate.

This would be fine and if it weren't for the fact that isn't anywhere near the way things really are.

Oops.

You see, the Fallacy of Singular Personas has somehow convinced even the most intelligent analytical thinkers into sidelining some major realities, so as to focus on the meaty fashionable single-customer-view-porn as outlined above. I'd go as far as to say that much of the advertising industry and pretty much all of the research industry is based on exceedingly questionable logic when it comes to online user data and insight, based on these blatant realities.

So what are these realities? Well, assuming the ideal is for information entered somewhere to be totally true, and let's imagine some people actually do that….the other realities are:

1. Partially factual information entered by a human (or groups of humans)

2. Totally fictional information entered by a human (or groups of humans)

3. Partially factual information entered by a non-human (e.g. a computer programme)

4. Totally fictional information entered by a non-human (e.g. a computer programme)

This presents a seriously problematic Reality of Multiple Personas which kicks up a whole load of dust in the face of almost every single piece of prediction/assessment/leading thought being touted around today - let alone almost every corporate valuation in new media and many investments made in every industry vertical across the globe. A small issue this is not.

In the mathematics of probability, anything less than 100% likelihood (e.g. 99%/98%) is the same as 0% certainty. It is this simplicity that unfortunately disables the assumption of singular personas. For instance, if on Facebook there is a 1% or more chance that one of the above 4 realities are in place, there is equally as large a chance that it is 99%, 30%, 1%. Very clever analysts will claim that X% of clicks are by robots, or Y% of profiles are fake - the truth is nobody really knows. Without certain knowledge, one cannot know certainly. Thus the reports to advertisers about who falls into a target group is littered with incorrect information.

In fact, the reality is so stark that people who base their careers on the Fallacy will defend it to painful degrees. And why wouldn't they? It's like being a professional footballer and all of a sudden I tell you that there are five balls on the pitch rather than one. You look, you see one ball, you argue about the other four - even if you can see them you dilute their significance due to your framing of the ball that your career is based on.

The only perceivable antidote I can see for this fallacy is one of forming actual relationships.

Yes, call it science fiction, but my suggested antidote is actually, like, get to know people.

Ah…for a minute you loved the idea…now you've realised it's a total pain to do so. Think about it, you have a user base of 1.5 million people, how on earth are you going to seriously get to know people? Focus groups? Not so much. No, the reality requires things like:

1. Forming relationships with people as humans, to understand their character and their characters (not limiting understanding people to understanding only humans)

2. To embrace semi-factual information and semi-human information as an un-discardable part of the information set

3. Adjust the hierarchical view of dominance above the public, to a more flattened view of being amongst life itself, to be immersed within the modern reality

There isn't a company that I can point at and say "they do it right" so sadly you may feel this is intangible. Quite the contrary. I have a strong opinion on how The Fallacy of Singular Personas could be avoided, and The Reality of Multiple Personas be exploited, yet forgive me if I don't provide a heap of free consulting advice here on my little soapbox.

With other topics like the privacy debate and 'who owns your identity?' it took almost 10 years to mature into meme status. I wonder if this topic will take as long?

Whilst you're waiting, check out http://www.weavrs.com and create your a new persona.

It's a blast.

Your new persona can join and interact social networks, create a blog and regularly update it and tweet on twitter. All of this whilst knowing that the entire world of big data, analytics and market research are counting your 'profile' as real. It's tremendous fun.

Go play.

--

For the other fallacies in this series, please follow this link: http://thejonathanmacdonald.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Business%20Fallacies

Online Data Privacy Update

2012-10-22T08:52:00.001+01:00

I've written about the whole data privacy situation a number of times in the past. One of the pricnipally cited pieces is 'The Fallacy of Data Bubble Ignorance' and another is 'Hidden Opportunities Within The Hype.

At the time of writing in the final quarter of 2012, the only thing to have changed in the last two years is that now this subject is high on the agenda of many companies and Governments. I'd like to report that the salacious dreams about the 'black oil' opportunities of 'data exploitation' had waned, but instead every hour a new investment is made on the back of a promise that personal data will translate into multi-billion dollar revenues.

Recently the Guardian Online where kind enough to publish a piece I wrote with the marvellous Louisa Heinrich (tweets @customdeluxe) whom I've been discussing this subject (and other 'out there' topics) with in great detail. We decided to write a status report as an 'as of now' overview so that in the future we can know where 2012 ended up.

You can read this piece in the Guardian by following the below link. Enjoy!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/media-network-blog/2012/oct/18/online-data-privacy-power-balance

The Fallacy of Social Media

2012-10-17T19:10:00.002+01:00

Over the last few years I've written a number of pieces that cover fallacies. You can view the archive by following this link: http://thejonathanmacdonald.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Business%20Fallacies

A fallacy is a mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound argument, or a failure in reasoning that renders an argument invalid.

I've been tempted for a long time to write The Fallacy of Social Media but resisted for two reasons:

1. The fallacy I suspected to be in place was arguably just an observed bad idea, poorly executed, rather than a totally unsound and mistaken belief

2. As an advisor and speaker I spend a lot of time talking about the new media landscape and it is slightly disingenuous to claim that the most fashionable modern term is actually a fallacy

I've been waiting for a sign to argue against these reasons, or to uphold them and therefore remain silent. Yesterday, the 16th October 2012, the sign came manifesting as the Bodyform video response to a supposed Facebook comment. This made me realise The Fallacy of Social Media was not only alive and well but has infected masses of people.

I apologise in advance for any offence caused and I'd like to caveat that these views are mine and mine alone. If you have a different opinion please feel free to comment on this post, I will answer any respectfully stated points of view. Here goes.

On the 8th October 2012, a guy called Richard Neill wrote a comment on Facebook, complaining that Bodyform (through their advertising) had created a myth about women's periods. This is his comment in full, spellings and punctuation intact:

"Hi , as a man I must ask why you have lied to us for all these years . As a child I watched your advertisements with interest as to how at this wonderful time of the month that the female gets to enjoy so many things ,I felt a little jealous. I mean bike riding , rollercoasters, dancing, parachuting, why couldn't I get to enjoy this time of joy and 'blue water' and wings !! Dam my penis!! Then I got a girlfriend, was so happy and couldn't wait for this joyous adventurous time of the month to happen .....you lied !! There was no joy , no extreme sports , no blue water spilling over wings and no rocking soundtrack oh no no no. Instead I had to fight against every male urge I had to resist screaming wooaaahhhhh bodddyyyyyyfooorrrmmm bodyformed for youuuuuuu as my lady changed from the loving , gentle, normal skin coloured lady to the little girl from the exorcist with added venom and extra 360 degree head spin. Thanks for setting me up for a fall bodyform , you crafty bugger"

Then, 8 days later, the below video was published as a response from the brand on a YouTube channel (called 'BodyformChannel'). There was a disclaimer in the supporting text that read: "Bodyform doesn't have a CEO. But if it did she'd be called Caroline Williams. And she'd say this" However many people didn't read that bit. Here's the video:

Around the web, tens of thousands of people began to spread this video, many stating that they thought it was genuine. Eventually it became clear that the agencies Rubber Republic and Carat had created this response (see Rubber's post here and below: http://www.rubberrepublic.com/2012/10/bodyform-responds-the-truth/).

"Periods are pretty funny" they say.

Along with this, industry experts were almost unanimous in lauding this as an excellent social media exercise. Here are just two out of many salacious samples to salivate on:

"Unbelievable PR masterclass" they say.

To be honest, it was the Electricpig headline that did it for me. That was the moment that I realised the industry has been grossly infected by The Fallacy of Social Media.

Let me explain.

The paradigm shift we are experiencing in the media landscape is not simply the addition of a new form of media, it is an enormous disruption to the way that business operates. As written about here, brands are democratised, citizens are armed with weapons of mass communication and the public expectation of human decency from once-faceless brands, is standard.

This means several things but let's pick two:

1. Consistency, authenticity, transparency and honesty are the factors of growing a loyal fan base, or even simply raising the profile of a brand. Any damage or diversion to these factors results, always, in disloyalty and lack of trust

2. Whilst the first point stands, the funky creative opportunities that are possible are far more attractive than looking inward for what a company really believes in, therefore a kick-ass video campaign mostly trumps a reflective purpose-driven business approach, agnostic of campaign

This paradox is what generates The Fallacy of Social Media.

Social interactions aren't actually a media in the same way as TV breaks are a media. Nonetheless, those charged with creating brand stories have quickly decided that the 'Social Media' requires a few different tricks, but essentially the benefit is that if you create something funny enough, or poignant enough, people will share it. I have spent a great deal of time showing the agencies and brands that the syntax of social interactions is social capital, exchanged as social currencies, and such sharing is native to our modern context. However this point is not intended to divert our strategies from the principle fact contained in the first point above. The video is called 'The Truth' for Christ's sake. But it's not. So what happens next when Bodyform want to tell the truth? "Oh last time we lied, but this time we're being honest". Maybe they'll call the next video 'The Real Truth'? *cough*

There are many arguments against my opinion unfortunately, and thereby much fuel for this pervasive fallacy. One primary rebuttal is that "no damage is done really", and to that I ask you to read this piece called Refuelling at Peace Time which presents the case of why "no damage" is actually a transient status report rather than a vital holistic assessment.

Another argument is that "at least it got people talking", or "it shows how social media can be used effectively by a brand".

No, no, no, no, no.

"Act like you're a company made of real, actual people, and good things will surely follow" they say.

Act like you're real? That's good?

It is the very last example a brand should consider in my opinion...and the effectiveness people claim is almost always 'proved' by the amount of eyeballs it reached. Remind you of the old media world by any chance?

By creating a false and sarcastic video clip, the message for those who don't work in the advertising industry is potentially a combination of:

1. So what do Bodyform really think?

2. Whatever that is, why don't they say it themselves?

3. Is being sarcastic ever really a productive approach?

4. Isn't this yet another artificial statement that just propels the view that advertisers are liars?

What good would look like is if Bodyform were already involved in the conversation around the topic and stood for something meaningful that they brought to the table. Not needing an agency partner to act as a proxy. Social conversation is not a campaign.

It's a way.

It needs to be business-as-usual.

Yes you can do campaigns, but the best way for your brand would be to have these support your actual mission. Not to dress up a mission in a campaign to go viral. No my friends, no.

And if you really wanted to 'go there', one could argue (yet I couldn't possibly comment) that if the company that owns Bodyform really cared about representing females, how about having more than one female member of senior management?

But I digress. Even if this Richard Neill character is real, the flow ran as follows:

1. Light-hearted attack on Bodyform by Facebook member

2. Eight days of silence from Bodyform

3. Video response from a fictional character, supposedly representing Bodyform, sarcastically answering the Facebook member

4. Shared liberally around the web

5. Advertising industry pats itself on the back, other brands want to copy the approach, the agencies win awards

Is that really what we think the potentially of this new media age is? Seriously?

How much authenticity do you think this generates for Bodyform? Really, how much? A lot? Not a lot? Let me know.

There's now dozens of articles claiming this is 'best practice' and a killer 'social media case study', but I'm afraid to say that it's nothing more than one giant diagnosis that The Fallacy of Social Media is alive, kicking and will (for sure) be in Cannes to pick up the respective awards.

It is a self-serving, cancerous circle-jerk where the winners are nowhere near the members of the public.

It is everything I stand against and I'd like you to know that I'll continue to call this out when I see it. My small voice won't spoil your party, don't worry, you just need to bear in mind that if the public share any of my above thoughts, the battle you will face will eclipse the hangover of any awards ceremony my friends.

Mark. My. Words.

It is all about you

2012-09-26T14:15:00.002+01:00

It's settled then. Hadn't you heard? At least according to almost every report about this 'social media' world, the opportunity for businesses is to 'join conversations' and to 'use people as unpaid marketers'. Equally common is the pervasive statement that 'it's all about the consumer'. However, what then happens is the application of out-of-date processes, structures and systems that get applied forcefully onto a tagline of 'people centric' intention.

'It's all about YOU'.

Except it's not is it? If you extend the line, the second half reads 'So you can do what we want you to do to satisfy our own objectives'. The statement seen in public however is a stark example of The Fallacy of Incomplete Logic.

Yes, there are ways to harmonise our commercial aspirations in business with socially acceptable behaviour in public, but that science goes far and beyond the product of an advertising agency creative, or a technological construct.

The mindset shift required ironically requires an adjustment of the very same things that make corporately successful people successful. The single-mindedness that disregards the soft science in favour of hard metrics needs to be re-tuned. The controlling mentality of a hierarchical organisation when dealing with the public, needs to be re-balanced.

When I say these things out loud in public, or in private with clients, this shift is often seen (at best) as novel and fairly trivial to implement, or (at worst) as something totally irrelevant to the way business is done.

At the Global Festival of Media early in 2012 I covered this point in depth - click here to see the talk, so I won't repeat myself here, other than to say the reaction of indifference I sometimes experience when discussing this point (listen to the deafening audience silence on the video from the above link) is less of an indication about the validity of it, and more of an indication of the massive issue that many companies have to deal with due to a commoditisation or misinterpretation of the depth of the challenge in turning an intention into real business.

Five Realisations

2012-09-23T18:11:00.000+01:00

I try not to live with regret but there are things that I've learned over the years that I'd tell a younger 'me' if I could. Of course I can't so I tell myself these things every day instead.

Here are my top five realisations, in case they are of value to you:

1. Take great care of your relationships

The relationships you have with people often make the difference in whether you experience failure or success, giving up or getting back up and deep sadness or great joy. Relationships are a primary asset to be nurtured and treated like a precious metal. When everything goes horribly wrong, the relationships you have with people are sometimes the only thing left. Sadly it's often only then you realise how important building relationships is - which is why I'm pointing it out now.

2. Effort is the extra bit

Most people exert some form of effort, but very few apply the level of effort that truly separates winners from losers. Observers call it 'luck', but the 'lucky' know that the harder you try the 'luckier' you tend to get. The thousands of failed prototypes that James Dyson produced were the absolute reason the final version smashed the market. The same story can be heard about many entrepreneurs who now seem to simply have the 'midas touch'. I used to think that trying quite hard was enough, now I realise the most powerful effort is the extra bit after most others have given up.

3. Negativity is a nightmare

Everything around you feeds into the way you feel and act. Surrounding oneself with negative energy, such as anger, resentment or envy for example, has a significant effect on everything you do. Often we don't realise this but then suffer visual or non-visual problems ranging from headaches, lack of sleep, problems concentrating, or generally feeling down. In so many cases we attribute the cause to more obvious things, missing the reality of the negativity that surrounds parts of our lives, seeping in to our being.

4. Everything tends to cost twice as much, make half as much and take three times as long to happen

Despite all the optimism in starting new ventures, the reality of this fourth realisation stings like a bee in business planning. Now I know what I know, I observe enthusiasm in strategy with great caution (hopefully without being a negative person), as the chance of things going to plan is extraordinarily unlikely. If a plan could suffer the doubling of costs, halving of revenue and trebling of timeframe, then the probability of success increases exponentially. Sure you still have to make something remarkable that people resonate with, but in the background this realisation adds makes cement from your sand.

5. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing

Above all there is nothing more important that what is most important. It sounds easy but is so hard to apply to real life, mainly because of all the distractions and temptations surrounding us on a daily basis. It is often very hard to identify what your main thing is and if or when you do it may not necessarily be in harmony with your present circumstance. This then kicks in a process of justifying why you should stick rather than twist, and results in most people you meet complaining about their lives, jobs or relationships. Basically, I don't believe there is anything more important in life than to identify and pursue your ultimate purpose of being alive.

So as I said, these are the five I'd tell a younger self…and five that I remind myself of every single day.

Business Jenga

2012-09-17T11:56:00.000+01:00

Despite the fact that businesses are full of people, and we spend most of our lives working within structures that are created by human decisions, it's alarming how rare it is to see organisations applying human thinking to their business thinking.

However, it is tremendously common to find organisations claiming that either their staff, or their customers, are the "most important part of the company". Upon closer inspection I regret to inform you that many times this is a tagline that's supporting some form of campaign, and rarely manifested in the way things are done.

If we can agree that without our people inside or outside, our companies would fail, then the claims of importance are indeed valid. What a juxtaposition then to find the most fashionable topic at the moment to be Artificial Intelligence, with an agenda hell-bent on ending the "human era". Removing the need for humans to do things...and, er, people still being the most important part of our organisations....

I can spend hours upon hours on stage pointing out a glaring issue with that agenda (as I do here for example at minute 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtVJmjaHNlc), but many still are fuelling this paradox: Creating automated efficiencies whilst still valuing humans.

I think that by attempting to remove people in business, we are playing a perilous game of Business Jenga. Unlike the basic picture above (the only result I could find when searching for 'Business Jenga'), I'm talking about the practice of building up an organisation by removing core components (people) that provide solid supporting structures.

I'm often asking audiences and clients whether or not they are certain they are building the future they want. I rarely get a reaction. People are often just carrying out the tasks sufficiently to keep their jobs. And not much more. Due to this I feel this subject is even more pressing.

Ask yourself, do humans really matter to you and your business? If a transaction happened without a person involved, would your balance sheet care? When you say you value your staff, would they say the same? If you could technologically automate most of their work, would you?

I'm not casting judgement as to what a 'right' or 'wrong' answer is to any of this, but I'd like you to consider the questions very carefully...especially in the light of our fascination with cutting people out of many equations.

In closing I'd like to publish two hierarchies of needs - one famous version by Maslow, and the other that was published as a joke about robots. For those who find the second one amusing, under no circumstance read this post.

Super Olympics

2012-09-11T18:58:00.000+01:00

I have an idea. Super Olympics. It's a really simple concept.

Basically, competitors can incorporate any type of modification to their bodies, up until the point where over 50% of their human being is un-human. In other words, not made up of their natural selves.

Let's start with some basic examples:

A swimmer could wear a snorkel so they didn't have to take breaths
A high jumper could use a pogo stick
A long-distance runner could wear an oxygen tank

But this is just adding stuff on the outside…let's widen our perspective:

What if an archer could have a mechanical super-powered eye placed into their head, enabling increased visibility of aspects like wind direction and zoom-in control?
How about a boxer with a robotised super-arm that delivered a knock-out punch? You can't say it's not fair. Anything goes.

If the technology was still not as super as one would need, I guess an extension of this would be to breed athletes with webbed feet and elongated arms? Genetic mutations would be all the rage and the vast range of imaginative technological implants would be a wonder to behold. If that's your 'thing'.

And I can guess your next question. What about drug enhancement?

Well, I'm not about to condone any illegal drug use, but the more rebellious amongst you may consider a scenario where an athlete could utilise any form of 'performance enhancer'. That's not what I'm suggesting at all however. Nope. Not me. Categorically not. How very dare you.

In all seriousness I'm wondering how we can embrace the convergence with humans and technology into a good old fashioned sporting event.

What other modifications do you see viable? I have more but I've said enough :)

Notes From The Left Field

2012-09-06T09:20:00.000+01:00

Recently I spoke at Oxford University about the ever-changing business and marketing landscape, what it means, and why it's happening. Fairly basic stuff, nothing remotely new, if anything it was tempered to suit an audience who are more native to a real-time, always-on, socially connected environment.

As I walked off stage, the compere thanked me for "showing us some left field thinking" and at the bar later, surrounded by attendees asking questions, the common thread was that my presentation had been quite "out there" and "disruptive".

This year I've spoken at dozens of events and I'm increasingly booked by organisations who would like to hear some "challenging thinking" and "new ideas".

Without wishing to dilute the enthusiasm for this(!), I have an admission to make. I need to 'fess up. Right here, right now.

Nothing I'm saying is futuristic, left field, or out there.

Not. One. Concept.

What is possibly the case is that, in context of how many companies operate and/or many people think and behave, the stuff I'm talking about is old. Not old as in a few years ago, I mean old as in thousands of years ago. The reason I removed any mention of the term "futurist" linked to my name (as much as possible), is that I'm (at best) a "nowist".

Maybe the stuff I'm saying is left of the field that others are currently in. Maybe "out there" means "not in here". I think it's definitely subjective.

Sure, it looks different in the light of the 21st Century, but citizen empowered revolutions, disruptive currencies, corporate transparency, and human interaction logic, has all been seen/done/implemented/theorised/practiced/spoken about before.

I'm just remixing it for today in the context of the capability and affordability of technology.

I've begun to realise that pretty much anything that doesn't fit into our common way of thinking, is seen as some kind of "out there" concept. From Brand Democratisation to 3D printing, people see these things as theories that "could happen".

Here's an example in closing. Look at the picture at the top of the page - the one you were wondering about why it was there. It's a mosquito right?

No.

It's a remote controlled insect spy drone with a camera, microphone, and injection capability. It can land on you, take a DNA sample, leave an RFID tracking device on or under your skin, then fly away without you even knowing what happened.

Quite "out there" isn't it?

No.

It's in production, funded by the US Government.

Today.

You see, I could tell you all kinds of crazy stuff that would blow your mind regarding my view of the future - however the stuff that's happening right now is even crazier.
The next time you see or hear anyone telling you something that makes you think "one day this could happen", I'd like you to imagine that it already is, and what that means to you.

Don't view your lack of visibility and awareness as a comforting factor. That's the very last thing a lack of visibility is my friends..

Visible Industry Pivot Points

2012-08-08T16:44:00.002+01:00

Companies can either choose to change or have to change, however, companies that have to change sometimes are unable to because they didn't choose to when they had the chance.

Think about it, have you ever looked back at moments where you had an option to do something but didn't, only to feel the effects of inaction afterward? This is a standard example of the 'benefit of hindsight', and as you know we always have 20:20 vision in retrospect...

The pivot point between being able to choose and being forced to adjust is often hard to see at the time. Again, in retrospect that pivot is way more visible. For example, most phone companies had a pivot point when the iPhone was released. Not because it was the first touch screen phone, but because Apple had shown what was possible at that time, leaving other manufacturers looking like the ugly kid who never got asked to dance. In the retail industry the pivot point actually happened when peer-to-peer sharing gained traction. We know that now, although at the time (whilst I was Chairman of the Music Industry Retail Committee) I was asked to identify the CEO of the Internet so music companies could sue.

Fun times.

Now, at the time of writing, there has recently been a ruling by the Australian Advertising Standards Board against Smirnoff. “The Australian Advertising Standards Board has ruled that Facebook is an advertising medium, and as such, company pages must comply with pertinent codes and laws, vetting all public posts to ensure they are not sexist, racist or factually inaccurate.” And further “The Board did not pursue the specific Smirnoff complaint, but ruled in general that Australia’s advertising laws were applicable to everything on a brand’s page — and not just content generated by the company, a ruling with significant impact for large brands where thousands and thousands of comments are regularly posted.”

Here's more about the story: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/07/business-is-now-responsible-for-facebook-comments/

What this means is that people (the general public, not official representatives) who write, for example, that "Smirnoff is the purest Russian vodka that helps you attract the opposite gender", are actually breaching three parts of the code if you look carefully. If this ruling takes hold in other territories this could well be a pivot point in the way that brands, not just alcohol brands, handle the socialised digital landscape. Currently the UK authorities have said they have no plans to change…but I imagine the warning signs across the industry will build more than die down as we move forward.

The point here isn't that the ruling could map across the world, it's that the focus is increasingly bearing down on the ramifications of what I call Brand Democratisation.

As my little firm (http://thisfluidworld.com) discusses in this free white paper 'Brand Democratisation - An analysis of the paradigm shift that is the socialisation of brands' http://thisfluidworld.com/branddemocratisation/ brands have a number of choices in how to handle the modern marketing environment, and now one could argue the urgency is even more present. Challenges ranging from the sheer volume of public comment to monitor through to a brand's protocol in conversation should now be at the forefront of strategy.

My prediction is that this paradigm will, in the short term, fall into campaign mechanics and outsourced to agencies to figure out. Then, when it has been found to be a paradigm with core strategic implications at the highest level, brand owners will raise the issue up from a campaign level into the boardroom. When that happens, organisations who had chosen to change will have the advantage, and those who are waiting until they are forced, will have a significantly different experience.

There will be proper auditing, deep investigation into every element of process, and a re-organising of structures and offerings.

The option is to take this seriously now and not think that 'social media' or 'digital' is simply some kind of marketing channel. The wonderfully ornate Facebook pages or mobile apps do not adequately address nor maximise the opportunity...and they most certainly do not translate to the pivot point we are living through.

I firmly believe one day this will be evident…but we all know that pivots are most visible in retrospect.

Change is the Enemy of the Competent

2012-07-29T17:25:00.001+01:00

A long time ago when I started helping companies interpret how to use the internet I was met with a significant level of negativity.

I was threatened by one particular shop owner who thought that I was in some way representing the internet and that he would ensure we were "shut down".

I was laughed at in board rooms when explaining to supermarkets they could sell groceries online.

I was kicked out of meetings for talking about the virtualisation of physical products and services.

I was taken aside and quietly told that I had no right to talk about "digital black magic" to serious business men.

I was told to bring back proof and case studies to show how markets had been re-defined by the online trend. No case studies existed and the only proof we had was from Cern, considered to be unrelated to industry by many pundits.

I was invited by the Government to discuss how the effect of the web could be halted.

When I told people about permission mobile marketing, I was cornered in a corridor by two very angry traditional ad guys who where absolutely furious that I was in some way "rocking the boat".

Over my career I've faced these reactions.

You can't win against them by arguing back. You can't win by entering into drawn out debates. To some people the existence of absolute undisputable evidence is the only thing they will accept - but actually that's not it. The issue isn't the issue.

The fact is, change is the enemy of the competent as it re-defines the safe haven in which the competent dwell.

They cannot stand change.

Ultimately it makes them scared as what they think they know is being challenged.

If anything changes the only way they feel comfortable is if they can pragmatically re-design the walls of their haven. At their speed. Within their level of understanding.

However change doesn't wait for that, hence being so unattractive.

When the winds of change are blowing you either build a shelter or build a windmill.

I'm in the windmill business. Are you?

Death Bed Regrets

2012-07-29T17:14:00.000+01:00

Nurse Bonnie Ware spent years at the bedsides of people nearing death, listening to their final thoughts and reflections. Ware shared some of those thoughts in a post revealing the five most common regrets she heard from people on their deathbed.

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I didn’t work so hard.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is your heart

2012-07-25T11:46:00.002+01:00

The year is 1931 and a man called Michael Unterguggenberger has just been elected mayor of a small Austrian town named Wörgl. The events of the coming 2 years will create a story of vision, courage, and one of the ugliest, most pertinent examples of industries who would prefer to suffer than change. Due to that starkness, this story may well have been missing from your history class, even if you studied economics. However, this story is one of my favourite examples of how purpose, focus, and velocity, can produce the most miraculous results. Let us begin.

Born into a Tyrolean peasant family and having apprenticed himself to a master mechanic, Michael Unterguggenberger built a modest career whilst striving for social justice. His hometown, Wörgl, had grown rapidly in the early 1900's but was affected significantly by the financial crash of 1929. At the time, Michael was town councillor and eventually mayor two years later. Despite the numerous projects to re-build the town, the depression had driven a population of 4500 to include 1500 without a job and 200 families penniless.

Michael studied a book called "The Natural Order" by Silvio Gesell and theorised that the faltering economy was principally caused by the slow circulation of money. Money that increasingly moved from working people into the banks, without being re-circulated back into the market. His plan was to replace the common currency with "Certified Compensation Bills" that the public would be given to be used at their face value (1,5, and 10 shillings). 32,000 such bills were printed and circulated.

Wörgl bills were designed to depreciate 1% of their nominal value monthly and the owner had to buy and place a stamp on the bill on the last day of the month, showing the devalued amount. Obviously nobody wanted to essentially pay a premium (by losing value), bills were spent as fast as possible.

On the back of the bills this was printed:

“To all whom it may concern! Sluggishly circulating money has provoked an unprecedented trade depression and plunged millions into utter misery. Economically considered, the destruction of the world has started. - It is time, through determined and intelligent action, to endeavour to arrest the downward plunge of the trade machine and thereby to save mankind from fratricidal wars, chaos, and dissolution. Human beings live by exchanging their services. Sluggish circulation has largely stopped this exchange and thrown millions of willing workers out of employment. - We must therefore revive this exchange of services and by its means bring the unemployed back to the ranks of the producers. Such is the object of the labour certificate issued by the market town of Wörgl : it softens sufferings dread; it offers work and bread.”

What a statement.

During the 13 months following, Michael initiated all the intended projects; new houses, a new bridge, even a ski jump. Six neighbouring villages copied the system to great effect and the French Prime Minister at the time, Eduoard Dalladier, made a special visit to see the "miracle of Wörgl".

Spin forward to January 1933 and Michael addressed a meeting with representatives from 170 towns and villages, all interested in adopting the concept.

The public were happy, employment was high, poverty was virtually non-existent. People paid their taxes in advance enthusiastically and price increases (the first sign of inflation) didn't occur.

However, the Central Bank started to freak out due to its lack of control over the situation and decided to assert its monopoly rights by banning complimentary currencies. Following a court case where the Austrian Supreme Court upheld the ban, it became a criminal offence to issue "emergency currency".

Wörgl quickly returned to 30% unemployment and social unrest spread like wildfire across Austria. Michael died in 1936 having watched his life's mission come to life, succeed brilliantly, then be stripped apart.

Two years later a chap called Hitler entered the scene and many people welcomed him as their economic and political saviour.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The thing that moves me about the story of Michael and Wörgl is the implementation of a vision into real life. There are so many good ideas around, so many interesting things that could be done, and so many idealists, but very few executors. To me it doesn't matter so much that the concept was ultimately outlawed (although it saddens me that many great concepts are killed at birth), the point is that it actually went to market.

I witness numerous people with new companies, new offerings, new concepts, all with kick-ass technology, fancy slogans, and cool haircuts but I rarely see robust go-to-market actions. It's almost as if we are living in perpetual concept stage.

Don't be fooled into thinking that Michael was only able to execute because he was mayor, in fact by 1912 he was elected representative for the union of Innsbruck Rail Engineers in the committee for personnel. He was seen as the person who represented the concerns of the workers against the capitalist interests of the railroad. His active campaigning at that time had a positive for workers but yet a negative effect on his career progression because of it. His perseverance was due to the purpose that was in his heart. This was a guy who had found his path, focussed like hell, and applied his courage to move things forward.

I see a direct correlation between people who are following their heart and actual outcomes happening, versus people who are following only their head. Maybe we should look within and ask "Why am I really doing what I'm doing?" It is said that to truly know where your heart is, one must observe where our thoughts are when we wander...and I say that magical things can happen when we are properly playing from our heart. A mixture of both is likely the best mix, but let's take the head thinking as a given, it's the heart piece I'm seeing mostly a lack of. But as Miles Davis said "It takes a long time to play like yourself".

Michael, along with using your head, you played it from the heart. I salute you.

Bye buy Apple

2012-07-20T18:01:00.002+01:00

The precise moment my loyalty and blind faith in Apple vanished was during the launch event of the third generation iPad. I had high expectations of what Apple may have announced, especially in light of the recent passing of Steve Jobs. I somehow felt the company would honour him by poking a metaphorical finger in the eye of the consumer tech landscape and rip up the market once more.

I thought they would show what innovation really looks like, what disruption tastes like, and what bravery feels like.

I thought they would rebelliously laugh in the face of faceless organisations producing plastic crap, and show exactly what the future holds at the intersection of liberal arts and technology.

…and then a slightly bigger iPad was announced with a higher definition display….called 'The iPad'...

I gradually tuned out the droning noise of technical specification and reminded myself that companies don't always need to be disruptively innovative. Incremental innovation is fine too, depending on strategy, not every announcement needs to blow the market away.

But that wasn't the point. I wasn't upset because Apple had announced a better product than the last - I was devastated to discover that everything Steve Jobs stood for had been cast into the shadows by money men.

That hurt.

At this juncture I'd like to disclose that although I have fairly deep connections within Apple, I have no knowledge of the recent launch timeframe. I don't know what the strategy is in terms of specific model improvements. All I know is that during the third generation iPad launch my loyalty and blind faith vanished. My Apple expenditure that runs to about £5000/yr vanished. My Apple advocacy which had involved endorsing everything Apple in front of tens of thousands of people every week, vanished. Simply because what Apple meant to me had been meticulously erased by Apple themselves. Right in front of my face.

Today is the 20th July 2012 and I write this in the midst of rumours about the next generation iPhone. Depending on who you trust with predictions, we're looking at an August, September, or October release date. Analyst Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee (that's not an easy six word sequence) said in a note to investors last month that it was expected to arrive in October, whilst J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz said a few weeks ago that the device should be launched in September. Meanwhile, Japanese tech blog Macotakara, with a track record of being accurate in terms of Apple-related predictions in the past, reported (citing "reliable Chinese sources") that the new iPhone has entered the manufacturing phase in China.

As you can see, the rumour mill is in full swing.

Again, depending on who you trust with predictions (and I've aggregated a bunch of unauthorised, unofficial, and unproven gossip here so you don't have to), we're looking at the next generation iPhone to potentially feature:

- significant design changes including the addition of glass to its "uni-body" backplate (potentially a glass piece between the backplate's top and bottom edges without leaving a bare aluminium surface)

- larger 4-inch Retina display

- 4G LTE technology

- Near Field Communication (NFC)

- a smaller dock connector

- 1GB RAM

- iOS 6

- improved Siri

- liquid metal casing

- 8 megapixel (or even higher) rear camera

- 2 megapixel front-facing camera

- much-improved battery life

Excited yet?

Me neither.

Here's the thing. You can throw around any sales volumes you like, cast predictions of the first trillion dollar valued company, or point out how much profit-per-square-foot the Apple stores make, but none of that was the point.

The point was beauty. The point was art. The point was function. The point was minimalist brilliance. Y'know…making a dent in the universe and all that. Yes commercial enterprise is all about making money, but I could have sworn we were in for a more imaginative ride.

I run the risk of being attacked by the Cult of Mac, a cult I was once part of, and I accept my fate at the hands of the faithful. But before you come for me, I want to give you an insight into what I would do if I were Apple.

Here goes:

Immediately, not next year, right now, Apple need to remove the need for smartphones and tablets.

I know it's a bit 'out there' but bear with me.

Apple need to remove any requirement by anyone to own another smartphone or tablet, ever again. In the same way as iTunes made billions of CDs pointless, Apple need to rapidly remove hardware in totality.

Unfortunately the ways in which they could do this all involve opening up their walled garden of perfection. Creating an iTunes/iOS API for people to create with, thus becoming a facilitator of altruistic beauty, rather than solely a creator of selfish beauty.

The problem is of course, this goes against everything they stand for. I've always admired their stubbornness in keeping the experience closed and the ecosystem tidy - but now I believe they need to adjust with the tide or risk drowning in the current.

Why should they?

Because their incremental innovation is now at a slower speed than the innovation outside the company…and as Jack Welch said "If the speed of change outside is faster than the speed of change inside, the end is near, it's just a question of when".

There's a time for being incremental and a time for being disruptive. Now is the time to make their core products redundant and thereby disrupt themselves and the consumer tech industry. Now is not the time to watch an army of once loyal followers slowly turn against the cause. That's the very last thing you want to do, in my opinion.

The only thing more powerful than a loyal army of fanatics, is an army of fanatics who have turned against the leader.

Why will the army turn against Apple?

Because up until about 6 months ago, Apple products were ahead of the game. Today Apple products are adjacent to the game. In time I'm concerned that Apple products will be behind the game.

I'm a realist. Apple are exceedingly unlikely to change in the way I think they need to. Their controlled protectionism is so central to their core philosophy that opening up would be like being 'non-Apple'. Another question then is, could they disrupt the market by not opening up?

Yes, I think they could, however it wouldn't be by creating a more fancy device, or by developing more cloud services I think. No, the thinking would need to be more lateral and less based within consumer technology.

We will have to wait and see what happens…and this post will likely remain sitting here in the interwebs, gathering virtual dust.

My Mobile Advertising and Marketing Perspective

2012-07-12T16:35:00.000+01:00

In the early nineties I bought my first mobile phone. It was a first generation Nokia and I was the only person I knew who had a mobile. Nobody knew my number and within a few days I started thinking it was pointless owning one as I had no reason to ever use it. Eventually, however, more people started to own a mobile and numbers were rapidly exchanged. Over one particular 6 month period the phone sizes slimmed down, battery life increased, and at least half my friends had mobiles.

It was at this point I realised that mobile could be an incredibly useful conduit between what we have and what we need.

Within a month of SMS (text) being enabled on phones I instantly saw a use in the property market and set about creating a service called 'SMS HomeSpec'. This was my first adventure in mobile marketing.

Basically my idea had 5 components:

1. A "For Sale" sign outside a property displays a number that a prospective buyer could text with a reference word or number that identifies the property the are interested in

2. The prospective buyer receives a text back with more details about the property (e.g. number of rooms, size of plot, etc), along with a number to call to set up an appointment

3. When an appointment took place, the number could be cross-matched with the prospective buyer so the effectiveness of the campaign becomes trackable end-to-end

4. An Estate Agent/Realtor can choose whether to cover the cost of the initial text exchange or alternatively the prospect pays for sending/receiving the information

5. Either way, SMS HomeSpec earns money every time an enquiry is made

I went around various companies assembling information on how this could come to life, and spoke to the top 5 UK Estate Agencies. The biggest hurdle was convincing the Agencies this could add value to prospects and their sales pipeline. Eventually, however, people started to realise, but to this day my original idea still hasn't been properly exploited to full effect in my opinion.

Moving forward by a decade I arrived at Blyk, invited by the former President of Nokia to head up the brand and agency side. The model was simple, people can speak and text without charge, in return for being connected with useful content that they have stated an interest in.

In the brilliant 'Communities Dominate Brands' book by Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore (http://www.communities.futuretext.com/), the reality of people power and conversation dynamics was made abundantly clear and at Blyk we certainly were inspired by that. However, when it comes to liaising brands and people, a brand cannot itself have a conversation, people make conversations, and this hints at of the largest issues we faced with the Blyk model. In summary (and without commenting on the management and financing of the company), the two main issues were:

1. Advertising and marketing is typically a one-way broadcast mechanic where messages are pushed out containing little request for dialogue response, and no way of responding individually. This is due to the way advertising and marketing has worked to date.

2. The Media industry is based on reach and specificity but the latter is only valid if it doesn't undermine reach (i.e. reaching 1 million people who are potentially the 'right' target audience is widely considered more advantageous than reaching 100,000 people who are definitely the 'right' people). This is due to the way inventory is planned and bought.

Despite thousands of extraordinarily deep and personal communications from Blyk members who seriously valued the service, and response/redemption rates that have yet to be surpassed up to now in July 2012, the model simply was not able to change the two points highlighted above. We sure tried though. In retrospect it was an un-winnable mission but hindsight is 20:20 and it's the effort that counts.

Following my time at Blyk I went on to create the Global mobile strategy for Ogilvy and spent a long time speaking around the world about mobile advertising and marketing. I became quite well known in the field and many companies and individuals asked me to advise them, one notable instance was Alcatel Lucent's Optism platform, for example.

I then created a system called Human Dialogue, a behavioural economics engine that generates conversation dynamics automatically, based on the types of people inside a dialogue, so that campaign creators can include conversational subtleties that can address biases and heuristics that normally would stop people engaging. This wasn't to remove the human creativeness but to enhance it to become a performance media.

However, when showing this to the organisations (that desperately needed their mobile advertising and marketing to work), there was still a lack of understanding in the way that multi-way dialogue could work alongside, or replace, one-way broadcast.

The thing was, the systems weren't set up for it, the billing mechanisms didn't support it, the creatives hated it, and the senior managers were just trying to get promoted rather than rock any boats…meanwhile the user/consumer/customer/person at the other end of the device was continually getting useless and irrelevant information from companies they didn't trust. Human Dialogue was only adopted, once, in the education field to increase school attendance. Which, of course, it did. Yet this reality happened too late. There is a patent in place though ;)

These experiences are why I no longer talk a great deal about mobile advertising and marketing. It's not because I don't believe in the real value it can create, it's because the way in which most practitioners are executing is fundamentally sub-standard in relation to the potential, and Lord knows I've waxed enough lyrical about that. Interestingly, my book ('The Communication Ideal' - http://thisfluidworld.com/ourthinking/the%20communication%20ideal.pdf) from 2008, still contains many unanswered questions and numerous under-exploited opportunities.

I remain an observer of personal communication practices and a fan of remarkable engagement…but more than that, I remain a firm believer in the fact that if all media is digitised and all digital is mobilised, the best practices in advertising and marketing are identical to the best practices is human-to-human engagement.

There you have it. Very simple. And apparently extraordinarily difficult to implement.