Rate this kid’s future
“Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt.” ― Eric Sevareid
Rate this kid’s future
I’m rarely on Facebook, but this is great. Watch this dad, Kyren Gibson, grilling his 8yo, Kyng, on his financial literacy. Yes, much of it rote learned, evidently, but the father’s enthusiasm shines through — the son is engaged and proud of his knowledge.
Question: What basic worldly skills do all children need to know that is not commonly taught in schools?
A truly new reality
I was shocked this week when the CEO of a government agency said to me, “We will never return to work”. I asked him to explain.
He said this: "We will never again have 250 people in a single building sitting side by side at desks. Since lockdown in March, we’ve demonstrated, successfully, that we can run an almost entirely devolved non-physical operation”.
He now wants to explore with me the possible implications of this, and we’ve mapped out the following 7 considerations:
Customers and community expectations and requirements;
EBA implications (their negotiations are due to commence early 2021);
Office redesign and refit;
IT capability distributed to employees, rather than locations;
Employee, and team, culture implications;
Workforce composition, including potential for global workforces; and
Financial modelling of revenue and cost bases
My suggestion to this CEO is that this essential thinking is best done in four logical stages:
Scenario generation: open exploration of “what if” options against the considerations above
Assumptions about the future — and principles for reshaped operations
Specific ‘hybrid’ models (e.g., partial home-based and office-based work)
Choices and decision points: A roadmap for engaging with their people, making decisions and, finally, a staged implementation.
We haven’t started work yet on this, but my own prediction is that they’re going to be an ‘early-adopter’ of this type of thinking.
Question: Do you — or your people — need to ‘go back to the office’ at all?
Visual culture
There is no denying we live in a deeply visual culture. We watch 10 times more screen content than we read books. The percentage of video content on social media platforms doubles each year. I’m one of the 65% of people who, when faced with a practical problem, go first to YouTube (e.g., how to tie a bow tie, or the best way to brush a cat’s fur).
I’ve been a strategy consultant for over 10 years now, and easily my popular ‘product’ is a “Strategy on a Page”. My clients (and their stakeholders) have loved having a concise, highly visual, easy-to-digest explainer of their organisation’s purpose, ideal customer or target audience, value proposition, role and capability set, objectives and measures, priorities and headlines actions, values and enablers. All on a page, attractively laid out, so the eye goes from one section to another, seamlessly. (Ask me if you want to see some samples - I’m happy to share).
To be honest, I’ve often dreamt of a world where powerful visuals can be used to explain anything and everything, and it seems I share this with a company I’ve only recently learned about, Visual Capitalist. They specialise in creating, daily, exceptionally good infographics on a multitude of topics.
From their latest infographic, just tonight I learned that online gaming is easily the largest form of entertainment, earning five times as much money as the movie industry, and 10 times the music industry. And growing way faster. Check it out here.
Even if you’re not interested in gaming (I’m not) it’s fascinating to see how they display complex information — often of a quantitative nature.
Question: What information do you want people to digest that could be conveyed visually?