Peerview Data Insights

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman was on Charlie Rose last night talking about "Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in The Age of Accelerations," his take on the three primary forces shaping the workplace, politics, geoplitics, ethics and our sense of community in the 21st Century:

1. The digital globalization of markets via Facebook, PayPal, Alibaba, Twitter, Amazon and cloud computing
2. The way climate change is impacting population growth and biodiversity in the developing world and changing immigration patterns
3. The continued acceleration of technology, exemplified by Moore's Law, which states that the speed and power of microchips will double roughly every 24 months

From a work perspective, a key insight is the transformation of "AI to IA," or "Artificial Intelligence to Intelligent Assistance, Intelligent Assistance, and Intelligent algorithm," in which he suggests that success in the future will come to those who "leverage the best of what machines can do and meld it with the best of what humans can still uniquely do – that is, relate to another human being and enable them to navigate the world more effectively.”

We are certainly starting to see that in the way CPAs and consultants use our cloud-based Comparative Analysis & Benchmarking Tool to engage more deeply with their clients, but if Friedman is right, that trend will not only accelerate, but become the norm for everyone.

So how do we survive?

He suggests the key is simple: never stop learning, evolving and challening yourself to do more.

You can find the entire episode here after 11/24.

Alternately, there's a good interview with him in Forbes:

Schawbel: How will all of this impact workers?

Friedman: The short answer is that average is over. More and more machines can do more and more above average physical and cognitive work these days. IBM’s Watson cognitive computer just co-wrote a song that’s on sale on iTunes. Basically, every middle class job is being pulled in three directions at once. It is being pulled up – it will require more skill or human touch – it is being pulled out – more machines, robots or workers in India or China can compete for it – and it is being pulled down – made obsolete faster than ever.

The companies and workers that are managing this best are those who are embracing life-long learning. The idea that you go to college for four years and store up all the knowledge you need to last you for the next thirty is a thing of the past. When I graduated from college I got to “find’’ a job. I tell my daughters they will have to “invent’’ a job. Oh, they may get lucky and get their first job, but to stay in that job, advance in that job and grow their income in that job they will have to regularly re-invent that job in line with the pace of change. I repeat: Watson just wrote a song…

Schawbel: Who will be the winners and losers?

Friedman: I think the best, most high-paying jobs, in the future will be what I call “STEMpathy’’ jobs. These are jobs that combine STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) skills with old-fashioned human empathy. STEMpathy jobs leverage the best of what machines can do and meld it with the best of what humans can still uniquely do – that is, relate to another human being and enable them to navigate the world more effectively. That’s where the best jobs in the future will be. If IBM’s Watson has read every article published on cancer then I want a doctor or a nurse who can ask Watson the right questions and be able to take those answers and relate them to me as a real human being.

Schawbel: Which companies will thrive?

Friedman: The companies I see doing best in this fast world all have a few things in common. One, they wake up every day and ask themselves: “What world are we living in today? What are the biggest trends in this world — and how do I get the most out of them and cushion the worst?’’ They are relentlessly curious and paranoid. Two, they have inspirational leaders. Young people in particular are attracted to mission-driven people and CEOs. Three, they demand — and they create — the resources for life-long learning. They understand, as management experts John Hagel and John Seely Brown have pointed out, that we live in a world of ”flows not stocks.’’ You and your employs have to constantly be in the flow of ideas, refreshing it and being refreshed by it.

Campaigns are bullshit.

Spin wins, and the "hard truths" behind every proposal are usually left out because even though somebody always has to pay, no politician wants to admit that it might be you.

At least not until they're elected.

Given that, how do we know what to expect from a president Clinton, Sanders or Trump? And more importantly, is your business in good enough shape to handle it?

(If you're not sure, let us analyze your performance for you.)

Here's what the candidates have said so far about the issues most concerning to business owners, managers, executives, employees and stakeholders:

PLEASE NOTE: the following is an excerpt from "20 Competitive Metrics Every Business Needs to Know," which is now available as a free download here.

Performance Metric: HR BUDGET

Definition:  A MEASUREMENT OF THE COMPARATIVE EFFICIENCY OF A COMPANY'S PEOPLE-RELATED EXPENDITURES

Importance:  HR budget is the collection of internal investments a company makes toward maintaining/improving its longterm growth, value and profitability via its human capital. These investments fall into four categories — compensation (fixed and variable), taxes & benefits (healthcare, retirement and payroll taxes), corporate culture (training, recruiting, “perks” and community-building”) and outsourced talent/ subcontractors.  Because norms vary by industry, it's important to put these investments in their competitive context.

Will your company still be in business a few years from now? 

Start-ups aside, most business owners and executives will answer "yes" and then chalk it up to strong growth, good margins, talented leadership, dedicated employees, the fact that the company's been in business for decades, etc.

All of which may be true.

Unfortunately, all those assumptions are grounded in the belief that momentum and trajectory are fixed — not 100%, because any company can stumble, but enough such that the average company can expect to do as well tomorrow as it's doing today as long as it just keeps doing what it's doing.

Maybe once upon a time that was the case, but not now.

The new reality is this: there isn't an industry anywhere that's more than one Silicon Valley surprise away from being disrupted.

Think Uber.

Think Netflix.

Think Tesla.

Think Airbnb.

Think Zenefits. (Pre-scandal.)

And then think about an upstart within your industry that's just about to launch with some product, service or approach that you dismissed as unworkable, delayed as impractical or just didn't think of yet.

How do you compete against an unknown like that?

You don't, not until it happens — but you do prepare for it by focusing on two things:

1. Strength
2. Flexibility

Most disruptions don't render entire industries obsolete overnight; introducing something new and convincing customers to adopt it takes time. 

If you've ever wondered why there's such a clear connection between leveraging your competitive strengths, strengthening your competitive weaknesses, exploiting your competitive advantages and increasing your growth and profitability, there are two simple reasons:

1. Nobody is an industry of one.
2. Everybody competes for customers and clients.

Given this, you'd think every company would treat competitive benchmarking as more of a priority, but most don't.

Why not?

To put it bluntly, it seems to come down to one of two mindsets: 

• Ignorance
• Arrogance

Ignorance is "No, because it wouldn't help us get better."

arrogance is "No, because we're already great."

What separates good marketers from bad marketers?

According to Salesforce’s 2016 State of Marketing report, "extensively using" these five data-driven tools and technologies are at the heart of their success:

• marketing analytics (aggregating and benchmarking internal and external performance data to help determine your marketing who, what, when, why and how)
• customer targeting and segmentation (using internal and external performance data to determine who gets what, when, why and how)
• marketing automation (using internal and external performance data to program what, when and how)
• agile marketing (test → measure → revise → repeat, with benchmarks differentiating "winners" from "losers")
• predictive intelligence (using internal and external performance data to estimate future actions or outcomes)

 How many do you use?

_____________________________

Don't let your data go to waste.

See how our Strategic Analysis & Benchmarking tool can help you tap the information you already collect to become more competitive. 

→ Request a 15-minute, no-pressure demo:

_____________________________

PLEASE NOTE: the following is an excerpt from "20 Competitive Metrics Every Business Needs to Know," which is now available as a free download here.

Performance Metric: CASH FLOW

Definition:  A MEASUREMENT OF THE AMOUNT OF MONEY A COMPANY HAS GENERATED OVER A SPECIFIC PERIOD OF TIME

Importance:  Cash flow shows how money moves into a company, how long it stays there, whether or not there is a sufficient amount of it to provide for day-to-day operations, and how it flows out of the company. The challenge is that even “profitable” companies can go broke because they had all their money tied up in assets and couldn’t pay their expenses. This means that no matter what a company is focused on — growth, profitability or value — it can’t survive without adequate cash flow, which is why they say “revenue is vanity, cash flow is sanity.”