How many of you even knew Earth Day was on 22nd April? And even if you did, did you care?
If there is one lesson we will eventually take from Covid, it’s the paranoia that government and business leaders’ now live with: a constant fear of being caught cold by a crisis like this, ever again. This paranoia must spur them to preventative action rather than a reliance on their ability to deliver rapid treatments. Those treatments of the symptoms simply paper over the deepest cracks of the causes – problems that remain unsolved despite all the debt we’ve incurred.
Barring future pandemics and world wars, which seemingly can be treated by throwing extraordinary amounts of money into science and military coffers, the next looming crisis is that of a climate meltdown. This offers the opposite problem – where the only cure is through smart and painful prevention, not quick-fire, after-the-crisis inoculation.
Sustainability must become a native part of businesses, policy, and our day-to-day lives
This means people need to be educated, they actually have to listen and then change their behaviors. No-one really took the threat of nuclear war seriously until the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were experienced. The world was able to recover from the horrors of ‘limited’ nuclear war, the experiences, hopefully, proving to be preventative for many more decades to come. But there is no second chance if we continue to destroy our planet. There can be no “lessons-learned” when the world runs out of water…. Sadly, our recent study of 150 C-suite executives across the global 2000 shows us that sustainability only ranks fifteenth as a “fit-for-purpose” measure – no change at all from pre-Covid times:
In this vein, we had our roaming story-teller Nischala Murthy Kaushik spend time with analyst Josh Matthews, who spends a lot of time thinking through how we tackle sustainability and climate change, in addition to spending his spare time as a counsellor on Cambridge City Council in the UK…
Nischala Murthy Kaushik (CMO, HFS): Let’s start with the basics, Josh… What is the definition of ‘sustainability,’ and why is it important in 2021?
Josh Matthews (Assoc Research Director, HFS): The best place to start by checking out the UN Sustainable Goals. These 17 Goals cover all the ambitions we should have as a planet, whether its tackling climate change, lifting people out of poverty, restoring and protecting biodiversity, or eliminating inequality. These challenges don’t stand alone—they’re heavily interconnected. These are all challenges we still face in 2021. These are all challenges we’re likely to face for decades to come. There’s so much under the sustainability umbrella—but can broadly be split into environmental, social, and governance (with a financial sustainability element) factors; many (businesses especially) refer to “ESG” as a way of indicating that sustainability is about more than just climate change, and how tightly intertwined all 17 Sustainable Development Goals are.
Nischala: The theme for 2021’s Earth Day (22 April) was “Restore our Earth”. How does the theme of sustainability really help in restoring our Earth?
Josh: There’s a scientific and internationally agreed need (The Paris Agreement) to reach net-zero globally by 2050 to have a chance of avoiding further irreversible global warming and climate and ecosystem breakdown. If we don’t reduce our emissions to net-zero by 2050, we’ll have lost any chance of avoiding global warming above 1.5 degrees (since pre-industrial times). This will not only cause extreme and erratic weather and make more of the planet uninhabitable, but it will also continue to break down natural ecosystems: oceans and reefs, polar regions, jungles and forests, and so many more. Biodiversity will disappear as habitats, and food chains will collapse. Restoring our Earth means avoiding this. But it also means actively improving biodiversity (and the planet in general) from where we are now—not just stopping the harm.
Nischala: Do discussions around sustainability come up in your interactions with clients? what are their top-of-the-mind questions and challenges?
Josh: Yes they do, Nischala, Many enterprises across the globe are committed to sustainability in various forms (for example, become net-zero carbon or committing to a target like 2030) and some demonstrate it through company policy or corporate level programs with a dedicated leader to drive this charter. As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic – sustainability and achieving more than just shareholder profit are becoming critically important for enterprise leaders (see Exhibit 1). Many, however, are struggling to translate their intent to action and impact. Many know that their customers are looking for sustainability in the products and services they buy—but still manage to stick with the status quo or not go far enough.
Our conversations with service providers do not fill us with a whole lot of confidence that the majority of enterprises are making the changes they need to make—despite marquee use cases and headline enterprises who have seized the sustainability narrative (Unilever is a good example). There is hope, however, as these same service providers hold the keys to making sustainable transformations happen – as they do in digital transformations. They can bring the strategy and design consulting, implementation, managed services, and technology to help businesses move along a pathway to sustainability.
Nischala: Has the election of Joe Biden as President of the U.S. made an impact, Josh?
Josh: Absolutely. And this is apparent in our service provider and enterprise conversations. There has been progressive regulation promised for some time across the world – and a desire for this from service providers and enterprises who are trying to be leaders in tackling climate change and pioneering all forms of sustainability. Investment in green technologies, infrastructure, jobs, and all manner of routes is beyond welcome – and other countries need to see this as a defining moment – where things change – and sustainability is no longer a future problem. Like enterprises, governments need to nail down roadmaps to decarbonize and reach net-zero. They also need to do the same in tackling all forms of sustainability. Technology and strategy, combined with implementation, need to come together.
Nischala: What trends around technology and innovation are you seeing in the world of sustainability?
Josh: Technology and innovation have two sustainability angles:
Firstly, they can both help businesses, governments, and individuals be more sustainable: AI and analytics (including in consumer apps) can improve decision making and optimization (of energy use, for example, which has a cost and carbon emissions benefit) and combinations of the internet of things (IoT) and cloud platforms can help measuring, monitoring, reporting, and optimizing of emissions. There are so many more examples.
Secondly, technology and innovation come with an associated carbon footprint which must be addressed. The electricity that powers computing and data storage must be decarbonized, and its consumption must be reduced. To address this, companies are sourcing more and more renewable energy to power their datacenters (or even producing it themselves) alongside improving their efficiencies. The supply chains which create technology products must also become more environmentally friendly (the mining of metals for batteries, for example), socially responsible (by eradicating modern slavery, to name only one challenge), and transparent (so that customers can have confidence that the first two points have been met, alongside their other requirements).
Nischala: What is it that large organizations can do to support the case and cause of sustainability actively?
Josh: Sustainability must become native to businesses. It must be an integral part of every decision from the shopfloor up to the CEO’s office. If there’s one concrete action to take away from this, it should be building a roadmap to decarbonize their carbon footprints. Measure your current footprint, and then plan how you’ll reach net-zero by 2050 at the ABSOLUTE LATEST (as far in advance as possible!). This includes your own direct and indirect emissions, but also those throughout your supply chains (often ). For example, direct emissions can be reduced via process optimization and redesign, indirect emissions could be decarbonized by sourcing more renewable electricity, and procurement processes can be adapted to ensure suppliers meet the highest sustainability standards to improve scope 3 supply chain emissions.
Nischala: Are there any specific initiatives that you are doing at HFS towards this cause?
Josh: HFS has been talking about sustainability, and importantly the sustainability services ecosystem, for some time. Businesses and governments know they need to become sustainable—but many don’t know where to start or how to put plans into action. Service providers are the ones who’ll make this change happen—as we’ve seen them do through digital transformation work—through consulting and design, implementation, ongoing management of operations, and technology. The sustainability services ecosystem, however, remains fragmented and poorly understood by providers and enterprises (and governments). Keep watching the HFS Research space as we change this throughout 2021. The sustainability ecosystem needs to be mapped, defined, understood, and coordinated. This must happen soon so that service providers can bring their enterprise clients and partners along on their journeys.
Nischala: What is it that we can do as individuals to support this cause, Josh?
Josh: There’s so much, Nischala – and even small changes aren’t wasted. Some of the most important would be: walking, cycling, and using public transport to cut down on car use (and if possible switching to an electric car, or car-sharing); reducing meat consumption and generally shopping for the most sustainable options (locally sourced, low plastic, etc.); reduce, reuse, and recycle as much as possible; retrofitting homes (although expensive) lowers heating/cooling costs as well as carbon emissions.
Nischala: What are some of the best global online resources for anyone to read if they want to understand more?
Josh: We’ve been sharing plenty of our favorite resources and research over the last week or so (and HFS’ own research, of course!), and obviously so much more is out there. But my top 2 picks would be:
United Nations (including the Sustainable Development Goals)
Cambridge Zero (a new policy unit within the University of Cambridge)
Nischala: Thanks for sharing your views and knowledge on this critical topic, Josh! We’re all eager to see our industry taking more action to drive sustainable actions.
Enterprise data businesses Syniti and Data Migration Resources have joined forces in a move they believe makes them the biggest data software platform and services pureplay in this, or any other, town. And we see no reason to doubt their claim. With the thirst for quality data at a pandemic-driven all-time-high to base critical enterprise decisions, this merger is perfectly timed.
Under the Syniti banner – and with Syniti CEO Kevin Campbell remaining at the helm – the new company has the resources and global footprint to answer the ‘Are these guys big enough?’ question when it comes to tackling the most complex data requirements of the top echelons of the global 2000. The Newco claims it offers the largest collection of data specialists and an AI-driven platform converging capabilities across data management, analytics, and governance. With Campbell energized and back in his element, who drove one of the first BPO pureplays Exult, before he inspired the multi-billion dollar BPO and technology growth trajectories in Accenture (see blog), you have to believe the newly re-invented king of data services is taking his new company somewhere very interesting…
Tie up comes after record growth for SAP-certified Syniti
Both parties share a common focus on people and intend that the new scale of the organization will give their prized data specialists the opportunity and desire to stick around to build long careers and the culture to attract more.
Syniti enjoyed record growth in 2020 (with some regions reporting more than 275% growth YoY). It reported the best Q1 results in its 23-year history at the end of April 2021. It’s riding a wave of rapidly increasing investment in smart analytics (Exhibit 1). Almost three-quarters see investments rising either significantly, or moderately.
Exhibit 1:Do you see investments increasing, decreasing, or staying the same for smart analytics in the next 12 to 18 months?
Syniti has been expanding from its SAP heartland (where it now holds SAP Certified Gold Enterprise Support Integration) to introduce real-time data replication with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
It is also an SAP platinum partner when it comes to helping businesses move to SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP Ariba. SAP resells data migration software from Syniti as SAP Advanced Data Migration by Syniti. Deloitte, IBM and DXC have been Syniti’s leading SI partners to date.
Joining together offers a global footprint and platform for acceleration
Syniti and DMR have been competitors in the North American market – each with facilities in India. Syniti has expanded to Europe and Asia-Pacific and DMR has gone into Latin America. The plan is to scale up globally, making use of the combined power of their India operations and sharing sales teams and the best of the products, tools, ideas, methods and techniques applied by each business. The aim is to accelerate their individual growth through combination – staking a bigger claim to the rapidly expanding demand for enterprise data management than either could alone.
The combined solution portfolio – comprised of the Syniti Knowledge Platform, DMR CONCENTO, Rapid Data Governance (RDG), and other software solutions, offers customers and partners aggregated, integrated capabilities to address a wide range of data-led business and IT requirements.
DMR products will remain supported into the foreseeable future and the combined might of the organizations will be applied to accelerate the ongoing development of DMR’s CONCENTO RDG – a potentially powerful differentiator if it delivers on its promise of cutting implementation costs by up to 50%.
Bridge Growth Partners are the majority owner of the new enterprise with DMR CEO Ryan Rodenburg joining the executive board with a ‘CEO of the Americas’ remit.
Bottom Line: Effective combination of assets holds the key to long term success
Thousands of hours of teaming ahead of the official merger proved the two parties can work together well. But the long-term success of the deal is likely to reside in how effective the new organization can be in making 1 + 1 = 3 when linking up its assets in a range of client-value-creating combinations. The new organization makes for a more balanced products/services company going forward, something the market is starting to reward. What is critical now is to encourage Syniti’s energized service provider partners, especially Deloitte, IBM, Accenture and DXC to increase their focus and staff training on the bigger, badder Syniti.
In short, we need to understand that data is the strategy to get us ahead of our markets. Here are five steps we must take:
Get The Data to Win In your Market. This is where you must align your data needs to deliver on business strategy. This is where you clarify your vision and purpose.
Re-think processes to get the data, Then you must re-think what should be added, eliminated, simplified across your workflows to source this critical data.
Design your new operational workflows in the cloud. There is simply no option but to have a plan to design processes in the cloud over three-tier web-architected applications. In the Work-from-Anywhere Economy, our global talent has to come together to create our borderless, completely digital business. This is the true environment for real digital transformation in action.
Automate processes and data. Automation is not your strategy. It is the necessary discipline to ensure your processes provide the data – at speed – to achieve your business outcomes. Hence you have to approach all future automation in the cloud if you want your processes to run effectively end-to-end.
Apply AI to data flows to anticipate at speed. Once you have successfully automated processes in the cloud, it is easy to administer AI solutions to deliver at speed in self-improving feedback loops. This is where you apply digital assistants, computer vision, machine learning, and other techniques to refine the efficacy of your data. AI is how we engage with our data to refine ourselves as digital organizations where we only want a single office to operate with agility to do things faster, cheaper, and more streamlined than we ever thought possible. AI helps us predict and anticipate how to beat our competitors and delight our customers, reaching both outside and inside of our organizations to pull the data we need to make critical decisions at speed.
The impact of the pandemic has completely changed the mindset and change imperative of the majority of organizations. Our recent study of 400 operations and IT leaders across the Global 2000 shows how crucial automation has become as the catalyst to modernize business operations. And this means the old-thinking around RPA is rapidly leaving the building, as enterprises are faced with a dual challenge: ring-fencing legacy data centers and processes, while making fresh investments to re-jig critical processes to function effectively in the cloud:
Simply put, if you try to take your existing messy processes and simply move them “as-is” into a cloud environment, it’s going to be one very costly exercise that could be so cumbersome, you may go out of business before you even get them there. We used to talk a lot, in pre-Covid days, about moving your “mess for less” offshore, and even if you did very limited transformation, you would reduce costs simply because you were tasking lower-cost people to run them for you. Essentially, anything you couldn’t shoe-horn into your standard ERP model would be a prime candidate to outsource as it was not likely to be core business activity, but you still needed them processed, and you might as well run your mess for cheaper via a service partner, than do it yourself.
Two thirds of major enterprises have no choice but to head for the Cloud in the new economy
Fast-forward to 2021, and most large enterprises have managed to move their messy stuff to an outsourcer or their offshore captive. That was what legacy outsourcing was all about and over 90% of the Global 2000 did it. Now they are faced with a whole set of nagging new challenges, as they simply have to function in the cloud, if they want to be effective in this work-from-anywhere environment, which we know is going to be the norm for at least two-thirds of enterprises, even after we finally get Covid under control:
So what does this new wave of outsourcing look like, and why is it poised to increase at close to 10% this year – and likely even more next year?
The desire to centralize large clusters of people is dissipating with enterprise leaders focused on outcomes. After 14 months of operating with armies of shared service staff operating remotely, most have learned how to manage by focusing on the outcomes of getting processes delivered, as opposed to obsessing with governance structures based on effort and control. Many enterprise leaders have told us how they are focused on driving greater internal coordination with increased daily video meetings, where accountability and ownership are determinedly applied, and 51% (see above) do not see the need to add additional headcount to make this happen.
The need to scale-up and scale-down at speed has never been more pronounced. The number one watch-word today is about moving at speed. Enterprise leaders accepting the current status quo simply want to make fast decisions to make their operations and supply chains as nimble as possible. This means freeing themselves from multiple sign-off points to enact policies and strategies is becoming an imperative; lugging around bloated back office functions that strangle the ability to get things done is becoming a tainted memory. Having deeper partnerships with lesser numbers of partners not only cuts out operational costs, but also creates far more flexibility to operate at speed in unpredictable market conditions. This explains why a quarter of enterprises have already increased their outsourcing scope across business and IT processes in this environment, and a further third are planning to accelerate in the near term. Pipelines for new deals are strong – especially in Europe, and early indications from our soon-to-be-finalized Pulse study for H1 2021 indicate expenditure increase in the high single-digits:
The need to add “digitally-fluent capability” is forcing the issue on the interplay between business context and technology capability. With all today’s technology solutions CIOs are evaluating being cloud-based, their roles are shifting away from the provision of custom-app development, support and maintenance etc., and towards understanding the business context of their non-IT executive counterparts. This is more about housing data, ensuring security, scalability, speed and business continuity. They need to make their departmental leaders’ data ubiquitously available, accessible, and mineable – working with them to embed a mindset that inspires business and IT staff to work together to create an organization that can flip its business model to exploit these seismic market changes.
There is a lot more trust to work with partners. The rapid uptick in deeper, broader outsourcing relationships is being driven by enterprise buyers becoming more decisive and experienced, and their service partners becoming much more adept and confidant to strike rapid, cost-friendly deals, knowing they have the expertise and resources to make these deals profitable in the short term and (potentially) lucrative in the medium-longer term, as they get closer to their customers’ customers.
It’s much easier to have a third-party drive automation than forcing it on resistant/inexperienced staff. Today’s service providers are becoming highly adept at automating transactional work – simply because they have had no choice but to get proficient at it if they are to deliver value for their clients profitably. On the flip-side, enterprises have proven particularly useless at scaling automation projects and doing anything more than piecemeal projects within silos. We can delve into all the reasons why this has been a failure for over 80% of them, such as politics, employee resistance and inability to redesign processes (and let’s not forget a year-plus of pandemic), but the benefits of having an external party tasked with driving your automation efficiencies are now crystal clear.
Bottom-line: With the cyclical nature of global recessions, the historical reaction is to outsource without much transformation. However, the response this time is different…
Today’s service providers are much more confidant at delivering the outcomes because they know how to infuse technology to support these new commercial models. Moreover, you can’t get the data you need if your critical data is not in the cloud and you don’t have the people, partners, processes, technology – and desire to change – to make this possible. Service providers now have the experience, desire and risk-appetite to roll their sleeves up and help many enterprises make it through the most unpredictable economic era we have ever lived through.
Let’s cut to the chase folks… chatbots have struggled to gain much of a foothold in the corporate tech innovation stack. However, our analyst Melissa O’Brien has spent the last few years studying how these engagement technologies are evolving deeper into the enterprise where they can truly augment staff and reduce a significant amount of their time, while driving a whole new digital way of engaging for both employees and customers… from the back office right through to the front. So let’s take a look at which services firms are getting good at creating these digital associate workers for enterprises…
Melissa, we’ve been observing the evolution of “conversation AI” for a good decade-plus now, so what’s new? has the pandemic driven more uptake?
The demand for conversational AI has exploded over the last year. The automation tools we call digital associates were one of the digital superheroes of the pandemic, as conversational tools picked up the slack in handling volumes of interactions when human associates were not available due to a lack of work-from-home preparedness. Reduction in staff coupled with spike in volumes of interactions in many industries such as ecommerce created a burning platform. For many companies, this rapid and massive disruption resulted in accelerating digital initiatives already in play and pushing many lingering POCs into production mode. Industries like travel and hospitality, which had a brief period of an incredible uptick in customer interaction volumes a year ago, have now developed conversational tools poised to address inevitable future surges driven by pent-up demand.
Now that acceptance and adoption has increased significantly, the imperative is to move beyond the low-hanging fruit, the really simple and repetitive stuff, to really see what these tools are capable of. The next evolution of DA’s is a lot more about using ML and AI for conversational complexity, having a good design that fits into an overall experience strategy, and integration with enterprise systems in order to deliver greater value. Many companies which hadn’t dipped a toe into this space pre-pandemic are struggling a bit with the learning curve now, where others that had a foundation built already are expanding their use cases. Enterprises are now really looking at digital associates from an employee and customer experience perspective rather than only call deflection, efficiencies, and cost savings. In many cases, we’ve seen them as effective tools for sales conversions and building brand loyalty. So there are a lot more potential outcomes that companies are now looking to conversational AI to help achieve.
Why do you think this space has struggled to attract the feverish hype of RPA and “dumb” back office automation? What needs to happen to get the digital associate value proposition weaved into the whole intelligent automation and AI narrative?
I think part of the trouble is this market landscape is vast, the tools poorly defined and buyers are confused. This is part of the reason we’ve taken to calling the tools “digital associates,” to convey that they are digital workers built to provide a tangible outcome. Digital associates are not distinct segments like AI, automation, and analytics – in fact, they are tools that if designed properly use elements of all three to maximize their power. The face of automation has been largely tied to RPA, a singular tool where a lot of the use cases are straightforward – the quick time to value in many of these tools makes it a fairly fast and easy win for certain processes. With conversational AI, there’s a lot more nuance to think through employee and customer journeys, the complexity that is human language and interaction, and the connections that need to be made in disparate back end systems for them to operate in a meaningful way at the engagement layer.
Digital associates run the gamut of maturity, but often get associated with their simplest cousin, the chatbot. Chatbot fatigue has been a real roadblock; 10+ years ago the fad was to slap an FAQ bot on every website, expecting it to deflect calls and create efficiencies. More often they provided little help outside of website navigation, and created customer frustration and degraded the experience in the process. So people who hearken back to those experiences will have an aversion to trying out conversational tools or be hesitant about their value. This is obviously changing now as the real digital associates are starting to prove their worth.
I think this is where the OneOffice helps people conceptualize the impact digital associates can have on an organization. Firstly, start with an EX or CX focused outcome objective and design the DA backwards from there. As you’ve said yourself Phil, digital associates are augmenters of the human experience. They start to add more value as they become more sophisticated and embedded in our processes. And thinking in terms of the Triple-A Trifecta, the digital associates’ AI-powered brain is complemented by automation arms and legs to retrieve, report, update and transact. Data is the fuel the associate ingests to produce insights (analytics) and achieve optimal performance, including the personalization users are expecting.
And which suppliers are currently winning in this market, Melissa? Both in terms of services and products?
Accenture, IBM and Cognizant took the top three spots respectively in our recent services Top Ten. These providers demonstrated an impressive breadth of capabilities across industries and enterprise functions, both IT and business, and a depth of design, process and technology prowess. While we didn’t include advisory firms in our assessment, focusing instead on BPO and IT services implementations, firms like KPMG and Deloitte have significant depth of expertise in developing solutions for clients in this area also.
On the products side, the number of vendors having some level of capability in this space is astounding. You’ve got the cloud providers which all have their platforms and developer suites, namely Google Dialog Flow & CCAI, AWS Lex & Connect , Microsoft Luis & Power VA. And then your established OOB software firms like IPsoft and Kore.AI, and including some of the RPA firms such as Pega and NICE dabble in various forms of digital associates. And we’ve been watching some interesting up and comers like last year’s “hottest hot vendor” Techforce.ai, and most recently we’ve been briefed on XpertRule’s Viabl.ai platform which comes in with an interesting value proposition focused on decisioning.
We’re really seeing this as an ecosystem play right now, as most of the successful implementations we’ve seen have required fairly complex customizations and integration from the service providers. While the products players tend to focus on selling licenses, the service providers provide with industry knowledge, deep understanding of clients’ processes and design expertise to help companies think through employee or customer touchpoints and really map out what they want to accomplish. And most of the service providers are completely technology agnostic, so they can come in and leverage an existing vendor relationship or preference or help evaluate vendors and select based on their requirements.
How are the call center firms approaching digital associates – are they reacting to customer demand, or still fighting to protect the legacy “butts-on-seats” model? Which ones are unafraid to disrupt the model and push conversation AI aggressively?
Many legacy contact centers still operate on FTE volumes and they’re safe for now because there’s still plenty of demand for labor-focused services (which is being driven quite a bit by growth in digital native companies whose rapid growth requires help to scale operations.) But most of the contact center leaders have a balanced approach which strategizes with clients on digital-first customer journeys which include a blend of automation and agent support. Concentrix is one of the most aggressive we’ve seen in this market, which landed at #9 in our recent report, the top ranking of any of the contact center pure plays. The challenge that the CX players continue to have is that of brand perception. They know that with the increase in self-service and automation that in many client engagements, if they don’t cannibalize their business another provider or vendor will. So they’ve built solid AI and automation capabilities for those clients with the appetite to work with them in that regard. The trouble is that some enterprise tech leaders won’t consider a contact center to work with on emerging tech, so in order for them to really gain traction in this space, there’s a mindshare gap to bridge, especially with IT decision-makers.
And finally, Melissa, how do you expect digital associates to evolve as we get used to new ways of working? are they going to branch way beyond customer-facing solutions?
Customer service examples are the most ubiquitous, but digital associates have already spread well beyond that realm. In the top ten, we saw a plethora of use cases in procurement, HR, IT helpdesk, finance, accounting, and much more. One of the interesting surprises we found was the prevalence of recruitment and HR bots. We’ve seen conversational AI tools which can help shepherd a candidate through the application and interview process, and also offer employee support once onboarded, helping staff access, understand, and process important information around benefits and compensation, performance, and time reporting. This is really a result of how accustomed we’ve become to automation in our consumer lives, that we expect to interact with digital ‘colleagues’ at work. And while chat solutions are still very commonplace, I do think the future of this market lies in voice. Not phone-based or intelligent IVR’s, but similar to virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri we’ve become so accustomed to in our consumer lives. Voice is opening so many doors right now to create new ways for people to engage either with our work as employees or with companies to buy services and products.
Many of the examples we saw were also quite industry-specific solutions, and I think we’ll continue to see greater depth in those capabilities too. Personalized menu customization for restaurant chain ordering, retail loan processing, and approval, program enrollment and Rx management for healthcare payers, and retail order status digital associates were just a few of the highly verticalized solutions we’ve seen.
One of the important topics I expect to see the industry tackle next is how these tools are supporting diversity and inclusion efforts. For example, service provider TTEC has developed a bot as part of a broader D&I offering which allows employees to ‘practice’ difficult conversations, around prejudices regarding race or gender for example, with the conversational AI tool. The platform then provides feedback and advice on how to handle the conversation. Another big one to unpack is how these tools play a role in influencing and in many cases reinforcing gender bias (did you know that “female” digital associates get greater adoption levels than male ones?). We recently saw Accenture coming out with a non-binary offering as an option to address this. I think we’ll see a lot coming from the top service providers which frame digital associates in the light of “ethical AI.” How to ensure an ethical approach an important conversation to have, because emerging and increasingly sophisticated conversational tools will help shape our future reality, from the fun and entertaining, to potentially serious and unnerving. The conversation is an extremely complex AI problem to solve, but with all the opportunities we’re seeing emerge, it feels like this is just the beginning of exploring the possibilities.
HFS premium subscribers can access the Digital Associates Top Ten Services report by clicking here
When it comes to big stonking change and the new meshing of business and IT disciplines, let’s talk to the ultimate wave-spotter: Mark Foster. I met Mark a few decades ago when I was wearing button-downs and he was one of the key Group Chief Executives at Accenture. I’ve been very curious to catch up and see for myself what enticed Mark out of (what he dubs) “blissful semi-retirement” to lead the 250,000-strong services business at IBM. So let’s dive in…
Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HFS Research: It’s great to get some time with you, Mark. You’ve been a well-known figure in strategy consulting for many, many years. I met you during your Accenture days, but not so much recently. I’d love to know a bit more about you, where you came from, and were you always intending on going into the services industry? Was this your goal when you were at university?
Mark Foster, Senior Vice President, IBM Services: Well, probably not. My background is rather strange, insofar as I have a degree in Ancient Greek, Latin, and Ancient History. So, I spent the best part of all my school and university career studying languages that are now largely dead, and only readable in ancient texts. (Laughs)
Very early on, though, I had a sense that there was something happening around technology; it was going to be a really important thing to get involved with. My first job was joining Accenture back in 1983, what was then Arthur Andersen management consulting, where the first thing that happened was to be sent off to St. Charles to learn to code in COBOL. That was really the start of an involvement with technology that’s carried me through for a very long period of time.
“I had a grounding in technology, a grounding in what it can do to transform industries and business, and then also a career that evolved away from core technology…”
When I came here to IBM, I remembered that I learned to code in RPG III on the AS/400 back in a dim, distant day as well. I had a grounding in technology, a grounding in what it can do to transform industries and business, and then also a career that evolved away from core technology and into areas of business strategy, management, industry transformation, digitalization, and over time, all the areas around the BPO marketplace that we got into, as well as all of the ERP worlds that the world got into. So, actually, I’ve had a very broad-based background across all these different areas of services over time.
Phil: So, you’ve had a very colorful career, Mark. IBM must have been a very interesting change for you… experiencing several years at the height of Ginni’s reign, and now Arvind, and some new blood in the company with a lot of change going on. I can’t help feeling that we’re going through a great big reset in the world of technology, and it might not be a bad thing for IBM considering the brand and the strength that you have. I’d love to hear a bit more from your perspective on what the experience has been like, and a bit about where you hope to take the GBS and the services business as things evolve.
“I could see another wave of change that was about to take place around digital technology. We were getting to a state, again, where technology was about to be transformative…”
Mark: First of all, Phil, I was actually lured… After 27 years of Accenture, I had five and a half years of what I like to call blissful semi-retirement, where I was working on various things and different boards, and I was really lured back by Ginni, to IBM, because I could see another wave of change that was about to take place around digital technology. We were getting to a state, again, where technology was about to be transformative, as opposed to living around the edges of companies.
I saw the coming together of the worlds of AI, automation, blockchain, etc., as being the big opportunity to be involved in something new again, and an opportunity to also refresh and transform GBS as a critical part of the IBM ecosystem. That was something that Ginni was very keen for me to do, and I think we’ve made some decent progress on that over the last four or five years.
“The strategy of IBM has evolved even more clearly around the whole world of hybrid multicloud, data, and AI. This has helped me to lean into the role that GBS can play in transformational journeys.”
The strategy of IBM has evolved even more clearly around the whole world of hybrid multi-cloud, data, and AI. This has helped me to lean into the role that GBS can play in transformational journeys that include those solutions as part of the business change that’s being driven and the thought processes around a cognitive enterprise, which is the new kind of enterprise we’re imagining where all of this comes together. It is very much in line with your OneOffice thinking, in terms of what an organization looks like when it has the power of these technologies applied at scale.
Phil: We had the days leading up to 2020, where we envisioned what the technology could potentially become, without really knowing what that burning platform would be to drive us rapidly down this channel of change that we’ve been through. It’s been an incredible shock to the system for some businesses.
What has it been like within IBM? How much has it changed you as a company?
Mark: Well, it’s changed all of us. I’ve got 240,000 people working for me around the world right now, 90% of whom are still working from home and have moved themselves seamlessly into that environment. They have had to deliver on projects, programs, and operations for clients, as well as doing other things to continue to sell and develop new work, all of that taking place in a virtual environment. We’ve had to leap to what that looks like. Fortunately, that was something in the background of how our global delivery was operating already, but it just accelerated even further and put it on steroids.
For many clients, there has been a massive acceleration of the digitalization of their businesses. It has also put technology at the forefront of people’s minds and the role it plays in enabling employees to do their jobs and connect to customers.
“CTOs and CIOs have had a good crisis in a way, because they have proven that the role that their technologies play is fundamental for enabling companies to keep going and to sustain operations. We’re going to see the shift… of these technologies moving into the mainstream and the replacement of legacy by new technology at scale.
It’s been highly accelerated.”
We did some research, just recently, in terms of talking to various C-suite executives about what digitalization had done, in terms of who is now playing a bigger role. Not surprisingly, the CTOs and CIOs have had a good crisis in a way, because they have proven that the role that their technologies play is fundamental for enabling companies to keep going and to sustain operations. I think we’re going to see the shift we have already seen, of these technologies moving into the mainstream and the replacement of legacy by new technology at scale. It’s been highly accelerated, and I think we’ll see a lot more of that coming along. And that’s the path we plan to play – helping clients take those new, faster journeys.
Phil: Yeah, when you think about it, you’ve got 90% of the Global 2000 with fairly expansive shared service organizations, and, of those, they all have varying levels of outsourcing relationships. Now we’re at this point where only a third actually want to go back to the model they had before, the physical model, the packing of people back into their service centres, etc.. A lot of them have declared that they’re work-from-anywhere organizations now. I get the feeling that not a lot of the traditional middle-to-back-office workers are going to be asked to return to a physical environment. At the same time, clients are figuring out how to do a lot of this work remotely, they’re judging more on outcomes. It’s getting a bit less personal. In a way, the work environment has gotten slightly harsher.
How do you see this playing out, Mark? If we’re going into a new model where things are much more disparate and much more remote, even when we’re fully vaccinated, is this the end of shared services as we know it, from a client perspective, and a whole new birth of a final phase of outsourcing? Is that how you see things playing out?
Mark: I don’t think it is, actually. The empowered, remote, anywhere workforce is something that people are obviously talking about. This also came up from the recent C-suite study that we did, the focus on [remote work] as being one of the most important things C-suite executives are worried about. Within that, there was an awful lot of focus about the ongoing humanity of those relationships, about empathy, and the way we’re actually going to make sure that we stay connected in this world.
“It’s been an interesting duality to show how virtual you can be, but it’s also made people a bit more aware of what they lack when they’re not connecting together. …All of that still has to find a place.”
It’s been an interesting duality, Phil, to show how virtual you can be, but it’s also made people a bit more aware of what they lack when they’re not connecting together. I think that we’re going to start seeing models where people will have to combine the ability to bring people together for creativity, for empathy, for connecting with each other, for networking, and spontaneity. All of that still has to find a place. It will make us think much more about the journey of talent being accessible from around the world.
The virtual garage model we have developed is very much a model for co-creation with our clients from anywhere around the world and for being able to bring expertise from ourselves and ecosystem partners to help transform a process with a client. That potential is very real, and I think it is quite exciting. It’s what we call our Dynamic Delivery model, powered by the Garage. We can see that becoming very powerful.
“We’ve seen a big focus from clients on this idea of uplifting skills, “Can you work with us in a way that actually means we also uplift our skills as well, and not simply take the skills off our hands?”
There has very much been a shift in that space going on.”
I think the clients will go on, reinventing their shared services and relationship with their strategic partners. We’ve seen an uplift in interest around aspects of core process outsourcing, or “co-sourcing.” We’ve seen a big focus from clients on this idea of uplifting skills, “Can you work with us in a way that actually means we also uplift our skills as well, and not simply take the skills off our hands?” There has very much been a shift in that space going on. I think we’re in for a very interesting period of more opportunity for disaggregation of processes, the power of extreme automation, and higher levels of AI coming into the mix as part of the transformation. But I also believe we need to be a bit more thoughtful on the role of the human in that machine.
Phil: I love that answer, Mark! You know, everything starts with data. Data is the strategy of the business. What data do we need to be more effective than our competitors, fix our supply chains, get products on the market faster? Everything starts with data.
Then you have to design your processes in a way to get to that data, to get to the outcomes you need. Right? You’ve got to realize as a work-from-anywhere organization, you have to move those processes into the cloud, so then you have to automate in the cloud. That’s something that we haven’t been educating people enough on, which is the next phase.
Automation is not the strategy; it’s the native DNA. Automation is the essence of making it happen; it’s the attitude, right? Data is the strategy, automation is the attitude and then we can run AI off automated processes in the cloud to get different types of data views, different types of ways of predicting things. We’ve got this cycle that we’re talking about, and so much of this is about redesigning process.
“We need people to actually help design businesses in the way they should have always been designed. Too many companies today hadn’t touched a process until they were forced to go into a remote environment.”
Isn’t this where the human element comes in? We’re a decade away from the singularity, apparently, so we need people to actually help design businesses in the way they should have always been designed. Too many companies today hadn’t touched a process until they were forced to go into a remote environment. And now…
Mark: I totally, agree, Phil. I totally agree. You need to have people who are really looking for pain points, looking for value pools, and working out where the opportunities are to make it better, but you also now have so many different tools to go after those value pools and drive out that value. That’s where we see the power of AI at scale, the power of automation, using IoT for massive sensing, the 5G enablement of some of these processes as well – we see all of that coming together.
We then find that, yes, we can do all of that, but we do need to make sure that the robustness of the data that is going to be used in this automation has a good base and is trusted. I need to understand and be transparent about how it is actually applying itself into these new workflows. It’s a bringing of all that together as part of an execution journey for a client that will take them from where they are now to where they’re going to be. That is the complexity.
“We’re talking about very big companies trying to do very big change, …the change management and reskilling agendas for people who sit along these new workflows becomes critically important.”
We’re talking about very big companies trying to do very big change, which, to me, harks back to past eras where thinking about the change management and reskilling agendas for people who sit along these new workflows becomes critically important.
Phil: Yeah, it’s interesting. In all your years in this industry, you’ve had to keep your own staff motivated, ahead of your clients, ahead of the curve, and now in a remote setting. What has that been like? Has this been like anything you’ve seen before?
Mark: Well, I think this is certainly up there, Phil, in terms of something I haven’t seen before. Let’s be clear, I’ve been managing large, global teams for a very long time, and I’ve always believed that you manage, engage, and lead by being with your teams, being with your clients, and spending time together. I literally like to get around the world many times a year to see as many people as I can and lead that way. The lack of that has been something that I have certainly personally felt.
We try to replace it. Every day, I’m sending a video somewhere; every day, I’m doing a virtual townhall with some slice or cut of my teams. I’m trying to spend time with as many of my leaders as I possibly can, reaching out to speak to people, but not in a planned way because one of the problems of Webex-land is that we’re all scheduled into our interactions with each other as opposed to bumping into each other. Trying to find ways to connect with people in a way that’s not so programmed is important.
These are things that I think are pretty fundamental to trying to work through this time, while also recognizing that many people are doing their day-to-day work in very difficult circumstances, with home circumstances, or children, etc. We’re trying to be empathetic leaders right now, but also trying to provide people with a vision of where we’re trying to go.
“Can you see where you fit in? Can you see where you could fit in if you built up a new skillset?”
Arvind has set a very clear strategy around hybrid cloud, data, and AI. We’re lining up our GBS business very strongly in support of that. That sets a North Star for us, which we can lay out into the marketplace, and a lot of my energy right now is making sure the teams understand what that new North Star is, and that we’re moving ourselves towards these two big value pools of intelligent workflows enabled by the hybrid multi-cloud.
And that’s our fundamental vision.
Therefore, if you are any one of those thousands of people out there in the world, the question is, can you see where you fit in? Can you see where you could fit in if you built up a new skillset? It is a very dynamic skills environment right now for our people, and you can do a lot more skills training, but you really need to make sure that you create the space in their time to do that.
Phil: Interesting. Do you feel you’ve spent a lot more time internally than externally for the last 12 months?
Mark: I’ve spent a lot more time internally in my kitchen.
Phil: [Laughs]
Mark:[Laughs]. In fact, today is one of the first days I’ve been out of my kitchen in a long while. I spend a lot more time internally. But, actually, I am also spending a lot of time with clients. One of the good things about this world is that clients are in their kitchens somewhere in the world as well, and I can get to clients in Australia, in India, in Latin America in a moment, as opposed to having to get on a plane and fly to see them.
Half my day, at least, is still spent interacting with clients, and then the other part of the day is a balance between the management of a very large, complex enterprise. You’re trying to make sure you’re keeping busy and economically successful, and then the rest of the time is with the people – the people and the teams – trying to make sure that they are motivated, and inspired, and know where they fit in.
Phil: Very good. We have a final question, Mark. When you look at the next 12 months, we’re not quite through a pandemic yet; we’re hoping a vaccine is going to bail us out of that; we have a booming stock market; we have booming unemployment; and we have a very, very confused and volatile outlook as to the economy and how things are going to shake out. Beyond answering me with the word “chaos” [Laughs]…
Mark:[Laughs].
Phil: …what do you think the world’s going to be like in a year’s time?
Mark: Well, Phil, I’m actually more optimistic than pessimistic about that picture, Phil. I mean, I think that the world will actually be in a better place than it was at the end of last year. There’ll be a little bit more certainty, I hope. Clearly, we are still in an environment of stop-start in many parts of the world, but I think each time we’re doing it, we are gaining a bit more muscle memory about how to deal with it.
At the same time, we shouldn’t walk past the fact that there’ll be a degree of fatigue of this world as well, which starts to have other implications for how people feel about how they can cope with it. Overall, my feeling is that we’ll have a choppiness in the first half of the year. We are going to be in a world where we’re likely going to have a lot of remote working still going on, for a very big part of that, but then I think we’re going to start to see some version of a new normal emerging in the second half of the year. We’re seeing clients who are using this moment to reset their business strategies; they are accelerating their digital journeys. All of that is goodness for us, if we can help them with that transformation.
The critical thing for us is to make sure that we’re well positioned in our relationships with our clients with the right skills in the right place, and that we can then help with that co-creation, which I think will be in a more benign environment towards the back end of the year.
Phil: What do you think services are going to look like in two years’ time? When you look out, we get beyond the pandemic and to some type of economic rebound; it’s going to be very different…
Mark: There are lots of what-ifs in there, aren’t there, in terms of what the world’s going to be like. I would say that if you just look at the amount of change that’s going to be spooled up – pent up demand, and, more importantly, thought up demand – I believe people have been thinking about new things in different ways. As they start to now execute on that, we’ll see big enterprises executing quite substantive change. A well-positioned services capability that can help with those journeys has an opportunity to thrive, so I’m optimistic about that.
“There is a changed relationship between the world of services and clients; it is very much more a co-creational world and very much more a co-skilling world.”
There is a changed relationship between the world of services and clients; it is very much more a co-creational world and very much more a co-skilling world. There’s going to be much more desire for an ability to have self-reliance and adaptability built into the client organisations through their experiences of this transformation, so that, to me, is exciting. I think there will be a lot of opportunity. We have to make sure we’re well positioned for it; that’s something I’m very much looking forward to.
Phil: Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Mark. That was a wonderful discussion which I know our avid readers will appreciate.
Still grappling with moving your operations into the Cloud? Click here to grab your spot at the HFS Cloud Native digital roundtable on 21st April 10.00am-1.00pm ET
Nigel Edwards is Chief Client Officer, HFS. Click for LinkedIn and Bio
While we can speculate all day long about what businesses can do when they are given the huge amounts of someone else’s money to burn, how about those that are employee-owned and make their own investments using the hard-earned money they actually earned themselves?
When you look at the growth and success of HFS over the past 11 years to tackle competitors hundreds of times our size, there is one constant throughout the whole experience – the collective array of people who’ve made it all possible. While you can buy successful brands, IP, methodologies, APIs, and algorithms, the most important asset you can accumulate is your people.
One such individual, whom I have known since the days just prior to founding HFS, is Nigel Edwards – an enthusiastic and affable character who’s weathered the best of the Indian-heritage service providers namely Cognizant. Wipro and EXL, after earning his business and IT services stripes at Accenture in his earlier career. It was time for “Nige” to take nearly three decades of blood, sweat, BPO and captives and lend it to HFS’ long-suffering clients, crying out for a sense of reality and to exploit the current market turbulence. Now there isn’t too much to say about Nigel beyond the fact he’s a lifelong Foxes fan (Leicester City), has played cricket with David Gower and gets beaten up in a boxing ring by his son almost daily… so let’s hear a bit more from HFS’ Chief Client Officer, Nigel Edwards:
Phil Fersht (CEO, HFS): Before we get to all the work stuff, Nigel, can you share a little bit about yourself… your background, what gets you up in the morning?
The honest answer is that it’s a combination of my 6-year-old (the youngest of my 3 boys), the dog, or the sound of the refuse collection folk reminding me that I did not put out the recycling…
Seriously though, it’s the opportunity to do something creative. My dad was in the construction industry for many years and he doubled up as a highly accomplished artist, sculptor, and writer. Even at 78 he is still pushing out new ideas each day in his quiet, unassuming but engaging manner. I guess this appetite for creativity has continued throughout my career as I have always been interested in what is coming along next: from buying outsourcing services to BPO, to automation and now digital. I love nothing more than launching a new service, entering a new market, or initiating a large new client engagement.
Nigel Edwards (Chief Client Officer, HFS): How did you end up in the process services industry as a solution leader across the likes of Accenture, Cognizant, Wipro, and EXL? Did the industry change a lot during these times, or is it really only going through real change now?
Honestly, I never set out with a plan. I wanted to be a professional cricketer or a rock star, failed at both, so I logically settled on a career spanning technology and banking /& insurance! But like many things, if you keep an open mind, and look for opportunities, then door after door opens. I remember when, around 31 years old, I was asked to lead a major £250m account – probably as there was no-one else available! But I grabbed it with both hands while secretly being scared to death of failure – I’m pleased to say that we had a great team and I think we managed to pull it off.
But wow the industry has changed in the last 30 years. When I was with PwC, BPO was all about capex-heavy SI (SAP, Siebel), followed up by onshore shared service operations before setting up in Netherlands and Poland – real transformational stuff for those days. Then along came offshoring with a Leanops approach and the market grew significantly. Consequently, we made hay with the big wave of BPO and I moved into the world of deal-making as a Partner within Accenture’s Market Maker team. And quick as a flash, the Indian heritage players caught up and I spent some amazing years with Cognizant where we looked to combine the core IT strengths with BPO and leverage into key vertical segments in BFS and Insurance, Pharma, and Healthcare. More recently I ran the UK/European Business Process Services teams in EXL and Wipro where the industry and CX focus was critical to profitable growth.
What did you love and hate about those times?
It’s tough to polarise because they are often both sides of the same coin! On the plus side, the chance to meet amazing clients, to travel, and work with people from all over the globe has been something that I will always be thankful for. The more you travel, the more you see what unites us. Seeing a deal or a project come to fruition is one of the most rewarding things, not just because of the outcome, but also because of the deep knowledge and relationships we have built.
The downside? The time away from friends and family, and the quarterly cadence of large corporates take its toll, and for that I thankful to work in a privately-owned research business.
That said, lockdown has left me with a deep yearning to travel again!
So what, Nigel, drove you to look at the analyst industry at this point of your career? What are you hoping to achieve?
A couple of things. First, the intellectual challenge of deciphering a truly complex and rich marketplace. And second, the opportunity to leverage my experience working with some great minds and great people.
HFS really leads the way in forward-looking research, unafraid to call the big plays, so it really was a no-brainer to sign up.
What role do you see analysts playing as we emerge from this pandemic? Same old game, or is something new brewing?
Oh look, the world has already turned and the pace of digital feels exponential. The last 9 months have seen change on a seismic scale that we have delivered and never thought possible. Who would have thought that we can work, learn, consume and create from home on such an unprecedented scale?
But the challenge is how to navigate and retain engagement while assuring our mental health. What is our purpose? Where do we start? Who do we start with? How do we differentiate? What skills do we need? And do I make, buy, partner, or acquire? Mostly, we need to have the courage to leave behind old practices, old comfort zones, and address the change management agenda seriously for once.
From the discussions I am already having with our clients, this is how we can help.
What do you think we’ll be talking about when we gradually revert to a world beyond our screens? Will we get a resurgence of energy and excitement, or will we crawl out of our caves blinded by the sunlight?
I studied European Political History at University – I had the pleasure of standing on (the remains of) the Berlin Wall when it came down in 1989! And if there is one thing I l have earned is that life has a way of course-correcting. As a natural optimist, I am sure that life will emerge richer. We will find ways to engage digitally on our own terms, to work in jobs that are fulfilling, and to lead a life where work and pleasure exist in harmony – they are by no means mutually exclusive. Yes, it’s a little cheesy, but I think it’s a good goal to have, and I truly believe that our role as analysts will help pave the way for this correction.
It’s terrific having you as part of this great team, Nige!
This injection of money is intended to expand HFS’ cutting-edge research coverage across all core geographic locations, plugging the gaps the firm missed in recent years. “Thank God we got the extra cash”, exclaimed the firm’s President for Research and Business Operations, Saurabh Gupta. “With the recent pandemic, not being able to cover dynamics in emerging countries like Turkmenistan and Laos was holding us back. Now we can really hit Gartner where it hurts most…”.
HFS is most famous for inventing the industry known as RPA in 2012, before famously killing it off in 2019, only to see its memory kept alive by Gartner and Forrester, which persisted in believing the revenue numbers of firms that were eking out the last of their PR cash. “I am so excited to fully restart the RPA myth now we have enough cash to throw at it,” stated the HFS Founder and CEO Phil Fersht in a recent press conference that was barely audible over Webex. “Without RPA, we had to pretend technologies like Cloud were making a comeback, and even our sustainability analyst has been trying to muscle in on the action.” Later on, Fersht managed to resume the discussion over Zoom, where he added, “All we had to do was promise Hoden we’d bring RPA back to life and we’d get a sizeable check to invest pretty much anywhere we wanted. I’ve convinced my head of research the next wave can be found in Turkmenistan and am funding a trip to escort him out there to view it first-hand. Apparently, they scraped the government’s mainframe green screen and managed to get a script to reproduce the content in a Windows app. Now they’re just waiting for Microsoft to give them a free bot to share it over their cloud network”.
Details of the investment plans will be available soon when the firm applies for its long-awaited IPO, where it’s rumored to claim it is worth at least $10 billion. There is no reason why HFS will ever be worth anything close to that amount, but at least it gets PE firms excited enough to throw them more money and put out more meaningless press releases.
It’s been quite the year hasn’t it, folks! I don’t know about you, but this has proven to be a voyage of self-discovery for me personally as we build businesses that can thrive in a world where it doesn’t matter where you are anymore, where the rules of the game are being re-written in a way we could never have imagined a year ago.
If you’d told me we’d be doing multi-million dollar deals over Zoom and holding the attention of a global industry captive for an entire day online while we shared experiences of vaccine brands, I would seriously try and shake myself out of this bizarre dream. Not to mention the spate of billion-dollar-plus deals being constructed on the back of an envelope…
In fact, I may still be having the same bizarre dream while I sleep-write this, and will wake up shortly to check my seat and meal-selection on my next trans-Atlantic flight, so I hope my ten learnings from the past imaginary year of bizarreness are worth a read:
Take control of your career. Whomever you are in today’s corporate world, the playing field has been leveled – however, almost everyone you know relies on the same vehicles to get things done. You have more time than you’ve ever had to focus on covering all the bases of your professional and personal lives, so make this time count and prepare for the future with a new attitude of self-assurance and confidence.
Be a great communicator. During his career heyday, my father was a world-famous scientist in protein science and biochemistry. His one (career) piece of advice to me was “always assume stupidity in your audience”. People love to hear you talk about the basics of what we do and build from there. I have never veered from this advice and it always serves me well… and those who engage in my narrative have proven to be anything but stupid!
Make a concerted effort to develop your relationships. While nothing beats a great dinner or a few glasses of good wine, beer, or whisky, the people you knew before the big change are still as important as ever, and you need to do what you can to keep them close and keep the camaraderie moving along. Relationships got you where you are, and during these new times, it’s even more important to keep the dialog going. Make time for the people who matter, and develop deeper relationships where you can. Also, focus on more one-to-one dialogs with people than sitting through hours of turgid discussions with too many people… nothing beats the intimacy of a direct conversation where you can see each other and share your genuine thoughts, ideas and feelings.
Keep learning new things. No one has any excuse to keep doing the same old things the same way, and in today’s environment, you really don’t want to become a dinosaur… post-covid world is definitely not dinosaur-friendly! If you are in sales, learn to sell over Zoom; if you’re in marketing… learn cool new apps to run promos, get familiar with analytics that help you understand your market, and make publications look awesome; if you’re in finance, put yourself on some data science courses; if you’re in IT learn how to cloudify business functions and understand the context. And if you’re ready to break free of the corporate treadmill, there is no better time to start your own business and reel in some clients.
Show your emotions more freely. Don’t you prefer to know how people really feel about things? Or if you’re pissing someone off? And doesn’t it feel good to get things off your chest, instead of letting them simmer for a long time until you blow up like a pressure-cooker? We have no choice but to preserve/build digital relationships with people, so be more expressive, and people will know you better, and maybe they’ll be more expressive in return.
Demonstrate your true values. We can peek into each others’ homes, hear our kids screaming and dogs barking… so why not peer a bit deeper into what makes us think the way we do? There are just too many issues conflicting our world these days, and it helps to share some of our views and beliefs – when it is appropriate. While it’s wise to avoid politics (unless it’s plainly apparent you’re with like-minded people), it’s healthy to discuss how to manage people better, the culture in which we like to work, how to cope better with stress, how to get a better balance between work life, health and family life. It’s also healthy to discuss how to balance diversity issues in the workplace, ensure equal opportunities for candidates when we are hiring for roles, respect our planet more, and what we can do collectively as an organization to address sustainability issues. Because if we never share our values, we can never learn from each other, and we can never evolve with how we think and act. This also means we need to avoid public shaming of people for behaviors that some people may construe as racist or sexist. That only creates deeper divisions between people and does nothing to promote better attitudes.
Make peace with people you value. It’s so easy to fall out with people these days when tensions and stress levels are running high… but it’s also just as easy to smooth things over and get relationships in a better place. It’s also easy to reconnect with folks you’d fallen out with years ago and find new areas of common value – bury that hatchet! The modern business culture is so relationship-driven these days, so drop the ego and cultivate relationships with people who matter.
Move on from people who don’t appreciate you. And on the flip side, those people who just use you when they need something… aren’t you just sick and tired of the take, take, take, and never getting anything back? These people are already getting left behind, and you need to move on from them. It’s all about valuing each other, listening to each other, sharing ideas, and mutually helping each other out.
Take the higher ground. How many times do you get pulled into petty squabbles, and you suddenly realize “why am I bothering? This really isn’t important to me”. Always take a deep breath and think about your higher goals and consider whether you need to fight every battle and distract yourself from the war you need to win? This isn’t being “political”, it’s simply smart about how you handle yourself.
Don’t forget those who got you here. One of my most important rules is never to forget the helping hands you’ve had during your quest for greatness. People who supported you know what they did and really appreciate it when you recognize them for it. I have lost count of all the favors I have done for people over the years, but I do remember when someone mentions they appreciated it – even if it’s years later. However, those who just “take, take, take” get struck off my list pretty fast these days – who has time for the entitled liberty-takers who want whatever they can get when they ask for it?
HFS analyst Josh Matthews
It’s been quite the year hasn’t it, folks! I don’t know about you, but this has proven to be a voyage of self-discovery for me personally as we build businesses that can thrive in a world where it doesn’t matter where you are anymore, where the rules of the game are being re-written in a way we could never have imagined a year ago. 