![\"\"](\"\/storage\/app\/uploads\/public\/57b\/730\/e29\/57b730e292b06951613141.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
As someone who has profited very nicely from social media (I helped build an analyst company with blogging and social at the heart of our culture), I am probably not the most appropriate person to speak out against the negative side of social media\u2019s impact.\u00a0 But, as Gerald Ronson once famously espoused to the editor of the Guardian newspaper, \u201cOpinions are like arseholes, everyone has one\u201d, I just can\u2019t help myself, so I\u2019ll give you mine\u2026<\/p>\n
2008 was a financial disaster fueled by greedy bankers; 2016 a political disaster fueled by social media wankers.<\/strong>\u00a0 Opinions on politics.\u00a0 My god \u2013 back in the day, people pretty much kept quiet on their views until they had some facts<\/em> to back them up.\u00a0 Today, they just have a bloody opinion and want to get it out there, regardless of whether they can justify it or not. When they get into an argument, they just try and shout louder, rather than listening to reason.\u00a0 David Cameron has been guilty of one of the biggest political snafus of modern times, where he went to the public with a complex decision to be made. \u00a0\u00a0Instead, all he succeeded in doing was allowing every opinionated idiot with a twitter account to air his or her views on society at large, until the vote become one about him and the establishment <\/em>and not whether Britain should remain in the EU. (And you wonder why Hitler loved referenda\u2026)<\/p>\n All social media has achieved is providing a platform for people to spout off unsubstantiated rubbish, as opposed to a collaborative opportunity for them to learn more about what\u2019s truly going on in the world.\u00a0 Then we advance to the lovely US media and the most insufferable election in history, where reality got somehow lost in a maelstrom of hype, tweets and many unsubstantiated facts that really dumb people actually believe<\/em>.\u00a0 All I can say is that I cannot wait for the election to be over so we can actually get back to some normalcy of running a country again.<\/p>\n The tech and services industry has complete lost itself in the socially-driven hype. <\/strong>So let\u2019s reflect on what happened to our industry over the last couple of years.\u00a0 For a while, social media was fun \u2013 we could debate the trials and tribulations of real <\/em>services and real technology and how to improve <\/em>ourselves.\u00a0 Suddenly, the facts have got lost somewhere are we\u2019ve arrived at this dark place where it\u2019s more about who\u2019s making the loudest noise than who\u2019s talking the most sense. \u00a0Every supplier of tech and services talks up \u201cDigital\u201d but never defines it \u2013 with few to no clients to reference their capabilities.\u00a0 They talk \u201cautomation\u201d with little clue how to do it, with (again) no clients as reference points. Myself and my team have sat through hours and hours of deathly dull briefings where we\u2019ve actually had analysts bemoaning the fact that the providers failed to brief them on the subject at hand.\u00a0 It\u2019s really that <\/em>bad.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Bottom-line:\u00a0 It\u2019s time to find our way (somehow) back to reality<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s be brutally honest – we\u2019ve all lost the plot. \u00a0Why are tech and service providers so obsessed with sounding the best as opposed to proving<\/em> they\u2019re the best?\u00a0 Why do so many analysts and consultants just parrot each other, as opposed to having real opinions and real substantiated viewpoints?\u00a0 Why have so many enterprise buyers buried their heads under the bedcovers, scared to come out until someone dared to explain to them what this new bullxxxt was all about?<\/p>\n It\u2019s time to make things real again\u2026 we owe it to ourselves and our clients to talk about how buyers\/end-users adopt these emerging solutions – what are they doing, which processes are being impacted, what outcomes are being achieved. We need to focus on real industry dynamics to learn why is digital so relevant to retail; omni-channel to travel; block chain to banking; cognitive to healthcare etc. We need truly to understand and articulate how today’s workforce grasps these emerging concepts and drives them in practice – how can experienced professionals reorient their capabilities, and the younger generation be embraced into the workforce? What are the career progression plans in these areas?\u00a0 While technologies advance, how are staff advancing (or failing to advance) with them?<\/p>\n Unless we really dig deep to stop using our social foghorns to spout the loudest and start focusing on being the more real, we are truly doomed to a future of increased stupidity, naivet\u00e9 and confusion.\u00a0 It\u2019s time we all broke form these habits and refocused on what is really happening in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As someone who has profited very nicely from social media (I helped build an analyst company with blogging and social…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,80],"tags":[303],"organization":[],"ppma_author":[19],"class_list":["post-2043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hfsresearch-com-homepage","category-hr-strategy","tag-enterprise-irregulars"],"yoast_head":"\n