'Services only ' future

,Over the last few years most of the world's new wealth is going only to the small portion of the population. Is this simply the capitalists plundering the country's resources or is there something deeper?

1. If you look at the the richest individuals and the richest industries making the most money, you will see a pattern.

Most of them are services based ,almost none from agriculture and very few from manufacturing.

2. If you look at the industries needing  government help in the form of trade subsidies protectionism and bailouts, most of them are again in manufacturing and Agriculture.

When did you hear about services industry needing bailouts?

3. If you look at the US, world's largest economy , it's almost entirely based on services, with less than 2% coming in from agriculture. Just to put this in perspective ,agriculture was majority in the US few decades ago.

What are the above facts telling us? The world is moving towards service based economies while both manufacturing and agriculture do not seem to generate much differential wealth.

What are the implications of this? A service based economy is very much skill and expertise based. It also expects stakeholders to be very agile in adopting to the changing world.

while technology is automating quite a few services ,it is still services that are building incremental wealth.

How do the populations and communities build skills to be ready for a  Services based world?

How do they plan their finances to be continuously reskilling themselves every once in a while?

How do they become self dependent instead of expecting government doles and entitlements? ( No government or a tax base can perennially fund a losing business forever!)

How do they learn the key skills and attitudes of pivoting ,reskilling, migration and adapting?

How do they celebrate risk taking, failures , innovation and continuous learning?

These are the questions that I feel, the leaders, politicians and parents need to find answers to.

Simpli fly

Changes in business and technology are not just disruptions anymore but continuous permutations!!   Coupled with the information overload, it's easy to get lost or get 'busy'!!!

Will getting busy this way make business sense? 

Mostly not. It is likely to cause distractions, money and time losses and poorer quality of life in general.

The right thing to do is to simplify. Choose very very few ideas and pursue them to be the best in class. 

For entrepreneurs and leaders, this will result in the following:

-  Expertise and IP that's hard to replicate and will give the true 'moat' to business 

- Quality revenue growth

- Better quality of life for the people involved since you are not chasing 1000 things to be busy all the time!!!

Good luck with that ' one in a million idea'!!!

Ideas to Unicorns

Everyday tons of ideas on generated ,copied ,experimented  and go through their own life cycle. 

Very few of them scale up, become big enough to make an impact, sustain themselves. 

Every Hype cycle idea creates hundreds of startups ,many of them wither and fall by the wayside.  Why is the mortality rate so high?

With no shortage of funding and societies' newfound respect for startups, shouldn't more of those be thriving? 

Ideas need passionate teams to commit, pivot, persevere and focus deeper. With sustained focus comes expertise, innovation , differentiation and business survivability. 

It's a long term game. Learn from Amazon!

Hype vs Value

We were promised flying cars and instead got social networks!!! - Peter Theil, venture capitalist 

Over the last four decades, labor productivity growth has been painfully slow - one of the reasons for stagnant wage growth in rich world.

How much of the innovation is touching bulk of the population? Mobile is enabling  millions get ' connected' and hence get benefited economically. At the same time, social networks are killing creativity, productivity at an equally alarming rate.

The winners of digital race are so few that many startups end up being ' hype pushers' rather than 'world changers'. 100s of them follow the same idea that makes you wonder if it's innovation at all!!

As each of us participate, work, invest in in these, it's critical to separate true value from hype.

Jerks and saints

Bulk of the world economies are now dominated by services. Manufacturing is perennially moving to cheaper countries and agriculture is getting automated.

Services are people intensive. You better be good with people first if you want to do well in services. The deliverables are intangible, methods of selecting and evaluating a services partner are fuzzy at best.

Its not enough to be an expert. Don't be a jerk. Most people choose their services partner based on their comfort and then justify that with rationality.

Relationships, working in cross cultural, virtual teams, handling conflicts, team wins are more critical than individual brilliance. 

Many a time, it is a popularity contest rather than a talent show!!!

Simple is beautiful

In the world of business agility, where speed overrides everything else given the short career spans of executives, shorter gaps between epic shocks etc, what's increasingly becoming critical is ' simplicity'.

Simpler solutions are easy to understand, implement, course correct, cheaper, less likely to fail( less complexity), less likely to be misunderstood....

Keep the solutions, projects, ideas simple. 

Anything else and you have already lost the plot, in the world of business agility.

Creator and the player

While there are number of reasons for an entrepreneur to go public, off late there are many who want to go back to private. Why?

Suddenly you are compared to your peers ( worst form of criticism!!!), crucified by analysts and investors who do not have as good understanding of the business as you do, your competitors determine what you do next quarter and the next and suddenly the vision and passion are overtaken by spreadsheets!

As they say, the 'suits' take over and mediocrity , short term thinking, playing to satisfy outsiders set in. Pursuit of ' good enough' is now the norm compared to the 'pursuit of excellence and best in class'. 

End game : A new leader and a new vision OR risk becoming a ' me-too'!

Jumping the hoops

As MOOC (massive open online courses) get popular and world gets more integrated thanks to internet, the traditional steps of learning process get blurred.

With global best practices and learnings become available much easier than ever, opportunities to jump the hoops covering multiple steps at once become available.

If the learning includes leveraging others ' experiences instead of academic approaches alone, you can learn two or three steps at a time and move ahead.

Let's take an example : suppose you want to open restaurant. In the traditional route, you may want to work in a restaurant and experience things first hand and then decide to start small. In the connected world, what if you are able to connect with other  restaurateurs and learn from their experiences as well?

You can jump multiple steps in your evolution as a restaurateur and start much ahead. 

Can you apply this to your area of interest?

Emotions in Business life

I have heard of a story ( apparently true) that a famous builder in Mumbai India hired an American as part of procurement which all of us are sure is an extremely critical function in a real estate firm.

This American then found a supplier from Pakistan who could export cement to India at a landing price that is half of the local produce!!!!

Can you imagine an Indian doing this? What gives? Emotion taking over in business decision making.

What an Indian would consider unpatriotic an American finds a simple clear business decision.

Leaving out the countries above, the point to glean is the aspect of emotion clouding or decision making.

Some times a fresh neutral perspective is most needed!!

Future proof skilling

Some shocking revelations first.

About 47% of employment in the US is likely to become extinct due to technology replacing them in the next decade or two. 

Over the last century, mostly three items' prices went up in real terms- housing , education and health care. Pretty much everything else had its prices come down in real terms.

Implications?

Skilling for the future is significantly impacted by the above. Most or at least half of what we do today will get automated. And if your skilling is in an area of declining prices, you are bound to face the heat sooner than later.

Is your skilling relevant to the three areas of increasing prices as listed above?

How flexible are you to reskill if your current one becomes extinct?

Most importantly, can you leverage the future's new opportunities as they appear instead of clinging onto the old and dying?

How 'Big Data' person are you?

Technology tries to mimic and automate human behaviour and those who get it right, succeed!

In a sense, the key attribute of 'Big Data' is key to success for you as a leader, human being, team player...

Big Data looks at disparate , unstructured data from multiple sources to identify patterns, deductions, conclusions or insights.

If you need to be successful, you need to do the same - connect data points from multiple sources/instances/events/contexts to bring together a perspective/insight that nobody has seen before. 

The more you master this to an art form, the more successful you would be , in any endeavour - a job, a business, an initiative/program or a project.

Go ahead and acquire/sharpen your 'Big Data' skills - not the technology but the underlying concept!

Value and Risk

Is your proposition addressing value or risk or both ?

In today's world of increasing uncertainity, regulatory compliance, failed deliveries on commitments, customers are bearing you on risk first and value later. 

Who or what among my options is the least risky? Can manage my risks best? Can manage my organisational risks best? 

These are top of mind compared to value and RoI for simple reason that no one faces a regulator, auditor , scrutiny for lower value/RoI delivered.

Is your risk proposition stronger than your value proposition?

100ft vs 50000ft

Is it possible for someone to have both these views? At 100ft and at 50000ft? 

You miss the details at 50000ft and you miss the big picture at 100ft. Both are needed for success.

How do you get both the views and get the balance ?

One way to do this is first get the hundred feet view and then check to see whether it meets all the objectives and requirements. You need to be objective and dispassionate to ensure 'proper' checking.

You can also do the 50,000 feet view and then get into details to make sure all the objectives and requirements are met.

The typical mistake people do is take one view and ASSUME that it meets the requirements of the other view. More often than not it doesn't and we end up finding it the hard way!

As one looks at taking bigger responsibilities , achieving this balance becomes more and more critical.

Initially you can request your friends or colleagues to help you get this balance so that over time you inculcate this habit.

 Remember! Plans that meet only one view's requirements are bound to FAIL!

Why successful people fail?

Why do people successful in one organisation fail in the next ?

What makes someone successful ? the individual or the system ? Or combination?

Organisations hire people for certain skills and strengths. But many a time it's the combination of skills from multiple people and ecosystem that makes a an individual successful.

People tend to have an exaggerated sense of self importance and a lower sense of ecosystem contribution to success. This is what makes them fail or underperform in other ecosystems.

That reverse also happens. 

Somebody who underperforms in an ecosystem may perform much better in another.

It is important to understand is dynamic before making deductions on one's critical success factors.

Advisory

Globally Service Economy is the biggest in most countries compared to manufacturing or agriculture.   If you are providing a service in the market place, one of the most effective ways to bring /retain customers is to a 'Trusted Advisor'.

Consulting companies have mastered this almost to an art form.  The basic principle is to offer unbiased expert advise ( not asking for anything in return) on client problems. Some of these problems may be known and some may be unknown.

A true consultant offers this advice to clients to help prevent/navigate/resolve the problems in an effective way. When this happens, client reposes their trust with the consultant in their times of crisis.

If you are in the service industry, how well are you regarded as a 'Trusted Advisor' to your clients who may or may not be hiring you?

Do they think of you as the 'go-to' person for advice/help in their times of need?

What would it take to build this skill and reputation as a 'Trusted Advisor?

Positivity and Perseverance

"When you are searching for honey , you must expect to be stung by bees!"

Honey is sweeter when it the path to get it is tougher and is ridden with obstacles.

Many careers and jobs need the two qualities in the title to become successful.

Whether you are trying to create a new product/offering to differentiate, whether you are trying to crack open a customer account , whether you are trying to find the right job that satisfies you, whether you are trying to reach any goal worth pursuing....

Most often you would come across surprises, failures, obstacles, rejections, criticisms and so on....

Easiest reaction is to get demotivated, blame yourself, personalise failure, blame it on the world, give up.....

Pretty much every successful actor got rejected for roles early. Many successful executives have been fired from their companies. Most artists have seen failures as often as they see the sunrise.

Examples: Steve jobs ( fired from Apple), Amitabh Bachchan ( rejected by All India Radio), Sports team captains ( crucified for every failure), Film actors who struggle so much for their first break....

How did they react to these?

The famous names we hear today have all dusted up, changed course, altered their ideas, tried something differently and fought another day.

'Positivity and perseverance'   - truly valuable traits!

Master of one ? Jack of all?

Should you be a jack of all of the master of one?

A successful enterprise needs both. But as usual , there are risks in both. 

Core skill means you are idle when the skill has no demand. Jack of all, means you don't command a premium. 

Core skill may also mean you operate in a silo and not a team player.

Jack of all makes you a potential entrepreneur. Core skill means you need to get ability to manage others to whom you outsource the rest.

What is a core skill today may become a commodity tomorrow that makes you not so valuable. 

Tough choice!!!

Customer, colleague ,vendor

The cycle of customers and Vendors is forever changing. With so much outsourcing around,a customer today could be a colleague or a vendor tomorrow and vice versa.

How best to leverage this cycle?

1. It pays to know how everyone operates be it a customer , colleague or vendor. This way when you change into another role tomorrow , you are not caught off-guard.

2. Network and work your network ! The roles could swap faster than you can imagine.

Rules for creators

If you are in the habit/business/ profession of creating, the following lines from 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand may be of help.

Disclaimer : please replace 'man' with person. The following were how Ayn wrote them in 1943.

You've gone beyond the probable and made us see the possible, but possible only through you. Because your figures are more devoid of contempt of humanity than any work I’ve ever seen. . . . I came for a simple, selfish reason . . . to seek the best.

Howard, I’m a parasite. I’ve been a parasite all my life . . . I have fed on you and all the men like you who lived before we were born. . . . if they hadn’t existed I wouldn’t have known how to put stone to stone. . . . I have taken that which was not mine and given nothing in return.

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”

“You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated”

“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.”

“It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.”

“Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?"
Yes."
My dear fellow, who will let you?"
That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

“Never ask people about your work.”

“I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.”

Hard + Smart

Great organizations, businesses are built by a few smart people and a lot of average hard working people. Ratan Tata once said that about Tata Motors.

Too many geniuses in the team and they can't work with each other or get any work done. Too many hard working people and their efforts may get wasted without direction.

Make sure you build a team which contains both in correct proportion.