innovation shifts to the human platform: are you ready?1 innovation shifts to the human platform:...

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David MoschellaBob BarkerLewis Richards

February 2018

Innovation Shifts to the Human Platform: Are You Ready?

Contents

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1. We can’t have a digital future without digital people

2. Traditional work/life boundaries are eroding

3. Digital innovation is now shifting to the ‘human platform’

4. As with Machine Intelligence, there is a high ‘creepiness’ factor

5. The Matrix sees and tracks the ‘virtual you’

7. Maintaining a strong foundation requires continual learning

8. Ongoing learning stems from a digital commitment and mindset

9. Work and consumer IT skills are increasingly the same

10. Career success is still the main motivator for changing habits

11. Confidence comes from embracing digital

12. Anxiety comes from resisting digital

13. A ‘digital mindstack’ approach to personal development

14. The social media mindstack: where do you want to play?

15. Are you becoming a 21st century human?

6. Thriving in this world requires a strong digital foundation

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This paper describes how innovation is shifting to ‘the human platform’, how the boundary between work and life is blurring, and how the digital infrastructure that we have labelled the Matrix supports and leverages these changes by seeing the entire ‘virtual you.’ While consumer services have long been the IT industry’s centre of gravity, technology is now being brought to bear directly on the human brain and body – with far-reaching implications for the 2020s and beyond.

We are already experiencing many of these changes on a daily basis, in issues such as the protection of privacy vs. new forms of advertising, real vs. fake news, location awareness vs. surveillance, business change vs. job security, or even individual choice vs. societal cohesion. All of these areas are shaped by our digital skills and learning, our habits and preferences, our information sources, and the digital mindset needed to maximize what’s possible for us as individuals over the coming years.

This need to improve digital learning and skills is now recognized by governments all around the world. For example, the UK Government emphasizes the need for everyone to have basic digital skills and access to the internet as the gateway to participating in the emerging digital society. But it also recognizes the importance of being nationally competitive in the digital skills for the future – software coding, data analytics, machine automation, and so on. Clearly, both societal know-how and national competitiveness require continual learning and upskilling.

Businesses today face the same challenges and opportunities for their customers as well as their employees. Consider how banks need to shift their consumers to online services before they can close more of their high street branches, or how Google’s Digital Garage programme offers skills training through pop-up courses both in large towns and online, with the goal of showing small businesses how to buy AdWords and set up websites. Just about every traditional company worries about its own digital skills.

But to repeat the analogy that our colleague Dave Aron used in his report Winning in the 21st Century (which was aimed at the organization itself): in terms of our careers, many of us have

sleep-walked into the 21st century, and have not systematically upgraded our digital capabilities. This is despite the fact that many things that companies used to do for us, or we had people do for us, or the state did, are now being digitally outsourced to us, as the modern economy becomes increasingly self-service and do-it-yourself in nature.

As Peter Drucker warned back in 2000: “For the first time, people will have to manage themselves, and society is totally unprepared for it.” We are – at least, until the widespread use of ubiquitous augmented reality (AR) – not biologically equipped to even see the ‘digital world’ that surrounds us, and so it is easy to underplay its role. But unless we actively explore how best to take advantage of 21st century digital capabilities, we will be working sub-optimally – often with direct consequences for our careers, and even our sense of our own possibilities and prospects.

We at LEF believe that for the majority of individuals, our 21st Century skills – most of which are digitally enabled – will be a key determinant of career success, and thus need to be taken seriously. As DXC CTO Dan Hushon put it in our recent 21st century human (21CH) podcast with Lewis Richards: “We owe it to ourselves and our families to invest the time needed to advance our careers. You have a personal responsibility to stay current.” After exploring many important 21CH concepts and challenges, this paper ends with a ten-question self-assessment that gives you a sense of how well you are doing.

“Many of us have sleep-walked into the 21st century, and have not systematically upgraded our digital capabilities.”

“For the first time, people will have to manage themselves, and society is totally unprepared for it.”

“We owe it to ourselves and our families to invest the time needed to advance our careers. You have a personal responsibility to stay current.”

Introduction

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Figure 1 – We can’t have a digital future without digital people

Whereas each major industry sector once relied on its own vertical ‘stack’ of processes, firms must now leverage powerful ‘horizontal’ capabilities that are used across many industries. At LEF we refer to this emerging set of digital services as ‘the Matrix’. It is changing how industries innovate, operate and compete, while altering the traditional boundaries between what happens inside vs. outside of an organization. As the telephone and electricity networks did in the 20th century, this ever-more capable digital ecosystem is becoming the underlying business infrastructure of our time. It will continue to transform many aspects of business and society.

Previous LEF reports have discussed the Matrix’s effect on industries, the organization and the Enterprise IT function1, but in this paper we are concerned with what the Matrix means to us as individuals. The way each of us innovates, operates and competes is also changing, while the distinctions between work and home, and leisure and learning, are eroding. As in the business world, fantastic opportunities – but also major disruptions – lie ahead.

We live in an increasingly competitive global economy, where work can be done almost anywhere, and where machine intelligence and automation are becoming ever-more capable. These profound changes are creating new possibilities, but also new anxieties. Maximizing the former while minimizing the latter is a good working definition of what it means to become a 21st century human.

We use the term with the full awareness that some readers might be put off by the implied assertion that ‘going digital’ is now an essential human requirement. This is far from the case. But we argue strongly that those who get on the upside of the technology adoption curve will, in general, fare much better than those who do not. The digital world we envision needs people who are sufficiently digital, both culturally and technically.

We also believe that firms cannot expect to build 21st century organizations without 21st century humans. Only someone who understands how digital markets operate, inside and outside the firm, and who is sufficiently skilled at working within them, is going to have the knowledge and insight needed to lead and effect real business change. This combination of individual learning with both personal and career growth is the main focus of this paper.

Why we need ‘digital humans’

21st century industries

21st centuryorganizations

21st centuryhumans

“Firms cannot expect to build 21st century organizations without 21st century humans.”

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LEF Proprietary and Confidential 2 July 2017

We can’t have a digital future without digital people

21st century humans

21st century industries

21st century

organizations

The Matrix

1. For example: Embracing ‘the Matrix’ and the Machine Intelligence Era (2016); Winning in the 21st Century: A User’s Guide (2017); Disrupting the Professions through Machine Intelligence (2017); The Renaissance of the IT Organization (2017)

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concept of being a 21st Century Human can be examined. Each of these lenses will form the basis of future LEF point-of-view papers.

There really is no longer a ‘company door’ where you can leave your personal opinions, and nowhere to hide. But as suggested by the famous quote in the figure from the US sitcom Seinfeld, some people are much more comfortable with these colliding worlds than others. Costanza’s approach is no longer realistic, but while social media has enabled a great many important innovations, the expectation that we will expose our full selves to everyone requires a major psychological and cultural shift, whose end effects are still far from clear. An eventual backlash is certainly possible, and what we have seen already is that private message volumes on platforms such as WhatsApp (WeChat in Asia), Facebook Messenger, Slack and the like have overtaken those on more public social platforms. This may simply be because people feel more in control and safer in a private group.

When people have access to more data about you, two imperatives emerge. First, the need to manage your personal brand online. We all know the value of being well dressed for work, down to the shoes you wear, the watch on your wrist and the bag you carry. Nowadays a good part of our brand is about how we show up online, but very many of us neglect it. I bet your ‘significant other’ hasn’t commented on how your latest profile picture looks, but would have told you to change that old/creased shirt you put on this morning.

The second imperative is to show some humanity online – for example, your hobbies and the causes and sports you are interested in. This enables people who look for you online to find social clues and (most importantly) builds trust at a human level. Millennials want to feel they are working for someone who is a real person with a real life.

Overall, the Matrix will drive even greater transparency. While we can try to maintain separate work and personal identities, our biometrics (or to use a better term, our ‘digital twin’) is the same whether we are in work, friends, family, consumer or citizenship mode. The Matrix can literally see the whole you.


Traditional work/life boundaries are eroding

21CH Work and

career

Consumption and production

Citizen and individual

Friends and family

“Anybody knows, ya gotta keep your worlds apart.” – George Costanza, on Seinfeld

Some people are much more comfortable with high

levels of personal transparency than others

Figure 2 – Traditional work/life boundaries are eroding

The figure above shows how the boundaries between working and living are blurring as these different worlds collide. Whereas personal computer and internet usage was once mostly personal, even anonymous, social media is putting much more of the full human on display.

For example, children can go to LinkedIn and review their parents’ entire careers, as well as the overall way they present themselves – once areas of great mystery. Similarly, in most workplaces there has long been an expectation that we should leave our politics at the company door. But, of course, on Twitter and Facebook, many citizens freely air their views on Brexit, Trump, terrorism and many other controversial topics. Should Facebook be used just for ‘friends and family’, or for work as well? Have you developed the skills to be able to spot and deal with ‘fake news’? Do you rely on the vendors (such as Facebook) to police the echo chambers they create, or do you have the skills to do this yourself? Do you take notice of the comments posted about your firm on the employee-rating site Glassdoor?

We use the four outer circles shown in the figure above as discrete ‘lenses’ through which the

“When people have access to more data about you, two imperatives emerge. First, the need to manage your personal brand online...second...to show some humanity online.”

“Anybody knows, ya gotta keep your worlds apart.” –

George Costanza, on Seinfeld

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Figure 3 – Digital innovation is now shifting to the ‘human platform’

While colliding worlds characterized the first phase of 21CH transformation, the next phase will be much more about data and technology. Over the course of the 2020s, it will become clear that the centre of digital innovation has shifted to the human platform.

Of course, digital technology will continue to get smaller and more powerful. Looking back, each generation of IT miniaturization – mainframes, PCs, smartphones – has created major new markets and possibilities, and increased the number of devices and data volumes we use by at least an order of magnitude. This pattern seems highly likely to repeat itself.

As shown in the figure, the Matrix will be used to augment both our brains and our bodies. Already today, deep learning, analytics and the internet of things are drawing insights from how we walk and talk, the rhythms of our breathing and heartbeats, the patterns of our thinking and emotions, and our unique faces, eyes and genetics, while enhancing our capabilities through wearables, implants and the nutrients we consume.

But these innovations are just the beginning. Digital technology will merge with healthcare, fitness, diet, medicine, genetics, entertainment, ageing and increasingly our five senses, greatly expanding the way we think about what humans can do.

In order to keep abreast of these innovations, individuals and firms alike need strong sensing functions, as LEF highlighted in both its 21st Century Organization and 21st Century Human models. In an organization, this sensing needs to be outsourced not just to the ‘innovation department’

but to every employee, since ideas for innovation in process, marketing and consumer use or for partnership for new opportunities could come from anywhere.

We have found that haptic experiences of new technology are the best way to not only understand but to think about them. LEF has been providing its Xlab (Xperience Lab) service for several years now and has helped many of its members (including GE, Raytheon and National Grid) to set up Xlabs of their own. The other key sensing mechanism we offer is the LEF Study Tour, which visits the new generation of suppliers as well as the established giants, to explore their plans for the future, including how they will develop the human platform.

“Haptic experiences of new technology are the best way to not only understand but to think about them.”

• Location

• Biometrics

• Faces

• Emotions

• Voices

• Senses

• Heartbeats

• Genetics

• Brain patterns

• Identities

• Wearables

• Implants

• Agents/bots

• VR/AR

• Health/diet

• Reputation

• Careers/skills

• Habits/mindset

Figure 4 – As with machine intelligence, there is a high ‘creepiness’ factor

• Would you want computers to recognize you based on your face, voice or gait?

• Would you take an fMRI brain scan to prove that you are telling the truth?

• Would you implant a chip in your hand to replace all of your keys?

• Would you wear a watch that identified any changes in your heartbeat patterns?

• Would you eat synthetic nutrients to either save time or increase performance?

• Would you let a deep learning system look at you and predict your life expectancy?

• Would you want to pay insurance prices based on your driving, diet, etc.?

• Would you use technology to greatly improve your memory, seeing or hearing?

• Do you really want to know all of your genetic tendencies and probabilities?

• Are you willing to let VR and robotics change your sex life?

Augmenting the body

Augmenting the brain

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While there are many exciting possibilities, many of us find some of the digital innovations listed in the previous figure as ‘creepy’ as we once found machine intelligence. What we broadly label as biohacking – implants, supplements, VR/AR, wearables, genetic manipulation, technology-to-brain interfaces, etc. – clearly makes many people uncomfortable. Yet most things on this list are well on their way to being consumerized:

• Facial recognition (in the new iPhone X)

• Implantable NFC and RFID chips (as provided by companies like Dangerous Things)

• Nootropics (smart drugs with cognitive enhancing capabilities like those from HVMN)

• Genetic testing and genomic manipulation (such as those from 23andMe and CRISPR kits from The Odin)

• Human brain/computer interfaces (under development from companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink)

You may find that creepy enough, but the others will be with us soon. Many of us aren’t ready for this level of machine intrusion.

Yet we often over-estimate society’s resistance to change. Consider that today, we routinely supplement our teeth with fillings, braces, crowns and implants; our eyes with glasses and contacts; and our hearing with electronics. We seek to improve our appearance through cosmetic surgery, Botox treatments, liposuction and tattoos, just as we try to enhance our performance through Adderall, HGH and other boosters. While some of these treatments work better – and are more socially accepted – than others, the evidence suggests that people will not only accept digital enhancements but will demand them, once they see the cost/benefit equation turn favourable.

When Google Glass came out there was such a backlash against the people wearing these geeky looking devices, with concerns about privacy and intrusion, that Google took them off the public market (does anyone remember the


expression ‘Glassholes’?) However, scarcely two years later, Snapchat introduced its Spectacles (a cool-looking pair of sunglasses with a basic video camera embedded within them to record video for the Snapchat service). Though Spectacles did not sell well for long, there was initially a crazy demand for them with no sign of a backlash or misgivings. This was partly due to their funky design but also showed societal acceptance of the technology. This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been awash with smaller, lighter Augmented Reality glasses and it is now assumed that this will be the natural evolution of the smartphone device.

An important driver of early adoption of VCRs, cable TV and the internet was pornography, and we are seeing this again in the growing market for sexbots. Another key area is biohacking, where we expect soldiers, athletes and celebrities, as well as the aging, infirm and disabled, to drive demand, as they will tend to reap the most direct benefits. Perhaps the biggest unanswered question is whether the youths of the future will embrace or resist the possibilities listed in Figure 4. Will they be perceived as cool or creepy?

One of the reasons that the term ‘the cloud’ feels increasingly archaic is that its underlying metaphor implies a technology environment that is ‘out there’ somewhere. Clouds are in the sky, and thus not directly connected to people down on earth.

“The evidence suggests that people will not only accept digital enhancements but will demand them, once they see the cost/benefit equation turn favourable.”

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Work andcareer

• Job/position

• Credentials

• Experience

• Skills

• Languages

• Postings

• Profiles

• Awards

• Connections

• Influence

• Reputation

• Endorsements

• Associations

• Communities …

• Your success

Consumptionand production

• Purchases

• Needs

• Ad views

• Sales

• Reviews

• Ratings

• Likes

• Postings

• Communities

• Connections

• Sharing

• Gigs

• Sentiments

• Used markets …

• Your commerce

Citizen andindividual

• Education

• Activities

• Hobbies

• Interests

• Orientation

• Causes

• Politics

• Beliefs

• Tastes

• Families

• Friends

• Emotions

• Attitudes

• Charities …

• Your interests

Identity andbiometrics

• Age/gender

• Height/weight

• Health

• Fitness/BMI

• Face/eyes

• Fingerprints

• Voice

• Gait/posture

• Hair/skin colour

• Sleep patterns

• Genetics

• Ancestry

• Implants

• Brain patterns …

• Your biology

Figure 5 – The Matrix sees and tracks the ‘virtual you’

But the reality is that we are constantly connected to the Matrix, and this steady flow of individual information is an essential source of its value, as shown by the vast range of personal data listed in the figure. Taken together, the four categories above provide a comprehensive picture of our individual activity, and suggest the wide range of the terms virtual you and quantified self. Indeed, the Matrix will know us and predict us much better than any organization – and in some ways, better than we know ourselves.

Of course, all of this personal data inevitably raises concerns about privacy, misuse and potentially coercive social control, and no doubt there will continue to be problems with unauthorized or abusive practices. However, similar ‘Big Brother’ worries have come with every stage of IT industry progress, and have not prevented innovative new uses. Thus although there will be heated debates in areas such as the right to forget and transborder data flows, as well as controversial new forms of marketing, we believe these issues will prove to be manageable, especially if customers can supplement today’s your-data-for-our-services business model with the increasing ability to control and monetize their own information.

New ideas are coming from groups that are against digital advertising and the giant gatekeepers (Google, Amazon, Facebook), and want a clean browser that strips the web back to basics – no ads, no trackers. They argue that in Google searches these days the first page is nearly all ads or perhaps plugs for Google services, and those ads eat up data and battery life. But the obvious question is how the platform providers who give all this free utility could make money without them. The founder of Brave Browser (which blocks ads and trackers) recently introduced the ‘basic attention token’ (BAT), a digital currency that, as the name implies, puts a value on attention. The idea is that Brave will automatically make micro-donations from your BAT ‘wallet’ based on the time you spend on given sites. No giant gatekeepers or intermediaries are involved, although it should be noted that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook has stated his intent to examine how blockchain technologies can be used to enhance how Facebook and humans will interact in the future. Like many other user-controlled access to data proposals, this sounds like an interesting idea; but for now the your-data-for-our-services business model still prevails. How these concepts mature and how individuals learn the skills to manipulate the ‘virtual you’ will be key to operating successfully in the near future.

“We are constantly connected to the Matrix, and this steady flow of individual information is an essential source of its value.”

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The figure above illustrates the shift from the 20th century, where digital usage was an extension of our lives and careers, to the 21st, where a digital foundation is much more central and affects many parts of our lives. We see evidence for this shift in three key areas:

• Productivity. The long period of flat productivity from 2008 was often blamed on the growth of things digital. It’s said that people have become addicted to email and social media, are losing the ability to focus on tasks and allow themselves to be constantly interrupted; or have become ‘data monkeys’ just filling in tedious online forms to keep the corporation happy. There have been many studies of time at work spent online, but one from Google recently suggests that office workers spend 28 percent of their week on email, 19 percent looking for information and 14 percent communicating and collaborating with others. Key questions for firms and 21st Century Humans are: Do you even know what your statistics look like? Do you track your effective use of systems? Do you quantify and measure your work efforts? Improvements could have a huge impact on productivity, but would require firms to take the trouble to properly train and show people how to manage their digital activities better, instead of just assuming people know.

• The growing skills gap. Three in four people lack both digital skills and the motivation to improve them, and often the organization lacks the culture to support them to change. These days, learning is frequently outsourced to a ‘learning management system’, online courses or MOOCs (98 percent of which, if you believe US author Seth Godin, are never completed). Most people don’t take learning seriously beyond the essentials of on-boarding/induction,

compliance, product knowledge, etc. In terms of growth and career learning, many have forgotten how to learn or can’t find the time to fit it in. Recognizing that life-long learning is part of your digital foundation and taking disciplined steps to make time for it are vital for career development. People who master modern technologies are often much more productive than those less skilled. It can be a huge career advantage as well as an economic advantage in terms of increased pay levels. (We say more about learning later.)

• Missed opportunities. As we said previously, a good sensing function in the organization is important, or new market and innovation opportunities will be missed. Also, if individuals or organizations do not have a good online presence, cannot be found or don’t appear to stand for anything, they will lose out on business opportunities when people are searching for expertise or checking out reputations online. And like it or not, our virtual/digital reputations are often at least as important as our physical-world reputations – for the simple reason that so many more people know us only through our virtual selves. This is why people feel the need to curate their LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Uber and other digital reputations, even though to many people, young and old, this is a source of stress and anxiety. Again, with proper training and coaching, one’s online reputation can be enhanced from the basic level of ‘looking dressed for work’ to that of a thought leader with a strong focus.

Figure 6 – Thriving in this world requires a strong digital foundation

Building and nurturing the ‘virtual you’

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“People who master modern technologies are often much more productive than those less skilled.”


• Continual learning

• Relevant skills

• Positive reputation

20th century human 21st century human

Life

Career

Digitalfoundation

Lifeand

career

Digitalsupport

99

Building and nurturing the ‘virtual you’

For better or worse, the virtual world increasingly expects us to serve as our own PR agents. It’s a fundamental psychological shift that many of us find uncomfortable, but it often determines who fully embraces and benefits from modern social platforms, and who does not. Today, each of us must decide how much we want to give and take from the digital world.

“Today, each of us must decide how much we want to give and take from the digital world.”


• DOS commands and files

• WP, spreadsheets, graphics

• Printers, peripherals

• Modems, datacom

• Back-up/recovery

• GUIs and browsers

• ISPs, broadband

• eCommerce, email

• Music and photo management

• Communities, wikis

• RSS, feeds, blogs

• Passwords/security …

• Mobility, apps, location

• Social media services

• Wi-Fi, Skype, Bluetooth

• Videos, podcasts, cameras

• Collaboration, APIs, IFTTT

• Data, privacy, analytics

• Biometrics, authentication

• IoT, wearables, implants

• Hacking, making, 3DP

• Virtual, augmented, 3D

• Brain, genetic patterns

• Agents, bots, avatars …

+

Figure 7 – Maintaining a strong foundation requires continual learning

The list at the left of the figure above shows just how much digital learning most of us have already done – we learned how to use all of these technologies as they emerged. People who excelled in these areas reaped significant rewards, especially in the workplace, where the level of such skills still varies widely.

But the list on the right makes it clear that today’s technologies are both much more powerful and much more personal in nature. Of course, many of these capabilities are still in their early stages, and thus are not essential for everyone to engage with today, but by the 2030 end-point shown, these – and many other capabilities not yet known – will surely be broad-based societal forces that will be prerequisites to interfacing with the world.

The best way to learn about new technologies has always been by direct experience, as opposed to classroom or book-based approaches. While there was once a significant industry ready to help us learn to use personal computers, it has all but vanished. Self-teaching and online assistance are now the norm, as supply-side innovations such as graphical interfaces and touch screens have made technology more intuitive and simpler to use.

But we shouldn’t kid ourselves; learning new technologies can still be difficult and time-consuming, with the benefits seldom immediate. We know there are many different learning styles as well as generational learning differences. For example, many older people learn best by being shown, because that’s the learning style they are used to – and because they grew up in a world where technology often failed and learning by trial and error was just too frustrating, wasting hours trying and failing to get something done. Millennials, on the other hand, have had the 10,000 hours of their education digitally enabled with laptops and smartphones. They are used to agile adoption, are not afraid that they will break things, and are willing to start again or find the next best thing and move on. The software industry hasn’t helped in the past by focusing on licence sales (to get numbers up so they look good to investors, meet targets set by head office or satisfy the large commissions of their salesmen), to the detriment of everything else including user experience and adoption or usage rates. This is slowly changing but it’s important now to understand what programmes and adoption approaches are available. The vendor has to offer support for its new technology, and as firms develop better sensing and skill capabilities, they need to demand better access to experts and training from vendors.

Because we now have so much technology and have already learnt so much (the left-hand list), many people feel they are ‘good enough’ and do not have a strong motivation to upgrade themselves on a regular basis. Often they are unaware of what is now possible or available. This is why personal belief and commitment are so important, as discussed next.

“Learning new technologies can still be difficult and time-consuming, with the benefits seldom immediate.”

Han

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lear

nin

g an

d e

xper

ien

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1980 – 2005 2005 – 2030

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In consulting with organizations all around the world, we’ve seen that attitudes toward new ways of working vary widely – from outright resistance to full-throated evangelism, as suggested by the two columns in the figure.

While it’s easy to say that people should embrace the views on the right-hand side and shun those on the left, we need to acknowledge that many highly successful people don’t do this. The reasons listed on the left for resisting digital ways of working shouldn’t be dismissed as inertia, laziness, stubbornness and/or short-sightedness. There’s much more to it than that.

Reasons for resistance fall into several camps. There is, of course, the fear of embarrassment, by showing ignorance or making mistakes. There is also a deep-rooted suspicion of social technologies: more introverted people often view much of what happens on social media as a form of boasting. These introverted people comprise a large share of the overall population, and they often have strengths that more extroverted people may lack. The leaders in personal computer and early internet adoption were often among them.

As discussed earlier, age can play a part. Many older and senior people, perhaps edging towards retirement, consciously or unconsciously calculate the risk and rewards of learning new skills, habits and interfaces. It’s valid for people to make a rational RoI case for sticking with the skills they have, but the problem is where 20th century people are leading the firm and have a huge influence against the adoption of new technology and the building of a 21st century organization.

One approach we recommend at Leading Edge Forum is our 21st Century Human Upgrade programme, which takes the form of immersive workshops combined with collaborative, online prompting and coaching (we currently use Workplace by Facebook for this purpose). The immersive nature of our 21CH workshops, with hands-on haptic sensing of consumer technology as well as facilitation from enthusiastic experts and peer-level insights, helps demonstrate the reasons and drive the motivation to upgrade one’s skills. The physical workshops have a gap of several weeks between them so that tasks can be completed, group work carried out and habits formed. There is also the option of one-to-one coaching, which will achieve the best results. This is often initially dismissed as overkill, but if these skills are going to lift the productivity of the firm, build the career of the individual, improve the speed of communications, even improve the resilience and energy of the individual, isn’t it worth considering?

In the end it comes down to the individual making what we call ‘the digital decision’ to take personal responsibility and make the time to build their 21st century human skills. But habits are hard to change, so the next section provides some tips for overcoming the barriers.

Figure 8 – Ongoing learning stems from a digital commitment and mindset

Resisting digital

• I don’t have time

• It’s not my job

• I’m a technophobe

• This stuff doesn’t matter

• I’ll just embarrass myself

• It’s for the young

• I prefer traditional media

• I’m not a self-promoter

• I like my privacy

• I’m retiring soon

Embracing digital

• Technology is important to my future

• I make time to learn new digital skills

• My online brand is as important as offline

• It’s important that I stay informed

• I am what I share, on and offline

• I have a learning and growth mindset

• The more I network, the better I do

• I learn by doing

• I see myself as a digital leader

• I embrace our increasingly digital world

“It comes down to the individual making what we call ‘the digital decision’ to take personal responsibility and make the time to build their 21st century human skills.”

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Figure 9 – Career success is still the main motivator for changing habits

We’ve seen that the strongest motivation to go digital is usually career success, although many valuable skills tend to be learned first in the consumer market. We believe that the lack of digital skills will increasingly render many people hard to employ, while those with strong and double-deep skills will be much easier to promote.

But even though many people acknowledge this overall reality, they can still find it hard to change entrenched habits – it’s 80 percent psychology and 20 percent technology. The best example is email: while one can debate whether so many initiatives using software to build internal collaboration fail because of shortcomings of the software or of human learning, there’s no doubt that changing people’s electronic messaging habits is hard.

In his article Ten Ways to Get People to Change (Harvard Business Review, 21 September 2012), Professor Morten Hansen of University of California, Berkeley and INSEAD recommended ten steps that organizations can take to get people to change their ways. We have adapted this list to our 21st century digital purposes, as shown in Figure 9.

The actions are a roughly equal mix of personal tips, social/peer pressure and performance evaluations. Of these, social/peer effects are often the strongest, as most people don’t want to feel left out. While performance reviews and

hiring/firing practices obviously matter, these decisions tend to be driven primarily by whether someone is meeting their core work objectives. But when strong social pressure and real career impact are both in place, we become much more willing to change.

Support is also essential. Sources of support include the company tech help desk for technical assistance or advice; a digital-savvy person in your team; your digital-savvy friends (try asking about people’s favourite apps to get a conversation going at a social gathering); and – of course – younger people who are adept at many of the social and visual aspects of digital skills. Learning from people who are already getting the results seems an obvious route!

Finally, seek inspirational content. For example (and as a shameless plug), in LEF’s 21CH podcast each month, we interview interesting digital leaders, to help inspire our clients and indeed ourselves with the many ways people use technology to run and enhance their work and social lives.

“When strong social pressure and real career impact are both in place, we become much more willing to change.”

2. Make goals as specific as possible

3. Tell stories; use vivid images

4. Leverage peer pressure

5. Reward early adopters

6. Use nudging to make change easier

7. Identify barriers and old triggers

8. Become a teacher and/or coach

9. Include change in performance reviews

10. Include change in hiring/firing decisions

Steps adapted from Morton Hansen

1. Focus on one change at a time

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Consumer markets are now the target of most IT industry innovation. LEF coined the term consumerization back in 2004 when it saw this trend emerging. Figure 10 shows how consumerization clearly has important implications for individual learning and skills.

We saw this first with the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement. Most people much prefer to use their own PCs and smartphones at work rather than a company-provided device or having to carry both. Indeed, for many years, we have argued that we should really be talking about BYOT, with the ‘T’ standing for Technology, so that not just devices but technology services such as Google Docs, Dropbox, public Wi-Fi, Facebook, Twitter and apps are included in what you can use at work as well as home. People naturally prefer to use the technologies they are most comfortable with.

These BYOT dynamics will only strengthen in the coming years. Consider the way smartphones now have recognition and authentication capabilities that far exceed traditional company token/password and other two-factor security solutions. The same will be true for speech recognition, video conferencing and many other areas. Enterprises will increasingly want to leverage these employee-controlled capabilities.

Also important in this area is the core ecosystem individuals use to organize their lives, increase productivity, share and collaborate. For example, the ever-closer integration and usability of Microsoft’s Office 365 (now incorporated into the integrated solution Microsoft 365) is particularly impressive in applications such as Teams, which combines many functions into one and performs well in a multi-device environment. Google has not been standing still either, and is leading the charge of natural language processing interfaces with its apps. Apple is still the hardware/software/cloud infrastructure chosen by many for its speed, integration of environment and of course aspirational brand, but Microsoft’s Surface technology is slowly gaining ground as the combination of its hardware and Microsoft 365 begin to deliver productivity advantages.

With so many choices available, at LEF we emphasize the meta-skills (overarching capability or skill) being learned because so many technologies do the same thing (for example, Skype, WebEx, GoToMeeting, Google Hangouts and BlueJeans). The need to switch products should not hold back change to a new platform since the meta-skills of access, configuration, sharing screens, messaging, adding new people, etc. are the same on each platform. It’s much more about mindset than technology or software.

All of this supports our overall view that those individuals who use technology actively in their personal lives will have substantial workplace advantages, as they will have the skills and confidence with which to adapt to changing work requirements. The rest of this paper discusses this further.

Figure 10 – Work and consumer IT skills are increasingly the same


Work and consumer IT skills are increasingly the same

Consumer IT skills and

usage

Work IT skills and

usage

•  Email •  Mobile •  Apps/maps •  Devices •  Photos •  Videos •  Facebook •  Twitter •  Skype •  Box ...

New individual

skills and

behaviours tend

to be developed

in the consumer

market first, then

spread to the

workplace

BYOT

Work/life


12

“Individuals who use technology actively in their personal lives will have substantial workplace advantages.”

New individual skills and behaviours tend to be developed in the consumer market

first, then spread to the workplace

13


Figure 11 – Confidence comes from embracing digital LEF Proprietary and Confidential 12 July 2017

Confidence comes from embracing digital

•  Equipped •  Skilled •  Up-to-date

•  Known •  In demand •  Purposeful

•  Informed •  Current •  Focused

•  Fast •  Capable •  At your best

•  Open •  Social •  Connected

•  Admired •  Followed •  Promotable

Vitality, Balance, Growth mindset

The benefits of being a ‘digital human’

Most people want to bring their optimal self to their work, but what does this mean in a 21st century, digital context? In recent years, we have used the figure above (the LEF 21CH capability model) to provide a framework with which individuals and their organizations can both assess their overall state of digital readiness:

• Tools. Do you have access to a modern set of hardware, software and online services? This doesn’t mean always having the latest gadgets, but it does mean using the systems and services that are and will be mainstream. And are you using the full capabilities of the tools you already have?

• Productivity. Are you seen as someone who uses technology to do things faster and/or better than average?

• Collaboration. Do you use technology to work effectively with people inside and outside your organization? Are you seen as connected to the right communities?

• Information. Do you use technology effectively to keep abreast of your field and manage the challenges of information overload?

• Brand. Do you have a positive online image – at work or more broadly?

• Leadership. Are you seen as a digital role model, a good example for others?

In the centre of the model is your lifestyle and wellbeing, which of course can affect the performance in all other areas. Here we include mindfulness, quantified self, DNA, sleep patterns and overall fitness tracking. Studies have shown that ill health costs firms the equivalent of 2 percent of turnover a year, so making sure this area is part of a 21st century skill set is important to both the individual and the firm.

If your answers to these questions are mostly ‘Yes’, you are well positioned for the digital future, and will tend to have the confidence needed to explore emerging 21CH possibilities. However, in our experience many overestimate their skills, partly because they ‘don’t know what they don’t know’. Our full 21CH capability model lists 42 different skills and we use it as a pre-assessment ‘digital 360o’ to begin to educate participants about what is possible in each area.

Much like the ‘1 percent’ tiny improvements that are sought in sports performance, so small improvements in 21CH and digital skills are valuable. Learning new recipes for daisy-chaining technology together (for example, using IFTTT or Microsoft Flow) and general tips can always increase our capacity to claw back precious time.

“Ill health costs firms the equivalent of 2 percent of turnover a year, so making sure this area is part of a 21st century skill set is important.”

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While the advice on the previous page may seem like common sense, and even obvious, the reality is that many people do not fare well on such assessments. We all know colleagues who seem:

• Under-powered. They use older, obsolete technologies, or (more commonly) have modern tools but really don’t know how to use them effectively.

• Maxed out. They always seem overwhelmed by their workloads, are overly dependent upon others, or become some sort of bottleneck.

• Resistant. Rather than leading change, these folks instinctively resist new ways of working, either actively or passively.

• Closed. For political, psychological or other reasons, they find sharing and transparency difficult, preferring to work mostly in their own heads.

• Out of touch. They don’t seem to know enough about important developments, either inside or outside the organization.

• Aloof. They shy away from public forums and are, fairly or unfairly, often seen as detached, and not sufficiently passionate about their work.

Taken together, these dynamics can lead to a high state of anxiety that blocks learning and change, with consequences that tend to escalate over time. In the worst cases, they will even affect the central ‘lifestyle and wellbeing’ section of the diagram, causing worry, stress, low energy and sleepless nights. Unfortunately, many individuals are still at this end of the 21CH spectrum, including many who are otherwise highly productive.

This is why linking digital skills to career planning underscores their importance. And away from work, not having these skills will make you less socially connected, more difficult to get hold of, less able to integrate into society – and at the very least, you will end up paying more for goods and services. People often just need to be shown, in a helpful, non-threatening way, how they would benefit from better digital skills.

The number and scope of the aspects of our lives affected by digital indicates that ‘a digital coaching’ approach may be the best way to support a reluctant participant. It involves making them accountable to a digital coach and using the coaching process to create habits and learn skills.

But first we need to understand something of the digital psychology associated with personal development.

Figure 12 – Anxiety comes from digital resistance LEF Proprietary and Confidential 13 July 2017

Anxiety comes from digital resistance

•  Unprepared •  Under-powered •  Uncomfortable

•  Not visible •  Not passionate •  Aloof

•  Not aware •  Not current •  Not learning

•  Slow •  Dependent •  Maxed out

•  Closed •  Out of loop •  Not sharing

•  Set in ways •  Barrier to change •  Behind the curve

Poor health, Stress, Fixed

mindset


“Linking digital skills to career planning underscores their importance.”

14

15


Figure 13 – A ‘digital mindstack’ approach to personal development

While these 21st century challenges can be addressed by focusing directly on the areas shown in the previous two figures, more psychological approaches can also be useful. Layered models such as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) are sometimes controversial, but they can help us see the digital skills challenge more deeply by factoring in rising levels of personal meaning.

NLP encourages us to think in terms of rising levels of personal meaning, and the power of applying this hierarchical approach to individual learning and development. While the figure above is largely self-explanatory, it can be viewed in two main parts:

• The lower three levels – environment, skills and behaviour – define your digital situation as an outsider might see it: is this person equipped, capable and behaving in a way consistent with modern digital norms? We highlight ‘skills’ in the figure because without them the higher levels are all but impossible.

• The upper three levels are more about what is going on inside your own head: what is driving me – enthusiasm, obligation, fear? Is the way I work consistent with the way I see myself? What are my real goals and priorities in work and life, and how important is technology to them?

While there are no right and wrong answers, and clearly different people will play at very different

levels, layered psychological approaches can lead to more fundamental changes than traditional coaching and training, at least for those willing to question themselves in such deeply personal ways. Not everyone is.

From our analysis of the several thousand people who have been through our programmes and taken our 21CH assessment, the area people most want to master is that of personal brand and purpose – and identity is covered by the lower three and purpose by the top three levels in the figure. It is said that “the internet forces you to define yourself”, meaning that when you go online you need to decide how you are going to define yourself, what you stand for and what your expertise is. Within our 21CH workshops, people work in pairs on these issues to create a more cause- or passion-driven and human-focused definition of themselves.

For a deeper look into the upper levels, using a life coaching programme can be inspirational, with the object of moving from making a living to designing a life. Digital can then support the goals and direction you define for yourself and help you achieve those goals through linkages to time management and focus.

“The internet forces you to define yourself.”

What level do you want to play at?

Is technology important to achieving your life’s goals?

Is technology changing how you see/assess yourself?

What motivates you? Where are your comfort zones?

Is your online style, appearance and etiquette effective?

Do you have the know-how and capabilities you need?

Do you have the right IT tools, services and spaces?

This six-layer stack is adapted from the work of Robert Dilts

Your purpose and meaning

Your sense of self

Your personality and beliefs

Your behaviour

Your skills and confidence

Your environment

16

In the figure above, we apply the layered thinking to our individual social media strategies, as this remains an area of sharply different attitudes and behaviour. As before, the lowest three levels are all about resources, skills and behaviour: have we signed up for the mainstream social media services? Can we use them with confidence? Do we understand the etiquette in terms of how we appear, how we share, and when we engage? These skills are useful to just about everyone – some call this social business.

The upper three levels are much more about content, meaning and purpose: what, if anything, do we want to say – either in our own name, or under an alias? Are we trying to influence people toward a particular purpose, or are we just trying to get our own name and/or thoughts out there? Do we see ourselves as leaders in some area or cause? Why are we spending time using social media in the first place? These areas are much more personal and discretionary in nature.

As shown above, the numbers shrink rapidly as we go up the stack. Billions of people have access to modern social media, and many millions regularly engage, but the number of true leaders is far smaller. While we can certainly debate what

leadership means in a world where celebrity and controversy are often richly rewarded, the key question of the model still holds: where do we want to play, and why?

If we do want to play in the upper half of the stack, we are going to need help. This is where social media has really become what its name suggests. Traditionally ‘the media’ was managed or promoted in some way. In the old days of marketing and PR, certain people would be chosen by the organization to be the spokespeople, given press training, have articles written for them, and meetings with journalists and platform engagements arranged and managed. Today, ‘the media’ covers multiple channels including social media, but otherwise things are just the same.

If you have a cause, and (assuming it’s not an outside interest) the drive behind it and the buy-in from the organization to permit you to speak, you then need the help of marketing and PR to help you organize, design and amplify your message. For example, what platform are you publishing on? The company blog, LinkedIn, Medium, Facebook, your own site – the choices are endless, but they all need resource and design. Then how are you going to keep up with your readers’ expectations of regular

Figure 14 – The social media mindstack: Where do you want to play?


Thousands

Millions

Billions

Lead,create

lnfluence, motivate

Publish, contribute

Appear, listen, share, engage

Know-how, skills, experience, etiquette

Devices, software, bandwidth, applications

Purpose-centric

Behaviour-centric

16

17


updates? For this there is the discipline of the editorial calendar, where you and marketing/PR agree content topics for a weekly/monthly/quarterly publication schedule. At a minimum, they should be able to help with editing your material, and perhaps arrange for some of it to be ghost-written. New digital options include sending an audio file of you recording your message to marketing for production.

How about amplifying your message in a pay-to-play world? When social media really took off in 2007/8 it was easy to build a following and spread your message as there were fewer people playing and less drive for revenue on the big platforms. Now, without some budget behind promoting your content, your quest to get your message to the world will be slower than you think.

For most, being in the social business category at the bottom of the stack is enough. For those who want to operate in the upper levels, success will depend on the industry you are in, your attitude to openness, your job role and who else in the organization is playing. But be aware that some individuals in the firm do need to play in the upper levels, because on social media no one wants to talk to a brand – they want to talk/engage with a human.

“On social media no one wants to talk to a brand – they want to talk/engage

with a human.”

17

18

The ten questions opposite pull together the key themes and recommendations of this paper, while providing an objective measurement tool.

Although subjective individual assessments are always interesting, the true power of such exercises comes when they are done at a group- or organization-wide level. Aggregate measures across the organization will go a long way toward defining a company or departmental culture, while revealing differences between individuals. The most interesting results often come when an individual’s self-assessment is significantly at odds with how others see them.

People naturally ask: What’s a good score? While, of course, higher is generally better, what constitutes a good score will vary with the surveyed community. More information-intensive groups and businesses should have higher scores than those engaged in more physical, prescriptive or face-to-face work, and what constitutes being digitally savvy varies widely across organizations and industries.

So rather than focus on the aggregate scores, we like to stress that the main goal should be to get an honest and shared consensus about the digital

culture in your organization or group, so that if improvements are needed, there is objective guidance in terms of key areas and priorities. That said, if you are giving yourself consistently low marks, and you are in an information-driven business, you might want to consider some serious changes. 21st Century Humans need to think about how their careers might play out over ten to twenty years, as the human platform era has only just begun.

18

Are you becoming a 21st century human?


“The main goal should be to get an honest and shared consensus about the digital culture in your organization.”

Figure 15 – Becoming a 21st century human: how well are you doing?

I am committed to having the technological know-how needed for my work

Technology is part of my lifestyle and I leverage this experience at work

I am a visible advocate for adopting new technology approaches

I use new information sources effectively to keep abreast of my field

I take my online brand and image seriously

I consider myself to be teachable, and open to different thinking and ideas

I believe in being transparent about my work, activities and results

I seek to be physically and digitally fit, and operate at my peak performance

I am open to wearing or embedding technology to enhance my capabilities

If a machine can do something better than me, I would embrace this progress

Stronglydisagree

1

Strongly agree

10


19

1

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