Hello,
And so, we’re into autumn,
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
As our old friend Keats put it.
I found out recently that Keats wrote his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ in the garden of one of our local pubs, The Spaniard’s Inn. So I looked to see if I had written anything while I’ve been there and my only opus was this text I sent while having lunch:
At Spaniards for Sunday roast - disappointing. Very dry
Which I could maybe work into a haiku, but it won’t trouble the greats.
Yet the mellifluous arrival of autumn does at least beget the sharing of my favourite meme:
I had to make a last-minute trip over the weekend, hence the lovely surprise of a hi, tech. in your inbox on a Monday.
This week’s big story took a fair old bit of research, as you’ll see, and I thought it best to finish this one properly before sending it out. 🤓
I’m talking to some people about taking these ideas forward, potentially as a new business in future. Let me know if you’d like to discuss any of the points in the essay - my ideas are not quite fully-formed, but I think the questions are worth asking.
🚨 Exciting news!
I'm teaching a two-week sprint on customer-centricity and growth marketing!
It starts on October 3rd, it's got fantastic content from Harvard Business Review and many others, 3 live webinars with this guy (I'm pointing at myself), plus you get 3-months access to Emeritus Insights and an annual subscription to The Wall Street Journal.
All for…
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Yep, that's the discounted rate if you use the link right there 👇👇👇
Hopefully see you there!
“The party is over”: How Meta and Google are using recession fears to clean house
They’re even cutting back on the in-house laundry service!
I’d have said Meta could save more money by firing everyone involved in its early metaverse efforts, but that’s why they earn the big bucks and I write a sarcastic newsletter.
On that note, Meta is now partnering with Qualcomm to create specialised chips for “premium metaverse experiences”.
The biggest news and trailers from Netflix’s Tudum event
And the WSJ has some news on Netflix’s upcoming advertising services:
The options Netflix is offering include targeting people that are watching Netflix’s top 10 shows in the U.S.; allowing brands to target people that are watching a specific genre of show such as comedy or drama; or the ability to target ads to a specific country, they said.
I won’t say I’m disappointed by this, but I’m certainly not appointed by it either. It all sounds very basic and given that Netflix is demanding advertisers sign up for 12-month slots at a premium price (CPM is about $80), you’d certainly hope for rapid improvements in those targeting options.
Albertsons details how it’s connecting online and offline shopping - Grocery Dive
This is a handy, practical example of what it takes to go “omnichannel” for a retailer.
Drizly launches new ad network to lure alcohol brands
Drizly (owned by Uber, of course) has launched its own ad network. Expect lots more companies to do something similar in the coming 12 months.
Does the Metaverse need to be on a blockchain? - Cointelegraph
This is a thoughtful assessment of the metaverse from a crypto-loving website. In essence, for the metaverse to be something genuinly new and different (not just The Sims), they reckon the blockchain is the key.
La Liga football signs Decentraland metaverse deal
The Spanish league will “host” viewing parties in Decentraland. Nobody watches games in Decentraland, but I’d probably be making bets like this if I were in charge of La Liga. They are so far behind the English Premier League’s annual revenues that it makes some sense to try this, just in case it ever does take off.
Artifical Intelligence allows me to get straight A's - Reddit
This is a brilliant discussion on Reddit, stimulated by a student (or is it simulated by an AI?) suggesting they can ace their classes using automated writing assistants.
In the dusty old days of the 3rd century BC, at Ptolemy’s university in Alexandria, Euclid is teaching a class.
The great Greek geometrist is working through his Elements with a group of impatient beginners. Euclid teaches the very first proposition in the lengthy list that stretches to 13 books of detailed material:
Proposition 1: To construct an equilateral triangle on a given finite straight line.
One restive upstart in the class raises his hand:
“Now that I have learned that, what is my profit?”
Euclid scratches his beard (probably) and gestures to a servant, before demanding in clear irritation:
“Give him threepence, for he must always make a profit of what he learns.”
Our desire to draw a straight line from ‘learning’ to ‘earning’ is nothing new.
Euclid knew it, and he was on more than nodding terms with the merits of a straight line.
Yet he understood that the acquisition and application of knowledge are rarely linear.
His Elements of Geometry is a pedagogical masterclass that starts with the dot, then the line, then layers on more complex concepts. It is meant to be read in sequence, with each proof building on those that preceded it. Students of the Elements - and there are still many of them - may later use this knowledge profitably, but that is their own concern. First, they must master the eternally true propositions of geometry.
With that in mind, I would like to turn our attention to our modern-day skills training in business. It is taken as true that we are experiencing as “global digital skills gap”, and that it only widens as technology advances and we stand still.
The list of problems in the modern British economy could easily fill 13 books, but the first proposition should really run as follows:
The argument that “workers are lazy” or “too busy watching Netflix” (genuine arguments the UK government has used) hold up to little scrutiny.
As the FT reports:
”A better explanation for poor UK productivity is the lack of investment in new equipment and technology to help people do their jobs more efficiently.”
What’s more:
77% of workers have experienced burnout - Deloitte
We need fresh thinking.
And I’d like to start with an emerging consensus in the neuroscience world:
Thinking creates reality.
“The brain is evolution’s solution to the twin problems of limited data and limited computation.” - Samuel Gershman, Harvard University
When we observe and compute external phenomena, we make calculations and judgements instantaneously. These “controlled hallucinations” are what we predict to be real, and we believe these mental models because the alternative would get us nowhere.
In essence, we fudge our way through as best we can. The more data we have at our disposal, the more effective the fudge.
Expressed otherwise: the more sophisticated the mind, the more sophisticated the reality.
My job is, in a manner of speaking, to connect the academic world to the business world. I say “in a manner of speaking” because it's not my job description. It's certainly in no contract I’ve ever signed and the very notion would shock my clients.
But if the mind constructs reality then that’s what mine constructs. 🤔
So how would we apply this to help everyday workers develop digital skills?
Beyond simply (albeit importantly) upgrading our technological infrastructure to make work faster, we need new approaches to training.
Otherwise, that gap between
what technology can do
and
what people can do with technology
will keep growing.
We love to categorise and we’ve created these two to add to the pile:
divergent thinkers and convergent thinkers.
A convergent thinker sees a brick and thinks it could be used to build a wall. They are more likely to view the world in binary, black-or-white terms, and they deal well with standardised testing.
A divergent thinker sees a brick and knows it could be ground down, or it could be a weapon, or a weight, or any number of other things. They see the grey areas and they know how to reframe a problem before deciding on a solution.
Needless to say, these are not mutually exclusive categories.
You or I could switch between these modes of thinking based on a situation’s unique requirements. Sometimes, I do just need a brick to build a wall. I don’t do manual labour, but you get the hypothetical idea.
Students today are typically convergent thinkers. They leave university adrift, with case studies their buoys in the corporate sea, templates for lighthouses.
This can be beneficial: employees need to know how to use specific tools and software packages as a basic requirement. Training through repetition is essential, everywhere from the army to sport teams and even IT departments. The education system sets us up to receive this training and the “profits” of any learning are immediately evident, where they exist.
However, as software automates more of the everyday workflow, businesses essentially cede control to the software programmers. Moreover, the tech companies are all-too-ready to provide their own “training”, with accompanying certifications for pliant attendees.
By outsourcing these responsiblities, companies diminish the creative capabilities of their staff. These are the very capabilities we say we’ll need in an age of automation.
There is a phenomenon known as the “automation paradox”, which I have written about a few times before, I know. It states that technology coddles us to such an extent that we cannot really make mistakes. Yet when something truly challenging does arise, we are even less equipped to deal with the scenario.
A famous example comes from the world of air travel. Autopilot manages most of the flying, but there are novel (often very dangerous) situations that it cannot handle. At these points, the technology hands back over to the human pilot, who is now less experienced due to his or her dependence on the software. This has led to a few disasters that industry analysts believe could have been avoided.
That is certainly not to say that something similar will happen if you let Google Ads manage your bids for you.
But we can still learn a lot from this realisation, just as we can learn from neuroscience’s discoveries about how we really learn.
What the world needs is an increase in divergent thinkers.
But how can we get them?
An alternative approach: Playful play
I’d suggest we can extend our research to the animal kingdom for answers.
I stumbled upon a Cambridge paper1 about the role of play in creativity and innovation. The author, Patrick Bateson, states that play has the following criteria:
Although we think of play as something children partake in, researchers have observed ‘playfulness’ in adult species in everything from spiders to chimpanzees and dolphins.
“Play, or at least some components of it, allows the animal to simulate, in a relatively safe context, potentially dangerous situations that will arise in its adult life. They learn from their mistakes, but do so in relative safety.”
However - and this point bears boldening - there are specific behaviours that initiate play.
For example, dogs have a “play bow” that looks a lot like this:
This creates a mental state of ‘playfulness’ between the participants.
If the partner does not respond playfully, the initiator will stop.
Bateson differentiates between “competitive play” and “playful play”:
Competitive play: There are rules, scores, and winners. Sports would fall into this category.
Playful play: Playful play (as distinct from the broader biological category of play) is accompanied by a particular positive mood state in which the individual is more inclined to behave (and, in the case of humans, think) in a spontaneous and flexible way.
The benefits of playful play for learning are clear:
Playful play, in particular, sometimes provides the experience that can generate novel solutions to challenges set by the social and physical environment.
Is this not precisely what we lack?
In which case, I would formulate (then, I hope, resolve) the following logical paradox:
Play is the opposite of work.
Play is a generator of novelty.
Novelty is the very stuff of innovation.
Innovation is what we cherish at work.
So why not play more at work?
Early studies suggest that play creates more effective employees. An academic study found a direct link between playing the PC game Civilization and better decision-making at work.
Nonetheless, I believe we are still too focused on competitive play and have not yet implemented the latest finding about playful play.
“Gamification” is already a cliché in HR training circles, due to the belief that cheap dopamine hits are the route to succes.
Playful play is its own reward.
Yet it is not simply a matter of giving the Finance team some Silly String and hoping the books balance themselves. The serious study of play shows that it can take many other forms. We need our own version of the dog’s “play bow” to signal the initiation of these sessions, where our instant reward is to enjoy the shared space while we learn broader skills.
If we start with the skills we want to develop, which I would suggest might include these themes:
Decision-making
Situation analysis
Creativity
Problem-solving
Statistical literacy
We can work backwards to see how play might take a role in their development, in tandem with more traditional, “convergent” modes of training. By building this base, employees are then better equipped to learn the latest tools when they inevitably arrive.
A significant challenge we face is that too many, ill-equipped staff are making multi-million dollar decisions every month. They learn from their mistakes but, unlike their canine cousins, they do not do so in relative safety. MBA courses lean heavily on written cases about business scenarios for good reason, but even they could do with a digital facelift.
I would instead prefer people to have access to a simulated training environment where they can play with datasets, trial new approaches, and (perhaps - only perhaps) have fun while they do so.
That doesn’t sound like any fun whatsoever, I know, but those that master their domains tend to enjoy them much more. Alexander Fleming was famous for saying, “I play with microbes”, and lost his mojo when science was no longer fun for him. Play can be a serious business.
That mastery of a domain comes from safe trial and error. We have the technology to create those environments, too. OpenAI has a “playground” for its GPT-3 technology, which allows users to work with the technology and see which prompts work best.
Imagine the potential of a similar playground for digital marketing or digital transformation.
The focus should not be on lifelike simulations at first, but rather on playing with data to see how our decisions affect outcomes. When we master this stage, we are ready to move on to simulations.
As we move towards a world of decreased access to cheap-but-opaque third-party data, everyone is saying “first-party data” is the answer. That might be the case, albeit only for creative thinkers. How many businesses are already paralysed by this scenario? Simply, they are not ready to construct a new reality for themselves.
In conclusion
I’ll pick up these themes in future editions and I’ll keep updating as I continue my own research.
For now, I would say that the academic world seems to know a few things the corporate world has neglected to incorporate.
If you’ll permit me to paraphrase Balzac, I would say:
At work, genius is thought in action.
Balzac said “war”, but you get the idea.
Action is all; yet its impact is multiplied when synthesised with thought.
However, businesses today see training as transactional. They fall into the same fallacy as Euclid's almost-certainly-apocryphal student. All the while, our productivity stalls.
In the rush for a solution, it is tempting to wonder how augmented or virtual reality could help. That’s normally where the discussion goes next.
But that really is to put the cart before the horse. Instead, let’s start by figuring out what we need to learn and focus on effectiveness first, driven by a deeper understanding of what learning truly means. We need to lift our heads out of the dashboards and broaden our inputs.
After all, play and work are not so diametrically opposed.
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.”
George Bernard Shaw
https://assets.cambridge.org/97811070/15135/excerpt/9781107015135_excerpt.pdf