How Good is Your Mind at Predicting?

My friend, Peter Rogers, who lives in the UK was wrong at predicting Brexit, but right at predicting Donald Trump would win.  How did he get one wrong and the other right?  Read about his experiences here.

Guest Blogger - Peter Rogers
Peter Rogers Predicted Donald Trump

I always thought I was particularly good at prediction as a result of me working as a technologist most of my life, but my world was turned upside down after Brexit. It took a long time for me to work out why I got Brexit so wrong, but eventually I brushed myself off and started to read a lot of material on Super-Forecasters.

It learned I had been misleading myself for many years.  I thought I was good at non-technical decision-making. I recall looking at the Ladbrokes Swingometer for Brexit and being so sure of a "remain" vote, that I was going to place a large bet.  I was however, wrong. I made the classic mistake of polluting the decision-maker-mindset.

In order to forecast accurately I needed to consider a wide range of diverse opinions without being overly drawn to any one particular source. This of course, is where social media makes fools of us all. We are typically drawn to a small group of close friends for inspiration, and these friends typically share our opinions.  People rarely fact check on social media. We also read newspapers, which have an increasingly political bias, and a high percentage of us fail to fact check.

I decided if I was going to truly escape from newspapers and social media bias, then I was going to have to train myself to be able to forecast independently. As a first step, I built a website that enabled me to place forecasts and to track whether I was right or wrong. I added a scoring system so there was feedback for my predictions.  This was important as most people don't keep track of their predictions and the results.

Every day I made forecasts on politics, sports, weather, finances, entertainment, and just about anything else I could think of.  I thought anybody can make correct guesses in their own field of expertise, but how many people can make correct predictions outside of it?  Even that prediction was wrong!  In fact, it turns out that Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are bad forecasters in their own field!

I learned there are two parts to being a good forecaster:

  1. A good gut feel
  2. Being able to show your "thought process."  Show how you worked through an "Outside Model" that is refined by an "Inside Model." 
I started out remarkably bad at forecasting. I soon learned to differentiate between the things I wasn’t so sure of, and mark these at a lesser percentage, from those that I was quite sure about, which I would place at a higher percentage. I also began regularly adjusting my prediction when new evidence became available. It actually started to feel a lot like betting, because I used a simple gamification hook with an avatar who gets weaker or stronger depending on my average score.

The bottom line, after 50 bets, I was actually able to predict with 95% accuracy that Donald Trump would be the next President many months before the actual election.

My goal now is to help other people improve their predictive powers as I did. The system still needs a lot of work.  Today it helps people improve their gut instinct, which is an improvement as I went from 25% accuracy to to 75% in just three months of time.  My plan now is to roll the system out to the general public as a beta.  You can register by simply emailing peterzrogers@hotmail.com, and I will send you the website address and a secure login token.

I am also very interested in talking to people who would like to take the system forward because I strongly believe that digital systems to enhance forecasting are in demand.

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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Digital Technologies Must Disappear in 2017

Almost a year ago, I wrote these words, "Technology has reached the tipping point for me, it moved from a help to a hindrance."  The plethora of adrenaline and endorphin inducing mobile apps, 24x7 news, notifications, alerts and updates, drip fed my brain and hindered my "deep work and deep thoughts."  In Cal Newport's new book titled, "Deep Work" he posits that most knowledge workers need concentration and substantial time, dedicated and uninterrupted, to produce their best work. He argues that a lot of technologies and open office layouts today inhibit creativity, "deep work" and "deep thoughts," and are the very things that are most highly valued, and one of the key differentiators between humans and robots.

Newport argues that we must understand and optimize the conditions that enable our brains to work best.  To sum up his argument, constant drip feeding technologies serve to prevent deep thoughts and deep work, our most valuable assets.  He recommends that we restructure our working environments, schedules, times, activities and technology uses to provide substantial "deep thought" times so we can maximize our brain's thinking.

A phrase I like to use is, "Just because technology can do it, doesn't make it useful."  Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of technology and have dedicated my career to understanding, teaching and using it, but we must all realize that technology has not been designed to maximize our brain's potential.  Often technology is designed to replace or degrade our brain's function, or to appeal to our addictive vulnerabilities.  Have any of you, like me, lost themselves in a computer game, and then realized it was 4 AM?  I did that when Doom first came out decades ago.  I realized early on my brain was vulnerable to these games, and banished them from our home ever since, at least until Angry Birds came out on my iPhone and I welcomed back 4 AM.

In our professional life, it is so easy to let our email inbox and calendar invites become our boss and dictate our day's focus.  Do any of us really believe this is the most productive behavior?  Does our inbox recognize our priorities, goals, focus, deliverables and ambitions?  I don't think so, so then why let it boss us around?

If we added up all of the mobile apps we have on our phones, then list all the possible alerts and notifications they each can provide, plus add in how many emails, messages and updates we see, and then add our social media and news feeds, it will literally be hundreds or even thousands of distractions daily.  Do these distractions make us more productive or efficient?  I don't think so.

In 2017, we need to reevaluate technology and take back our brains and purpose.  We should be guiding our technologies, not the other way around.  Technology needs to disappear into the background, while productivity and purpose should be our siren's call. We have approximately 700,000 hours between our birth and our death. About 350,000 of those hours are spent in our careers. How many of those hours do we want to waste on technology enabled distractions? I first published some of the following list nearly a year ago, but I needed the reminder, and perhaps it would be helpful for you as well.  I propose the following:

  1. Our schedules and activities must reflect our purpose and goals, not our inbox and social media feeds.
  2. We must recognize what activities offer value, and what activities do not.
  3. We shouldn’t have to read through hundreds of useless email messages to find the three necessary to complete our job. Communications need to change and email must disappear behind a veil of utility and productivity.
  4. Someone emailing us, does not mean we need to respond.  
  5. We shouldn’t have to check dozens of different locations, apps and websites to communicate with our work colleagues and friends. All of these various collaboration and communication platforms need to disappear into a consolidated and efficient aggregated solution like Slack.
  6. Communication technologies should disappear into the background, and the quality and utility of the message improved by technologies.
  7. Email and meeting driven schedules must disappear, in favor of schedules that honor purpose and deliverables.
  8. Prioritize thinking time and mental productivity, and dedicate the time they deserve.
  9. Scientists agree that the creative parts of our minds work better at different times of the day. Those times need to be reserved, blocked and honored on schedules, to optimize productivity.
  10. The requirement to develop, store and retrieve dozens of different passwords and user names must disappear. The ability to accurately authenticate a user must become more efficient and secure.
  11. Trivial messages and alerts from hundreds of different sources arriving 24 hours a day must disappear. Trivial messages and an urge to immediately respond must not be allowed to intrude on our thinking, creating, planning, sleeping, loving, relationship building, driving and the handling of dangerous equipment.
  12. On-premise IT solutions, hardware and apps that serve to distract from the business, and offer no additional business value, competitive advantages or market agility must disappear into the cloud.
  13. The 200+ mobile applications on my iPhone must disappear into an artificial intelligence engine that will access their functionality and assist me even before I ask.
  14. Mobile applications that are not personalized, and are not contextually relevant should disappear. I don’t care what you sell, if I am not interested, or it is not relevant to me, I don't want to see it.
  15. The routine process work I do on my computer must go away. Intelligent process automation should be pushed down to individuals. An AMX mobile app should process my expenses without me. It should only alert me to exceptions, not the routine.
  16. Technologies and the use of technologies that hinder creativity, productivity and innovation must disappear.

In the lifecycle of any technology, there is a time when we should be enamored and distracted by how it works, but these times must quickly pass and the technology should disappear into the background. I propose that digital technologies should improve and optimize our brain power, and make the human experience richer, deeper and more purposeful than ever before.  This year, I am more committed than ever to making technology work for me, not against me, by being less intrusive and distracting.  What do you think? Message me.
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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Day Big Data Analytics Died

The Huffington Post gave Donald Trump a 2% chance of winning, The New York Times 15%.  The best polls, prediction markets and analytics predicted a Hillary Clinton victory in the days before the election, yet they were all wrong.  The national media’s predictive analytic systems failed catastrophically.  Why?

Analytic systems require timely data on all the variables that impact a system and measure its performance.  Analytics requires support from an optimized information logistics system (OILS), which describes the a system that manages the full lifecycle of data from collection, transmission, processing, analysis, reporting, data driven decision-making, action and archiving.  An OILS is only as good as the data.  It can only function correctly if it is collecting the necessary data inputs.  For example the sensors in an Internet of Things (IoT) system must be attached to the right “things” that impact operations, to provide full system visibility and insight. The pre-election big data analytics systems used by pundits, media and prediction markets used incomplete data that resulted in operational blindness, a massive failure for those responsible.

A simple phone poll may not measure the degree of sentiment, neither does it measure those not on the phone.  It appears from reports this morning that large numbers of folks whom rarely if ever voted - voted.  This unmeasured, invisible group, that was an important data input, was not measured and analyzed in the OILS.


When I meet with business and IT strategy leaders and discuss data analytics and OILS, I always ask them, "What data are you NOT collecting that potentially could be important to your plans and operations?"  Many have never considered this simple question.  They look at their available data, but not their data gaps.  Today in a world of hyper-connectivity, bots, real-time operational tempos and decision-making, having the right data at the right time is critical.  What data are you not collecting?

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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Merging Humans with Enterprise AI and Machine Learning Systems

  1. In Defense of the Human Experience in a Digital World
  2. Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation
  3. Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
  4. Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
  5. Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
  6. Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
  7. Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Tranform
  8. Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
  9. Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
  10. 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
  11. The End Goal of Digital Transformation
  12. Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
  13. Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
  14. From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
  15. Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
  16. Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
  17. Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
  18. A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
  19. The Advantages of Advantage in Digital Transformation
  20. Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
  21. Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
  22. Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
  23. Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
  24. Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
  25. Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time
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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interviews: PowWow Mobile's CEO Kia Behnia

The enterprise mobility software vendor space has been around for more than a decade, but new start-ups continue to enter the market with ambitions to address unsolved problems and challenges.  In this interview, I ask PowWow Mobile CEO Kia Behnia, why an enterprise mobility start-up now?  

Kevin Benedict's latest video on mobile commerce trends and strategies: ************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation

Presenting 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation in Lisbon, PT
  1. Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation
  2. Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
  3. Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
  4. Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
  5. Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
  6. Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Tranform
  7. Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
  8. Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
  9. 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
  10. The End Goal of Digital Transformation
  11. Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
  12. Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
  13. From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
  14. Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
  15. Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
  16. Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
  17. A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
  18. The Advantages of Advantage in Digital Transformation
  19. Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
  20. Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
  21. Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
  22. Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
  23. Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
  24. Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time
Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

In Defense of the Human Experience in Digital Transformation

Discussing Digital Strategies in Lisbon, PT
  1. Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation
  2. Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
  3. Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
  4. Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
  5. Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
  6. Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Tranform
  7. Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
  8. Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
  9. 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
  10. The End Goal of Digital Transformation
  11. Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
  12. Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
  13. From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
  14. Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
  15. Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
  16. Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
  17. A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
  18. The Advantages of Advantage in Digital Transformation
  19. Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
  20. Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
  21. Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
  22. Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
  23. Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
  24. Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time
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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Interviews with Kevin Benedict