Covid-19 and the Value of Ideas

I was recently on a call with a client who asked, “In addition to your standard services, what new ideas are you bringing to the table?”  The client obviously placed a high value on ideas.  

Competitive advantages first start as ideas.  A single competitive advantage can open doors to a tsunami of additional advantages and economic benefits (Advantages=A²).  For example, innovators and leaders always see data that laggards can’t.  That data can be used to guide new product roadmaps, marketing opportunities, sales, improvements and innovations.

The value of new ideas, however, can only be realized if acted upon.  I have personal journals full of good ideas with little to no value.  I never acted.  I can’t tell you how many times I have exclaimed to my wife, “That was MY idea!”, after having read about another company acting upon my latent good ideas.

Why hadn’t I acted?  Most often it had to do with time and focus.  My work at the time was not focused on “acting upon” that particular new idea, and my KPIs did not include acting on it.

What if companies were to recognize how valuable new ideas are to their future success?  I recently interviewed a successful entrepreneur, Richard Skellett, about his views on workforce productivity and management.  He said the business value of an employee should not be associated with a pre-defined position or pay scale, because even a junior employee could contribute highly valuable ideas to the company.  Skellett believes every employee should have a balance sheet where their personal asset and liability curves could be recognized by all in a transparent manner.  The more ideas and value a person brings to the company, no matter their position, the higher their reward.  

In this age of the global pandemic, many changes and restrictions are being imposed upon us by the Covid-19 coronavirus.  These changes, unwelcome as they are, are forcing many companies to experiment and test new processes and strategies.  These are prime opportunities to consider new paradigms and to come up with new ideas.  Use these unwelcome times to act upon your good ideas.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Covid-19 and the Role of a Futurist

Early Futurist

Futurist Frank Diana leads Tata Consultancy Services' Future of Business team.  When people ask his predictions about the future he often responds, “We don’t predict, we identify and consider possible scenarios.”  He is also fond of saying that most predictions made after a crisis are wrong.  It’s not picking one future scenario to place a bet on that is the role of a futurist, rather identifying many possible scenarios and then monitoring and tracking which are becoming more likely or not - given new and continuous inputs.

What then is the role of a futurist during a pandemic like Covid-19?  As a Futurist myself working on Frank’s team I can say we focus on how Covid-19 is altering the trajectory of various trends and acting as an accelerate or inhibitor to change.  The value of course is for leaders to use these insights to best position their businesses to succeed.

The Innovators' Equation for Success

Thomas Edison's innovative, gifted and future thinking finance and operations expert was Samuel Insull.  While Edison was inventing, manufacturing and selling electric power plants to factory owners, Insull was studying the economics of the emerging electric generation industry.  The data he reviewed eventually helped motivate him to leave Edison's organizations to lead his own.

The insights Insull gleaned from the data revealed there were alternative business models available for providing electricity to factories.  Rather than requiring every factory to buy and operate their own power plant, they could simply connect to an electric grid.  The data showed a large power plant connected to many factories could achieve far greater economies of scale that would generate higher profits and lower costs.  Insull understood that his insight was an advantage.  He also recognized that one advantage could in turn lead to many additional advantages down the road (An advantage multiplied by an advantage=A² benefits).

Leaders and innovators today can also be recipients of A² benefits.  Early adopters and innovators gain insight into what works and what doesn't before followers and laggards.  That information is incredibly useful and valuable.  Once a successful design or model is determined and implemented, new user experience data and feedback guide the way forward on paths which competitors have no data, logic or understanding to follow.  

Data by itself, however, does not deliver success.  Insull had foresight.  He was able, like a chess master, to understand how one advantage could lead to many other additional future advantages that when combined could deliver the ultimate package of A² benefits that would deliver the desired scenario.  

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Innovating for Innovators with Expert Gabby Czertok, Founder of The Builders

In this episode, global entrepreneurship expert Gabby Czertok, Founder of The Builders, shares how match making between large companies and start-ups are done, and how national entrepreneurship at scale is possible and the ecosystems necessary to support it.

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Kevin Benedict

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Using AI to Analyze CX Across the Business

In this episode of Future of Business TV, we speak with expert Boaz Grinvald, CEO of Revuze about using the power of analytics and AI to understand customer experiences across the entire business.  Most businesses share some CX information with a limited segment of their leadership, but by using AI and automation, analytics can be shared across the entire business.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

AI, Autonomous Programming and Karma

Autonomous Programming

Recently an artificial intelligence system in China successfully passed a medical exam for the first time.  Potentially AI can soon provide high quality medical diagnoses remotely anywhere around the world, but I don't know about their bedside manner.   Another significant step in AI and robotics happen a couple of years ago in Saudi Arabia where they granted citizenship to a robot named Sophia.  I wonder if that robot will be forced to wear a burka?  With all these rapid advancements, I think it is time we explore the spiritual life of robots and artificial intelligence.

Up until recently, human programmers coded and configured algorithms, AI, automation and machine learning system and took personal responsibility for all of their own code.  Today, however, AI has escaped the confines of human oversight and has been empowered and employed to self-program, self-optimize, self-test, self-configure and self-learn.  

There are many emerging AI self-programming projects underway.  Bayou is an AI application, sponsored by Google and DARPA that uses deep learning to generate code by itself.  DeepCoder is a joint project between Microsoft and Cambridge University.  SketchAdapt is an AI environment that learns how to compose short, high-level programs, while letting a second set of algorithms find the right sub-programs to fill in the details.  SketchAdapt is a collaboration between Solar-Lezama and Josh Tenenbaum, a professor at CSAIL and MIT’s Center for Brains, Minds and Machines. 

The Importance of Relativistic Competition and Theory

In a race what matters most is your position relative to your competitors'.  If everyone in a race is slow, then the winner must simply be less slow.  It's all relative. 

"It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best." ~ W. Edwards Deming

Given the importance of relativity in winning, it is critical to understand how you are positioned against your competitors even in business.  This has traditionally been a very difficult exercise because of the lack of data.  Today, however, systems that use artificial intelligence can scan millions of data sources, multiple languages and dozens of news feeds for information related to your competitors.  This data when given value scores can generate a competitive ranking number that can be used to determine relative positions in a competitive field. 

“Without data you're just a person with an opinion.” ~ W. Edwards Deming

Only one company can be in 1st place in a competitive ranking.  That doesn't mean all the other companies are not profitable or competitive, just that they are in different relative positions.  The importance of competitive ranking is to help identify how different companies aka "competitive systems" deliver different results.  If a competitor with a better competitive ranking utilizes a different system than yours, then it is important to understand in what ways that system is an improvement over your's.

"Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets." ~ W. Edward Deming

According to quality improvement and management expert W. Edwards Deming, if a company is ranked behind a competitor, it is because their system is perfectly designed to place them there.  That of course means it is necessary to adjust the system to improve it, because as the saying goes, "If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten." 

Deming also taught that the purpose of capturing data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation for action. In our discussion of relativistic competition, we would want data that shows how our competitors' systems are different from ours.  Once we have the data, we need an action plan, but first we need a prediction on the likely impact of that action.  The task of predicting means all managers must at times wear a futurist's hat according to Deming, "The management’s job is to look ahead and predict what the results of a particular action will be."  In order to make a rational prediction, however, there must first be a theory on how the action will impact results.  "Without theory there is nothing to modify or learn," wrote Deming. 

“This is a long, sad story... JC Penney offers no reason to shop there compared to its competitors, whether it’s Macy’s or T.J. Maxx or Walmart," said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics, a retail research firm. 

In summary, it's important to know (i.e. measure) how you compare relative to your competition, both now and over time.  Scoring systems can define the ranking of both your's and your competition's "competitive systems."  So to improve your competitive position you need data.  The data will help you define an action plan.  An action plan requires a prediction.  A prediction on how the action will help accomplish your goals.  A prediction requires a theory.  A theory on how actions impact results.

For more read Deming's 14 Key Principles,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principles

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Who Will Protect Us from AI? Expert Nigel Willson has some Ideas

In this episode, I have the privilege of interviewing artificial intelligence expert Nigel Willson.  Nige spent twenty years working at Microsoft and much of it studying and speaking about artificial intelligence. He is now dedicating his time to helping societies, especially in the UK, understand how artificial intelligence should be monitored to ensure it is used for the common good.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Space, Pandemics, Roman Roads and Air-Conditioners

The author on a
Roman Road

The only definitive protection against the Covid-19 coronavirus so far in this pandemic is space – at least six feet of it.  Isn’t it interesting that space the infinite 3D realm in which all material objects are located and all events occur, is the solution to stopping a global pandemic?  Space between people, in great abundance in Idaho, is in high demand and low supply in many heavily populated urban environments where the Covid-19 coronavirus is having the deadliest impact.

Krys Johnson, an epidemiologist at Temple University explains the origins of the six foot space for social distancing commonly referenced during the pandemic, "Six feet is the average distance that respiratory droplets from a sneeze or cough travel before they settle and are no longer likely to be inhaled by other people.”  Space offers protection and the more space, the more protection.

In Roman times, soldiers were expected to be able to march at the pace of 20 miles per day on carefully constructed roman roads.  Roman Generals would use the rule of 20 miles/day to plan military campaign time schedules and resupply points.  Opposing armies knew the 20-mile rule and recognized space equaled time.  One hundred and twenty miles of space between armies equated to six days of time with which they could use to either retreat, or to prepare an attack.  Space offered protection and the more space, the more protection.

The problem today is that space, once in abundance has been shrinking for many centuries as a result of speed.  Speed eats up space, much as Marc Andreessen wrote, “Software eats the world”.  As mentioned previously, each 20 miles of space between armies in the Roman era equated to about one day’s worth of time and protection.  That equation however, changed when soldiers began riding horses, taking trains or flying in airplanes.  Soon 20-miles/day became 20-miles/hour and then to 20-miles/minute.  As a result, the protective value of space was deflated because of speed and it lost much of its strategic value in military terms, and not surprisingly in Covid-19 terms as well.

I recently came across the news headlines, “Air-conditioning spreads the coronavirus to 9 people sitting near an infected person in a restaurant.”  In a restaurant in Guangzhou, China nine people became sick as a result of an added “speed” element from an air-conditioner.  The air-conditioner’s fans carried the viral droplets farther and faster across the restaurant, thus the six-foot social distancing rule was “eaten by speed” and lost its value.  

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Human, Digital and Future Cadences on a Time Continuum

Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the later than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Digital transformation involves the process of transforming a business from one state to another.  It is also about time.  An important part of this transformation is speeding up the cadence of business and information movement along the time continuum from human, digital and finally to future-time.  Businesses today must be capable of competing in all three of these cadences on the time continuum simultaneously.

What are the time cadences on the time continuum?

1. Human-time – time cadence governed by our physical, biological and mental limitations as humans and the regulatory environments that we work within.

2. Digital-time – time cadence supported by the digital and mobile technologies used including computers, software applications and network transmission speeds.

3. Future-time – time cadence stretching into the future and only limited by the lack of available data, computing power and the sophistication of algorithms used to analyze, predict, model, project, forecast and recommend.

Navigating a Pandemic with Dropbox's CMO Tifenn Dano Kwan

In this episode,  I have an insightful conversation with Dropbox’s CMO Tifenn Dano Kwan on how Dropbox is navigating through the Covid-19 pandemic.  We talk about working from a home office, changing customer needs, marketing strategies and future trends.  Enjoy!

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Thinking Like a Futurist During a Pandemic with Frank Diana

In this episode, I have the pleasure of learning from futurist Frank Diana as he shares his advice on how to think like a futurist during these chaotic times.  He walks us through his mental frameworks, concepts and methodologies, and shares how ecosystem thinking can help businesses survive and grow.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Napoleon, True Competition and Pandemics

Napoleon

In 1809, a British military expedition of 40,000 soldiers was sent to Walcheren in the Netherlands to defeat Napoleon’s troops.  After a few light skirmishes, the French army evacuated and left the British occupiers to themselves.  After a few weeks the British began to get sick with “Walcheren Fever.” Soon over 4,000 British soldiers were dead and 12,000 were too sick to continue.  The competition for Walcheren was less about the French army and more about the fever.

On June 24, 1812 Napoleon’s French army of 685,000 soldiers invaded Russia.  Over the next six months the French army won a long series of bloody battles.  Although winning nearly all the battles the French army still found itself in deep trouble.  The cold and wet of autumn and winter destroyed them.  They were forced to retreat back to France with only 27,000 out of the original 685,000 soldiers left.  Historians say that Napoleon didn’t lose to the Russian generals, rather to the weather.  

Napoleon mistakenly thought Russian army was the true competition. Today, during the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses must also understand the true nature and source of their competition.  Recognizing that the pandemic, pandemic related economic impact, and the pandemic inspired behavioral changes of consumers are the sources of our competition today is critical for us to respond appropriately.  

If the pandemic and its impact on customers is the true competition of 2020, how might your company’s business plan need adjusting?  

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Covid-19, Demographics, Risk Analysis and Mobile Apps

Finally, it seems we have accumulated enough data from Covid-19 cases to focus in on how we can properly and strictly protect our vulnerable populations and reopen our economies.  We know that if a person has underlying health problems* they have a far higher risk so need additional protections.  We know that people over 65 years old and people living in long-term care facilities are more at risk.  In fact, the most recent update from Idaho's Covid-19 statistics show 58 of the 60 reported deaths occurring in individuals 60 or older.  If a person does not fit any of these three high risk categories, then their risk of getting seriously ill from Covid-19 is small.  This data seems to suggest that giving different guidance to different segments of our population may have merit.

A Pandemic Inspired Tsunami of Channel Switching

In Boise, Idaho our local downtown retail chocolate shop, “The Chocolate Bar” transitioned into a chocolate factory and direct delivery service seemingly overnight as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.  We have also seen other stores quickly reacting.  Costco now limits the number of shoppers inside their stores, while dramatically ramping up online ordering with home deliveries.  Whole Foods is now providing three ways of shopping locally: in-store shopping, online ordering with drive through pick-up and online ordering with home delivery.  All of these new and expanded options represent fast transitions to new or additional sales channels.

Fast transitions, or what military strategists often refer to as “fast transients,” are the ability to quickly transition from one position to another.  Today we are seeing examples of fast transitioning across many different areas including retail stores, restaurants and businesses as they attempt to meet their customers where they are.  In a recent interview my colleague, Rich Sherman, Senior Fellow, Supply Chain Centre of Excellence at Tata Consultancy Services called this, “Channel Switching.”

Ahead of the Curve - Pandemic Responses and Business

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be a more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks." ~ Warren Buffet

Ever since the pandemic has taken over and dominated our lives, everyone seems to be talking and writing about “curves.” Not just the shape of the curve, although important in the context of flattening, but also getting ahead of it.  Here are three recent headlines that demonstrate my point, “Was Your State Ahead of the Coronavirus Curve?”, “Getting Ahead of the Curve — in Hopes of Flattening the Curve”, and “How Did Germany Get Ahead of the Curve?”

What does ahead of the curve even mean? I did some research.  It means, “When one is more advanced than others, or ahead of current thinking or practices.”  More research into the origins of the phrase led me to the classic Bell Curve model used to visualize data showing low, average, and above average performances.  If you are “ahead of the curve” you are on the right side of the bell shape and above average in whatever was measured.

Inside the Curve

“Getting inside the Curve”, is another phrase often used by military strategist.  Getting inside the curve refers to a fighter pilot being able to maneuver into an advantageous position by getting inside the turning radius of an opposing aircraft.  A more expansive meaning is used in maneuver strategies and refers to thinking ahead of an opponent and acting in a way that gives you an advantage.

Business-as-a-Service a Resilient Response to Pandemics

Ecosystem Platforms

I have spent nearly 30 years in and around Silicon Valley.  I have worked for small start-ups, medium sized and large established technology and services companies.  Looking back over my high-tech career and the careers of my peers, it seems our skills and expertise overall have easily transferred across different companies, roles, industries, technologies and solution categories.  For the most part, at least in the high-tech industry, business is business.

At the highest level all businesses have similar processes.  They need products and services to sell, customer acquisition processes, customer success processes, front and back-office systems and operations to keep track of everything.  All of these processes and systems must have experienced experts supporting them.  

Over the course of my career I have spoken with dozens of venture capitalists and angel investors.  In no case did these investors express an interest in spending money on the basic business processes listed above.  They wanted to invest in unique and clever products and services that are in demand and generate profits.  All the rest of the business is simply noise to many of them.

Using Data and Deming in a Pandemic

Throughout history military leaders have wrestled with the “fog of war" - the desperation of not knowing critical information.  Information as basic as where are my forces and where are the forces of my opponents?  We face similar information needs today in our battle against the COVID-19 coronavirus.

“The ultimate purpose of data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation for action,” wrote the revered quality improvement consultant W. Edwards Deming.  Today, in our battle against the COVID-19 virus, we are struggling to make informed decisions because of our own lack of data.  The absence of information both paralyzes decision-making and forces us to expend enormous amounts of time and energy defending against all kinds of scenarios that may not in fact be relevant.  We just don’t know.  Think about a scenario of being lost in a dark forest at night with all kinds of strange sounds and dangerous predators lurking about. How would you defend yourself? Which way would you turn? It would be difficult in the best of times, but the absence of data can make it even more excruciating!  We are struggling with this today.

Today the fog of war can largely be lifted with the combination of software systems, mobile phones, sensors and analytics.  With COVID-19, however, we have the necessary and important consideration of how to protect personal privacy.

Another relevant Deming adage, “The biggest problems are where people don’t realize they have one in the first place.” Not knowing the status of COVID-19 in our communities is a big problem.  In order to move forward and open the economy again we need to understand precisely our COVID-19 exposure and status.  We must quickly remove the blind spots by collecting as much data as possible, while at the same time protecting as much of our privacy as possible.

I look forward to quickly reaching a point where we replace conjecture with good data.  Removing the blind spots is our next best step for our physical, mental and financial health.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Protecting Our Global Economic Network from Pandemics

The word pandemic comes from the Greek words “all” and “people.”  It is a fitting title given to the COVID-19 disease that crosses all people groups, economies and continents without respect to ethnicity or status.  It has a way of pulling back the curtains and showing us what makes the world run.

Pandemics travel on our community’s economic and transportation networks. Because pandemics are international travelers, they disrupt our global economic networks, which are the sources of much of our economic prosperity today.  

Post-Pandemic Risk Strategies for Supply Chain and Procurement Leaders

In this interview supply chain risk management expert Joe Carson shares strategies for addressing the Covid-19 pandemic and preparing for the next one.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Six Degrees to Contagion - Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic

Small World Networks

Seventeen years ago, in 2003, Professor Duncan J Watts, published a book titled, “Six Degrees, The Science of a Connected Age.”  In it he wrote the following warning, “In a world spanned by only six degrees, what goes around comes around faster than you think. So just because something seems far away, and just because it happens in a language you don't understand, doesn't make it irrelevant.” Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people in the world on average are only six or fewer social connections away from each other.  It has been proven time after time to be true as the famous Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game has demonstrated and the study of the small world networks phenomena.  What this means is you are only six or fewer social connections away from a person living in Wuhan, China where the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak first emerged.  

More thoughts from Professor Watts, “When it comes to epidemics…we are all connected by short chains of influence. It doesn't matter if you know about them, and it doesn't matter if you care, they will have their effect anyway. To misunderstand this is to misunderstand the first great lesson of the connected age: we may all have our own burdens, but like it or not, we must bear each other's burdens as well.” All of us are in this global community.  We all share earth, and we are only six or fewer social connections from someone who is infected by the Covid-19 coronavirus.  We might feel we are great distances away from an epicenter, but we are really only a relationship or a handshake away.

State and Local Supply Chains Challenged by the Pandemic

In this episode, I get to interview Brian Utley, CEO and Founder of Periscope Holdings, about the unique challenges government supply chains, especially state, city and local are having during the COVID-19 pandemics.  Brian shares how government-centric supply chain ecosystems are working together to solve these issues and to develop new strategies.

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Kevin Benedict

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Pandemic Resilience is Knowing When to Quit

Thomas Edison

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be a more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks." ~ Warren Buffet

Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from difficulties.  It doesn’t, however, require you to return to a previous state.  Often the fastest way to recover is to quit and start again.  Think of a jeep climbing a steep muddy hillside.  Mid-way up the hill, tires spinning it comes to a stop.  In this situation your choice is often limited to staying in the same spot spinning your wheels or quitting and trying again.  Life often provides us with similar choices, and the COVID-19 pandemic will force many businesses to face this decision.  

Let’s talk about the role quitting plays in resilience.  As a youth I was taught that with enough hard work, belief and long hours anything could be accomplished.  Now as a veteran high-tech executive with thirty plus years of experience I no longer hold that maxim to be true.  Some businesses are just bad ideas.  Some good ideas are before their time.  Sometimes people in leadership positions shouldn’t be.  Some ideas just run out of money before they get to market.  Some good ideas just can’t rise above the noise and fade off into oblivion.  Sometimes pandemics happen.

Ecosystem Commerce and Pandemic Supply Chains - Interview with TCS Expert Rich Sherman

In this episode, I interview Rich Sherman, Senior Fellow at the Supply Chain Centre of Excellence at TCS.  He shares his insights on the impact the COVID-19 pandemic is having on global supply chains and what can be done in the future to make them more resilient, adaptable and redundant.

 

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Steps Required to Stop and or Live with the Pandemic

Common Good

We have all learned a great deal about living with and fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.  Not everything for sure, but enough to start sketching a plan for the guaranteed next one.  We don't ever want to be in a situation again where we must decide between our lives or a functioning economy.  We also recognize that both COVID-19 and poverty have their own associated health risks, so let's try to balance both concerns.

A working plan seems to be emerging from the fog of war.  It isn't fun.  It requires isolating those that feel sick, those that test positive, and those that are in contact with those that test positive.

This plan is also written without due consideration for individual liberties.  It is simply a list of what works to stop the virus from spreading, while keeping the economy functioning long enough for effective treatments and vaccines to be developed and "herd immunity" achieved.  An implementation of this plan, however, would need to balance the concerns for individual liberties against the common good. 

This plan is not original.  It is the aggregate of what has already been widely reported and argued to be working.  I have simply collected them in this living document and will continue to add, subtract and edit as we gain better insights.

Pre-Pandemic Assumptions and Presumptions

Over the last 3 years my wife and I have become avid backpackers with many adventures under our belt.  One of the biggest surprises I learned during my time in the wilderness was how often I make wrong assumptions.

It was mid-July and the lake we were backpacking to was still frozen over and the trail was covered in deep snow.  I had assumed warm mid-July weather would have cleared the trails.  Another time after fishing in a high mountain lake, I looked at the map and saw the trail passed directly above our location.  After over an hour looking for the trail we realized it didn't exist.  My assumptions that maps are updated regularly and accurately reflect the reality on the ground were wrong.  I can't tell you how many times I have learned that the obvious shortcut doesn't save you time.

We all make assumptions.  We assume something is true or certain to happen, without proof.  We also make presumptions.  We presume ideas are true, and then use them as the basis for other ideas until we have built ourselves a house of cards that is one fact away from collapsing.  As we ponder our changed mid-pandemic world from our home offices with our dogs and kids under our desk, it is a good time to reflect on the assumptions and presumptions that got us into this predicament.  

I think we presumed the biggest dangers in flying were potential terrorist attacks or equipment failure.  I think we assumed our doctors had the answers to whatever illness we picked up.  I think we presumed that since all companies seemed to be developing long and lean supply chains that they must be resilient, redundant and reliable.  I think we presumed that an illness in China was a Chinese problem.  I think we assumed that the local hospital could just order and quickly receive any supplies or equipment they needed.  I think we assumed that our economy would always be there in the morning.  I think we assumed toilet paper would always be available. I think we assumed our leaders had a plan.

As our anxiety evolves into acceptance of our mid-pandemic situation, perhaps it is a good time to re-evaluate the assumptions and presumptions we all have about the world around us.  What I have learned in this past month is we have far less control over our world and destiny than might have been presumed.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Flattening the Curve of a Risky Future

Today, in the midst of round one of the COVID-19 pandemic, I received an email from Delta Airlines sharing their efforts to make travel safe and normal. What will normal be post-pandemic?  Will society be comfortable going right back to flying all over the world again?  The thought of spending time in crowded airports, attending conferences with tens of thousands of people in one room, sitting in tightly packed business meetings and sitting elbow to elbow with coughing strangers on planes fills me with anxiety.  I don't think I am the same person that I once was.  I suspect most of us aren't.

As the pandemic and resulting economic anxieties extend further into the calendar and deeper into our mutual psyches, our habits will be altered - some temporarily, others permanent.  Just as our grandparents (and great-grandparents) before them developed a propensity to save and to be financially conservative as a result of experiencing the Great Depression during their formative years, we also will be known for the changes about to take place in us.  This pandemic will alter the curve of our future.

We have now all borne witness to the results of our societal decisions or lack thereof, and experienced the consequences.  I am reminded of a popular Greek myth of Daedalus and his son Icarus.  They were imprisoned in a tower by the King of Crete.  Being a great craftsman, Daedalus devised two pairs of wings using wooden frames, wax and feathers to escape and fly away.  Daedalus warned his son Icarus that flying too near the sun would cause the wax to melt and the wings would fail.  Icarus jumped from the tower, escaped and his wings allowed him to soar high over the ocean.  

It was not long, however, before Icarus forgot all about his father's warnings.  Soon he was flying higher and higher.  The warm sun quickly melted the wax, the feathers came loose and Icarus plunged to his death in the sea.  I think today we may have flown too close to the sun.

In 2015, Bill Gates, gave a Ted Talk titled "The Next Outbreak? We're Not Ready."  It accurately described what would happen if a pandemic similar to COVID-19 occurred.  He precisely warned of the impact and what the world needed to do to prepare for it.  Bill Gates was our Daedalus, and like Icarus we were captivated by the joys and excitement of flying high and far.  The question for us all now is - what next?  What will we do differently?  How will our future be reshaped?

After taking some time for lamenting and learning, we must go forward into the future wiser.  My friend and supply chain risk expert Joe Carson, who I recently interviewed in this blog post titled, A Mid-Pandemic Interview with Supply Chain Risk Expert Joe Carson, often encourages organizations to develop a "Risk Culture."  A culture of studying risk, identifying risk, understanding risk, planning for risk, and factoring in the cost of risk mitigation. 

The lasting impression we all may be left with post-pandemic is that risk is not just a hypothetical, but real.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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 work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

A Faustian Bargain Involving Privacy, Pandemic and a Functioning Economy

Will the price of controlling current and future pandemics be our privacy?  Will societies, at some point, be willing to strike a Faustian Bargain and give up their privacy in return for a functioning economy?  A Faustian Bargain is described by the encyclopedia Britannica as a "pact whereby a person trades something of supreme moral or spiritual importance for some material benefit, such as knowledge, power, or riches."  Some countries have already made that bargain, and as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, more societies will be forced to confront this decision.  

In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, privacy looks to be one of the values required in the Faustian Bargain to keep an economy functioning.  The other option is to offer up life itself - a serious topic for another time.

South Korea, widely praised for their fast and efficient COVID-19 response and control, passed legislation in 2015 after a deadly MERS outbreak that gave government authority to collect mobile phone, credit card and other data from those who test positive to an infectious diseases.  They have now added a central tracking app called Corona 100m.  This mobile app publicly informs citizens of known cases within 100 meters of their current location.  Both of these examples are the result of a 2015 Faustian Bargain South Koreans made between privacy and pandemic control.

In China they are using mobile apps connected to government servers and tracking systems to dictate whether a person should be quarantined, allowed to ride subways, visit and shop at malls, work and be present in other public spaces.  A green badge on a mobile phone means the owner is symptom free, yellow means the person has had contact with an infected person and hasn't finished the quarantine period, and a red badge means the owner is confirmed to be infected, or has a fever or other symptoms and is awaiting a diagnosis.  Privacy advocates are quick to point out these mobile apps can be used by police, government agencies and other intelligence services for other forms of automated social control as well.

Raina MacIntyre, Emerging Infectious Disease scholar at the University of New South Wales lists the three actions societies must quickly employ to control a pandemic: instantly scale testing and diagnostic capacity, isolate those found to be positive, and track all of their contacts (and test/isolate).  This is a nearly impossible job to do during a rapidly expanding pandemic if you are using paper, pencil and other manual processes.

Smartphones with their mobile networks, apps, GPS, WiFi and bluetooth radios and other powerful utilities are amazingly powerful computers that can collect and spinoff all kinds of very useful data for those fighting and managing disease.  Many countries and people, however, are still not willing to make the Faustian Bargain between privacy, pandemic and a functioning economy. Perhaps we will someday find out if the saying, "Everything is for sale if the price is right," is a true maxim.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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 work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Leadership and Mental Biases in a Pandemic

The global magazine, Foreign Policy, has compiled a list of things that kill more people than sharks - trampolines, roller coasters, vending machines and furniture/TVs:  In fact more than 26 people die every year after being crushed by furniture/TVs, and only an average of six people die each year from shark attacks.  With these numbers there should be an entire week dedicated to furniture/TV attacks on Discovery Channel.

Humans are not very good at analyzing risk.  We are all afraid of sharks, but never give our furniture a second look.  We all come with biases, prejudices, paradigms, different education levels and viewpoints that influence and filter the way we think.  This is all before we consider normalcy bias.  Here is what Wikipedia says about normalcy bias, "It is a tendency for people to believe that things will function in the future the way they normally have functioned in the past, and therefore we underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects."  It's reported that 70% of people display normalcy bias during disasters.  It's what makes people reach for their laptops and suitcases when they exit a plane during a serious emergency.

Paying the Piper In the Midst of a Pandemic

In the German folk tale, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, the leadership of a small village made a verbal contract with a mysterious flute-playing exterminator to rid the village of rats.  Once the rats were successfully removed, the village leaders refused to pay.  They came to regret that. From this old tale came the saying, "pay the piper" which acts as a warning.  It means you better pay the true cost, or something sinister will happen.

In the Pied Piper of Hamelin tale the village lost their youngest generation, in the current COVID-19 scenario, it is our oldest generation most at risk.  The question to ask ourselves today is have we stopped paying the piper?  Have we lost our fear of existential risks.  Have we as a society come to believe we no longer must pay the cost of risk prevention?  Have we come to value short-term profits over safety and the lives of our most vulnerable?

Our lack of fear is a new thing.  Throughout history humans have been very fearful for good reasons.   Life was mostly short, exhausting, violent and full of suffering.  For example in 17th-century England life expectancy was only 35-years old.  In the early Colony of Virginia it was only 25-years old.  Out of the 270 men on five ships in Magellan's fleet, only 19 survived the voyage.  Yet today we seem to believe that we are safe, in control and there is no longer the need to pay the piper.

In March of 2020 the markets crashed.  Why? Investors never anticipated existential risks like COVID-19, although there have been 8 pandemic's in the past 70 years.  Investors never built the risk of a global pandemic into their financial models — and when the risk of COVID-19 had to be priced into their models in February and March of 2020, our global markets collapsed.

The United States' entire defense budget for 2020 is $738 billion. Yet in comparison we now find ourselves pumping a massive $2.2 trillion into the US economy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  We are now paying the piper, but on his terms.

I hope we learn from this.  I hope we decide to pay the piper in the future.  I hope in years to come we invest in finding and stopping pandemics early, creating vaccines and the means to produce them, have teams of experts trained to lead fights against pandemics, establish a reserve of life support systems to respond to outbreaks, and accumulate large stockpiles of protective equipment to enable our healthcare workers to provide the care we require.

Let's pay the piper.

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Kevin Benedict

Futurist/Founder

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

A Mid-Pandemic Interview with Supply Chain Risk Expert Joe Carson

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global supply chain has been in the headlines for weeks.  To further explore how the pandemic is impacting global supply chains and risk management strategies today and in the future I reached out to expert Joe Carson, CEO of Spend Strategies LLC, (former Chief Procurement Officer of both Micron Technologies and Lucent) for his insights.

What is the scope of the challenge procurement organizations are facing in high tech as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?

The challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic is the unprecedented scope and scale of the impact zone. Past disruptions, such as factory fires, tsunami’s, earthquakes or even past pandemics, were relatively localized. A city, country or region of the world served as the epicenter. In those cases, supply chains could stand a chance of reacting by adjusting their supply chains to other suppliers or transportation lanes. In this case however, the problem is much more severe.

Speed, Accidents and Pandemics

The value of distance has been lost to speed.  Throughout history distance meant a level of security and safety.  Invading armies of marching foot soldiers could cover about 20 miles per day on Roman roads.  A thousand miles distance between a town and an invading army equated to at least 50 days of security and time for the townspeople to either prepare a defense or flee. Historically distance was not only a protection against invading armies, but pandemics, epidemics and plagues as well.  Some diseases started on one continent and took years to reach another.  Speed, however, has removed this protection.  It has made us all continuously contagious neighbors.

Today the world is divided into GPS coordinates surveyed by invisible drones and satellites.  These and other technologies support the ability to deliver people, cargo, munition and disease anywhere in the world within minutes or even seconds.  The value of distance has nearly disappeared.

Professor Paul Virilio, a sage futurist, wrote every innovation comes with  a guaranteed accident.  For example, you cannot create a Tesla without a Tesla crashing.  Innovations and accidents are inseparable.  You cannot have one without the other. The technologies that support globalization, global supply chains and air travel guarantee pandemics.  You cannot have one without the other.  The world has faced over 70 epidemics since 1957 and 8 pandemics.  That averages one or more every year.

The data tells us that epidemics and pandemics are now guaranteed and common.  We cannot move blindly forward in a global network of people, economies, supply chains and connected technologies without paying the piper.  We must set-up the processes, plans, and government and economic levers necessary to live and thrive under the continuous exposure of pandemics.  It is no longer acceptable to be surprised and unprepared.

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Kevin Benedict

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict's 26 Strategies for Career Advancement - 2020 Edition

One of the most popular blog articles that I have ever written was on career advancement strategies.  One of the advantages of getting old is the ability to accumulate a lot of experiences and lessons.  Since the 2019 article seemed to be appreciated and useful, I have written a new edition for 2020 with eleven additional lessons learned.

My Strategies for Career Advancement:

1. Be an Expert - Create opportunities to be recognized by your employer’s leadership team. Become an expert in your field. Experts get recognized for their contributions by their communities, industries and employers. Be the person that has read more books, studied more industry reports, attended more training classes and networked with more experts. Become THE expert.
2. Know your trends - Know your industry's trends.  Know where your company fits in the industry, and where they rank against competition and why.  Know how the trends will impact your customers and prospects.  Talk about trends and their impact.
3. Build a Network – As your network of contacts grows, so will your insights into more industries and businesses, trends, sales and career opportunities. Don’t be lazy and make excuses to not be on LinkedIn and other business oriented social media platforms. It’s important to your career. 
4. Keep in touch - The crazy jock sitting in the cubicle next to you today, will run a company you want to work for in 25 years.  It is amazing how many kids I started my career working with who are now in senior executive roles.  Those friendships open many doors, so don't forget to invest in your friendships.

Culture and Humility as Competitive Advantages

In 2019, I interviewed over one hundred business leaders.  In the course of these interviews and follow up discussions I learned a great deal - some of which I want to share here.  I have seen workforces that are united with their leaders in a desire to change and improve.  I have seen organizations that bring in all new leadership eager for change, but watched them fail because of institutional resistance.  I have seen leaders and workforces passionate about winning, but without the humility to learn from their customers.  I have witnessed how difficult it is to change.

I have learned the human-work of solving problems, facing challenges and overcoming obstacles tends to share a common purpose: creating stable, secure and predictable environments. The tendency for most humans is that once we solve a challenge, we want to be done with it.  That propensity, however, does not fit with today’s reality of perpetual change.

Digital Transformation for the Greater Good

Adam Smith wrote about rational self-interest, which posits we work for the greater good when it benefits ourselves.  But what is the greater good, and how does digital transformation impact it?

I believe most of us would agree that replacing large numbers of humans with machines that result in wide scale unemployment and suffering is not in our rational self-interest or the greater good. Having massive numbers of jobs terminated by the Terminator does not result in a safer, healthier, happier civilization or vibrant economy.  So what is the greater good that we, out of rational self-interest, can strive for?

Just because something is possible, and VCs will fund it, does not mean it supports the greater good. Technology that takes all meaningful jobs away from humans resulting in their suffering will soon become a target for their wrath.  I can already imagine brands placing badges on their products that certify "Human-Made" to gain a competitive advantage over machine-made production.

At the macro level, if businesses increasingly replace human workers with machines, they will soon have difficulty finding employed customers that can pay for their products.  At what point do businesses seek to expand employment opportunities out of a rational self-interest rather than decrease them through automation? Is it even realistic to expect profit maximizing businesses to seek the greater good of the societies they operate in?  We must seriously ponder these issues as gathered humans.

I think there is value in playing out future scenarios:

• In the short-term, manufacturers want to automate faster than their competition in order to gain economic advantages while there are sufficient numbers of consumers employed elsewhere to provide a market for their goods.
• In the mid-term, entire industries will automate and terminate large numbers of jobs, but hope other, slower-to-automate industries will employ their customer base so there is money to spend. 
• In the long-term, however, when digital transformation has swept through all industries, who is left to employ the consumers and provide them with living wages so goods can be purchased?

As jobs that require little training or education diminish in numbers, we have two choices, 1) Increase education levels to equip humans for employment in the digital future, or 2) subsidize and fund employment opportunities that benefit the greater good, so there are sufficient incomes available to support a healthy economy.

There are plenty of problems left on this planet to be solved, and solving these problems could employ many. Today, however, not all of these problems have economic and greater good values assigned to them. Fresh water sources, clean air, litter removal, forestation, sustainable farming, peace, better health and wellness, improved education, beautification of public spaces, etc.  All of these areas have the potential to generate enormous benefits for the greater good, but they need society to place a value on them and fund employment in these areas which are not always profit generating but support the greater good.

A vibrant economy, and a safe and secure society depends on healthy employment numbers, adequate wages, property ownership, human and property rights, hope, peace and purpose. Digital transformation must add to the greater good, or it risks accelerating a break down in our society and economy.

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Kevin Benedict

Futurist/Founder

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 work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Technologies Without Strategies

Layers of GIS Maps

Fingerspitzengefühl: The literal translation of this German word is finger tip feelings.  It is used to describe one's ability to maintain situational awareness by receiving real-time data. 

The problem with fingerspitzengefühl, in addition to difficult pronunciation - is knowing how much data a person needs in order to maintain situational awareness without it being too much.  Today we have data coming at us from every direction.  In fact, as I am writing this article I was notified that my security camera detected humans at my front door.  I now have situational awareness, but at the cost of distraction.  What is really needed is not just any information, but information that will materially impact one's ability to succeed.

Digital Transformation Requires a Doctrine

Knights using Stirrups for Balance

In my 30+ years in the high tech industry I have often heard the business maxim, “Develop a business strategy first, and then find the technology to support it.” This teaching I have come to believe is wrong.

Let me support my argument by first asking a few questions.  What came first e-commerce or the Internet, mobile commerce or wireless networks, commercial airline travel or the airplane, knights in shiny armour being used as shock troops, or stirrups?  Answer: Stirrups of course!  Innovations and technology have a long history of appearing first, and then doctrines and strategies forming later.

What we are learning is if your outdated business doctrines and strategies are dictating the speed of your technology adoptions - you are in big trouble! The world is moving much too fast and organizations must now align the tempo of their business doctrine and strategy evolution with the pace of technology innovations and customer adoptions.

"Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the latter than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never." -- Napoleon Bonaparte

A Digital Leader's Playbook

Digital Strategies

Winners know how to win. When competition, data and/or rules change, so do their game plans.  Recently while watching NFL football, I was intrigued by a discussion between analyst about how the best coaches can change their strategies mid-game based on new and different data.  Some coaches are able to pivot, others can't.  

What follows is a list of key strategies, concepts and mindsets that will help your enterprise win:

Being Faster than Real-Time is a Competitive Advantage

Competing in Future-Time

Businesses must continuously transform themselves to compete.  Why?  That is what their customers and competition are doing.  One of those areas of transformation involves competing in time.  Think about the impact of Amazon on shopping and delivery times!  All businesses operate in time, whether human, digital or future.  Businesses today must transform in order to successfully compete in all three of these time states simultaneously.

Let’s first discuss the definitions of these times:

• Human time – time governed by our physical, biological and mental limitations as humans
• Digital time – time governed by computing and networking speeds
• Future time – time governed by predictive analytics and algorithms