Category: future

Making way for Gen Y in the executive suite

A challenge for organisations is opening the career path for Gen Y managers as baby boomers hang around the executive suite.

One of the great challenges in today’s workplace is how organisations will manage Generation Y entering the boardroom.

Lazy, unfocused and high maintenance are some of the descriptions used by boomers when talking about younger workers, but how much truth is there really in that and how do organisations plan for this generation to take leadership positions?

As part of the recent Sydney EMC Forum, I had a chance to discuss the challenges of managing Gen Ys with social researcher Micheal McQueen and EMC Australia Managing Director Alister Dias.

Like many tech companies, EMC has a younger workforce with around 25% of staff being GenY and Diaz sees global thinking and a fresh, bright approach as some of the advantages younger people bring to the workplace.

“We want to see this grow,” says Diaz. “There’s two reasons for this; one is that energy level, quick learning and adaption to the new world but the other is the shortage of general talent in the market.”

That shortage is an early part of the global race for talent, with Diaz seeing the priority for EMC and other tech companies to develop home grown skills rather than importing skilled workers.

Offering a career

For Diaz’s, one of the great challenges in this race for talent is retaining skilled and motivated Gen Y and Gen X through offering more diverse career options.

Career progression is one of the big problems facing both GenY and X workers as, in McQueen’s view, the baby boomers have no intention of going anywhere as many define themselves by their work so they don’t plan to retire.

“For Baby Boomers their work ethic is their identity,” says McQueen. “Stepping back from a leadership position, or any position in general is a big deal.”

Not working huge hours which is a key difference between baby boomers and their GenY kids and grandkids who don’t wear long hours as a badge of honour.

Language barriers

An area that concerns McQueen is a lack of vocabulary as text and social media messaging has eroded the teenagers vocabulary with average 14 year old today only knowing 10,000 words as opposed to 25,000 in 1950.

“It started off as text speak and it’s gone beyond that now,” says McQueen. “If you have a Gen Y person operating with older workers there’s often a disconnect there.”

The effects of electronic gaming and communications also has created a climate where today’s teenagers have less empathy than those of twenty years ago — McQueen cites a University of Michigan study — this has consequences in fields as disparate as sales, technical support and nursing.

Organisations are going to have to learn to deal with these differences.  “In our own organisation we talk about the need to adapt to Gen Y,” says EMC’s Diaz. “Personally I think we have to meet them half-way.”

“We’ve found it difficult to get talent. You really have to do your homework on it.”

Part of EMC’s problem in finding skilled Gen Y workers has been the collapse in university IT course enrolments along with the broader turning away from STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathmetics — related degrees.

Diaz is quite positive on this and sees the pendulum swinging back towards more technical degrees and diplomas with more younger people taking on STEM subjects. At present though enrolment statistics aren’t bearing this out.

Finding those skilled workers is going to be one of the great challenges for business in planning for the rise of GenY workers, one of the greater tasks though might be getting the baby boomers out of the corner office.

Image of a younger worker courtesy of ZoofyTheJi through sxc.hu

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Reducing the road toll through the internet of everything

How can the internet of everything reduce the road toll?

How can modern computer technology cut the road toll?

Transport for NSW’s John Wall spoke last week at Cisco’s Internet of Everything presentation in Sydney about some of the ways the connected motor car can reduce accidents.

John’s presentation comes from personal experience, having being a volunteer for nearly thirty years at his local State Emergency Service brigade where he was often among the first responders to local vehicle accidents.

Some of the improvements in technology see the road toll falling as people travel less because of remote working, teleconference and business automation. Many of the applications though are built into the vehicles, street signs and the roads themselves.

Finding the safest route

John’s first suggestion for improving driver safety is having navigation systems sourcing traffic, weather and other information to suggest the best route for the driver. An intelligent system may also modify the recommended journey based on the experience of the driver and state of the vehicle, such as the tyre conditions.

Watching the eyes

Fatigue kills and all of us have driven when we were really too tired to be behind the wheel.

The first in car technology John discussed is facial recognition technology that detects when drivers are fatigued. Tying this feature into the vehicle’s entertainment system with a stern aviation style “PULL OVER – YOU ARE TIRED” warning could well save hundreds of lives a year on his own.

Connected road signs

One of the underpinning factors of the internet of everything is cheap computers and transmitters embedded into almost anything. Road signs and sensors talking to cars could help reduce driver errors such as entering curves too fast.

Those signs can also be plugged into weather conditions so if there’s ice, fog or rain then the car can be told of the hazards ahead.

Going on the grid

Signs are not the only devices that could be talking to each other, vehicles themselves could be talking to each other. Should one car hit a slippery or soft patch on the road, it could tell following vehicles that there’s a problem ahead and respond accordingly.

That technology too could help traffic planners and road authorities, as data on traffic speeds and road conditions feed into their databases it becomes easier to identify black spots or road design problems before lives are lost.

Helping the first responders

A wrecked car or roadside sensor can also help those first responders attending an accident. The vehicle itself could transmit the damage and give rescuers valuable, time saving information, on the state of the occupants.

Similarly, the system could also warn emergency services such as hospitals and ambulances of the injuries likely and what’s needed to treat the injuries on site, in transit and at the casualty ward.

Importantly, a smart vehicle can also warn those first responders of potential risks such as live air bag gas cylinders, car body reinforcements or high voltage cables as they attempt to free trapped occupant from a wreck.

The rescuers themselves may be wearing technologies like Google Glass that help them see this information in real time.

Bringing together the technology

As Kate Carruthers points out, the internet of everything is the bringing together of many different technologies – wireless internet, cloud computing, grid networks and embedded devices all come together to create a virtual safety net for drivers.

By the end of this decade that we will all be relying on these technologies to help us drive. Which means we might find our licenses start to be endorsed for the level of technology in our vehicles, just as we used to have to get qualified to drive a car with a manual transmission.

Concluding his presentation, John Wall told the story of Jason, a cyclist from his town who was killed in a road accident and left a young family. In his slide he showed Harry, Jason’s young son, playing with the flowers on his father’s memorial.

“I hope for Harry is that when Harry learns to drive that things will be different on our roads and things will be different because we are all connected,” said John.

It’s a strong reminder of the real human opportunities and costs when we adopt new technologies.

Car crash image courtesy of jazz111 through SXC.HU

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Dealing with the digital investor

The Telstra Digital Investor report shows the problem facing the financial services industry and many other sectors in dealing with connected consumers.

Telstra’s Digital Investor report released earlier this week looked at the generational changes for the financial planning industry and the effects of technology on delivering advice and services.

At the core of the report is the projection that by 2030, 70 per cent of Australia’s financial assets will be held by the digitally savvy Generations X and Y and the advice industry is doing little to cater for this group”s media and reading habits.

This is barely surprising, financial planners are one of these fields subject to arcane rules and regulations which make practitioners extremely conservative about innovation or changing work habits, even when the new tools don’t breach any laws.

One of the nagging questions though with the report is the underlying assumptions on wealth generation over the next twenty years. Will it really follow the same pattern as we’ve seen for the last few decades?

As the Stanford Graduate School of Management notes in its dissection of the Forbes richest 400 Americans, the path to wealth is changing.

“Three of the 10 wealthiest people in the United States – Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Michael Bloomberg – built their fortunes on information technology that barely existed in the 1980s,” says the author Joshua Rauth.

It may well be that the financial planning industry’s core assumptions, of a large, stable middle class workforce steadily squirreling away a nest egg is going to be challenged in an economy undergoing massive change.

Another generational aspect in the Digital Investor report is the handing down of family owned enterprises. The paper quotes social analyst Mark McCrindle saying “Succession planning is already a key issue (for SMEs) – yet by 2020 40% (145, 786) of today’s managers in family and small businesses will have reached retirement age. We are heading towards the biggest leadership succession ever.”

As this blog has described before, many of the current generation of small business owners will never pass their operation on. Their barber shops, car dealerships and factories will retire or die with the proprietor as Gen X and Y entrepreneurs can’t afford to buy the business and the owner can’t afford to retire.

The investment climate of the next quarter century will be very different from the last fifty years as will the business models and the paths to wealth. It’s something that shouldn’t be understated when considering how Generation X and Y will manage their finances.

Despite the weaknesses, the Telstra Digital Investor report is an interesting insight into how one industry is failing to identify and act upon the fundamental changes that are happening in its marketplace.

The financial planning industry isn’t the only sector challenged though and that makes the report good reading for any business trying to understand how marketplaces are changing.

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Could 3D printing be lurching up the hype cycle?

3D printing is hot, so hot it’s found a place on the hype cycle.

3D printing is undoubtedly a game changing technology that changes the economics and scalability of manufacturing. But is it possible the technology is becoming over-hyped?

Two stories today illustrate the opportunities and potential of 3D printing; a home made SLR camera and NASA manufacturing their own rocket parts.

NASA’s experiment shows how precision, low demand components could be made. One of the problems with procuring parts like rocket engine injectors is that the production runs are low so the manufacturing costs are high given there are no economies of scale involved.

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing also has the advantage that components can be manufactured in one piece rather than requiring assembly from a number of different parts. In turn this reduces production times and errors.

Printing your own camera seems a bit of waste of time and money seeing that cameras aren’t particularly expensive and the one printed isn’t a digital SLR – your have to find somewhere to buy and process the film.

The point though with Bozardeux’s project is that it is open source – anyone can modify or adapt the design and that is where the potential lies.

While the possibilities are endless with 3D printing, it may well be that the technology is being overhyped. Both the rocket engine injector and the SLR camera are early stage proofs of concept, neither are ready for full time use.

It also has to be kept in mind that traditional manufacturing methods aren’t going away – there will always be products more suited to mass production or using materials that can’t be fed through a 3D printer.

Right now we’re on the early stage of the hype cycle with 3D printing and while the potential is clear, the immediate future of the technology being oversold is also becoming apparent.

That of course means opportunity for many entrepreneurs and their investors, but it also means you have to be very careful in choosing technologies or where to place your bets.

In poker it’s said if you don’t know who the patsy is at the table, then it’s probably you. The same is true when a new technology is being hyped.

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Coming to your city – the internet of machines

A chart by sensor manufacturer Libelium illustrates how the internet of machines is growing

An intriguing infographic from Spanish sensor manufacturer Libelium – which to Australian ears sounds like a new age defamation law firm – illustrates how the internet of things is being used in all walks of life from shipping containers to park benches.

The notable thing about the diagram is pretty well all of the sensor applications have been available for years – in some cases decades – and its only with the arrival of cheap sensors and pervasive internet access that widespread monitoring has becoming possible.

Libelium smart world infographic

With affordable, even disposible, sensors coupled with internet projects like Google Loon and Australia’s National Broadband Network, these networks are now possible at a price that won’t sink a government’s budget.

In fact these sensor networks will probably improve councils’ and governments’ budgets as they promise to improve the efficiency of services like rubbish collection and street repairs.

The real challenge is managing all the data this equipment gathers, that’s going to be one of the big jobs of the next decade.

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Telling the broadband story – the government makes its case

The minister’s office replies to my NBN criticisms and illustrates how the broadband story isn’t being told

Further to yesterday’s post about NBNCo’s inability to tell a story, I received a polite message from the long suffering staff at the Minister’s office that pointed me to some of the resources that NBNCo and the Department of  Broadband, Communications and Digital economy have posted.

Here’s the list of case studies and videos;

http://www.nbn.gov.au/nbn-advertising/nbn-case-studies/

http://www.nbnco.com.au/nbn-for-business/case-studies.html

http://www.nbn.gov.au/case-study/noella-babui-business/

http://www.nbn.gov.au/case-study/seren-trump-small-home-based-business-owner/

All of these case studies are nice, but they illustrate the problem – they’re nice, standard government issue media releases. The original CNet story that triggered yesterday’s story tells real stories that are more than just sanitised government PR.

It also begs the question of where the hell are all these people successfully using the NBN when I ask around about them?

What’s even more frustrating is the Sydney Morning Herald seems to get spoon fed these type of stories.

The really irritating thing with stories like yesterday’s SMH piece is that it’s intended to promote the Digital Rural Futures Conference on the future of farming being held by the University of New England.

Now this is something I’d would have gone to had I known about it and I’d have paid my own fares and accommodation. Yet the first I know about this conference is an article on a Saturday four days out from the event. That’s not what you’d call good PR.

The poor public relations strategies of the Digital Rural Futures Conference is a symptom of the National Broadband’s Network’s proponents’ inability to get their message out the wider public.

When we look back at the debacle that was the debate about Australia’s role in the 21st Century, it’s hard not to think the failure to articulate the importance of modernising the nation’s communications systems will be one of the key studies in how we blew it.

Despite the best efforts of a few switched on people in Senator Conroy’s office, a lot more effort is needed to make the case for a national broadband and national investment in today’s technologies which are going to define the future.

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We’re all Luddites now – Wage deflation and falling living standards

As the consumerist society runs out of credit, we have to find new ways to drive our economy

A post on today’s Macrobusiness describes how Australia’s General Motors workers being asked to take a pay cut is the harbinger for a general fall in the nation’s wages.

This is coupled with a post by Paul Krugman in the New York Times sympathising with the Luddites as technology takes away many middle class jobs that were not so long ago thought to be the safe knowledge jobs of the future.

Krugman points out that in the United States income inequality started accelerating in the year 2000, the stagnation of most Americans’ incomes started a decade or two before that.

For the last few decades, expanding credit allowed the consumerist society to continue growing, but the crisis of 2008 marked the end of that that economic model. Although governments around the world have tried to keep it alive by pumping money into their economy.

Now we have to face the reality that the Western world’s standard of living is falling for the first time in a century.

For some this is going to be really tough – although one suspects those who will really complain are those least affected.

What is clear is that many of our business and political leaders aren’t prepared to face this change. Dealing with that is going to be the biggest challenge of this decade.

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