It is nearly Xmas again, and it is time to reflect (again). I decided to go back through all the blogs I wrote and share some of the lessons I learned this year. The first blog of 2020 was this. Covering storytelling, the information dashboard and reinvention of your business model.
COVID
That was before COVID. Reinvention is now a necessity. Reinvention is often confused with transformation, but I think it is more fundamental than that. COVID has forced not only the adoption of technology but also a complete rethink about purpose and vision,
Citizen development
From a technology perspective, there is good news. Automation, digital twinning, continues improvement experimentation at scale, diffusion of decision making, engagement and up-skilling and enablement of staff were always very time consuming and expensive concepts to implement. No longer with citizen development. Citizen development will be one of the big trends in the next five years.
Abstraction
Technology will follow the same abstraction curve as software, meaning that your employees will be able to play lego with robotics, AI, data, 3D printing, but also genetics, synthetic biology, and any other technology you can imagine. Near-instant product development and innovation.
Gut
The topics of the books I covered in the blogs this year are the microbiome (your gut is important not only from a health perspective, but it is part of your brain and your intuition). Always trust your gut.
Decision making
The importance of diversity, without diversity in thinking you will not find the solutions for the future. Decision-based on one all-knowing leader or management team is no longer fit for purpose. The future is open strategy models based on collective wisdom. Based on experimentation and scenario planning. Where the frames of the past do no longer apply. Generals always fight the last war. If you do that as a leader now, you will lose. That is why AI won’t help you with predicting the future. It will help you predict behaviour. Consider how you can use AI in your business.
Climate
COVID is the dress rehearsal for the impact of climate change. As you adjust to COVID, include SDG as a fundamental part of your business model. I think interesting business models will emerge are based on restorative economics. That is one of the few ways your business can grow in the future.
Let go
In a world that is super complex, consider quantum leadership, the art of letting go until the solution materialises. Letting go of control will be the theme for next year.
Marketing
Marketing will become super contextual and super personal. Everything an experience.
Resilience
A healthy mind in a healthy body (or the other way around) will become a theme in the new year as a response to COVID. Personal resilience, which means actively managing your own mental and physical health (food, breathing, meditation, exercise, information diet). I have started rereading Napoleon Hill. You need to take control. Otherwise, someone else will.
PMI
My work with PMI got me into automation, project management, the world of work, citizen development and again, you have seen nothing yet. There is a collision of trends, exacerbated by COVID. Sunil Prahara, the CEO PMI calls it existential VUCA.
2021
Not sure what my last blogs in 2020 are going to be about. Apart from “Think and grow rich”, I am reading “Restoring the soul of business”, “Unchartered”, “Die empty”, “The technology fallacy”, “Out innovate”, “Intentional Integrity”, “The misfit economy”, “What is water”, “The body” and the “The corporate social mind”. I think books are a predictor of the future. I would expect that 2021 will be the year of some very fundamental choices.
PS I also launched my latest book this year. You can order it here.
