Business Brainpower with the Human Touch

Publics around the world are decidedly unhappy about their nations’ economies. Most are displeased with current economic conditions and concerned about rising economic inequality; few are optimistic about the coming year. However, at the same time, most global publics say their personal finances are in better shape than their national economies, according to a new 39-nation survey.

But one of the most striking divides in global economic attitudes is that citizens of emerging market countries are overall more pleased with their economies than are people in advanced or developing economies.

The job description “data scientist” didn’t exist five years ago. No one advertised for an expert in data science, and you couldn’t go to school to specialize in the field. Today, companies are fighting to recruit these specialists, courses on how to become one are popping up at many universities, and the Harvard Business Review even proclaimed that data scientist is the “sexiest” job of the 21st century.

Data scientists take huge amounts of data and attempt to pull useful information out. The job combines statistics and programming to identify sometimes subtle factors that can have a big impact on a company’s bottom line, from whether a person will click on a certain type of ad to whether a new chemical will be toxic in the human body.

To succeed consistently in the marketplace, a company must have a clear and differentiated way of creating value for its customers, supported by well-defined capabilities—things it does exceptionally well that are central to its ability to perform, and hard to replicate. All this should be reflected in its portfolio of products and services. But those elements will only lead to sustainable success if the company has the right organizational design, one that enables it to execute its strategy.

No matter where your customers, employees, partners or channels are in the world, Bare Brilliance can improve the performance of your business by deploying a global next-generation training solution. All without the traditional costs associated with face-to-face training.

Don’t believe us? Watch a short video of a training session for one of our clients who trained their global team – all for a fraction of the cost associated with normal training.

The word “Presentation” for lack of a better term often called “PowerPoint” or “Slidedeck”has become synonomous with a period of long, boring information forced upon the audience by the Presenter.  But love it or hate presentations do play an integral part of communication from business to education and everything in between. If used properly a presentation can serve as the medium to externalize your story or idea.

Anyone who has ever used PowerPoint knows that they offer boring un-inviting templates that look like they were created a generation ago. And most of us at one time or another didn’t know any better and started with a default template, pasted loads of content and called it a Presentation.

After working five years as a regional director at a large health insurer in Oakland, Calif., Daniel Eddleman felt ready to move up the ladder. So he found a mentor within the company who agreed with Mr. Eddleman that his performance and leadership ability merited the promotion.

But he'd need to work on a few soft skills to clinch the job. "It can be a challenging environment to get noticed in because it's such a big organization," says Mr. Eddleman, who connected with a job coach who helped him identify and work on three weak areas—including the ability to self-assess, manage his emotions and brag.

Daniel Pink’s The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need conveys a number of principles about the world of work that everyone should take note of.

Why? Though Pink doesn’t bog the story down with academic research, all of his core ideas are backed up by plenty of studies, many of which I’ve posted about in the past.

So what does he have to say? Six simply-stated concepts:

1. There is no plan.
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses.
3. It’s not about you.
4. Persistence trumps talent.
5. Make excellent mistakes.
6. Leave an imprint.

People say that business is all about relationships, but the truth is that business is really all about communication. Communication is key to virtually every aspect of business—from acquiring and retaining customers to improving employee engagement and performance. At the most fundamental level, business can’t happen without communication. This is even more true in the era of globalization. As geographic borders become porous and the world flattens, effective communication with customers, employees, partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders across the globe becomes essential to successfully running a company.

A simplistic approach to this issue (and one adopted by some less-progressive companies) is to assume that everyone will speak English, including all potential customers and employees. After all, English is the lingua franca of much of the world, and the language you happen to be reading this article in. Yet given the accelerating pace of globalization, and the rising influence of many non-English-speaking countries, the flaws in this thinking start to show.

Recent technology advances in mobile computing and augmented reality are blurring the boundaries between traditional and Internet retailing, enabling retailers to interact with consumers through multiple touch points and expose them to a rich blend of offline sensory information and online content. In the United States today, more than 50% of cell phone owners have smartphones, and more than 70% of these have used their devices for comparison shopping, a habit that is becoming increasingly common worldwide.

In the past, brick-and-mortar retail stores were unique in allowing consumers to touch and feel merchandise and provide instant gratification; Internet retailers, meanwhile, tried to woo shoppers with wide product selection, low prices and content such as product reviews and ratings. As the retailing industry evolves toward a seamless “omnichannel retailing” experience, the distinctions between physical and online will vanish, turning the world into a showroom without walls.

Forget spreadsheets, swot analysis and risk management, the latest topic on the business school agenda is happiness.

Those academics who research the topic prefer to classify it a bit differently, however. “Meaning” is the term used by Lee Newman, dean of innovation and behaviour at IE Business School in Spain. At Michigan Ross in the US, Jane Dutton, university professor of business administration and psychology, says it is about “human flourishing”. Christie Scollon at Singapore Management University describes it as “subjective wellbeing”.

But however they describe it, they all agree that happiness makes good business sense. Moreover, employers and policy makers need to consider the happiness factor if they are to promote strong economies and profitable companies.

When Jim Keenan, the social sales specialist, describes his work today, he’ll tell you that he’s “ushering salespeople from the old world into the social world” – the cold calling world to the Twitter world, the salespeople who call prospects incessantly to the salespeople who educate their prospects with relevant content. Keenan’s argument in the The Rise of Social Salespeople is that using social media to sell – increases profits.

But up until now, we’ve had no real data.  So sensing an opportunity, Keenan’s firm recently released a report on the impact of social media on quota attainment and the results were impressive.

Squeeze your employees, and you’ll pay the price. Seems obvious—but Ernst & Young has actual evidence. For its annual fraud report the firm surveyed 3,000 company board members, managers and their teams in 36 countries across the world, and found that employees feeling the double pinch of increased demands and fewer financial perks are alarmingly likely to respond by doing anything from fudging the numbers to bribing officials and clients.

Practically everyone, it seems, is feeling the pressure to grow their businesses and meet their targets in a tough economic climate, but at the same time, “the vast majority” of people reported that they’re not getting the bonuses, raises and other perks that they used to. Oddly enough, this is true not just in the sputtering engines of Western capitalism but also in hyper-competitive rapid-growth markets “where the battle for talent remains fierce.” In India, for instance, 43% of respondents were witnessing what E&Y delicately describes as “downward pressure on pay and remuneration.”