Nexttech

Nexttech
Creating Generational Legacies

Saturday, November 21, 2020

Lifelong Learning - a key ingredient to the future of work



Life-long learning has been proved to be one of the ways to stay relevant and not get disrupted by machines. 


Acquiring new knowledge is a such an integral part of your life - you need to learn how  to absorb new knowledge and eventually create your own knowledge  - which is key to not only to your advancement.


It is clear that for us to advance an indeed continue to proliferate the  survival of human existence. we will need to learn how to effectively and efficiently learn new skills - over the course of our lives! 


So.... what do we need to to learn how to learn ? 


There is a great article by Erika  Anderson https://hbr.org/amp/2016/03/learning-to-learn

that shares 4 attributes needed to learn how to learn all based around your mindset. 


  • aspiration - you truly need to want to learn new skills 
  • self-awareness 
  • curiosity, 
  • and vulnerability. 


Well worth a read 


Below are 6 C’s that will help you to learn how to learn 

(Following the theme of the 5C’s of BBG -coined by Monica Graham - connection, collaboration, contribution, continuity and community) 


Cerebral - Mindset 

A Mindset shift to change your focus from challenges to benefits - self talk is key 


Think about the last time your company adopted a new approach—overhauled a reporting system, developed Referron , replaced a CRM platform, revamped the supply chain. Were you eager to go along? I doubt it. 


Your initial response was probably to justify not learning. (It will take too long. The old way works just fine for me. I bet it’s just a flash in the pan.) 


When confronted with new learning, this is often our first roadblock: We focus on the negative and unconsciously reinforce our lack of aspiration.


When you want to learn something, you focus on what you’ll  gain from learning it—and envision a happy future in which you’re  reaping those rewards. 


That propels you into action. 


Chunk  it 


Focus on the process vs the finished product 


If you are writing a novel, focus on the chapter at hand. If you are writing software focus on the iteration, you are on right now, and everything will eventually connect.


Procrastination is a killer - and I am so good at it! delaying or postponing something that you are very well aware of needs to be done. If this is a problem work our strategies on how to deal with procrastination.


Emails, whatsapp, LinkedIn , Facebook notifications, tiktoks , YouTube and anything else that gets your mind off your task - shut it down so you can chunk that knowledge into your brain.


You have got to know the signals that get you off your attention spree and learn to shut them down for a period. 


You can reward yourself after you have accomplished your goal, by maybe doing some social media!


Learning in short bursts followed by either taking a nap, social media or doing some exercise helps your brain make the necessary neural connections that build long-lasting chunks of knowledge into your long time memory.


Challenge yourself 


Be comfortable being uncomfortable and vulnerable - by testing your knowledge by doing challenges that will force you to remember what you studied.



Continuity is king and Queen 

Practice is key , and going deep into the subject over a period of time - plan your activities 


Collaboration 

It is much easier learning with others - especially if you know like and trust them 

Building long term relationships with people who are interested in like minded things will hold you in good stead 


Coach and having a mentor 

Having a mentor or coach that cares about you is key to your ability to learn and get you to your top game. There is a reason why top athletes and CEOs have coaches! 


How cool would it be for BBG to create a process to enable lifelong learning! 

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

The Future of Work

What you need for the future of work 





An interesting piece on Adecco’s report on the future of work 



There is no doubt that digitisation, automation, and advances in artificial intelligence will disrupt the way you work ...... 


  • 62 percent of executives believe they will need to retrain or replace more than a quarter of their workforce by 2023 
  • By 2030 as many as 375 million workers—or roughly 14 percent of the global workforce


  • Lifelong learning is key 
  • Being connected is key 
  • Building your network is key
  • Mindset is key 


You need to have an


  • agile mindset 
  • resilient mindset 
  • continual learning mindset - being open to be  mentored  and on the job soft skill learning,


You need to be digital literate AND take on additional digital skills training ready for the digitisation of the future of work.


The future of work is exciting - with such cool opportunities !


The rise of technology in the workplace needs to be embraced . 

AI could make work more intellectually stimulating by automating routine tasks, freeing up  time allowing more creativity, collaboration, and customer focussed attention. 


Technology is going to create jobs, however, the jobs will be different and will continue to change at a rapid pace (Moore’s law)


The Winning Organisation 


The  Organisations that will win and attract the brightest and the best will need to have a policy of continual  training of its workforce. Your Organisation  Experience will need to be as important to your Employee as a Harvard degree, and their experience with you will be proudly included in their CV for the future of work - and be rated as part of the lifelong learning curriculum.


The Winning You


Open to lifelong learning

Being relevant 

Having a powerful network

Love what you do 


What else?

Monday, November 16, 2020

CSL’s Seqirus to build an $800m plant in Victoria



Australian listed CSL’s subsidiary Seqirus  (ASX: CSL)  is building an  $800m flu vaccine facility in Melbourne in 2021 to be ready in 2026.


This investment is on the back of a 10-year deal with the Australian Government to supply flu vaccines for the local population as well as the Q-Fever vaccine and antivenoms for Australian snakes, spiders and marine creatures.


Utilising the cell-based techniques currently used at Seqirus' facility in North Carolina, the Melbourne facility plans to supply domestic and global needs for flu vaccines, both for seasonal and pandemic purposes.


The facility will also produce the company's proprietary adjuvant MF59, which helps improve immune response and is being used in its combined trials for a potential COVID-19 vaccines with the University of Queensland.


CSL chief executive officer and managing director Paul Perreault and Seqirus general manager Stephen Marlow say that  the facility will be an important addition to the Company’s global influenza manufacturing supply chain, and will ensure more than 1,000 science, technology, manufacturing and engineering jobs in Victoria, and a supply chain worth more than $300 million annually.


Victoria's Minister for Industry Support and Recovery, Martin Pakula says that the facility will position Victoria as a global leader in cell-based influenza vaccine production and further boosts the capabilities in R&D, commercialisation and advanced manufacturing.


CSL - a share to watch!!



Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Hendrik Lourens - Getting The Most Out Of New Technology

 

Are Job Descriptions redundant




Are Job descriptions awash with the last centuries thinking and redundant? 


We need to embrace the future of work... how?


Does “a job description”.... stifle innovation, put you in a box and does not let you grow and innovate ?


A job description is great for systems to work and scale .....there is a  need for a “job description” - for a machine ..... 

if your job is defined as a job description.... by definition it can be .... and indeed will be...replaced by a machine.....


So...... how should a job ad be framed in the future of work? 


Leading sales recruiter, James Michael - talks about the need to  focus more on the outcomes that will be delivered vs how those  outcomes will be delivered.... 


What are the “smart” deliverables or goals that people are looking to be achieved? 


Will people be looking for core competencies .... what are your  human traits? 


You will need to have the basic competencies to do the job ..... write code, project management, accounting and analytical skills, be a doctor, architect, engineer etc  ....... 

you will continually need to learn how to learn, upskill, reskill, learn new ways to code, write up books, use technology .


Who have you worked for in the past?.... what skills have you acquired along your journey? ....

What skills do you still want to acquire on your journey? ....


You will need to get on with the team.... what is your psychological/disc profile ? 


Imagine 


Imagine if you had this all in a digital wallet- that could be searched for .... that you can seamlessly be connected to the ideal opportunity ! 


How cool would that be for you? 

How cool would that be for the “sponsor” 



#futureofwork 

#recruitment #jobdescriptions #talentacquisition

Sunday, November 1, 2020

10 Gems to be Agile and thrive in the Nexttech Revolution





There were some interesting presentations at last week's Drucker Forum 2020.


The conference discussed (amongst other things) the rise of China as well as the need for Europe and USA to regain its leadership in technology. 


One of the key ways to do that is to build a culture of agile - and those bureaucratic giants will suffer the same fate as the dinasour! 


Steve Denning wrote a brilliant piece based on the presentation of Kevin Nolan, President and CEO of GE Appliances (GEA) now taken over by Chinese Company , Haier CEO. Kevin Nolan spoke about the massive cultural shift that needed to happen for it to survive.... 


GE seems to have lost their way - drowning in a sea of bureaucracy - there needs to be a change - big change!!! It seems to be slowly dying. Revenue and EBIT are flat - new competitors are coming in and challenging the status quo. How can GE rise to the occasion and not rely on its old model. 


GE is slowly being killed by obsolete ideas and layers of bureaucracy.


Dinasours become extinct - how did Nolan break this behemoth into small, agile, innovative powerhouses - with a common value system?



Rendenhayi Is  the answer says Nolan 

  • its all  about the individual. 
  • the  individual wants to contribute. 
  • the individual wants to  interact. 
  • the management needs to believe in that so as to unlock the value
  • accountability, agility, and competition amid key 
  • customers were the only boss.
  • everything is about getting close to the customer.
  • who is the customer? 


What did GE Appliances do to change? 


They  broke the company from four major product lines into fourteen, and  continue to try to make the pieces smaller and smaller. 


The goal was to achieve “zero distance with the customer” driving accountability down to micro-enterprises.


Each microenterprise had its own goals and make sure that they supported the firm’s overall goal.


Their compensation was tied to their results,  so individuals felt the impact. And what matters in GE now is the result achieved for customers.


Today , even during the Covid crisis, GE Appliances now has the highest employee satisfaction rating in the history of the firm.


Below are Nolan’s 10 tips for change 

  1. defeat the bureaucracy. The firm needs to let people control their future and their decision making, so as to unlock their creativity.
  2. the customer is the boss. get outside and meet their new boss. It means meeting the boss they always had, even though they had not understood that.
  3. burn your org charts. Org charts are stagnant. They represent hierarchy. They represent bureaucracy. They represent internal power lines. When the customer is the boss, the org charts aren't meaningful anymore.
  4. live in a zero distance world. how can we get closer to our customer so that we can anticipate the needs of our customers. They look at their individual customers. Who are they serving? What's the response from those customers.
  5. the commercial teams are the firm’s eyes and ears. The commercial teams are about  understanding the customer. Identifying problems - there job is about developing relationships 
  6. create ecosystems. The focus is on what's the experience of the customer. It's not about the product. It's about the experience and feeling that the product provides. So the whole effort now is: how do we get more ecosystems out there to interact with our customers?
  7. people are smart; companies are not. let people be human again. Let people flourish. Let  people reach their potential.
  8. fight  bureaucracy. Defeating bureaucracy isn’t easy. Think of it like weeds. They're ingrained in how everyone thinks. Procedures and policies are needed to scale - but it can stifle
  9. cope with crises. Covid has been a test!! The micro-enterprises respond!! Things are changing at the micro-enterprise level with no central control. They all leaned in to the Rendanheyi philosophy during the crisis and were able to solve issues at the speed of the market. They had plants up and running before competitors. They were able to keep associates healthy and keep the business doing what it needed to do and being there for customers, because everyone knew that was the most important. They let their customers and alliance partners identify the opportunities and create the solutions.
  10. trust your people. believe in the human spirit. be vulnerable and trust your employees. Trust their capability. Trust the entrepreneurial spirit they have. When you do that, you will get results 

These are 10 amazing gems ðŸ’Ž that any organisation , community or country can adopt to improve its triple bottom line ! 


What are some of your gems 

Sunday, October 25, 2020

5 Active Learning Principles That Saved SRI International




by Curtis R. Carlson October 19, 2020

Editors’ note: 

When Curtis R. Carlson took the reins as CEO of SRI International in 1998, the famed research center was on its last legs. As Carlson quickly learned, “We were broke, the buildings urgently needed repairs, and the land was being sold. Teams worked in silos, and most of the senior managers were pursuing their own agendas with little regard for what others were doing.” When Carlson left the company in 2014, revenue had more than tripled, and the company’s world-changing ideas had generated tens of billions of dollars of new marketplace value. SRI had re-established itself as one of the world’s leading innovation enterprises.

How did he do it? Carlson’s article in the November/December 2020 issue of Harvard Business Review shares the author’s methodology—a framework that involves developing an “NABC value proposition” that spells out how a company’s offering addresses customers’ needs with a compelling approach while delivering superior benefits per costs when compared to the competition. 

Of keen interest to Inspiring Minds readers, Carlson’s methodology is based on proven practices from the education sciences. What follows is an excerpt of Carlson’s HBR article that focuses on active learning. It’s a helpful reminder of how critical it is for educators to help students become master architects of their own learning—especially during these times when student engagement is so fleeting, yet so important.

At its heart, creating value is an exercise in active learning. Coming up with a novel product or service is not simply a matter of waiting for inspiration to strike, but a process of using proven practices from the education sciences to gain insights and improve fast.

Active learning depends on engagement. 

Students become master architects, for example, not just by reading textbooks, listening to lectures, or watching other architects but by constantly working on and revising actual projects.

 Through that activity, they synthesize the theory they’re taught, the techniques they see others using, and their own ability to manage the design process.


VALUE CREATION AS AN ACTIVE LEARNING PROCESS

In Innovation for Impact: Value Creation as an Active Learning Process, I describe the process we used at SRI International, which enabled us to produce technology such as HDTV and Siri (now on the iPhone). Our methodology is applicable for creating both disruptive and incremental innovations, and versions of it are used in major universities, national laboratories, and large global companies. It works for people in all positions and all professions because value creation is everyone’s job.

Since leaving SRI, I have partnered with a former colleague there, Len Polizzotto, to further develop the methodology at Northeastern University and at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. We call our approach Innovation for Impact, and in 2017 I coauthored a National Academy of Engineering reportdocumenting aspects of the research behind it.


People who try to learn purely through observation and theory miss a great deal and forget even more. That’s particularly true for anyone seeking to create value in business. Innovation occurs in a complex, dynamic environment; those who succeed do so because they manage to find the right signals in a sea of noise. 


To create efficiently and effectively in that context, people must follow a structured process that includes five basic elements of active learning:

1. Iteration with real-time feedback. In creative endeavors, repetition is central to learning. Playing the piano, for example, involves complex manual maneuvers and a high degree of hand-eye coordination, and to reach a professional level, students must continually experiment with timing and movement. This practice is most effective when accompanied by real-time feedback from an expert who can reframe problems and provide potential solutions.

Coming up with a new business idea is, of course, very different from learning to play the piano. The inputs are undefined and may come from a range of sources. So instead of a master-apprentice relationship, the process involves an innovator who keeps refining the idea and seeking feedback widely: from experts, peers, partners, competitors, and, most importantly, customers.

2. Concise mental models. Psychologists assert that all of us construct “mental models”—frameworks carried in our minds to make sense of our experiences and inform our decisions. In active learning, we use these models to identify the beliefs, insights, and assumptions upon which we build hypotheses for what works. We can then test our hypotheses against collected evidence and, if warranted, revise them to develop improved models.

Of critical importance, the mental models that guide the initial inquiry must respect the limitations of the people using them. Research shows that most of us retain only seven items, on average, in our short-term memory. What’s more, we can think about only three or four items at once. If innovators use mental models that are too long or too complicated (as many are), they will not easily make sense of the evidence or rapidly learn their way to better hypotheses. But if mental models are concise, they can, over time, become intrinsic knowledge to be tapped almost automatically.

3. Multiple learning styles. Active learning involves applying a variety of approaches to presenting and experimenting with ideas. Using images, simulations, and prototypes, for example, can bring ideas to life, highlight different aspects of a problem, and challenge people’s thinking about possible solutions. Storytelling is effective because it can create the context for a mental model: Research shows that stories help people remember information and revise their beliefs, assumptions, and theories.

4. Teamwork. Working in teams increases engagement, learning, and motivation. Research suggests that the optimal size for a business team is about five people. That number allows for a diversity of perspectives and skills, is small enough to prevent the group from subdividing, and reduces communication costs and the risk of miscommunication. 

 Because value creation is a highly collaborative, interdisciplinary activity, no individual will have all the necessary knowledge, relevant mental models, or insights. This means that each person on the team must bring the distinct competencies and experiences required for his or her tasks. The goal is to assemble teams whose members have a shared vision but complementary skills and varied viewpoints.

5. Frequent comparison. Comparison is how we learn our preferences and decide most things, whether we’re buying a new car or choosing what to eat. And research shows that direct and rapid comparison of two similar objects greatly amplifies small differences. Suppose you need new eyeglasses. If you randomly try out different pairs, it may take a while to find one that helps you see better. So instead you get an exam in which you look into a machine that displays lenses of different strengths. Your doctor rapidly switches the lens in front of each eye, asking, “Which is better, this or the previous one?” Having you quickly compare lenses with subtle distinctions enables the doctor to swiftly zero in on the right prescription.

Systematic success is achieved when all the building blocks of active learning are brought together in a complete value creation system. 

A Checklist for Creating Effective Learning Programs

In addition to performing basic educational research, SRI International’s education division also evaluates ongoing educational initiatives. When a program—whether online or in a traditional in-person setting—shows little or no educational advancement, SRI teams work to help improve these programs, often by employing the principles of active learning. These are the same principles we used to improve our value creation methodology

For educators, I offer this checklist, which includes 10 active learning concepts that are critical in evaluating the potential of not only different value creation methodologies, but learning environments as well: 

  1.         Continually perform the task.
  2.          Provide real-time feedback and ensure constant engagement.
  3.        Use concise frameworks, heuristics, and mental models along with multiple representations.
  4.         Focus first on the big ideas.
  5.      Employ mentors and not just “teachers.”
  6.         Initially form small teams with unique, complementary skills.
  7.         Leverage established knowledge and use tools that accelerate learning
  8.         Leverage comparative learning.
  9.        Provide motivating incentives and support positive human values.
  10.        Integrate into a complete system.

For an educational program to be fully effective, it should adhere, in some form, to these 10 core concepts. Using nonexperiential lectures in synchronous online programs, for example, has limited educational effectiveness. Conversely, Northeastern University has built an online platform based on these principles that’s an excellent example in teaching and practicing value creation. 

See Carlson’s HBR article for a complete reveal of the Innovation for Impact framework and its “NABC value proposition.” 

Curtis R. Carlson is the CEO of Practice of Innovation, a consultancy based in Silicon Valley. He is also a professor of practice at Northeastern University and a distinguished executive in residence at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.