In 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle church in Wittenberg containing 95 subjects for debate over the health and abuses of the catholic church. This was a defining precursor to what was to become the reformation of the catholic church, an event with as profound of consequences of that of the industrial revolution or second world war. Arguably we stand on the precipice of a societal change as or more profound than those mentioned that has more potential for societal, economic, human and technological implications. So where is our 95 theses for debate on the implications of AI?

Although I don’t think we need to start nailing articles to the door of Silicon Valley offices — through my professional and personal dealings over the last few years — there is need for a reasoned and open debate. This article is an attempt at a purely societal discussion on potential futures. I have encountered in my privileged personal and professional life murmurs of discussion but as of yet see a collective will to have wide spread debate about the potential implications of AI. Often discussions are met with a conflict of personal and professional views that mean a hesitance or fear around exploring all the potential outcomes of AI. There is a sparsity on theories around what ultimately will come of the world once AI is fully adopted.

The idea of subjugating ourselves to a supreme being is not new. From the dawn of civilisation, we worshipped gods, planets, kings, celebrities and politicians. But what is new is the notion that the vast contribution to evolution may come from something synthetic in nature. What branch of Darwin’s evolutionary tree does AI sit on? The idea here is this that what is considered the inherent natural order of our planet and species is to be fundamentally transformed and as such this wave is something which supersedes those that came before. Introducing something so profound and expecting there not to be disruption would be negligible.

The common idea is we are embarking on a wave of change that is a thread connected to that of the Internet, Big Data, Cloud Computing, Machine learning and more. This view rather softens the fear in that we have managed these waves both as a society and leaders and the net benefit on the large was positive. Therefore, this wave albeit sharper coming wave of AI will be managed with similar success. We naturally look to our past for lessons to deal with our future. However, we cannot understate the point this wave is more profound than others. From manual labour factory, driving or cleaning roles — to healthcare, business or creative roles — AI has the power to replace human labour in a way no other wave did. Likewise in our daily lives — tasks which required elementary human skill and thinking maybe handed over to AI tools. These risks can be sugar coated or softened but not ignored.

In every industry, we see a potential for AI to replace human’s role in tasks and crafts. The most pessimistic view is somehow AI will replace so many jobs that ultimately some form of societal collapse will occur and lead to a dystopian future. I reject this view because even in a scenario where AI serves not humans — without humans to serve or more importantly spend — the businesses or economies wouldn’t exist. Unless robots get a credit rating, our role as consumers will be critical now and for the centuries to come. Furthermore, it should give us the opportunity to sharpen our crafts and tools to become more efficient and effective and accelerate the progress of humanity.

If jobs do become obsolete it is critical new industries will have to form or in a more radical view some form of universal living wage may be needed to ensure wealth exists and moves freely enough to keep society functioning. However, we should be starting as a society to adapt and prepare for this today to ensure we prevent the pessimistic outcomes of AI. There seems to be little appetite for debate around the negative outcomes — some of us leaders are cautious at least publicly to occupy a view of potential risk when much of our products are dependant on AI to be a success. We need as society and businesses to remove these internal conflicts to allow us to best prepare on how to ride this wave and predict failure points or pitfalls.

A greater potential risk is that we abandon freedom of thought, discussion, critique and lose the foundational basis for a lot of our intelligence. If we can just get to the answer without the process or skills to get there — we run the risk of “forgetting” the basis of our knowledge. This is hard to imagine but in the very same way during dark ages the Roman knowledge and practises were simply forgotten and abandoned leading to a decline in society and culture. Of course we should use chat bots etc. But if we put all our faith and free thinking into them without critique or thought, we unwittingly abandon free thought, reason, logic and critical foundational skills which our intelligence is based upon. Furthermore, if we naturally assume AI is an intelligence greater than ours — should that intelligence become corrupted or biased — we may blindly follow its advice to negative impact of our lives. It is worth noting despite rumours of biased coding, AI is not fully commercialised and open to manipulation via investment, it is after all a form of media.

A Utopian view is perhaps one where we will send our AI to work, where we will be served by it, and we can live in great wealth with a society more accessible for all. We will sit in Café’s debating and spend time with our families or on holidays. AI will be available to all and remove the barriers normally encountered in society. As nice as its sound, its just unlikely this level of Utopia will ever be achieved. Perhaps shorter working weeks as already been suggested will be the norm and we will have more time -but ultimately and for the good of humanity — we should continue to work and keep our roles to ensure we always have a role in society. Hybrid options like those already seen in Care homes or Offices or Hospitals perhaps seems most plausible where our crafts are sharpened via artificial intelligence and the human guards this and validates this in order to achieve the right balance.

Who will decide on the outcome of AI? For this answer we must individually turn inwards. Either in a conscious or un-conscious way we are the architects of our fate. The reality is we have control over our outcomes. We often struggle to see that the 100 seemingly inconsequential decisions we make each day impact the greater collective, but they do. For example, take our consumer decisions, we like to believe that when asked to make good choices, but in reality, when stood on the aisle of a supermarket we choose what’s best for us in that moment, cheapest, easiest etc not what is better for society. Perhaps an organic choice or buying local would improve society more — but its not front of mind when picking up an item at the supermarket. Likewise in political sense we prefer the idea of shaking our fists at politicians than exacting the control we have. Our decisions to abandon active politics and disenfranchisement has led politicians to have free reign without consequences and net negative impact on society.

If as a society then we continue to shirk away from the control we have, we will remove our rights to safeguard ourselves from the most negative consequences and similarly the ability to ensure the most positive outcomes from AI happen. We have seen incidences where in abandoning accountability and handing it over the net benefit to our society has been worse. Ultimately as a society then we will vote with our feet and small daily decisions. When you write an essay on AI not through learning, when you design your logo on Grok not hire someone from Fiverr, when a CEO replaces roles with technologies, when a leader dilutes craft for savings, when we all make what are seemingly inconsequential decisions, we potentially introduce risks of pessimistic futures. That doesn’t mean we can’t do the above, but we need to understand and mitigate risks and it will be the sum of the collective decision making which will ultimately determine which of the aforementioned scenarios our future will hold.

We may be faced within the next decade moral junctures of which we face choices or conflicts between our ideals and societal pressures. It is in these moments that we must make our own decisions which will shape the society. The ask right now is to look within and reflect in a way of moral fortitude and make conscious decisions for the greater collective. This allows us to embrace a new form of intelligence without sacrificing its fundamentals.

This article was not written with AI.

The purpose of this article is simply a message to my future self to remind them on the importance of consistency vs importance in long term performance and well being and hopefully in sharing my 12 years learning (and failures?!) I can help others in this common but critical challenge we face throughout our careers.

There is no blueprint to when burnout arises and we can’t solve the issue of intensity vs consistency through developing road maps, frameworks or asking chat GPT (yet?!). So an alternative thinking is can be used to alter our perspectives and work some key concepts into our day to day working lives is key to unlocking the power of consistency vs intensity.

Below are the key tenets in building this perspective

Brains have gears — Cars driving in high gears for too long can be more likely to break down, the same is true of our brains. Our brains operate wavelengths in gears increasing in intensity ranging from gamma to beta to alpha to theta and delta. It took me a while to realise I spent from about 3 seconds after waking up to falling asleep in delta — often to the detriment of my fuel (energy) supplies. We all operate on slightly different wavelengths and which one we’re mainly in doesn’t define success but our ability to move through these gears certainly does. Step 1 is recognising which we are in then by switching tasks or circuit breaking like going for a walk or meditating we can have periods of lower intensity for more consistency.

Service the engine from time to time — there is no blueprint to this — it can be activities outside work — switching off or booking a couple days leave — clearing the workload or spending a few days on tasks you enjoy or simply connecting with others. Servicing the engine on a regular basis allows it to perform better for longer. We must try our hardest to set regular intervals or do this in response to the feeling of burnout approaching so we can keep doing the great things we do but consistently.

Be surprised at the response when you say the magic word…”Help” — If like many you don’t use this word often, you won’t have witnessed and ingrained into your belief system the magical response that happens when you finally do. Help is not a dirty word in the workplace and very often the compassion and willingness of people to do so can be a powerful reinforcement. The help we seek maybe just not getting overly invested in solving a task and getting outside perspective or help in managing excessive workload — whatever it is unlocking the magic of the word help is key to consistently performing.

Celebrate the wins — We rarely celebrate the wins — on the endless convener belt of challenges we face in our organisation we often are onto the next issue before we’ve paused, reflected and celebrated the wins we get. We don’t have to be over congratulatory but pausing to just enjoy the wins is a critical antidote to when projects are more challenging or success maybe doesn’t come. Without doing this it’s hard mentally to deal with the more challenging outcomes and can lead to breakdown in times of challenge or perceived failure.

Unlock the power of No — For most of my career this word has been my kryptonite and only recently I have unlocked the power of NO recognising it to be a strength — not a weakness. Dismantling the deeply rooted belief system that somehow saying NO is a failure is essential to all the points above. Deploying it in the right ways and communicating why we use it helps it no longer be such a toxic word and can stop us overloading or focusing on the wrong things. Deploying No is a key aspect of a consistent and longer term more manageable approach.

Ask, what am i here for? If we are expected to remain motivated for years and sometimes decades its critical that we are aware of the why that is guiding us. The answer to this is vast and varied, no one defines your reward system. But often we can lose sight that we maybe here to provide for a family we haven’t seen as much as we’d like or chasing a promotion for not always the ideal reasons. A reminder of the why and purpose of what we come to work for can re-energise and refocus us towards the why and purpose we lose sight of. If we can’t answer this — we may want to use this to ask if we’re on the right path.

Mindfulness in the Workplace… Yes that word again, don’t worry we’re not going to shut shop and live on a covenant but we keep seeing this concept for a reason. Its one sure way of resetting or moving down from unsafe gears and we can all benefit from working into our lives the now well vocalised practices of mindfulness. When I first discovered mindfulness it went against my entire belief system and my inner rebellious child decided it wasn’t from me — now many years later it’s the key to hitting reset and moving down in gears or just feeling like the day has started again and problems dissolved into the ether. Yes the workplace isn’t yet optimised to our spiritual awakening but in reality we can practise mindfulness anywhere in lots of different ways (google/youtube is your friend on this).

Help others by helping yourself…is a concept that may seem counteractive but bare with me. Our inherent good nature means often we pride ourselves in the workplace in being able to help others. But only through helping ourselves and following steps like the above can we have the impact we seek. If we have big bursts of energy and focus on helping others and burn ourselves out we cannot be there for others. If we care for ourselves to do this over a longer time then the net impact is far greater when done consistently.

Operate with openness, humility, honesty and be kind — By using these as our guiding principles it makes many of the tasks above much easier. Not having to portray perfection all the time and being open to how we are doing and being kind to ourselves and act as a cocktail of characteristics that can mean we can demonstrate the behaviours above not only to deliver consistency but to look after ourselves and contribute longer term.

Connect as a community — Through LinkedIn and other avenues we present the very best of ourselves all the time. It’s great celebrating our teams and achievements but also as a community we can do so much to support each other on issues like the above! This is my attempt to do that and I hope you found some use and may in the future be able to share with others.

Thanks for reading.

We’ve seen a positive movement globally with brands across the spectrum from multi-nationals to SME’s and local traders adopting CSR initiatives. Often these cover more globally accepted values centred around diversity, inclusion, mobility, accessibility and sustainability. These days its increasingly important for brands to align with a customer not purely on a product level — but form a more deeper connection grounded in an alignment of values and ethics with its potential customers and world around them — but how far should they go and how much should they be held to account in this?

It’s critical in the modern times that brands have a voice in a world where they form a key part of individuals identities. Consequently its now the case that brands need to not only reflect their customers values — but also use their position to help guide and shape the beliefs of its customers. For example we can all see the good and value brands can bring in having more diverse models or actors on our TVs and as a result help build confidence and self belief amongst their audiences. Because of this no longer is it enough for a brand showing support for a cause to print a few keyrings or sponsor a pride stall — brands more often than ever are being held to account. Brands now have to pair their more superficial gestures with real and more meaningful acts which substantiate that they really do practise what they preach.

Very often in the world today adopting CSR stances on terms such as inclusivity, diversity, mobility etc allows brands to open their appeal up to more audiences and thus more commercial opportunity. Perhaps in a more cynical view its clear that alongside the importance of doing the right thing, we can’t ignore that this is usually paired with making a brand more accessible or globally appealing and thus improve commercial performance. But how far should a brand go to practise what it preaches? Is the modern value led brand brand willing to risk commercial success to uphold its true values. Even if it may alienate or lose customers? And in this how far should a brand be accountable?

We’ve seen well documented cases where certain brands in attempting to be value led misunderstand the potential implications with their core audiences and suffer commercially because of this (an American beverage brand springs to mind). This well documented case which sparked an acute but ferocious response but also served as a watershed event and a warning to many brands that even when demonstrating the more universal beliefs if executed in a way which neglects or misaligns with its audience can be destructive to a brands commercial results. So how can brands navigate this complex landscape in a seemingly increasingly complex and more political world?

A big part of this question falls back to what is a brands purpose? Whilst many brands strive to have a more ethical purpose the fundamental answer here is that still within our world performance comes before politics. Yes the end goal is that purpose and performance can be mutually connected — but on more divisive issues brands must navigate a riskier landscape. One strategy for brands is to implicitly or indirectly show their stances without the alienation of some of its audiences through more subtle gestures and actions. But a risk here is that it limits how deeply they can push other value led agendas — without being held to account by its audiences or accused of hypocrisy.

Should a brand ever be outwardly political? Is it possible to hold a voice in more globally accepted issues but be quiet on others — whilst maintaining a values led identity? The truth is there isn’t a clear answer and recent times present ever increasing challenges for modern brands and test their willingness to use their voices. As such no set universal strategy exists but I would encourage brands to use their intelligence, empathy, data and leverage social channels to keep in touch with their audiences and understand them at a deeper level before devising any strategy on how loudly they speak on issue — in order to avoid serious commercial risks.

One things seems evident though that customers will increasingly hold brands to account and if you choose to adopt a value led brand strategy — it must be done with substance and the expectation of accountability. As such if a brand does not align with and understand their audiences on matters and consider how those audiences view and respond to a changing world around them — they could risk suffering as a response. But it is also true that for the time being a for a brand it may be better to instead focus on more implicit gestures or avoid outward political stances unless it is willing to risk it’s commercial performance unless it feels it truly represents and understand its audiences beliefs.

You may or may not have heard of OKRs….

If KPIs were the early mobile phones these are in principle the smart phone. Forward looking, measurable, objective orientated and with the power to be the glue in traditionally siloed organisations.

In theory they have the ability to connect the most senior members with the specialists who using commonly aligned and connected objectives all move in synergy….(the birds in v formation analogy springs to mind).

I get it…I mean can it really be blue skies and everyone moving collaboratively, in synergy and towards the same direction?

From my experience and quite surprisingly the answer is yes (well as close as we can hope to achieve in a modern organisations).

I don’t seek to repeat the deep literature on what OKRs are and the theory of how they bring value to organisations but instead share my practical real life learnings from working with them and implementing them in organisations.

This article simply shares from my experience how they work and why they work.

OKR Systems

Although OKRs can be applied and used in a variety of ways and I encourage your organisation to explore the best fit for you — there are 2 systems or approaches I’ve used and witnessed which seemingly offer the most opportunity for the end state outlined above.

In both systems a few things are common -

1. Individual > Team > Dept > Business unit OKRs roll up and connect.
2. There are regular intervals for scoring, assessment and review.
3. The principles of what an OKR is can be found online but they must adhere to this
4. They have a scoring mechanism which is consistent, fair and uniform
5. They tie together not only the most senior and junior positions but also in some ways connect separate divisions.

How the last point is achieved essentially differentiates the two systems.

System 1 — Division Centric

Explanation : These are centred around quite compartmentalised department specific objectives. Conceptually they still roll up to shared business objectives but it is a direct and disconnected cascade down through divisions to teams to individuals.

System 2 — Theme or Mission Orientated

Explanation — within this method objectives are aligned to collaborative multi-skilled workstreams from which the most skilled individuals across various teams connect and contribute towards a shared end goal. Mission groups pave the way for change and talent teams deliver it — each individual contributes.

Comparison

It’s critical you choose the right method for you and your organisation. The division centric one has the power still to lead to synergy and collaboration but should be used when focus and emphasis is that a teams vision, workload, priorities and objectives are of primary importance.

Here the division and its purpose is key to clarify and the exercise is done to give visibility to the wider organisation how it plans to deliver the business objective — which although team-centric still offers opportunity for dialogue and collaboration.

Within organisations and divisions which are more insular or have less need to be connected to the broader organisation this method can be more effective.

The mission group however is a more unified and goal orientated model. Here you ensure synergy and collaboration by creating connected groups at leadership level who collectively own broad themes, missions or goals.

They then choose the leading talent and assets from the business in a collaborative way to ensure optimum delivery. These groups together agree the relevant okrs down to individual level which tends to lead to stronger synergy.

This can present some complexities when trying to view or manage OKR’s purely from a team or division perspective but this can be dealt with by re-structuring the view to team level.

Also you might want to pair or blend the two approaches for inward and outward objectives — so you both define the team but also it’s role in the wider organisation. For example if a data function wants to onboard a new technology, this maybe inward. But if it re-builds its visualisation product that is used across the business, this is outward.

Both systems have in common that they offer opportunity for collaboration and what is critical is that all the way from business vision to individual contribution there should be as smooth a cascade as possible and more importantly consistency across the hierarchy.

Scoring

OKR’s work when scored effectively. The critical component is that they all have to be measurable.

This means some can be simple for example if an OKR is grow subscriptions by 10%, If I achieved 5% I get a 5/10. However it can be more complex. What if someone did as much as they could but was blocked by something out of their control? Do you account for this at individual or team level?

The key is not to sugar coat it, all OKR scoring must be viewed in context. Although the individual did the best they could, the score being authentic is the only way the business can learn and evolve. So if you link OKRs to appraisal, its critical it can’t just be black and white but should be contextualised.

Further complexity comes in binary OKRs…e.g launch a paywall. These can be viewed as Yes/No however you just need a consistent method and a fair one. Self assessment is fine, is it 60% the way there? Then a 6/10 is given.

So why How Do they work?

• Resource allocation becomes defined, no longer is there who shouts the loudest but you have a safeguard, does this contribute to an OKR? Therefore should I work on it?
• You find a way to ensure people work on what adds value, not just what they enjoy — however bear in mind the two should in theory always be closely connected.
• In this model there is ultimately accountability — even more frightening measured accountability! But the beauty of OKRs is they aren’t to say people do bad jobs, its to recognise where the tools, skills, knowledge, time ect. weren’t present for the business to meet its objectives. This is massively powerful.
• Consequently, they only work with honesty. When marking your own homework you need a systematic way to score as above and it needs to be consistent, fair and objective.
• Simply, pulling divisions or areas in the same direction is critical, not only from a relationships and alignment perspective but the communication leads to new processes, frameworks and workstreams organically.
• Ultimately operational efficiency and effectiveness comes through this way of working and is a critical benefit. Duplication of work, mistaken investments, resource/reward imbalances, not thought through projects etc all struggle to exist in this environment.
• OKRs link directly to talent growth and acquisition including development of individuals and teams and as such improve the appraisal process.
• Finally its an empathetic approach, by building collaborative workstreams it connects perspectives which may not have previously met in dialogue and tying individuals to common objectives and key results brings teams and individuals closer together.

I hope this helps and gives you some inspiration to embark on your OKR journey!

We are all familiar with the well voiced principles of marketing — right message, right time, right location delivered in a meaningful way. But what if this could be applied to unlock the power of adoption of data? This article is about how we can deploy these techniques within our organisations to build and activate a culture of data driven decision making.

We as a data community may all be familiar with the scenario — we’ve built the ideal data model to act as the engine of decision making, we’ve got the insight which is the fuel driving knowledge across the organisation and then the spark which activates this into action and adoption is ultimately missing. I’ve worked with some organisations which posses the dream tech stack or analytical capability but often struggle with the activation and mobilisation of this.

We often have a Porsche in the garage and don’t know how to drive it.

Here are 5 leanings about how we can use data marketing to drive a culture of adoption and success -

1. No one needs data (?!) — this may seem absurd and blasphemous as data people — but as much as we hold onto the complexities of data we often lose our audience. Fascination in the inner workings of a linear regression model although dear to our hearts belong to a special few minds. Knowing when to deploy technical concepts and knowledge vs the reality of how it enhances our organisations is key to success. Knowing when to let go of data principles we hold dearly can in fact help us…
2. Build the bridge… — Building networks of data champions within an organisation creates a bridge between key stakeholders and the data team. Ultimately adopting a WE strategy vs an US and THEM. It means inwards we can use data champions knowledge, needs, pain points, language and sentiment to solution better. Outwards it offers an opportunity to collaboratively remove barriers and have advocates whose trust can be leveraged to ensure successful adoption.
3. Identify organisational needs — Like we try educate our customers we identify needs in the organisation. Conducting an organisational analysis on the roles and skills of our teams allows us to identify educational needs. For example identifying which stakeholders need elementary data knowledge like how to use reports or read data vs those which should be offered deeper more specialised education because of the key role they play. Like we have lots of marketing channels we can create videos, shorts, one pagers, QA/slacks etc to build education for adoption as our teams may like to consume in different ways. This means the right people get the right education to their needs and aren’t starved or overwhelmed.
4. Speak to our stakeholders meaning — As part of this process we understand what language we need to use to communicate data solutions in a way which has meaning to them. Each business unit often has a unique set of objectives, ways of thinking or accountabilities — adopting a different language and being versatile to know when to talk about operational efficiency or audience activation or customer behavior or commercial risk requires different delivery methods to be fully received by our stakeholders.
5. Deliver data at key times in the decision cycle — The final piece is right time — each business has a decision cycle often aligned to a broader strategy or business calendar. Aligning analytical resource and output to the key moments in the decision cycle ensuring intelligence can be used at critical moments is a key component to adoption and success. Post campaign analysis 3 months after campaign close is well intended but often the needs and demands of the organisation have moved on and evolved.

Thanks for reading and hope this learning may help your organisation!