Month: February 2022

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To drive long-term growth every business needs creativity, innovation and importantly design thinking.

Since the dawn of the first industrial revolution, machines have largely been used to improve efficiency. We’ve now entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution – an era in which machines will become smart, self-optimizing themselves and the systems in which they operate. It’s a shift that’s shaping many of the megatrends, one that Douglas Lines and myself have identified at International Business and Executive Management [IBEM}, that are in turn changing how the world works.

Gartner stated for the record: ‘Digital transformation is more successful with a positive shift in culture. In fact, 80% of enterprises will change their culture as a way to accelerate their digital transformation strategy’.

Some have seen this as the rise of the robots – a dystopian future of mass unemployment and dehumanization as intelligent machines do away with the need for people.

But history suggests that while new technologies may end the need for human involvement in some tasks, they will usually also enable the creation of entirely new jobs – even entirely new industries. The challenge isn’t the technology – it’s to be creative in reimagining how to use it to generate fresh opportunities, value and growth.

Success and growth won’t be achieved by focusing on technology alone, because technology is no more than a tool that enables us to develop goods and services that humans need. The real skill isn’t in developing technological solutions, it’s in identifying what people want – and then finding the best ways to deliver. The question isn’t how to use the technology, it’s what impact that technology can have.

Ask any CEO in the world to write a top-five wish list, and we guarantee that “more ideas—better ideas!” will show up in some form. Most likely it’ll be right at the top. CEOs know that ideas and innovation are the most precious currency in the new economy and, increasingly, in the old economy as well. Without a constant flow of ideas, a business is condemned to obsolescence.

There are three primary ways technology – and especially Artificial Intelligence (AI) – can encourage human creativity in meeting human needs:

– Freeing up time for humans to focus on innovation.
– Offering opportunities to creatively combine technologies to create new ways of working.
– Actively augmenting human decision-making, by adding a layer of machine-driven data analysis to guide our creative choices.

Today, the division of labour between human and machines/algorithms across total task hours looks like this:
– Humans: 71%
– Machines/Algorithms: 29%

By 2025, according to a report by the World Economic Forum, it’s predicted to be:
– Humans: 58%
– Machines/Algorithms: 42%

While this shift naturally generates both excitement and fear, stories about the future of work are often technology-focused and, therefore, fail to capture one aspect I find critical: As machines/algorithms automate once-impossible tasks and replace those that are repetitive and laborious, it is likely that creativity will increasingly become a vital (and, further down the road, measurable) skill of the modern worker.

LinkedIn recently analysed the skills listed on profiles of candidates who are getting hired at the fastest rate and found creativity to be the top “soft” skill. The report’s summary stated that this result wasn’t surprising: “Organisations everywhere need people who can innovate and conceive fresh ideas and solutions.”

“The human spirit must prevail over technology.” —Albert Einstein

You cannot go back to the stone age. You must embrace artificial intelligence (AI) and the fourth industrial revolution (FIR). Humans evolved from the stone age to the space age because of the power of imagination and creativity. Technology creates dialogue among researchers and people. It cannot replace creativity. It can complement creativity. Therefore, treat technology as an ally, not an enemy to take forward human civilization in the right direction. To conclude, humans must know how to harness technology for the benefit of humankind.

According to an article in the Journal of Management Inquiry, soft skills are more accurately referred to as CORE (competence in organisational and relational effectiveness) skills. This definition is likely to cause less confusion than “soft.”

In line with LinkedIn’s findings are those from the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs Report 2018,” which lists creativity as one of the major skill groups in demand today and set to grow through 2022. With creativity rising, the heat is on to tie its impact not only to disruptive, industry-changing ideas, but also to key performance indicators throughout the company. And future research is likely to shine more light on the dichotomy between what companies believe and say about creativity and their actual practice.

One global study from Adobe offers a glimpse into this: While 76% of respondents say companies that invest in creativity are more likely to have happier employees, 77% also believe there is increasing pressure to be productive rather than creative at work.

Business leaders spend considerable time thinking about how to best keep up with technological advancements to prepare their companies for the future of work. While addressing this is an important, ongoing process, few seem to be considering an equally important topic: how they’ll improve their organisation’s creativity skills.


Right now, companies that are combining technologies like this can gain competitive advantages over more traditional rivals.

To take one example, a drone on its own is little more than a fancy radio-controlled helicopter – a toy. A drone with a camera is a surveillance tool. A drone with a camera, depth-sensors, a robotic arm, and AI is an autonomous tool that can radically change how we use warehouse space or deliver goods to customers by finding more efficient transport routes. Meanwhile, more traditional companies are still using slower, less efficient human-driven fork-lift trucks.

The next ten years will see an explosion of innovation as smart technologies mature and ever more businesses use them in combination with existing and emerging technologies to create radical new approaches to doing business and meet the ever-changing needs of their customers.

But remember this isn’t about the technology itself, no matter how creatively it’s combined. The pace of technological change will continue to accelerate – no one piece of technology will be enough to give a lasting competitive advantage in such an environment.

The truly successful businesses will be the ones that realize their transformation isn’t a one-off change to adopt the latest technological tools, but an ongoing process – with the needs of people placed firmly as the focal point of innovative efforts, not the capabilities of the currently available tools.

Looking to 2030 and beyond, the impact of such human-focused innovation could radically change how the world works. The number of possible permutations is vast – and when AI enables these new combinatorial creations to continuously self-optimize, they should get continually more impactful.

It’s time for us to reframe our relationship with technology, reimagining how to use technologies to meet real human needs, enable new ways of working, and power human enterprise. With the right approach, people can be both the drivers and beneficiaries of technological change, unlocking new paths to value and human engagement, helping us reinvent our organizations to be ready for what’s next, and fully realizing human potential.

It’s one thing to create a technology, but it’s another to use it to transform how a business operates.

To unlock AI’s true potential and unleash human creativity, businesses should seek to shake off their preconceptions and reimagine the fundamentals of how their industry operates – and what purposes they serve for their customers.

As you reimagine what your business and industry could look like in the next five to ten years, you should also start thinking how you can reshape your operations to make your vision as effective as possible:

Use technology to do the mundane, freeing up humans to focus on the higher-level creative thinking and strategic decision-making that add true long-term value.

Combine technologies to create better ways of working.

Focus on finding ways of deploying AI not just to replace humans, but to guide their creative choices.

A successful strategy for driving long-term value and growth will never come solely from upgrading your tools – it’s from ensuring your strategies and processes meet the needs of your human customers and employees. Even the most cutting-edge technology alone will never be a lasting solution – just a way of enabling better ways of meeting those needs.

Finally, rather than be worried about the rise of AI, businesses should embrace the opportunity technology brings to unleash a new wave of human creativity and power human enterprise. It can free up time for innovation, provide new combinations of technologies to enable better ways of working, and help guide us on the path towards even more effective creative ideas.

With so many societal signals pushing us toward technology (and to become data-driven rather than data-informed, a critical distinction), the push to reskill will no doubt involve a heavy focus on technology. As a result, there exists an opening for those willing to tread the less obvious, more human path toward developing a CORE (competence in organisational and relational effectiveness) skill that can amplify all others.

Finally, those who work to build their creative capacity are likely to be rewarded, especially if they can document which creative decisions they make, how they bring them to life and the impact on company performance.

Kenya Hara, a Japanese graphic designer, curator and writer once said:

“Creativity is to discover a question that has never been asked. If one brings up an idiosyncratic question, the answer he gives will necessarily be unique as well.”

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Is our heart reserved for True Love, a sacred flame that burns eternally for one love?

I have been having much debate with my circle of close friends recently over the subject of ‘Love’ and whether we ever forget our first ‘True Love’. For some people, they will never truly experience ‘True or Unconditional Love’ and for others, there is a long distant memory of ‘True Love’.

I love the quote by Maya Angelou:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

We all have experiences to share.

Some of you will remember a blog that I wrote in July 2016 called ‘Do we forget our first love or how people have made us feel, or are we still in love?’. And prior, ‘Can Love Last Forever’ – this was written just before another interesting blog: ‘Can Love Conquer All or is Love a Myth?’.

A few years ago, I interviewed a love expert and special friend in the subject matter, Jo March, author of ‘Love is Simple’. After several cups of tea at the Terrace Room at The Meridian Hotel in Piccadilly – London, and much discussion sharing past and present experiences, Jo explained:
‘Why people should live in love and why we are not communicating and forging meaningful and unconditional relationships, love is simple right…?’

Love is simple when we understand the true meaning of unconditional love. The kind of love that transforms and transcends us as human beings to a higher level of consciousness, in those moments when we truly love, we become alive, we feel passion, we feel life in every breath. Love is life, at the core of everything we do on this life path it is love that is the driving force.

I could not agree more. That being said, I have learnings from a few things about doing what you love for life and business — and this was the précis for my first book, ‘Freedom After The Sharks’.

Jo mentioned a quote by Maya Angelou, I am sure will resonate with us all:

“I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love because that liberates. Love liberates. It doesn’t just hold — that’s ego. Love liberates. It doesn’t bind. Love says, ‘I love you. I love you if you’re in China. I love you if you’re across town. I love you if you’re in Harlem. I love you. I would like to be near you. I’d like to have your arms around me. I’d like to hear your voice in my ear. But that’s not possible now, so I love you. Go.”

I have often written on the subject of love and relationships and with Valentines upon us I recently reminisced on the subject: ‘Is our heart reserved for True Love, a sacred flame that burns eternally for one love?’

Or as William Shakesphere once said in his play is ‘The World Just a Stage?

The meaning of this phrase is that this world is like a stage and all human beings are merely actors – Oscar Wilde has put his spin on this phrase, declaring “The world is a stage, and the play is badly cast.”
Allan Moore in his novel, ‘V for Vendetta’, has taken it to a completely new level by saying “All the world’s a stage, and everything else is vaudeville.” Now notice how people love to quote this phrase, because it sounds very clever, and they believe that this line has something that still resonates today.

With the world stage aside the facts are instead of strong, meaningful conversations and relationships, we struggle through long series of bad dates and so-called hook-ups. Instead of meeting people in real life, we are constantly swiping and messaging somebody new. Instead of telling people how we feel, we do not text back. We no longer have people cancel, we get flaked on, and then we flake on other people. We no longer date or commit, we “see” and “hang out” with each other. We are complicit in a dating culture that systematically prevents intimacy. I believe and the evidence certainly supports this, that we have become a generation afraid of being in love.

One could say “We are complicit in a dating culture that systematically prevents intimacy”.

I read a recent article from UCLA called ‘What does being committed to your marriage really mean?’ UCLA psychologists answered this question in a new study based on their analysis of 172 married couples over the first 11 years of marriage.

“When people say, ‘I’m committed to my relationship,’ they can mean two things,” said study co-author Benjamin Karney, a professor of psychology and co-director of the Relationship Institute at UCLA. “One thing they can mean is, ‘I really like this relationship and want it to continue.’ However, commitment is more than just that.”

The psychologists’ report demonstrated that a deeper level of commitment is a much better predictor of lower divorce rates and fewer problems in marriage.

Of the 172 married couples in the study, 78.5 percent were still married after 11 years, and 21.5 percent were divorced. The couples in which both people were willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the marriage were significantly more likely to have lasting and happy marriages, according to Bradbury, Karney and lead study author Dominik Schoebi, a former UCLA postdoctoral scholar who is currently at Switzerland’s University of Fribourg.

So, do we marry a ‘soul mate’ or a ‘life partner’?

Soul Mate:
Someone who is aligned with your soul and is sent to challenge, awaken and stir different parts of you in order for your soul to transcend to a higher level of consciousness and awareness. Once the lesson has been learned, physical separation usually occurs.

Life Partner:
A companion, a friend, a stable and secure individual who you can lean on, trust and depend on to help you through life. There is a mutual feeling of love and respect and you are both in sync with each other’s needs and wants.

At different times of our lives, we will need and want different types of relationships. Neither is better or worse than the other, it is all a personal decision and one that you will feel guided to as long as you are following your heart.

In summary, our childhoods taught us to value love; but our institutions, cities, and technology have taught us to fear commitment and put choice first. We are trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of emotional distance from each other.

Most of us really want love at some point, but our actions are at war with this desire. We maintain an emotional distance because we fear commitment and rejection, not because that is our true self. We replace the feeling of true intimacy with short-term flings, long-term noncommittal hookups, and sex. We comfort ourselves knowing at least we’re not feeling the stinging pain of a broken heart, at least we don’t have to deal with real emotions. My belief is that we have trapped ourselves in a cycle that we are all complicit within.

This cycle is detrimental to us all. Happiness means different things to different people. For some, it is marriage and kids, for others, it is traveling the world, and for others it is a rainy day with a good book. One thing that we all share, however, is that having strong, positive relationships in our life is one of the keys to happiness and fulfillment. Even anecdotally, we know this to be true.

When we keep emotional distance because of the fear of rejection, we lose out on one of the most important aspects of being human. Deep inside, we know we are unfulfilled but we do not know how to fix ourselves. So, we play the game where there are no winners. We must break free from this culture that damages us all and learn to love again.

For most of us, improving our relationships is one of the best things we can do in our lives. For me, with this realisation and my committed effort to be more open, honest, and straightforward, I have been able to not only improve how I treat other people but also the quality of my relationships with my circle of wonderful friends.

Final thought, there’s no reason that “love forever ” cannot exist, and in fact, relationships with so much love and sustainability should exist with the partner that you call your love or spouse.

True love is a decision of the will. It’s a choice based on many factors, including that “in love” feeling you have for your love or spouse. Such a feeling can be built upon with tenderness, romantic gestures, and caring choices all along the way. We all celebrate Valentines Day today, whilst the day represents love with the partner of your choice, love should not be celebrated once a year, as Jo stated ‘love that transforms and transcends us as human beings to a higher level of consciousness, in those moments when we truly love, we become alive, we feel passion, we feel life in every breath’ the gestures of love, the small touchpoints of affection should be constant.

Music is also a great channel for communicating your true feelings to the person of your dreams, Kenny Thomas once wrote a record called Tender Love

Maybe, this is the answer to a happier and more fulfilling life, maybe there is only one person in the universe for everyone, one person that we call home, and maybe it has led me to finding love, my true love, my first and only love and soul mate.

I just know I do not want to be complicit in modern dating culture any more. I am happy when building real emotional connections in business and in life, and I guess, that is what we all want in the end, to be happy and in love with real connections, real people, real-life – a real soul connection – not a world stage with an actor or actors.

One of my favourite quotes by Tamie Dearen, from her book ‘The Best Match’:

“Love is such a small word for what I feel. For the first time in my life, I have a reason to breathe. I’m enchanted with every part of you I know, and I only know a small part so far. I plan to spend the rest of my life searching out every hidden enchantment in your body and soul. And I’m going to cherish and protect you with every fiber of my being. So, do I love you? No… I love love love you.”