All posts by hindfarag

A few weeks ago an energy industry executive that I look up to asked me a simple but great question: what gap in energy industry analytics is most significant to leaders? While I’d never thought of it this way in the past it took me only a couple of seconds to come up with my answer: demand scenarios! This is because over the past couple of years, many of my clients and I found ourselves repeatedly identifying the rise of the digitally-empowered customer as a gap in their vision of the future. Then came COVID19 to expose our limited understanding of digitally-induced demand dynamics and the associated risks not only for energy but across different industries. Many businesses now are keeping busy with their own digital strategies. But the future implications of the digital revolution on the behaviors and demand profiles of B2B clients and individual end users are rarely well understood. Winners during the ongoing health and economic crisis are mostly businesses that had historically better aligned their visions and strategies with the digitally-empowered customer. This alignment is more relevant now than ever as we all are getting more intimate with our devices while we socially distance from each other.

But don’t get me wrong. Aligning your business with the digitally-empowered customer is not just about perfecting ecommerce and digital marketing. It begins with a robust prediction of potential behavioral shifts and their implications on demand in your sector. The digital revolution is already empowering the individual customer in many different ways. Discussed below, these trends are here to stay and grow. How about your brand and business?

1. Access to an increasing amount of detailed product, service, and business information

Real-time access to detailed information about products, services, and their providers is getting easier every day. This information comes in different forms and shapes including customer and expert reviews. Businesses and individuals are now able to make their purchasing decisions on a much more informed basis, even without speaking to a single person. This means that unfavorable information about a single transaction or employee experience can remain online and hurt brands indefinitely. Winning businesses and leaders know how to use this challenge to their advantage.

The electronics industry is a great example where users, experts, and companies make it very straight forward for us all to compare product features and find the right fit for our needs with the least amount of effort. Electronic companies themselves report on the bugs and shortcomings in their products and how they plan to fix them in upgrades or new releases.

Do you have full knowledge of all the information that would influence perceptions about your brand? What are you doing to contribute to the dialogue in ways that strengthen your brand?

2. An expanding variety of product and service choices

Digital technologies enable providers to reach customers that they wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise due to financial or geographic constraints. Digital marketing requires much less financial commitment than traditional marketing. I am intrigued by how the digital revolution is challenging law and medical practices with all the new choices that are available to their empowered customers. Through search engines, social media, and specialized websites it is so easy to find and compare legal and healthcare providers in so many different ways. One bad patient or client experience can easily send a few prospective patients and clients away. Lawyers are starting to get much more active on social media, and doctors are probably next!

Barriers to new entry in many industries are also reduced by the ability of smaller, new entrants to adopt new technologies more easily and faster than larger, more established businesses. Clients now can easily find product and service choices that are more aligned with their own technology preferences, systems, or workflows. Through creative solutions, leaders of larger organization can turn this challenge into an opportunity as well. For example, tech conglomerates like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba have established internal venture studios to spin off innovative startups that are not limited by the legacy systems of the parent organization.

How is the digital revolution changing the competitive landscape in your sector? In what way will you leverage technology not only to stay but also to be ahead of the game?

3. The ability to form, join, and mobilize large virtual global communities

This may seem like it has much more relevance to politics. The ability of one or a few individuals to virtually ignite major social movements and revolutions has been changing the lives of billions of people during this last decade. As a result, economies and business environments are also being transformed in unimaginable ways. One recent example is the growing impact of Black Lives Matter (BLM), a movement that was founded in 2013 to address police brutality in the US. BLM’s expansion to become a global movement was only made possible through social media. What used to be a national concern is now an international issue.

These global cause-based communities are now able to not only change the socioeconomic landscape for businesses, but also directly make or break a brand. The effect of global virtual communities on individual preferences and brand perceptions is growing rapidly. In extreme instances, calls on social media to boycott businesses based on their stances on political or social issues can have serious implications on established brands. Even Facebook saw some losses as a result of the recent ad boycotts.

Are you familiar with the global communities where your customers and prospects hang out? How well are your values aligned with their causes?

4. More Independence, Less Reliance on Others

Imagine how our lives would have been during the COVID19 crisis if digital technologies weren’t making us this independent. While painful to many parents, teachers, and school administrators, their collective success in saving the academic year could have been impossible to achieve just five years ago. The list of applications enabling client independence had been growing fast even prior to the coronavirus outbreak: e-learning, homeschooling, electronic trading platforms, online banking, e-commerce, online health assessments, nutrition and exercise apps, etc. Digital technology is not just eliminating the need for some middlemen but also expert hours since expertise can now be digitally packaged and sold and resold to millions of clients indefinitely. This is in addition to the expanding application of robotics ranging from helping the elderly with independent living to helping doctors with surgeries.

For businesses, the challenges range from declining demand for their services and products to increasing competition from nontraditional providers.  This new competitive challenge comes in the form of digital or digitally-packaged and/or delivered products and services that improve client independence. At the same time, new opportunities are surfacing for those who are willing to get creative about product design and delivery and client engagement.

How is digital technology improving client independence and tightening competition in your sector? What product features or client engagement strategies will make you the go-to provider for those who are seeking more independence?

5. Reduced Need for Transport with Telecommuting, Telemedicine, Teleworking, etc

This is a trend that has clearly been accelerated by the COVID19 crisis. The preference for telecommuting is expected to remain strong for some time due to the challenges associated with reopening economies at a sustainable pace. Post COVID19, the pandemic’s prolonged socioeconomic and behavioral effects could mean that many of us will continue to travel much less by land, sea, and air. There will clearly be direct implications on the transport, aircraft and automobile manufacturing and energy sectors. In the energy industry, for example, the muted desire to drive or fly places downward pressure on transport fuel demand but upward pressure on residential power demand. This could improve prospects for renewable energy and other electricity generation sources.

Also, some other sectors will see second order impacts from telecommuting such as the hospitality industry. When working or spending our vacations at home, restaurants will suffer from lower dine-in and take-out demand. Likewise, hotels may continue to see much less in-person conventions and conferences for some time. On the positive side, the broadband industry is picking up much higher demand.

What kind of first, second, or even third order impacts is your industry seeing from the proliferation of telecommuting? What are your plans to navigate the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities?

The socioeconomic transformation associated with the rise of the digitally-empowered customer is already reshaping competitive landscapes and demand profiles. Success now hinges on the ability of leaders to revisit future visions accordingly and strategize for new challenges and opportunities surfacing as a result of the rise of the digitally-empowered customer.

Contact us to learn more about how we partner with our clients to navigate the digital revolution and other major transformations

The new normal continues to take shape as social distancing and other health and safety measures bring transformational shifts to our behaviors, societal values, employment practices, and leadership approaches.  The demarcation between winners and losers in this environment may become clearer than ever. What it takes to be on the winning side could vary by industry, location, and/or profession. In our survey about the new normal, we asked leaders from the energy, health, and coaching industries about their views on what it takes for businesses in their respective sectors to excel in the new normal. Their answers indicate that bigger picture success drivers are similar across the economy. How each of these is interpreted will clearly be different for each organization.

What will take for businesses to be on the winning side in the ‘new normal’?

There was a great deal of consensus among our respondents that winning in the new environment will hinge on realizing and maintaining a tricky balance between flexibility and innovation on one hand and taking responsibility for sustainability on the other.

• Innovation in employee and client solutions.  As discussed in earlier blogs, the preference for having the flexibility to work remotely and meet virtually when possible is expected to be here to stay. Applying communication and digital technologies creatively to allow employees to do their jobs while adhering to social distancing has already proven to be an important survival and success tool in the new normal.  Innovation in client solutions has also been a major differentiator for grocery stores, other retailers, and restaurants that were quick to upgrade their online shopping and delivery systems. Professional service providers offering research, advisory, consulting, and coaching services have also increased their online activity levels immensely. Even healthcare services are now trying to be creative about going largely virtual where possible. Our respondents feel that continued innovation in leveraging digital technologies to improve employee and client experiences to help establish diversified businesses will be critical for success in the new normal. 
• A proactive attitude toward change and risk assessment and management. Embracing the constant state of change that comes with the new normal is viewed as a top driver for winning. While predicting the timing and nature of change accurately can be near impossible, winners will typically have established the capability to identify, assess and navigate risks. Being proactive about embracing change and assessing and mitigating risks calls for a great deal of operational and commercial flexibility and nimbleness. Also, while visionary leaders can be naturally gifted in identifying signposts for game changers, every leader can benefit from a mechanism for soliciting such input from visionaries within their organization and wider industry. The leaders we spoke to realize that it could be very complicated to be prepared for winning under many potential future scenarios for how things could evolve in the short, long, and medium term. But they’ve all agreed that otherwise success would be far fetched in an evolving and volatile new normal.
• Sustainability-oriented business models. Leaders that had considered operating efficiency and emergency preparedness among their top priorities in the last few years, have been better able to ensure business continuity during the COVID19 crisis. Going forward, our respondents believe that taking responsibility for sustainability will require mental, emotional, physical, and financial preparation.  Effective sustainability business models will, therefore, have to encompass all aspects that impact operations including facilities, human capital, skillsets, structures, information technology, and financials. Also, an organizational culture that values continuous efficiency improvement can be  a real differentiator for organizations that prioritize sustainability. In addition to their operational, business continuity, and financial benefits, sustainability business models remain an important tool for realizing ambitious environmental goals.
• Employee empowerment and engagement. Most of the leaders that responded to our survey agreed that the quality of leadership will be a real differentiator for winners in the post-COVID19 world. Engaging employees in identifying and addressing challenges and preparing for emergencies while ensuring alignment around organizational visions and missions is recommended not only for winning but also for survival. This requires an open exchange of feedback with employees and commitment to the greater good of stakeholders, not just shareholders. This in turn will allow organizations to function with a longer time horizon mindset, beyond maximizing next quarter returns and engender innovation in ensuring nimbleness in the face of volatility.

Interestingly, wining strategies in the new normal do not seem very different from some of the top leadership priorities that we had all been working on during the last few years: innovation, sustainability, employee empowerment and engagement, and a proactive approach to change and risk management. COVID19 and the ensuing economic crisis are now accelerating the attention to these priorities and reinforcing their importance for business continuity and commercial performance. In addition to assessing and managing risks, winning businesses will be those who are able to adopt and leverage these strategies to identify and capitalize on new opportunities in a socially responsible manner. If you think about it, these principles are relevant for establishing a new foundation for growth across the wider society- including public and private organizations across sectors, charities, special interest groups, communities, and even families. As influencers within several of such entities, we each have the responsibility to bring more agility, flexibility, sustainability, and engagement to our environments.

The values of the larger community have always been an important consideration for business success even prior to the COVID19 outbreak. Aligning corporate values with the values of the larger society is now becoming even more important for attracting clients and talent, securing employee and customer loyalty, and staying competitive. In our survey about the new normal, we asked leaders about values that are surfacing as we confront new health and economic challenges and will prevail beyond COVID19.

Which societal and business values are going to prevail in the post-COVID19 world?

A few of the leaders we spoke to doubted that there would be a lasting change to our value systems beyond the COVID19 crisis. But a good majority felt that this trying experience would stay with us long enough to bring about long-term shifts to our priorities and what we value. There was a good deal of consensus around some contradictory values that are expected to prevail ranging between the extremes of compassion and empathy on one hand and polarization and self sufficiency on one hand.

• Compassion and Empathy. There is at least hope that what we are experiencing as a human race will lead to some mutual appreciation of of what others are going through and the environments they have to live and work in. As already evident, employers are expected to continue to demonstrate greater display of empathy for workers, their families, their health, and their well-being. The focus is going to be not only on compassionate leadership, but also compassionate collegiality and compassionate citizenship. The epidemic is teaching us that good hygiene and protective social habits are part of our responsibility toward the health of others in and outside of our immediate circles not just our own.
• Volunteerism and Charity. Beyond being more empathetic and compassionate, there is an increasing sense of responsibility over the wellbeing of the larger community that comes with tragic crises. Given the duration, scale, scope, and economic impacts of the COVID19 crisis, this sense of responsibility is expected to be grow. Respondents believe that the greater public display of acts of heroism, selflessness, and generosity in business as well as social networks will extend even as we recover from the crisis.
• Honesty and Transparency. The disparity in public and private entity transparency about the progress of COVID19 and protective measures has been appalling to many across the globe. There is a great deal of dissatisfaction with how some governments, health authorities, medical institutions, and industries have handled the crisis. Trust has been broken in these cases in terms of both how honest leadership had been about the extent of the crisis and how seriously they’d been about protecting employees, clients, and the general public. Going forward, it is expected that the average citizen is going to command honesty and transparency from politicians as well as business leaders. Likewise, honesty and transparency is expected to be a requirement on the individual level about social activities and proximity to support pandemic containment efforts.
• Self Sufficiency and Polarization. This value set is at odds with the first two, but they are expected to continue to coexist. As economically disadvantaged communities experience more health and economic tragedies during the crisis, preexisting feelings of inequality and unfairness would only get reinforced and stick further in the foreseeable future.  On the other hand, the more privileged nations and communities have now become more aware of the range of economic and health risks that surround them. As they become extremely protective of their stability and safety, de-globalization and regionalization trends will pick up even more pace. Self sufficiency is predicted to remain a priority at the expense of collaboration and globalization.

Expectations about values that would prevail in the new normal may vary from time to time, from one location to the other, and between social and cultural backgrounds. But it would be useful for leaders to form and regularly revisit their view on the prevailing value system. The ability of a public or private enterprise to align its actions with societal values can be a great differentiator when it comes to attracting customers and attracting and retaining top talent. Also, innovation in product and service design, development, and marketing has largely benefited from an understanding of the aspects of life experience clients value and would value over time. Leadership across many leading businesses and progressive nations have already been proactive about embracing the opportunities that come as different or new values prevail. What value shifts bring about new opportunities or risks for  your business, team, or career? What strategic choices are you making to capitalize on the opportunities and navigate the risks effectively?

As discussed in our previous article, much of our recent dialogue with leaders has been about basic questions about socioeconomic shifts that are shaping a transforming new normal in the post-COVID19 world. Answers to these questions define alternative and coinciding scenarios for customer demand,  competitive landscapes, and work dynamics within each, if not all, of the sectors of the economy. Having reviewed major insights from our respondents on the expected shifts to individual behaviors earlier this week, this article summarizes insights from answers to the second question:

In what ways will leaders continue to approach their businesses and employees differently even as we recover from the crisis?

Some respondents were very skeptical that all leaders will actually make long-term transformational shifts in their approach to leadership as we recover from the health and economic crisis. But there was  consensus about some overarching transformational themes that are here to stay beyond the COVID19 crisis.

• Embracing remote working and virtual teams, and re-imagining the workplace. Remote working has enabled business continuity while adhering to social distancing measures. There is an expectation that leaders will now trust remote working more even beyond the crisis. Mandating physical presence as a condition for employment could become extremely challenging, especially for “at risk” employees, required to stay home if they have health concerns.  Also, ongoing experiences with remote working have already demonstrated the associated benefits of cost savings and access to more diversified pools of resources for building more effective virtual teams. As a result, companies could find themselves having to rethink the workspace to avoid physical proximity, allow telecommuting, leverage virtual teams, and achieve cost savings.
• Empathy, balancing employee well-being with shareholder value. Leaders are expected to become more empathetic, and shift their emphasis from shareholder value to overall enterprise value enhancement. This will take additional attention to employee financial, emotional, and physical well-being. Even if some leaders don’t choose to be more empathetic, the COVID19 health crisis has made the direct connection between employee well-being and business performance clearer to employers. Employees would now be approached much more holistically as human beings and family members with priorities and demands that affect their contribution.  This could call for evaluating the need to upgrade their health insurance plans, mental health programs, flexible work policies, and compensation schemes. On the flip side, economic pressures are expected to motivate the reassessment and reduction of hiring and overall human resource needs.
• E-commerce driven recovery and growth. Business leaders predict growth in established as well as emerging e-commerce markets with remote working and social distancing becoming the norm. Many businesses in the online retail and tech sectors have already seen significant growth in 2020. Leaders across sectors are upping their game, where possible, to identify and realize commercial opportunities for their businesses in a socially distanced, increasingly virtual world. Financial recovery and growth is projected to be driven by a continuous shift to e-commerce or products and services that support virtual work and communication and other social distancing measures.

Raising questions about how overall public and private sector leadership priorities and approaches could be transforming is critical for success in the new normal. These changes drive shifts in the competitive landscape, customer demand, and/or policy dynamics for most businesses. As leaders re-envision the future and redirect their organizations accordingly, it would be useful to consider societal values that will prevail in the new normal. The next article in our “Seeking New Normalcy” series will address the question of values.

Globally, economies are being reopened while the fight to flatten the COVID19 curve is still on. The highly volatile ‘new normal’ is unfolding under our feet. Meanwhile, we’re being challenged to make sense of it and maximize gains or at least minimize losses. Leaders in the public and private sectors are under pressure to provide answers as the search for normalcy continues. This is probably distracting them from doing what successful leaders do best: ask great questions.

As a strategy partner, I work with my clients on raising and answering the right, sometimes very complex, questions. But over the last few weeks, we have been deliberating over some basic questions. To help envision a few alternative or coexistent scenarios for the new normal, we raised these questions with leaders in the energy, health, and coaching industries. The answers reinforce the complexity of the evolving new normal. But when it comes to what it takes to be on the winning side, the answers were not so different from what we would have heard prior to the coronavirus outbreak. We all probably just had assumed that we had more time to address the imperatives of innovation, sustainability, empowerment and engagement for example.

In this first article, we summarize the major insights provided by our respondents in answering our first question:

Which individual behavioral shifts will characterize the post-COVID19 new normal?

The first question is about the personal and professional behavioral shifts that will prevail even as the world recovers from the health and economic crisis. It is critical for every leader to make a habit of raising this questions to improve intelligence about client preferences, end user demand, and employee dynamics. The results of our survey show consensus around four areas of behavioral changes that are already transforming the landscape in most, if not all, public and private sectors.

• Flexibility toward remote working. A conservative attitude toward physical proximity is expected to continue for some time, at least until real progress is made on an effective vaccine. Also, as employers experience cost savings and begin to trust the performance of remote workers, it is anticipated that many could follow Twitter in rolling out their indefinite remote working policies.
• Virtual communications and team dynamics. Virtual meetings are expected to be an acceptable norm unless in-person meetings are an absolute necessity. Organizations and employees are also expected to continue to seek creative ways for remote team building and operations and virtual relationship building.
• Personal health prioritization. Most of our respondents expect individuals to become much more aware of their health conditions and view improving their mental and physical health as a priority. This will affect how they view work and the work environment and their personal and professional habits.
• New spending and buying habits. The economic crisis and resultant financial pressures and fears that followed COVID19 containment efforts are expected to linger for some time. Individuals and businesses have already become much more conservative spenders, an attitude that could stay beyond the economic crisis. Also, there is consensus that the growing preference for online shopping is here to stay not only to adhere to social distancing measures, but also to have access to a wider range of choices when it comes to product pricing and quality.

These and other behavioral shifts are presenting new growth opportunities for some industries such as online retail and technology. At the same time, unprecedented risks have surfaced for other sectors such as the airline and energy industries. Challenges on both sides require creativity from leaders in considering game-changing behavioral shifts and addressing their implications on demand for their products or services, their supply chains, and/or workforce dynamics for their organizations.

To continue to provoke thought around the ‘new normal’ scenarios evolving for different industries, we will follow up with three other blogs covering survey results for three more questions:

• In what ways will leaders continue to approach their businesses and employees differently even as we recover from the crisis?
• Which societal and business values are going to prevail in the post-COVID19 world?
• What will take for businesses to be on the winning side in the ‘new normal’?

In the meantime, start thinking about how the ‘new normal’ could be shaping for your organization and larger industry and what it means for your priorities as a leader.

While it has become a necessity for many, remote working will not be ideal for everyone. Success can be challenging and complex even for the most seasoned and experienced employees and managers. The leadership challenges associated with such a wholesale and abrupt shift are numerous. Since we published our article about remote working last week, we received a number of questions about several of these implications: 

• Which employees and/or roles will remote working hinder success for? Will remote workers have the ability to create the right environments for themselves?
• How will they handle daily distractions at home? For example, as nice as it is to spend time at home with small children, how do you explain to them that it is work time when you’re at home all day?
• How can managers establish supportive work environments and ensure effectiveness and relevance in employee performance?
• How to keep teams together when every team member is sitting at home feeling lonely and/or scared, or being surrounded by family doing family business?

These questions highlight that despite the advancement in technology, moving away from habitual and traditional work environments hasn’t necessarily been easy. Some remote workers can feel isolated and experience difficulty in managing time. And productivity levels can be a contentious discussion. These issues are now compounded by the distressful nature of the COVID19 health crisis and the associated economic crisis. It can be near impossible for any of us to stay focused on task for a full workday.

But what does it take to keep your team’s or organization’s eyes on the prize during this crisis? It actually starts with you, the leader! What are you doing to transform your approach to leadership during these testing times? For example, are you taking full advantage of technology to serve your people and your business? This is the time for you and your leadership team to develop and/or leverage your online forums for building and strengthening your virtual teams in different ways.

Of course, sharing business updates, meeting outcomes, and employee business and personal achievements can be a great opportunity to improve engagement. And scheduled virtual check-ins may now be more critical than regular face-to-face meetings in the not so distant past.

But more importantly, leaders could benefit from some extra creativity in assigning performance objectives and projects to pairs and teams rather than individuals to ensure continuous team engagement. Also, technology-enabled feedback systems have now become much more important than ever for ensuring engagement and an instantaneous flow of information about how the employee and client experiences are evolving during the crisis.

The fast unfolding health crisis is making figuring out remote working solutions a necessity, almost for all but essential businesses and business functions. While this decision is already made for many leaders already, there are other decisions to ponder upon:

1. The frequency of communication from/with CEOs, executives, and managers to solicit input on business decisions, or to just talk about non-work-related matters
2. The frequency and balance of formal and informal team and one-on-one communication
3. Identifying and empowering employees and roles that could even be much more successful in solitude
4. Ways to adjust performance management systems to the new reality and develop, prioritize and measure team-level objectives
5. Professional development resources to support managers and employees with the new challenges related to self-discipline, clarity of expectations, productive virtual team dynamics, and motivation during a time of collective hardship

The world is changing very quickly as the crisis unfolds, and that comes with opportunities to be creative. Perhaps with this crisis companies will exhibit a sense of urgency to build more on of the use of technology to their advantage. Be strategic with the crucial roles that will jeopardize the smooth flow of business. It is imperative that this is given immediate attention. There is no time like now.

The coronavirus pandemic is a harsh reminder that the world is changing more rapidly than we can comprehend. And the challenge to learn how to live, work, and do business differently cannot be overestimated. But the change presents real opportunities for some of us: those who have embraced the very different nature and pace of the shifts happening beneath us. Only those will be able to find out what works and how we can capitalize on the opportunities to make transformational improvements in our lives, businesses, and our larger environment.

Declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday, the coronavirus outbreak and the ensuing economic downturn or crisis are now compelling us to find new means for living, working, and running businesses. Schools, universities, and religious institutions are all now talking about going virtual. We believe that leaders who succeed at planning and implementing effective remote working programs will have a better chance at not only surviving but succeeding. While remote working is not perfectly right for every role and every organization, leveraging technology that’s been available for some time to help human beings and businesses survive is not just optional now. Every leader will have to address what this means for their organization or their team. The real winners are those who have been in the middle of this transformation for some time and are finding it more straightforward to adjust to the health and economic crises responsibly. Followers who have accepted the reality of change and are considering how to reshape work and the workforce could have good chances at succeeding.

In addition to business continuity and productivity goals, leaders and organizations now have an opportunity to meet some of their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals in new and creative ways. Accommodating remote work imperatives for employees is a means to demonstrate commitment not only to their health and safety but also to the health and safety of the larger community. As we have all learned, carriers can be asymptomatic. And social distancing has now been proven in China as a successful measure to slow down the trend of growth in new coronavirus cases.

Over and above the ongoing global force majeure of coronavirus outbreak, developing the ability within your organization to run virtually when necessary is helpful in many ways:

Working remotely can be a huge cost benefit for companies. Huge savings involve expenses associated with locating and leasing/buying the ideal physical location, purchasing, rental and maintenance. That money can now be allocated to marketing, additional staff benefits, to a cause supported by the company, and/or to improve overall finances. It can also be used to expand the workforce to undertake new initiatives.  The company would also spend less on overhead, and other menial unnecessary expenses which can add up. Also, introducing the remote working culture make organizations and employees better able to save on business travel as they learn how to productively run and participate in virtual meetings and workgroups. These are just some of the cost benefits that can make it attractive to begin the process of encouraging a remote workforce.

We shouldn’t always allow situations to force us into thinking of what would attract some of the best employees, however this more often than not is the case. Otherwise, they will probably end up with competitors who are willing to offer that flexibility. There is a case for working remotely. There are individuals who get more done working from home. Most people who work remotely will have more control as to how time is utilized, display a higher level of commitment, dedication and accountability because they are unsupervised and deadlines become even more important. Businesses who offer remote work opportunities also have a good chance of attracting some of the best candidates because they now have a much larger and more diverse pool to choose from. Attracting a diverse workforce is another key ESG objective.

Also, being able to work from home gives parents with young children the chance to spend more time and flexibility for raising their children just as they would like to. It may even become very convenient for parents to home school their children. Parents who feel confident that their children are safe will be more productive. Trust will be built and diversity and inclusion will be served, meeting ESG aspirations in yet another way. Also, when people have a good work-life balance there is a good chance that you have an employee for the long haul, higher work morale, less absenteeism, an opportunity to engage with other remote workers around the world which helps in expanding their knowledge at perhaps no cost to the employer. Working remotely reduces the pain and time spent on long commutes and unpredictable travel nightmares.

As we experience this new health and economic challenge, businesses will benefit from being intentional in their thinking and staying prepared for testing times. In cases of highly contagious diseases the work will still go on with less disruption unlike the panic and fear that can be caused working together in a huge office space or eventually not being able to work for long time periods. Forward thinking companies must spend more time exploring the reality of the constant changes taking place in the world and the workforce, and the effectiveness, growth and cost savings that come with working remotely. However, going virtual doesn’t come without personnel and operational challenges which we will soon discuss in another article.

Last month, 16-year old Swedish climate change activist, Greta Thunberg, made headlines again with her speech at the Climate Action Summit in New York. At a young age, Greta is demonstrating impressive leadership in holding world leaders responsible for the lack of sufficient action to combat climate change. She felt that they left her and her generation no choice but to quit being kids and take ownership of their future, which is being destroyed by the greed of adults.

Greta was deeply concerned that world leaders were not ready yet to present real solutions or plans to meet the 1.5 degree by 2030 goal, because they were not “mature” enough. She cited an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report setting a “total carbon budget” of 420 gigatons of CO2 in the beginning of 2018. And it’s one we have already missed. This got me thinking…

While brave and admirable, will Greta’s activism be supported by the kind of multi-generational leadership the world needs to meet its climate change goals? Are the rest of us fully informed as to what effective leadership in this space looks like and what compliance actually requires?

As widely understood, the failure to meet carbon emission goals is largely driven by the reliance on fossil fuels to satiate our ever growing hunger for energy. This makes it easy to point at government inaction and the greed of fossil fuel producers and large consumers for limiting our access to an assortment of zero- or low-carbon technologies. Regardless of the extent to which governments and oil, gas, coal and related industries are responsible, environmental activism and related studies seem to be largely focused on one side of the energy equation: supply. The concern has largely been about our energy sources and the insufficient investment in zero or low carbon technologies. Understanding the demand side of our energy equation is obviously trickier. But if climate change activism and leadership across relevant industry sectors and economies are serious about meeting their carbon emission goals, they would benefit from addressing a couple of questions.

How feasible is it for investments in zero or low carbon alternative technology over this coming decade to grow at a pace that would support energy demand growth and displace fossil fuel sources?

Over the last decade global renewable capacity has more than doubled from above 1,100 GW in 2008 to above 2,300 in 2018 GW according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Still, renewable energy supplied about 15% of global energy demand in 2018 according to the EIA. Even if global consumption for energy were to grow by no more than 1%, we will see energy demand growth of 20% in the next 20 years as predicted by the Shell Energy Sky Scenario of 2019. This means that investments need to more than double current levels of renewable capacity only to support demand growth, i.e. limit further increases in rather than reduce CO2 emissions. To effectively displace carbon-emitting fossil fuel sources and reduce our emissions, the world needs to more than triple or quadruple its renewable capacity. The technical, geographic, and financial feasibility of the required fast-paced wholesale transition in the energy supply mix could definitely use some more analysis. To what extent is multi-generational leadership of climate change initiatives ready to drive this analysis?

And a more burning question is do we really believe that our global demand for energy will grow at a drastically slower pace in the next 20 years compared to the last 20 years?

The more we use energy for transportation, industrial activity, electricity, heating, cooking, etc the more CO2 we send to the atmosphere. And it could be that our growing consumption of energy is making it near impossible to meet climate change goals. Climate change science and activism is mostly originating in the developed OECD world and more specifically in the Western Hemisphere. This is where energy demand growth is beginning to slow down in many areas and is expected to remain flat or even decline in the future. In non-OECD, energy demand has grown by over 3% per year on average over the last 20 years. Most of the recent energy consumption outlooks expect energy demand in the developing world to adhere to a growth rate of no more than 1-2% per year over the next 20 years. The need to triple or even quadruple global renewable energy resources in the next 20 years is based on these low to moderate energy demand growth expectations. But is it realistic to expect the developing world in Africa and Asia Pacific for example to curb its appetite for energy to this extent, given all the socio-economic and political change?

Have traditional methods for understanding and forecasting energy demand become obsolete?

Global energy demand is an extremely complicated story that requires hard core data analytics and modeling. Energy demand forecasting models have typically been based on the extrapolation of past behaviors. The relevance of past trends is declining due to major socio-economic and technological transformations, not to mention climate change itself. Any serious demand forecasting exercise will need to address multiple dimensions around these transformations and they affect our appetite for energy, for example:

• Home to more than one third of global urban population, the developing world is still primarily rural. The rate and nature of economic growth could drive urbanization much faster than historic rates in several of these economies.
• The anticipated growth in economic activity and urbanization in the developing world simply means the need for automotive mobility will only grow. This will happen in places where economic pressures make it nearly impossible to see any form of meaningful adoption of newer fuel-efficient vehicles, let alone EVs.
• About 14% of the world’s population (about 1 billion people) is still without access to electricity. Universal access is planned by 2030 in most countries according to the UN. Many uncertainties surround the timing and nature of this access.
• Complicated decision making processes among individual energy consumers, consumer groups, or policy makers will drive investments in distributed generation, micro-grids, or electric vehicles. Understanding the impact of these decisions on the operation of energy systems and eventual energy demand growth can be even more challenging.
• An ongoing technological transformation at a pace that is catching us by surprise every second. Digital technology adoption across different sectors can make energy demand growth easily exceed moderate expectations not only in the developing world, but also in the developed world. In the financial sector, a recent analysis by the University of Cambridge estimated that bitcoin-related activity alone consumes more energy than the entire nation of Switzerland!

The real challenge for energy transition leadership: combat climate change but cooperate with others around the table

Clearly, it’s much simpler to understand the investment and operational decisions of hundreds of regulatory bodies or thousands of businesses than it is to understand what these transformations mean for the energy consumption of 7.7 billion individuals. This is why understanding the responsibility of policymakers and energy producing and consuming industries in the success or failure of energy transitions is more straightforward. But the bad news is that if demand does not assume an active role in meeting decarbonization goals, we could see consumption growth at a rate that supply cannot keep up with.

The good news though is that one of the key demand challenges, the digital transformation, can be an enabler. We have the technology that will allow us to better access and understand behavioral, socio-economic, and energy demand dynamics and predict future dynamics. To support Greta and her generation protect their future, responsible multi-generational leadership of global energy transition takes two things:

• Accepting the analytical challenge of projecting how energy demand will or won’t grow and its implications on carbon emissions; and
• Setting clear objectives for energy demand growth and consumption profiles that support climate change goals and developing innovative strategies to meet them.

If the world needs to go through a low-carbon diet then having an exciting assortment of zero- and low-carbon technologies in its pantry alone isn’t sufficient. Like any diet, an intentional understanding and management of our energy consumption behavior is a necessity.

Since I launched my startup last year, my social media and email have been seeing much more activity from digital marketing agencies and coaches of coaches than clients or friends. Most of these businesses are startups themselves who are in the business of serving other startups. And pretty much all of them are using digital technology to sell digital technology-based services. The DIGITAL AGE has arrived if you haven’t noticed! And it’s making a great deal of data and very sophisticated technology available to the average person. So launching a new business is seeming simpler and simpler but is success also going to be much easier for the new entrants or incumbents?

I have been taking much of these online ads and marketing material pretty seriously, but deciding whether I need any of these services and picking a provider has been a real struggle on multiple levels:

• Taking all of this digital activity seriously means that I don’t take my own business seriously! There are simply not enough hours in the day to review and evaluate every piece of communication we receive about a coach of coaches, a digital media agency, or a marketing and sales consultant supporting coaches and consultants. Let alone the time and energy we need to live, work, and address our responsibilities.
• Well structured digital campaigns make differentiation a real challenge. The combination of very similar messages and almost identical techniques makes it near impossible to understand what differentiates one business from another. The email, LinkedIn InMail, or Facebook message structure is pretty modular like they are all written by the same sender for the same recipient. Also, most providers follow very similar schedules of communication, advertising, and content releases like they are all part of the same machine. Their LinkedIn profiles are structured in very similar ways that it is sometimes boring to go through them. Even their promises sound very similar which makes it extremely difficult to pick any of them with confidence.
• I wonder how they’re all going to help me “get high ticket clients” when their digital marketing is not making me feel like one. Receiving identical messages and responses to what every other lead receives doesn’t make me feel like these providers appreciates my unique situation and needs. Even when it comes to scheduling meetings, I am being sent to an online calendar to schedule my own calls. I am finding it pretty difficult to believe that high ticket clients can really be won without some real human interaction to establish credibility and win confidence.
• Apparently many of these providers have built multi-million dollar businesses and want to show us all how to by exactly building businesses like theirs. No comment there!

Digital technology provides businesses and the larger economy with access to unlimited amounts of data and communication and analytic tools. But since digitalization is at the fingertips of most (if not all) professionals and businesses, differentiating our offerings has become very challenging. This is especially the case for startups that are still working on building their brands. When it comes to doing business, I believe that digitalization will only succeed when it enhances the human experience rather than fully replace it.

As the 2019 Women’s History Month comes to an end, there is probably no better time for female professionals to take control of their growth and promise themselves a breakthrough year. While the role of employers can not be overemphasized, taking control of our lives and careers is definitely much more powerful. But taking control is not just about making a decision to do so. It takes making major mindset shifts to unleash our full potential as female leaders and professionals. Some, if not all, of these mindsets also apply more widely to non-gender based minorities.

1. Avoid anticipating bias. The anticipation of bias and/or discrimination can be one of the most inhibiting self-limiting beliefs. It’s a form of bias against oneself.Many career and business opportunities are being missed everyday because of this expectation. Showing up without all of our confidence and enthusiasm is a sure way to project that we are not prepared to perform at the right level for the new opportunity. Earlier in my career, I recommended a friend for a job (with my employer then) that he was more than qualified for. Being a recent immigrant, he went into the interview with little faith that he would end up with the job versus an American born citizen. He lost the opportunity for sure, but to an even more recent immigrant. The hiring manager was concerned about his level of enthusiasm and interest in the job!
2. Reflect on rather than reject feedback. It can be very easy to mistakenly assume preexisting conscious or subconscious gender biases are the source of most constructive feedback from male colleagues. It certainly could be the source of some feedback. Yet, bias against unpleasant comments as gender-biased opinion can waste much time and energy on defending oneself and proving colleagues wrong. As a result, we can easily miss the opportunity to identify and address real development needs reflected in the feedback. Another risk is bruised relationships with well-intended colleagues and discouraging others from providing honest feedback. Reflecting on all feedback and identifying common views across a wider group of colleagues as a first step can make a huge difference.
3. Be ready to fail even if you are not ready to succeed. I am really not sure if this behavior is innate or learned. But, we generally seem to want to be more than ready for a new role or responsibility before we throw our name in the hat. This reluctance is another form of bias against oneself. Many men, on the other hand, are more likely to ‘fake it till they make it’. In an extreme cases, women may find themselves pushing their male colleagues forward for opportunities that they themselves may be as (if not more) prepared for. The fear to fail can immensely slow down our progress like bias and discrimination would. Putting ourselves out there and being ready to fail will only bring us closer to success much sooner. At least, we can start to eliminate what wouldn’t work!
4. Promote diversity and inclusion. Professional women are generally very supportive of other women in and outside of the workplace. However, much of the support addresses the symptoms of limited opportunities and representation of women in senior positions. Topical treatments of the situation may appear like bias toward women, not necessarily the answer for bias against women. In reality, diversity (beyond gender) has become very critical for success for organizations today. The increasing diversity of challenges, opportunities, clients, and competitors calls for diversity in mentality. Homogeneous organizations will struggle even if they try to stay local because technology and demographics together bring the world to their doorsteps, both virtually and physically. Female leaders are in a great position to tackle bias, engender diversity of thought, and celebrate differences in gender, race, ethnicity, region, etc. Assuming ownership and leadership of diversity and inclusion goals is a sure way to unlock growth for ourselves, other female professionals, other groups facing bias, and our businesses.
5. Be yourself. We have made huge progress in this area. Professional women now feel much more comfortable looking, dressing, and behaving like the women that they are. But as our world becomes more competitive by the day, there is pressure to “join them if you can’t beat them.” We have all probably watched male and female executives get caught in the race and start to communicate or generally behave like the dominant majority. There is growing awareness, however, that realizing one’s full potential takes understanding and applying your authentic self. Also, to pave the way for other women and disadvantaged groups to succeed it’s our responsibility to demonstrate how you can do it without sacrificing part of who you are.

There are definitely other issues that require attention for empowering female professionals. Many of these would require the larger organization, community, and their leadership to make cultural shifts and change their policy and approach. However, organizational and societal measures are only as effective as our willingness to take ownership of our success and growth and remove our own biases around bias!