tech intensity

Future of Work, Sense Making

Half life of information and necessary rate of learning

Stephen Danelutti Leave a comment

I’ve just recently completed a series of certifications and learning modules for work. This is in addition to the training we have to do every year. It’s a lot of learning and pretty challenging alongside your day job.

That’s the point. It’s part of Microsoft’s (where I work) emphasis on a growth mindset since it focuses on the way you relate your sense of self to a challenge. My sense of self has risen immeasurably since taking on the challenge I can tell you and I am relishing it even more as I move forward.

The growth mindset theory popularised by Carol Dweck encompasses many aspects in addition to how you tackle challenges. One of them is the belief that your abilities can be developed, through learning for example (as long as you have a growth mindset).

Continuous learning is especially critical in an age of tech intensity which Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also believes we are in, as I wrote about here: Tech Intensity and the Adaptive Organisation.

Learning refresh cycles

So coming full circle to my doodle. If continuous learning is the order of the day, how long before your past learning becomes redundant?

I caught myself in self congratulatory mode after finishing my recent certification thinking I couldn’t get too comfortable in the knowledge my learning was done for that subject.

A great piece on the theory of the half life of information ponders what the current rate of decay of knowledge is.

With my recent certification which was on Azure Fundamentals, I was pretty sure that things were changing so fast, I’d have to relearn things in less than a year.

My doodle posits that a year is the average time it takes for knowledge to be made redundant and then new learning needs to kick in. Of course this will vary by subject and industry.

What do you think?

As a Service

The engine of the subscription economy

Stephen Danelutti Leave a comment

I read this article the other day: 4 Reasons Why Salesforce Could Acquire Zuora.

I’m writing this trend report: As a Service Trend.

Two of the chapters I will be covering are Subscription Economics and Technology Ecosystems.

Point 2 in the first article linked above gets to the heart of and intersection between these two chapters and this post is a way to explore the topics.

As mentioned in the article: Zuora is an enterprise software platform that helps subscription-based companies manage and bill their clients.

Its a pretty unglamorous part of the subscription economy, another reason that maybe their stock price is a little low.

But it is a very necessary part of the subscription economy, that’s why I used the analogy of the engine 😊 That is, technology platforms (or ecosystems) are the engine that drive the subscription economy.

Zuora have competitors and new ones entering all the time. WordPress (the worlds most popular content management system and blogging platform) recently announced they are going to help users monetise by offering subscription mechanisms.

Salesforce it seems, have their eye firmly on the space, adding credibility to the claim in the first article linked above. Check out this recent post on their site: How to Move to a Subscription Revenue Model.

From that article this diagram below, which they propose are the key business capabilities for supporting a subscription model. They may be business capabilities but look closely and they are all underpinned by technology functions.

From this you also grasp that moving to an As a Service business requires that the whole company shifts or refines its various functions in unison. In the article, Salesforce offer a three phase strategic roadmap for getting there which at best, is transformational.

I love that Customer Success is also represented in this framework above which I will be exploring in a separate chapter.

In conclusion, the articles and points they make and I discuss here are good indications that this trend is alive and well. Especially for SaaS businesses like Salesforce that focus on business-wide software, I think there is going to be increasing attention on this.

Future of Work, Startup Innovation

Startup lessons for the workplace

Stephen Danelutti Leave a comment

I discovered this really awesome resource on the BBC – articles and exposes on work life: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/

In it I came across this intriguing concept of Adaptability Quotient in an article: Is ‘AQ’ more important than intelligence?

This is based on the thinking of someone who has extensive experience working with startups, investing in them really, in her role at Goldman Sachs. Here is her Ted talk on the subject.

AQ is not just the capacity to absorb new information, but the ability to work out what is relevant, to unlearn obsolete knowledge, overcome challenges, and to make a conscious effort to change. AQ involves flexibility, curiosity, courage, resilience and problem-solving skills too.

Natalie Fratto

My interest is in how lessons learned working with startup founders on what is likely to make them successful can be applied to work and career management. This is the essence of the BBC article. It’s especially relevant in the work I do with customers in Digital Transformation, with concepts like tech intensity that speeds up the need for change and adaptability which I wrote about here: Tech Intensity and the Adaptive Organisation.

So compelling is this interest that I wrote an eBook and trend report about it (more here: Startup Innovation) and write many posts like this one under the category with the same title. My premise and that of many others is that large traditional and incumbent organisations (and the employees in them) would do well to emulate startups in many ways and innovate like them.