2 Visuals. 2 Beverages. 2 Perspectives

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 8.

1. 2 Visuals

Here are two visuals that stuck out for me in the past couple of days.

The first is an ad. The second is a gathering a week ago where President Trump announced his choice for a replacement of RGB for the Supreme Court.

During your next company or family Zoom/Team/WebEx call, an interesting exercise might be to ask for thoughts on comparing the two visuals as well as questions about each.

Some thought starters for discussion on comparing the two:

Which visual is filled with more intelligence?

Can the picture with a mask be more true to reality than the picture with almost no masks that is celebrating a nomination of someone who has to seek truth?

How does each visual make you feel and why?

With regard to the ad specifically

Why does this ad resonate? Is it an example of creative power where a few words and picture on an old media (outdoor) combines humor, timeliness, truth and human insight ? Does our marketing do that?

Can modern digital data driven technology improve and enhance the effectiveness of this ad? If so how?

If you decided not to get fitted for braces what will you do in the next six months socially distanced and partially hidden away to improve yourself?

With regard to the Rose Garden scene

Are there fewer people of color or fewer people who are wearing masks?

Does this picture underline the reality that Power does not equal Truth?

Will this picture in hindsight be seen as seminal moment in US history ?

2. 2 Beverages

Over the past few months working across the world and across myriad companies I have come to understand that there are two styles of decision making which I now call High Tea versus Espresso Coffee.

Most companies and people utilize both styles depending on the situation.

The High Tea style of decision making is one of percolation and process. It takes time and many people are involved and it goes up and down an organization.

The Espresso Coffee style is fast and focussed on jolting into a bias for action.

Depending on what is being decided, the financial implication of a right or wrong decision and the ability to change ones mind should determine which beverage preparation style is being used.

Decisions of strategy that will impact many people and cost a lot and be hard to walk back probably needs some High Tea approach. Decisions that are not interconnected to large parts of the organization, cost a little, can be stopped or reversed quickly should probably be espresso style.

What I find fascinating is how many espresso decisions are now being treated as high tea decisions. Is this because in a Covid-19 world where we are all isolated we feel less sure about decision making or is it because there are so many new challenges we need to slow everything down and involve everybody?

I find that while many folks are talking about a great acceleration ( to digital, to working from home, etc) what we are seeing is a great percolation where too many decisions are being group groped and slow marched.

What is fascinating is that so many small decisions are requiring so much time and people input that the human and time capital spent in evaluating the decision is many multiples of the cost or the risk of the decision being taken.

Lets make sure we know which beverage style makes sense when we decide to decide.

3. 2 Perspectives

Six months into working from home with at least another six months to go, businesses are confronting a key challenge: How to re-wire work, management and culture in a distributed always-on but always- away environment.

If a company is to transform and grow, it’s people need to transform and grow, and as I speak with management all over the world they are increasingly concerned about how to manage culture, communication and collaboration.

And they are right to be concerned as a wide gap is opening up between employers and employees on how these matters are being handled.

The three big questions are “learning/growing”, “physical/mental wellbeing”, “new approaches/rules to a new world”

Smart management all over the world is now focussing on the emotional and mental state of their employees. While we wait for a vaccine for Covid-19, we should think about how we can inject doses of inspiration, learning and hope as the great re-wiring of the work begins.

Soul for Christmas or Gaining Leads with Soul

As many of you know my first book “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data” was published early this year and thanks to the support of many has garnered great reviews, ratings and sales. It will be issued globally in paperback on Jan 28,2021 and published in Mandarin across China in February 2021 and in many other languages early next year.

At the request of a few firms looking for gifts or ways to leverage the book for marketing, I have worked with my Publisher to offer an e-book version that can be easily accessed and distributed. This allows the book to be available on the Cloud and read on any Android, IoS, Windows or MacOS driven hardware anywhere in the world ( except China due to upcoming publication and Iran due to embargoes).

What is particularly cool is that companies can buy in bulk and we can send individual and personalized codes for each book or a common link which can be used to access books repeatedly till empty. The flexibility of what we can do is pretty infinite. Companies are using it for lead generation, event grab bags and for gifting.

In today’s world where budgets are tight, physical gatherings limited and the thirst for knowledge and growth great you may want to consider offering my book to grow your relationships, leads and more. Pricing (revised since original post) here

Restoring The Soul of Business, the discounts are on ebook list price of $12.99 US.

25-99 @ 20% discount, net $10.39

100-499 @ 30% discount, net $9.09

500-999 @ 40% discount, net $7.79

1,000-2499 @ 50% discount, net $6.50

Larger quantities of 2500+ can be quoted

If you or your company are interested please reach out to me at Rishad@gmail.com.

Rishad Tobaccowala ( @rishad ) is the author of the bestselling “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data” published by Harper Collins globally in January 2020. It has been described as an “operating manual” for managing people, teams and careers in the age we live in and The Economist Magazine called it perhaps the best recent book on Stakeholder Capitalism.Rishad is a sought after speaker, teacher and advisor who helps people think, feel and see differently about how to grow their companies, their teams and themselves. More at https://rishadtobaccowala.com/