Jeremie Averous | The Fourth Revolution Blog

It’s not about Work-Life Balance, it’s about Work-Life Integration

This is a quote of Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, as related by Hugh McLeod. Hugh continues: “Work and personal life seems to meld together in a way that can be either enhancing or debilitating – and it is up to each person to structure what works in their life and in ways that allow them to be their best in work and at home. What is interesting is that this is a new phenomenon, borne out of technology.”

Work-Life balance is a typical concept stemming from a time where work and life were happening in different environments, separated by the barrier of commuting. This geographical border has now been abolished by technology. Work has already heavily invaded our private home, and life increasingly (but with more difficulties due to old habits) invades a bit our work.

Visionaries try to develop new spaces where life and work could co-exist harmoniously (this seems to be one of the objectives of Tony Hsieh’s Las Vegas downtown project that allies urban and social experiment).

We need to stop these obsolete and pervading considerations about work-life balance and concentrate on how we can integrate these two activities. In fact, they are not antagonistic but in synergy and we need to recognize that better. Once we look at it that way, a world of possibilities opens.

What about you? What do you see when you consider that work and life are in fact integrated and will become ever more integrated?

Creativity and Design by Subtraction

I bumped into a few references to the fact that creation and design is often powerfully achieved by subtraction.

creativity is subtraction — Creativity is subtraction, by Austin Kleon

In “Perfect Pitch“, a book about how to present advertising concepts and ideas, Jon Steel mentions his “belief that creativity is not, as many people believe, a process of invention from nothing. Instead, it is a painstaking exercise in reduction, of removing all the bits that don’t look like a great idea“. He uses the example of the unhewn rock that the sculptor will transform into a masterpiece.

Similarly, this quote of Jonathan Ive, the famous Apple designer: “A lot of what we seem to be doing in a product like [the iPhone] is actually getting design out of the way. And I think with that sort of reason — and they’re not just arbitrary shapes — it feels almost inevitable. It feels almost undesigned. It feels almost like, “Well, of course it’s that way. Why would it be any other way?”” (hat tip to Valeria Maltoni in this Conversation Agent post).

Maybe instead of constantly trying to add features to our lives and products we should take a deep breath and take out everything which is not indispensable – and thereby create great value. What do you think?

The picture is by Austin Kleon, an excellent writer on the topic of creativity, in books such as Newspaper Blackout or Steal Like An Artist.

What’s Your Presentation’s Single Message?

That’s a question I often ask to people who ask me to advise or coach them and I am often met with blank stares. Even after a long winding presentation that lasted a few hours. It is the most important question: if you don’t what’s your message, how can you expect to have communicated it properly?!?

What's the message? Bad ppt example — So, what’s the message?

Yes, you need to have one message. One SINGLE message that pervades your entire presentation from start to finish.

Remember that law of presentations by Jon Steel in Perfect Pitch: “The more separate points you attempt to make, the less your audience will take in“.

It might be tough to restrict yourself to one single message that you’ll wave in and out of your presentation, in particular if you feel like it is the single opportunity you will have to express yourself in front of a particular audience.

Yet, what do you prefer: one single message that is noticed and remembered, or a presentation that will soon be forgotten?

Make your choice. One single well-crafted message for the next presentation will take the day. Ready to try?

How the Subscription Economy is Spreading, Killing Ownership Further

Further to our successful blog post on The End of Ownership, John Warrillow proposes an interesting alternate view on the development of the Subscription Economy.

Increasingly, successful companies propose to clients to pay a subscription instead of buying individual items. John identifies 5 main business types associated with a subscription business model:

flat fee to access an unlimited library of content,
sampling boxes,
automatic replenishment of consumables,
monitoring (e.g. antivirus etc),
reporting – access to information.

The most interesting evolution lies in the first type. Unlimited libraries of content have only been made possible through the Fourth Revolution. It looks increasingly like subscription is the model of the future for access to cultural and artistic products, leveraged by powerful algorithms that suggest further products based on what you have been using. It is the typical model of Netflix for video, and it seems that Amazon and online music broadcasters increasingly tend towards this model.

For example, Amazon Kindle proposes a program where customers can borrow titles and authors get compensated from an Amazon pot, proportionally to the popularity of their books.

Hence, not only do we own less and rent more, but the rent increasingly looks like a flat fee for a service, relatively independent of the usage intensity. A great business model that will further reinforce our dependence on rental.

Re-imagining Work – Fourth Revolution applied (Video)

This excellent video from RSA Animate features Dave Coplin, Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft, explaining the future of Work – how it shifts with the digital revolution.

This video gives another perspective on the fact that Work as we were envisioning it in the Industrial Age is going to be deeply transformed by the Fourth Revolution: “The ways we live our working life today has become outdated“. And, it mentions how the concept of productivity is obsolete – not only obsolete – “it is fast becoming the problem“. The video also presents some interesting considerations on office space!

Plus, you’ll really enjoy the great illustrations as usual with RSA talks!

If you can’t see the video, follow this link.

Hat tip to Valeria Maltoni for this nugget. In her post she adds more comments on how she sees the future of work – in particular, that “One thing is for sure, a culture of openness remains scary for most organizations, as well as the people who work in them.” Interesting thought!

The Job of a Leader is to Grow More Leaders

It is the first point of Robin Sharma’s ‘the top 10 things amazing leader do‘ post.

Seeing the mighty oak in the acorn — As a leader, do you recognize the mighty oaks in the acorns around you?

Actually this is so true that I deem leaders who fail to groom successors and can’t pass on their steering wheel utter failures at leaders. Even if their organization had been successful under their helm.

What serves to deliver great results if they can’t be sustained after you are gone? When you have an unfortunate accident? It is just so true that one of the prime roles of leaders is to develop more leaders. And it is something you can see and touch readily in organizations. It is never a secret to know if the leader is coaching and mentoring others to grow and become successful as leaders. This practice, when it exists, pervades an entire organization.

It remains even more so in the Fourth Revolution, within the smaller core of organizations. At its core, movement leadership only does its job if it grooms future leaders. If the leader knows to step aside to leave younger generations take over in time.

Be a leader. Grow leaders!

How to create disruption for billions in 18 months

Disruption happens ever more quickly. According to this excellent post on Asymco, Android is the third platform to reach 1 billion users.

Only that according to the graph, Android took 1.5 years to get there; Facebook took 3 years and Windows (two decades ago) probably something like 5 years.

1 billion user is planet-wide disruption. And today it only takes a few month for successful ecosystems to disrupt the planet and change our habits.

Do you remember the first version of the iPhone went on sale mid-2007? 6 years ago ONLY?

Food for thought.

Why You Should not Seek to Adapt too much to your Circumstances

“The Better Adapted You Are, the Less Adaptable You Tend to Be“. Systems and living beings tend to adapt as much as possible to their environment. With a dramatic effect: if they become too adapted, too specialized, they become vulnerable.

lab mice — It can be dangerous to be too specialized!

Human success in nature is mainly due to our adaptability across different climates, seasons and living conditions.

Yet we tend to forget too often that adaptability has been our key for success for generations, like for example when the Industrial Age taught us that specialization was best for our social success (see the post ‘Stop to be Excessively Specialized – Become a Generalist to be Successful in the Collaborative Age‘).

Gerald Weinberg, whom this quote is from (in ‘The Secrets of Consulting‘), continues: “This law provides one reason why people need consultants. Consultants are less adapted to the present situation, and therefore are potentially more adaptable. Their perception of now/then tradeoffs is different from those close to the problem, which makes them a valuable source of ideas (as well as people not to be trusted)“. That’s why you need to have candids in your meetings and make sure you always bring people that have not been too associated with your ideas.

Remain adaptable. Seek outside advice. And you’ll be successful.

How to Overcome the Experts’ Confidence Conundrum?

“If someone’s confidence is high, we believe they are probably right; if they are less certain, we feel they are less reliable“, research suggests, as reported by Dan Gardner in ‘Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway‘.

“Obviously, this means we deem those who are dead certain the best forecasters, while those who make ‘probabilistic calls’ – like “it is probable this will happen but not certain” – must be less accurate, and anyone who dares to say the odds of something are 50-50 will be met with scorn“. The author goes on to add that it is not a conscious decision path.

So let’s summarize: we tend to believe those confident experts – who are probably wrong. And we tend to discredit those experts that don’t look too confident and who qualify their statements or speak about probabilities – who are probably closer to the truth or what can be said about it at the present moment. That’s quite an annoying situation, isn’t it?

I have personally drawn a personal conclusion: when too many experts agree with high confidence, I conclude that is groupthink and that it is worthwhile to take a contrarian position. At least you establish a noticeable difference with the bulk of the experts!

Be careful of experts that look too confident – they are probably wrong when it comes to predictions.

From Blogger to Beauty Guru to Celebrity Businesswoman in 6 Years

August 2013 headlines: After six years of tutorials and millions of views, YouTube beauty guru Michelle Phan has launched her own 250-product line of makeup – backed by L’Oreal.

I am not particularly a fan or expert on makeup (!) but I found it to be a great story to show the power of the Fourth Revolution. Michelle is clearly passionate about makeup. After some blogging she started posting videos on Youtube in 2007. Obviously there was a need! She has today 769 million views and has 4.6 million subscribers! And what was a passion became a business. AT 23 years old L’Orelas backed up her video making. And at 26 years old L’Oreal backs her up for a personal line of makeup.

This great post on Mashable explains her story. Her secret recipe is story-telling. “Success is like a lightning bolt. It’ll strike you when you least expect it, and you just have to keep the momentum going” she says! This other post is also quite instructive about her career.

Coming from a humble background, with passion and having obviously fun, Michelle created what will soon be an empire. She created tremendous value for many people (for free). And most of her fans are at the other end of the planet, in Asia. And all thanks to the Fourth Revolution!

Have a look at the promotional Youtube movie for her product line which recounts her journey and where she thanks the community she created around her for giving her all the ideas that founded her success and her product. Still don’t believe in the Fourth Revolution?

More material: Michelle has also her own Wikipedia page, here is the link to her Youtube channel, and her website.

People Don’t Care How Much You Know, Unless They Know How Much You Care

This classical quote is mentioned the excellent book “the Perfect Pitch – The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business” by Jon Steel about public speaking and presenting.

Yet it obviously also does apply to many other instances in our daily lives.

It is amazing how turned-off people can turn on if you show a little bit of caring.

What is caring but the expression of an attempt an emotional connection?

Show that you care in negotiations, and in any situation where you interact with people. And be certain that in all cases, nobody cares about how much or what you know!

If you Want to Become Unstoppable… Don’t Stop!

I found this beautiful sentence in an excellent post by Manal Ghosain, ‘the Persistence‘.

Becoming unstoppable is often not an issue of unbearable external forces but much more frequentlyan internal issue.

It’s all about personal persistence.

As Manal highlights, it’s often all about letting go of expectations, judgment and comparisons.

Become unstoppable. Just don’t stop!

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