Geoff Smith's blog post was featuredIT Hiring Across Britain’s Tech Cities Is Evolving for the BetterAs we are all aware, the UK has experienced a remarkable technological evolution over the past few years, becoming an international destination for digital innovation, expertise and entrepreneurial spirit. As the silicon roundabout ‘Tech City’ model is being adopted across the country, the approach businesses are taking to expand and ensure their future is changing, as is the way they hire.We recently published our inaugural quarterly report called Tech Cities Job Watch, showing where the battle for IT talent is taking place across the country and how the pay stacks up.While the majority of hiring demand was, unsurprisingly, for experienced IT Professionals with skills in Cloud, Web Development, Security and Mobile in London, over 25% of the demand is for other opportunities in other emerging tech cities around the country.Bristol, Birmingham, Cambridge and Glasgow were all revealed as ‘Tech Cities’ where skills were gathering, and where competitive salaries are being posted to attract skilled IT professionals.There is a perception that most of these jobs are being created by ultra-cool digital, web and app development start-ups or design firms in cities like Bristol and Cambridge, which boast young vibrant communities. This is a little misleading.The big corporates, systems integrators, pharma companies, FMCGs and banks are still the primary employers of IT talent. In fact, some of these companies are falling over themselves to hire people with tech skills, hoovering up talent wherever it’s available.The bottom line is there is still a huge demand for IT talent, whether young and new to the profession or older and more experienced. But it is still the big companies with the money to spend and the larger head count to meet that are luring the majority of IT talent. Mature IT professionals, who value stable work, secure careers and higher salaries are more likely to work for the well-known systems integrators where they can still get project variety.However, this may be set to change. There’s an increasing amount of hiring back and forth between large and small companies, a trend that will continue as London and the UK’s Tech Cities keep growing.For the bigger organisations, taking the long-term view is essential. Some of the major projects and systems being worked by large companies may only have a limited life, and as such the skills they hire in will (if not invested in and updated) become obsolete quicker than you can catch a cold (or a millennium bug!)Larger companies are making serious efforts to appeal to young, bright and innovative minds that can help them evolve their offering. Google is seen by many as the market standard of this model, ensuring their employees are offered all manner of toys, comforts and ‘flip-flop’ practices aimed at appealing to the minds of the best millennial talent.Many firms are following this mode, introducing digital academies aimed at attracting talent by creating a great working environment (creative zones, test labs, war rooms, and so on), as well as home working options.The qualities being sought are changing as well. Digital development skills have never been in higher demand. But many larger organisations are now looking at developers who also have a creative or artistic qualifications, as well as computing or programming skills, and crucially individuals who are desperate to learn what's around the corner.In many ways, larger companies are mirroring the practices that helped many smaller start-up firms appeal to the next generation of tech innovators. Of course, some are doing it well. Others, well let’s say they are wearing flip flops over their brown socks...What smaller firms are looking for is changing, too. Particularly in the early stages, disruptive start-up brands tend to attract like-minded people: highly creative and ambitious, but often inexperienced, flighty and not terribly commercially minded. This leads some firms to get burned or, at the very least, slowed down by short-term candidates who don’t add value to the business.Growing tech companies increasingly need to hire people with end-to-end project management and commercial business skills in addition to the tech knowledge.A few years ago I helped a seasoned project manager at an investment bank take a role in a small, but promising organisation. The change came with a significant rate cut, but the challenges presented by the role resonated with the individual and were too attractive to pass up. The start-up company needed someone who had the experience to professionalise the offering and talk to the corporate customers who ultimately had the cheque books.This ended up being a really positive move for both the candidate and company. After a few years helping them formalise and expand their sales, he tapped further into his entrepreneurial side, leaving to start his own business, which is still running very successfully today.Small firms should be realistic when they are competing with the larger firms for IT talent. Many won’t have the resources to offer salaries or benefits that compete with the big, largely London-based firms. However, this doesn’t mean that smaller organisations can’t offer challenges, opportunities for advancement or other qualities that more experienced IT professionals might find attractive. The high cost of living in London is also factoring heavily in the appeal to move to an alternative Tech City.Britain’s evolution as a global hotspot for tech business growth and innovation, and the resulting competition for IT talent, is here to stay. As the market continues to evolve, big established businesses and growth firms alike will be looking to tap new areas of talent to ensure their futures. This means London firms, big or small, need to watch out and should embrace a multi tech city environment whilst talent spotting for the tech experts who may not fit the conventional archetype but who have that crucial staying power, commercial acumen and learning desire.Geoff Smith is the Managing Director of Experis Europe and a member of the Manpower Group Global Leadership Team.See More

ABOUT THE AUTHOR   Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I have a coworker who abuses my open-door communication policy. Our offices are side-by-side, and we both benefit from this arrangement by discussing dilemmas and sorting through issues to prioritize our group’s efforts. However, my coworker has a very reactive way of coping with an e-mail she does not like or a phone call from someone who disagrees with her. She will come rushing into my office to rant about this e-mail or that coworker, or this phone call or that situation. This happens five to six times a day! This behavior is distracting because she expects me to put aside what I’m working on to pay attention to her. She’s also thin-skinned, very volatile, and I suspect less than receptive to a conversation that centers on her negative behavior. Any suggestions? Signed, Open-Door Abuse Dear Open-Door, This is an interesting question because it’s hard to say which issue you should address. The first skill of crucial conversations is picking the right conversation. Your two options are: Reset expectations. This one is fairly straightforward. The key is to make it about you and not the other person. This is you realizing you need a different boundary in order to be productive in your work—not blaming your coworker for interrupting you. If you set it up that way, there is minimal chance of defensiveness. Address your coworker’s volatile behavior. There are two reasons to address this issue first. One reason is if you think—no matter how careful you are—you’ll be unable to focus on resetting expectations. If this is true, then you have to address your coworker’s volatile behavior first. The second reason is if it is more important to address her behavior than it is to reset expectations. When you use words like "volatile," it sounds as though you may have been putting up with abuse for some time and even enabling her misbehavior by not asking for things you want or need in your work relationship. If this is true, you have to hold an entirely different crucial conversation. If you decide to reset expectations, as I said, make it about you and your needs—not a criticism of your colleague. This is both true and easier to express without creating defensiveness. Go in with a specific proposal—not just a vague criticism. For example, you might simply say, "I’ve noticed that I go home many times feeling disappointed in how much I get done. I’ve realized that one reason is that I don’t focus. I am going to start creating "islands of focus" in my day—when I do not respond to e-mail, talk with colleagues, or schedule meetings. This will put a cramp in the spontaneous conversations we sometimes have, but I want to try this. Can I ask that from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. you not tempt me with interesting topics?" You’ll then need to maintain this agreement and give reminders if there are encroachments. If you don’t, then you will be colluding in undermining your own request. So be firm and consistent—odds are it will only take a couple of reminders and you’ll have a bit of solitude. Confronting her behavior will be more difficult. I might be reading more into this than I should—but I’m inferring not just to volatility (i.e., she gets animated when expressing frustrations) but to hostility (she is defensive and rude when you confront her about concerns). If I am correct, you may want to hold her accountable on this issue. You may also want to give some thought to how you may be rewarding this pattern by allowing it to cause you to tiptoe around other behaviors that don’t work for you (like constant interruptions). Over time, a weakness like this can turn into a technique when those around her reward it too consistently. If you decide to address this issue, once again, start with safety. When confronting a longstanding pattern that you’ve colluded in, a good way to do this is to acknowledge your part. For example, "I’d like to discuss a concern that I’ve put off addressing for a long time. I realize the pattern we’ve fallen into is as much my fault as yours—as I’ve been staying silent and blaming you for my silence. I’d like to discuss the problem—including how I might be contributing to it—and find a way to work together that is acceptable to both me and you." From here, you’ll need to describe two or three examples of the pattern. Be careful, because each time you describe an instance, she’s likely to offer excuses for that instance. For example, you might say, "Last week when I pointed out misspellings on your PowerPoint slide you called me a loser. Then laughed and walked away." If she then says, "I was joking!" You need to return her to the pattern. Say something like, "I realize there might be special reasons you said things in each circumstance I raise. And yet, what I’m asking you to notice it that there is a pattern—one that is unacceptable to me. If it happened just once, I wouldn’t be discussing this. This is something that happens regularly. Can you see that?" This will be tricky, but the key is to maintain safety while being fully honest. You need to begin exercising a firmness you have not in the past. If you do, there is a good chance you can get closer to the kind of relationship that will work for you. Best wishes, Joseph Related Material:Influencing Corporate Policy What if the other person refuses to open up?

Kurt Mueffelmann's blog post was featuredEvading Tomb Raiders: It’s Time to Rethink How We Implement Defense In-DepthDefense-in-depth is an accepted and well-practiced tenet of information security. The crunchy network perimeter protecting a soft, vulnerable center is not only a tired cliché - it is also an outdated security strategy. And yet, despite our best efforts to shore up layers of defense, attackers still gain access to enterprise networks and "walk away" with sensitive data. It is clear, by the likes of recent large-scale data breaches, that IT organizations today need a more robust mechanism to protect enterprise assets across dispersed networks.The concept of defense-in-depth took hold in response to the dissolving perimeter - the idea that there is no longer a defined corporate network through which users access IT resources. While the concept holds true, the traditional network hasn’t just dissolved. It has collapsed. The growth of enterprise collaboration, the increasing consumption of information on personal devices and the growing number of mobile distributed workers has resulted in a dispersed network environment. Trusted networks have become so complex and interconnected that it has become almost impossible to manage security precisely enough to stop intrusions.The problem is only compounded by the fact that the traditional preventative technologies used in a defense-in-depth strategy are largely ineffective. Antivirus, intrusion-prevention systems, firewalls and sandboxes fail to stop advanced attacks. Polymorphic malware constantly changes, rendering signature-based defenses useless.And, of course, users themselves remain vulnerable. Attackers continue to gain unauthorized network access by exploiting stolen privileged credentials, as in the case of the Target breach, or by grooming a rogue insider. Once attackers have possession of legitimate credentials, the network is their playground. Access management controls assume users are who they say they are without more in-depth checks than a username and password. What’s more, we accept upfront proof of identity and treat authentication as a one-time transaction - enabling the user to do whatever he/she wants in real-time, without further scrutiny.Once inside the network, attackers typically look for a weak spot and use off-the-shelf tools to scan for vulnerabilities - creating a ‘network blueprint’ of assets with known vulnerabilities that can potentially be exploited. Sometimes, however, attackers don’t even have to exploit a vulnerability. For example, following the attack on Sony Entertainment, the media reported that the company had saved all passwords in a file labeled "Passwords." That filename was a beacon to attackers - a flashing neon-sign in a dark alleyway.Organizations today must employ a more sophisticated layered defense strategy to help prevent data breaches like those experienced by Target, Sony and many others. Such a strategy starts with a mechanism that can protect enterprise assets across dispersed networks and that enables the management of isolated trusted networks by a single entity. This can be achieved via dynamic access control, specifically focused on the activities of privileged users.Unlike traditional access control, which grants users open access to an entire network segment, dynamic network access control uses a context-aware architecture to grant access. Access is determined by a number of user-specific variables, such as IP address, operating system, time of day, location and role. The system looks at additional information to not only verify that the user is who he/she claims to be but to also grant access based on the context. For instance, the CEO may be granted access to a low-risk document at 11:00 p.m. from his personal tablet through an unknown IP address, but she may not be granted access to confidential financial data. Firewall rules are created and enforced when access is requested to provide a secure, encrypted, service-specific connection to each individual application or service.Dynamic access control also makes it difficult for attackers - or anyone else on the network - to find valuable network assets. The technology renders servers completely invisible to would-be attackers - even those in possession of trusted credentials. Application servers are effectively moved off the network by default. Once hidden behind a secret door, internal vulnerability scans are unable to detect weaknesses in the network, let alone exploit them.In light of today’s advanced attacks and dispersed trusted networks, IT organizations need to reconsider their approach to defense in depth. Granting users and partners access to entire network segments protected by preventative controls is no longer a viable means of protecting sensitive assets. It’s time we question our old assumptions about security controls and consider new technologies like dynamic access control, which transform how we approach security in the digital era.Kurt Mueffelmann is the CEO of Cryptzone.See More

Uschi Schreiber posted a blog postIs Tech Really as Advanced as We Think?We now live in a world in constant motion. Our everyday lives are touched by megatrends - large, transformative and sometimes disruptive, global forces that define the future by having a far-reaching impact on business, economies, industries, societies and individuals.Technology and globalization are inextricably part of this dynamic. In this world, the ever-increasing acceleration of change is one of the few constants.The tech industry epitomizes rampant innovation and globalization. It is renowned equally for its cutting-edge culture and as a workplace of the future. The industry boasts a celebrated bench of female leaders who have shattered the glass-ceiling for women in technology - and throughout the corporate world. The likes of Marissa Mayer, Meg Whitman, Sheryl Sandberg and Ginni Rometty are true trailblazers and role models that men and women can look up to. Even in government, key figures like Neelie Kroes and Megan Smith are advancing the tech policy agenda across the EU and US respectively.The industry can also take claim for the profound impact its technology has had on women’s careers. This has included individual empowerment, new unforeseen opportunities in business, the advancement of emerging markets, and opportunities to thrive as entrepreneurs.But is this industry really as advanced as we think?A closer look reveals a glaring and deepening gender gap. Today, men make up nearly 70 percent of workforces across the biggest brands. Even more striking - men constitute an overwhelming 80 percent of the engineering and programming roles at these companies.To compound the issue - two factors reinforce this gap. Only around 18 percent of computer science graduates are women. And the number of women in related STEM-careers (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) range from just nine to 25 percent across developed economies. Simply having a few female executives does not address these problems.This is concerning, despite recent comments to the contrary by Mayer. As technology continues to grow in prominence, it will no longer just be an industry unto itself. The pervasiveness and power of new technologies are blurring sector boundaries as companies across all industries develop their own digital strategies and solutions.In the next 20 years, studies indicate that 47 percent of all occupations in advanced economies are at ‘high risk’ of becoming automated or mechanized. Without a strong skillset in technology, many individuals across all working classes will be relegated to lower-skilled service occupations, or even worse, to the unemployment line. And with so few women with relevant education and experience in technology, many industry players would struggle to immediately improve their ranks, even if they wanted to. This is not good enough, as recent surveys indicate that of the top 25 paying professions, 14 are tech-related.Other leading professions like law and medicine still rank highly in pay-grade tables and women have since nearly reached parity with men in obtaining advanced degrees and breaking into these fields. They are also steadily advancing through the senior ranks of public sector leadership roles across the G20.Yet without having requisite technology skills, women are now at risk of being excluded again - this time by the one sector that will transform all our futures and those of generations to come. Is this a future we want?We must cultivate industry environments where women can thrive alongside their male counterparts. The technology sector is no exception. Countless studies show that having diverse workforces increases productivity and profit.Despite this recognition, companies are not always creating the right culture to hold onto talented women. A 2008 Harvard Business Review survey found that as many as 50% of women working in STEM-based careers leave these fields because of hostile work environments. The reasons include unsupportive and detached cultures, few advancement opportunities and lack of flexibility.We all have a responsibility to close the gender gap, not reinforce it. Plenty of grassroots programs already exist that encourage girls and young women to embrace technology at an early age. In fact, according to Kroes, there are an equal number of young girls and boys involved in coding before girls identify the gender stigma attached to this activity and pursue other things.Schools, employers and policy-makers need to pro-actively address conscious and unconscious bias like this, and make clear that the status-quo is unacceptable. This needs to be addressed to not only attract girls and women into technology but to retain their talent. This can’t just be an occasional initiative. It has to be a culture change driven by policy, supported by business and encouraged by governments through legislation to create positive and equal environments for both men and women.Globalization and technology have ushered an unprecedented level of opportunity for women across all areas. These megatrends will continue to reshape every industry and the way in which human beings manage their lives and careers. Let’s ensure that women are at the forefront of leading this change to truly advance technology and the world it touches. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past. It’s time to fast forward.Uschi Schreiber is Global Vice Chair - Markets and Chair of the Global Accounts Committee at EY (Ernst & Young). She is also EY's Global Markets Leader, responsible for the organization's globally integrated go-to-market approach.See More

ABOUT THE AUTHOR   David Maxfield is coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I have two employees who are categorized as management yet they do not have any direct reports nor do their job descriptions indicate any responsibilities specific to management. Because it is a large company, I am unable to modify the job classification. I would like to delegate increased responsibility to their role, but there is also an issue of trust. These two employees do not have the desire to grow as leaders. They are content with working their eight hours a day and going home. As much as I try to help them develop, they just aren’t interested. Do you have any suggestions for motivating or developing managers? Motivated Manager Dear Motivated, Thanks for describing an interesting influence challenge that many managers face. Organizations ask managers to develop their people, and the workload makes it important for people to take on larger roles, but some employees seem comfortably stuck in their status quo. Or maybe you’re a mom or dad whose son or daughter is comfortably stuck in the status quo—or whatever you call their basement bedroom. You want your child to launch a career, but he or she doesn’t seem interested in doing what it takes. How do you get a person who is comfortably stuck to take action? Avoid the fundamental attribution error. When people are stuck, we have a strong tendency to blame their personal motivation. More often than not, we describe them as lacking character, willpower, grit, or determination. This bias is so strong that psychologists call it the "Fundamental Attribution Error." However, when a person is stuck—even comfortably stuck—there is usually a lot more going on than simple laziness. I’m not saying the employees you described aren’t lacking personal motivation. I think you described their poor initiative quite well; however, there is a good chance that personal motivation is not their only problem—it’s just the most obvious one. Diagnose all six sources. When people are stuck, it’s usually because all Six Sources of Influence are working in combination to hold them fast. Their world is perfectly organized to create the behavior (or lack of behavior) you are currently seeing. Here are the questions we use to diagnose obstacles in all six sources: Personal Motivation. Left in a room by themselves, would they want to take on greater responsibilities? Would they enjoy it, find it meaningful, and aspire to it as an important part of their identity? Would they take pride in it, or see it as a moral imperative? Ideas for action: Invite choice. As part of the performance-management process, ask each employee to prepare a two- to three-year plan. Ask them to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) your organization and your department face. Then have them anticipate how they see your department and their jobs changing in order to take advantage of these SWOTs. Finally, have them describe what they would like to be doing in two or three years and what they need to do now in order to prepare themselves. Try small steps. Identify the crucial moments when it would be most helpful for your employees to step up to greater responsibilities. Think of times, places, and circumstances when you could really use their help in a particular way for a short period of time. It will be most effective if you can include them in finding these crucial moments. People are more trusting when they discover crucial moments for themselves. Then ask for their help during these brief and occasional crucial moments. Personal Ability. Left in a room by themselves would they have all the skills they need to feel confident taking on greater responsibilities? Do they already have the right knowledge, skill sets, experiences, training, and strength? Ideas for action: Training that focuses on critical dependencies. Ask your reluctant employees to identify skill sets that are new, are becoming more important, or are in short supply. These skills would make a person indispensable. If they aren’t quick to identify these skills, work with them to identify the people in your organization who could help and ask your employees to interview them. Training that fills in missing skills. Suppose your reluctant employees did accept a greater role, what parts of an expanded job would they find most difficult, tedious, or noxious? How could you skill them up so they’d be confident, efficient, and effective in these areas? We often say, "If it’s taking too much will, add some more skill!" Maybe an ounce of skill will yield another pound of motivation. Social Motivation. Are the right people encouraging them to take on greater responsibilities? Do the peers they respect, the managers they look up to, and their family members encourage or discourage them from stepping up? Ideas for action: Get them some feedback. Do they know how others see them? Most of us want to believe we are doing our fair share. Motivate change by using a 360-degree feedback tool to get feedback from their peers and customers. Make it clear that the feedback is for development—not evaluation—purposes and make sure you have solutions for whatever negative feedback they receive. Otherwise, this kind of feedback can be more demoralizing than motivating. Connect them with a greater purpose. Get them involved in field trips where they meet with their internal or external customers. Make the connection as personal as possible. Have them report to your team on what they learned and on how your team can improve. Social Ability. If your employees take on greater responsibilities, are the people around them ready to lend a hand? Do they have mentors, trainers, and peers who can give advice and step in to help? Ideas for action: Make them coaches. Sometimes people step up when they become responsible for someone else’s success. Consider assigning them to work with another person in your group. Structural Motivation. Does your organization provide incentives such as performance reviews, pay, promotions, and perks that could motivate these employees to take on greater responsibilities? Your employees’ job descriptions don’t include management activities so it’s hard to use the formal reward system, but there may be other routes to explore. Ideas for action: Recognize incremental improvements. Try small assignments, projects that can be completed within a week, and then give your honest, heartfelt appreciation when they complete them. Then gradually increase the number, size, duration, and importance of these projects. Continue to show your appreciation as you deem appropriate. Structural Ability. Is there a way to use the environment, data, tools, cues, or systems to make it easier and more convenient for these people to take on greater responsibilities? Ideas for action: Discover and remove obstacles. Ask yourself (or your reluctant employees), "If you wanted to take on a few additional responsibilities, what are the biggest obstacles you would face?" One good guess would be time. If nothing else about their jobs changed, they would have to work longer, harder days. How could you change that? What could you take off their plates so they would have more time for higher-value work? Showing your flexibility may encourage them to become more flexible as well. I hope these ideas help you generate more strategies tailored to your exact situation. Notice all these ideas involve an investment of time, energy, and thought on your part. It would be easier to write off the employees as unmotivated slugs, but that would mean abdicating your own responsibilities as a manager. It would also be a very costly write-off, since they are likely to remain on your payroll. Whether you’re dealing with reluctant employees or a child who is still living in your basement, never lose faith! When you marshal the power of all Six Sources of Influence, you can truly change anything. David Related Material:Change Anything: Motivating Weight Loss Putting Skills into Action Does the path to action still include telling a story?

Richard Davies's blog post was featuredThe Evolution of Cloud: The ‘Intergalactic’ Infrastructure of the FutureToday, most companies are using some form of cloud services. According to Gartner, the Worldwide Public Cloud Services Market is now worth $131 billion: when you consider that ten years ago the only clouds people had heard of were the ones in the sky, this is pretty remarkable growth. So why has cloud adoption enjoyed such phenomenal success? And is it really such a new concept?It could be argued that the idea of cloud was actually introduced as early as the 1960s by J.C.R Licklider, who voiced his idea of an ‘intergalactic computer network’. Licklider’s idea was that everyone on the globe would eventually be interconnected, accessing applications and data at any site, from anywhere. Today, we can see that we are moving ever-closer to Licklider’s intergalactic future, with the cloud acting as the primary delivery mechanism. The ‘cloud’ has become something of a catch all phrase for anything that can be delivered via the internet, whether it is infrastructure, data, applications, or a platform. However, at the fundamental root of all IT innovation is the compute power that drives and supports it - so to narrow the scope, I have focused on the evolution of infrastructure, rather than Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service.The Iron AgeTo understand how we have come to the version of cloud we have today, it is worth having a look back to life before ‘cloud’ and how the infrastructure environment has developed over the years. It could be argued that the mainframe represents the first iteration of cloud as we know it today. Widely acknowledged in the 1950s as the ‘future of computing’, large-scale mainframes, colloquially referred to as "big iron", provided a large scale central infrastructure, shared by various applications and IT services. Like the cloud, businesses could scale resources up and down, depending on their needs. Aside from maintenance and support, mainframe costs were attributed according to Million Instructions Per Second (MIPS) consumption; the more it was used, the more MIPS were consumed, and the higher the cost. While revolutionary at the time, and still in use to this day, mainframes also have limitations. Mainframes require massive up-front investment, coupled with rapidly depreciating value of physical servers over time, and are expensive to run and maintain. Companies are also limited by the amount of server capacity they have on-site, which means they can struggle to scale capacity according to need.Yet one of the main reasons that people started to move workloads away from the mainframe and onto client servers was actually one of the reasons people are today moving away from client servers and into the cloud: decentralisation. As mentioned above, mainframes act as a central resource, meaning in the early days they had to be connected directly to computer terminals in order to operate. While this was not a problem when companies only had a handful of computers, the introduction of personal computers in the 1970s changed everything. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s the distributed client/server model became extremely popular, as applications were migrated from mainframes with input/output terminals to networks of desktop computers. This offered newfound convenience and flexibility for businesses, but also added layers of complication in terms of managing this new distributed environment.The World Wide WebBy the mid-1990s the internet revolution was having a massive impact on culture and the way we consumed technology, and also moving us closer to the cloud that we know and love today. While the distributed on-premise model that had emerged in the 80s had offered huge cost and productivity gains, as IT became more integral to business operations the demand for power increased alongside. This created a new set of problems, as companies had to find money for new servers and space to put them, leading to datacentres and adding further layers of complexity to infrastructure management. Not only this, but there was a lot of waste due to the variable need for capacity; companies had to pay up front for servers to support their peak levels of capacity, even though this level was only required infrequently. This made capacity planning a mammoth task, and often meant companies needed to make a trade on performance at times of peak traffic.Hosting companies emerged to fill this gap, promising to manage businesses’ infrastructure for a fixed monthly fee. Hosting opened the door to what we see as cloud today, by helping businesses to get rid of their physical servers and the headaches associated with running them. Yet while hosted services had a lot of benefits, businesses increasingly began to feel locked in to rigid contracts paying for capacity and services that they were not using, and began to crave more flexibility. Then in the early 2000s came virtualisation, which allowed business to run different workloads on different virtual machines (VMs). By virtualising servers, businesses could spin up new servers without having to take out more datacentre space, helping to address a lot of the issues faced in the on-premise world. However, these machines still needed to be manually managed, and still require a physical server to provide the compute power needed to run them.VMs, coupled with the internet, enabled a new generation of infrastructure cloud services that we see today. Cloud providers could run multiple workloads from remote locations, helping companies to deploy resources as and when needed, without contracts or large up front investments. By giving businesses access to a network of remote servers hosted on the internet, companies could start to store and manage their data remotely, rather than using a local server. Users could simply sign up to the service, pick an instance size of server, and away they go. Most importantly, they could make changes according to demand, with the option to stop the service whenever they wanted.Breaking Bad HabitsNot a lot has changed over the past 10 years and this model largely reflects the cloud computing we see today. While users today have greater choice over the instance size of Virtual Machine (VM) they wish to deploy, they still pay for the service based on the level of capacity they provision, whether they use it or not. Unless businesses are prepared to deploy expensive and complicated technology to automatically scale capacity according to usage, the only way to avoid overspending is to have a member of staff manually adjust it, a resource-intensive and time-consuming solution. As a result, most companies just set a level which should cover their needs, so that some of the time they are over-provisioned, and some of the time they have to sacrifice peak performance as they are under-provisioned; a far from ideal solution. This trend is evidenced in recent research showing that 90% of businesses see over-provisioning as a necessary evil in order to protect performance and ensure they can handle sudden spikes in demand.This suggests that users are not enjoying the full benefits of the flexibility cloud can provide; instead, they are just picking up their old infrastructure bad habits and moving them into the cloud. However, the introduction of containers could be the answer to these problems. Recent changes in the Linux kernel have enabled a new generation of scalable containers that could make the old Virtual Machine server approach redundant. We have seen the likes of Docker making waves in the PaaS market with its container solution, and now such companies are starting to made waves in the infrastructure world as well. These containers are enabling cloud infrastructure providers to offer dynamically scalable servers that can be billed on actual usage, rather than the capacity that is provisioned, helping to eliminate issues around over-provisioning. Using Linux containers, businesses no longer have to manually provision capacity. Servers scale up and down automatically, meaning that they are only billed for exactly what they use - like you would be for any other utility. Not only is this cost efficient, but it also takes the mind-boggling complexity out of managing infrastructure; businesses can now spin up a server and let it run with absolutely no need for management.The Intergalactic Future Is HereIt looks like the revolutionary "intergalactic computer network" that J.C.R Licklider predicted all those years ago is finally set to become a reality. And it is funny how things come full-circle, as people start to move back to a centralised model, similar to that provided by the early days of mainframe. As our dependence on cloud in all forms increases, the big question is where next? I believe that just as companies naturally gravitated towards the cloud, leaving hosting companies out in the cold, the same will happen with capacity based vs. usage based billing; logic dictates that containers will win out in the end.Richard Davies is co-founder and CEO of the cloud hosting provider Elastichosts.See More

To help more of our readers with their crucial conversations, confrontations, and behavior change challenges, we recently introduced the Community Q&A column! Please share your answers to this reader’s question in the comments below. Dear Crucial Skills, What can we do as a company to optimize our cross-cultural performance? As a multi-national corporation, our employees live in different countries and time zones, have different cultural backgrounds, and speak different languages. The situation is further complicated because we usually don’t have the luxury of face-to-face contact. Can you share tips and examples for using Crucial Conversations to handle cultural differences? Cultural Balancing Act Related Material:Crucial Applications: Bridging the Cultural Communication Gap Crucial Conversations about Climate Change Crucial Applications: Overcoming the "Nasty versus Nice" Debate

Scott Lomond's blog post was featuredWhy WebRTC Will Drive the Next Billion Dollar CompanyWe all have a fascination with the billion dollar startups. Venture Capitalists try and identify them early, media laud them (or bring them down to earth), and early adopters claim discovery. One new technology innovation has the potential to spark the creation of more billion dollar companies, and markets are starting to pay attention. So what is WebRTC, and why is there so much interest?It begins with recognizing the emergence of two massive trends. The first is the increasing appetite for ‘on demand’. This is evident in everything from movies to car rides, hotels, relationships to groceries to well, everything. And communications is a core part of this, just look at Meerkat and Twitter’s latest acquisition, Periscope, bringing on demand video broadcasting to the social web.The second major trend is the contextualisation of communications. The desire and ability to talk and share outside of a walled garden environment. To date live communications have either been text/image-based, or video-based within a standalone application like Skype or FaceTime. But thanks to WebRTC, the ability to bring rich communications within the application or website is now possible. And that opens a world of opportunity.As a result, WebRTC represents the most meaningful breakthrough in communications and the construct of the web from the last 10 years - maybe more. Think of it this way. Remember the first time you encountered the Internet? I do - the firm I was working for had set up a secured room with connected machines for doing research. When I logged in the first time to find something for a project, I was struck by how much information was out there and how easy it was to sift through it. It was fun, and it made you wish that all of your work could be that that interesting and that easy.Most of the content on the web then was text - just numbers and letters. A lot of it was from universities or the government. But within a little bit of time, people figured out how to post images and pictures. A little after that you could view videos (and then HD videos!). Before much longer PCs connected to Internet could function more or less like phones and TVs.Underlying all of those functionality improvements were technology advancements, most notably HTML, which powers what most people think of as the modern Web. It’s been said that before HTML nobody had even thought about companies like Yahoo, Google, eBay or LinkedIn. The technology wasn’t in place to make them possible, so nobody spent too much time thinking about it. Today it feels like they’ve been around forever, but it took a steady stream of technology breakthroughs - starting with HTML - to make them reality.WebRTC adds another facet to our modern web: in-browser communications. Voice and video directly in the browser. No downloads, no plugins, no barriers. Consider the opportunity for the world as developers create and proliferate web apps leveraging this technology - how will we be communicating in ten years?So what does WebRTC bring to the table that can really change the way we use the web?It takes the functionality that was previously offered by a telco or cable provider - with the packaging and economics they determined - and puts it in the browser, for free, for any web developer to use. As a result, WebRTC is changing the way people can use something as intrinsic to humans as how we communicate. It turns what used to be locked-down functionality into a flexible ingredient for websites and apps. Developers and organizations big and small can now use all of their imagination and creativity to come up with new ways to use communications in their websites and mobile apps. This has huge implications across all sectors: banking, education, healthcare, entertainment, ecommerce - to name only a few.The multiplier effect in all of this is that we are doing so much more of everything online. We shop for cars, plan vacations, bank via mobile apps, take classes, and consult with our doctors. Somewhere out there are the next amazing companies that none of us have thought of yet. Their products, websites and applications will incorporate communications in ways that are limited only by the imaginations of their founders, engineers, and web developers, and with them will come the Googles and eBays and Amazons of tomorrow.That is what WebRTC is really about: unlocking creativity around something as fundamental as communicating with each other.Here are a few examples of how innovative companies are leveraging WebRTC in their respective industries:Banking - The UK’s Coutts Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has launched video-enabled consultations for their customers and advisors around the globe. Financial institutions around the world are looking to bring live video assistance to branches, ATMs, and mobile apps this year.Education - Minerva’s Active Learning Forum™ technology platform enables educators to conduct each class via live video. Students benefit from in-context communication, including collaborative breakout clusters, debates, quizzes and polls as well as more traditional tutorial discussions.Health Services - BeMyEyes is an iOS app matching blind people who need assistance with a network of volunteers willing to help. The helpers can see and describe in words exactly what is in front of the visually impaired person.Field Services - Fluke created a mobile app to keep teams connected both in the office and out in the field, consulting in realtime to solve issues on site.Retail - Bridgestone Golf’s online video consultation kiosk "B-FIT" lets golfers talk live to product experts to learn which Bridgestone golf ball would be best for them.And perhaps the greatest example of WebRTC application to date, Mozilla, who recently introduced ‘Firefox Hello’, making it possible for users to have free video and voice calls directly from their Firefox browser without having to set up an account.So yes, WebRTC is pretty important, because of what it touches and who can use it to make the next wave of amazing things. That "who" is basically all of us. And, it is big! Faster than all other communications endpoints in history, WebRTC enabled endpoints achieved 1bn within the first 12 months of launch and is projected by the experts at Disruptive Analysis to exceed six billion by 2019.Now that the web can see and talk there is the opportunity to create the new waves of services and companies that change the way we engage on a global scale. It’s up to you, the innovators, to create this new future. As we sit here in the relatively early days of a WebRTC-enabled world we’re already seeing the innovation. But even now it’s difficult to predict who the Facebooks, eBays, and Yahoo!s will be, but you can bet they’re coming.Scott Lomond is CEO at TokBox.See More

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I have attended Crucial Conversations Training and try to practice the skills, but it’s difficult when the person I am trying to communicate with doesn’t "play along." For example, when I try to ask how he or she is feeling or why he or she feels a certain way, I receive a response such as, "I don’t know," or, "I don’t want to talk about this." This ends the conversation and I feel stifled and defeated. What do I do? Playing Along  Dear Playing Along, It is very frustrating when you want to talk something out with someone and the only response you get is, "I don’t know," or "I don’t want to talk about this," or worse, an icy-cold stare laced with a fake smile. I hear you. I’ve been there. So what should you do when the other person won’t play along? I think you have an advantage—you’re motivated and able because you’ve gone through the training and practiced your skills. Good job. Whether it’s at work or at home, you feel the need to hold a crucial conversation and the other person won’t talk to you. He or she won’t engage and won’t "play along." What I hope to provide here are tips that might give you some additional options for reaching dialogue with a stubborn companion. 1. Start with heart. I suggest you Start with Heart and ask yourself, "What nonverbal messages am I sending?" Sometimes we have behaviors—subtle or overt—that demonstrate our purpose or intent more loudly than our words. A common pattern is to start a conversation very pleasantly and nicely but then quickly let our emotions escalate as we press for the solution we want. Or sometimes before we even open our mouths, we enter a conversation with our eyes and gestures signaling, "I have held court in my head and found you guilty; let’s talk." When that happens, other people don’t want to play. These kinds of patterns cause people to disengage from the conversation. Here’s a personal example. Years ago, my third daughter found every excuse to avoid talking with me. She was fourteen years old and all I got was a cold shoulder. Finally, I asked her why she was acting that way around me, and in a tender moment, she opened up. She shared with me that no matter what I asked her—whether it was about school, friends, or something else entirely—I always, always got around to discussing just two topics, her grades and her messy room. Sometimes, we are so good at debating that the other person prefers to disengage or stonewall rather than argue. Make sure you get your emotions in control before you open your mouth. Make sure you build Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect before you begin and work to maintain both throughout the conversation. The other person needs to know you have a mutual purpose rather than a selfish or opposing one. 2. Choose CPR. We often find that people choose the wrong topic to discuss. When having a crucial conversation, we tend to choose simple over complex; recent over distant; and easy over hard. In reality, we need to discuss the right issue instead of the most convenient one. We use the acronym CPR to help you determine what the right issue really is. C stands for content and deals with the immediate incident or concern. P stands for pattern and references the fact that the immediate incident has actually occurred more than once and probably frequently enough to make you upset. R stands for relationship and is a conversation you hold when you realize that the pattern is so pervasive and unwanted that it is now affecting your thoughts, feelings, and interactions with that person. You need to hold a conversation not about the content, but about the pattern you’re experiencing—the way in which you two talk, or don’t talk. You need to explain the pattern you’ve noticed and how it’s affecting your relationship. I can see the conversation going like this: "Bob, every once in a while, I feel the need to talk about an issue here at work. The last two times I have tried to talk to you, you said, ‘I don’t know,’ and ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’ I know having conversations about issues like budget or deadlines can be tough. I don’t want to make it tough. I want to be able to talk about these issues so we can work together in the most effective way. Why do you think it’s difficult for us to have these talks? What’s going on?" If the person still refuses to talk, I’d ask, "Will you please think about it? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I do want to deal with some of these issues so we can work well together. Can we schedule a time tomorrow to meet and talk about our working relationship?" 3. Explore natural consequences. In Crucial Confrontations, we teach the difference between imposed and natural consequences. So far, I’ve only introduced the natural consequences of being unable to communicate. Helping people understand what will happen naturally if you don’t deal with the issues is an educational step that motivates them to comply. For example, you could explain how the lack of talking about issues is affecting colleagues, deadlines, budgets, and customers. If your colleague still won’t comply, then you’d impose a consequence. In this case, you’d probably ask someone else to help or communicate the situation to your boss and ask her to convene a meeting. 4. Use your skills; keep your cool. When you have situations like the one you’ve described, it’s easy to slip into less than helpful behaviors. Make sure you avoid gossiping about the other person, getting angry and flying off the handle, or withholding information or avoiding the other person. What you do when it matters most will determine the results you achieve, the relationships you build, and how you feel about yourself when you look in the mirror. Inviting people to dialogue, being persistent and patient, and maintaining your professionalism will eventually pay big dividends. While I believe you can make progress and there is great potential in your relationship, I will close by saying that not all conversations work. You can’t always get into them and you can’t always get the things you want out of them. However, crucial conversations skills improve your chances of getting results and building and preserving valuable relationships. Best wishes,Al

Jean-Christophe Zufferey's blog post was featuredSaving the Planet, One Drone Flight at a TimeTechnology and environmentalism aren’t two terms that you normally see in the same sentence. However, when used in the right way, technology could be the key to preserving the planet for generations to come.Recent developments in technology are helping scientists achieve things which would have been thought impossible just a few years ago. One of the key challenges faced by scientists, for example, is establishing a benchmark of what the world looks like now compared to in the past, so that we can better understand why and how changes are taking place. But tracking these changes, particularly in remote areas, is a time consuming, difficult, and at times a dangerous process.Drones for example, whilst seen by some as merely toys, are already allowing environmentalists to work more effectively. These aerial imaging aircraft can provide high-resolution geographic data, on demand, and can be launched remotely — allowing scientific researchers to reach regions that were previously considered out of bounds, due to their remoteness or the harshness of the terrain.Professional drones are already being used in the Himalayas for example, to monitor the rate at which glaciers melt, and to track where and how animals migrate.As such, the data being gathered by drones is giving us an unprecedented insight into the workings and complexities of our ecosystem, such as how the water cycle - from glaciers to rivers - really works. Insights based on data that in the past was either too low resolution for our needs, or too difficult to capture.However drones are useful for more than just passively tracking changes in the environment. They are valuable tools for aiding conservation work in real time.The Australian founder of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF), Damien Mander, has spoken about using drone technology to combat the issue of elephant poachers in Africa. During his recent Ted talk, he spoke of his journey from the Iraq war to conservation. "With drone technology… we are battling each day to bring military solutions to conservation’s thin green line," he comments. Indeed several African governments, such as that in Kenya, have already consented to drone technology being used in trials across several national parks.Drones (also called unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs) can also play a valuable role when responding to environmental disasters.When the Philippines was struck by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, response groups were hindered by the remote nature of the affected communities and the lack of accurate maps of the region. They turned to Drone Adventures to help them fill in the gaps.Over 6 days and dozens of flights, Drone Adventures were able to provide aid groups with highly accurate images of the region, allowing them to create up-to-date maps and determine where reconstruction work was most needed.Forest fires are a major issue for conservationists and a great example of how drones can help us tackle challenges. Rather than risk human life assessing the damage, drones can be used to assess the situation safely from the air - an ability that we at senseFly expect to grow in value over time as forest fires and other extreme weather events occur more frequently due to climate change.With the information gathered by the drones, human teams can put into place precautionary measures, evacuate at risk areas and help map out the clean-up and re-planting campaigns after disaster has been averted.There’s a great opportunity for technology to become a massive part of global conservation efforts. We’re only just scratching the surface of how drones can aid such efforts and I’m excited to see the ways different groups will harness the possibilities they offer.Jean-Christophe is CEO and co-founder at senseFly.See More

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I’m tired of attending meetings where there’s no agenda, the wrong people are in attendance, and people carry on side conversations and otherwise violate good meeting etiquette. How can we use our Crucial Conversations skills to get our meetings back on track? Miffed by Meetings  Dear Miffed, One of the first training sessions we designed was aimed at just this problem. We gathered people and taught them about the importance of developing and following an agenda, the need to avoid being critical when brainstorming, and other such standard meeting fare. We thought we were done. Then trainees went back into their meetings, saw things go wrong, and said things such as, "Hey bozo, we’re trying to brainstorm here and you’re being critical. That’s not allowed!" Or, "Wait a second, you don’t have an agenda. What were you thinking?" "What have we created?" we wondered as we watched people "fix" problems they observed in their meetings by verbally attacking anyone who strayed from strict meeting protocol. The cure they were administering to the flailing meetings was often worse than the original ailment. From this, we learned that you can’t merely teach what should happen in meetings, you also have to teach what to do should the meeting turn south. This all took place before we had learned the ins and outs of crucial conversations, so we got no help from that research. But it wasn’t before we had learned the technique of watching effective people in action and learning to see what can actually work with real people in real organizations. So, we watched all kinds of people in all kinds of meetings. Most individuals sat quietly as the meeting staggered from topic to topic like a mad dog on its last walk. An angry few, after they could take it no longer, made harsh comments to the "loud mouth who carried on a side conversation." Others directed ugly stares at the offending party—followed by the ever-popular eye-roll. These were some of our first glimpses into silence and violence. But then there were a few people who spoke up in a way that wasn’t offensive. They said and did things that helped get the meeting on track without looking like they wanted to take over or blast people who didn’t stick to the right agenda. And best of all, they followed a pattern that worked for most meeting problems—from dozing off to arriving late to straying from the agenda. You didn’t have to apply ten different techniques to ten different problems. The most notable part of every effective response was that they all reflected the same philosophy and feeling. They noticed something that wasn’t working very well (at least for them), realized it was probably best to talk about it rather than simply let it continue, and decided to check with the group to see if it made sense to change what was currently happening. In summary, the pattern looks like this: (1) here’s what I see; (2) here’s what I think we might want to do instead; (3) what do others think? This three-part response was always delivered tentatively (after all, not all deviations are mistakes), respectfully (there’s no reason to assume others are purposely causing problems), and inclusively (asking others for input turns the solution into a shared plan rather than your plan). At the scripting level, here’s what the three steps sound like. A group moves through an agenda and nears the end of their meeting, but one of the people present keeps referring to a previously put-to-bed agenda item. The person is mostly ignored until eventually someone hints that the group is now talking about another issue so please get on board. Finally, someone deals with the deviation by stating, "Tim, I notice that you keep returning to the budget discussion we had earlier. We’ve moved on, thinking it was a closed issue and now I’m wondering if you want to return to it and re-open the discussion. Is that what you want, and if so, what do others think about the idea?" It turns out that the person did want to return—feeling that the topic wasn’t fully discussed—and, given time constraints, the team agrees to schedule the item for further discussion in the next meeting. Now, most people are uncomfortable intervening in any way for fear that they might be the only one who is concerned. Plus they want to avoid the appearance of hijacking the meeting. Notice how the three steps indicated above solve both problems. You check with the group to see if the problem is not merely yours and you also involve others in the potential solution. For instance, someone has violated the primary tenet of brainstorming by criticizing suggestions that cost money, and someone else in the meeting remarks, "Kim, it looks like you’re concerned about solutions that cost money. Do we want to put cost in as a constraint right now so we don’t spend time recommending financial solutions, or should we continue coming up with any solution that might work? What do others think?" Another example: a meeting rolls along with lots of ideas flowing and nobody takes notes. It’s not your meeting but you’re worried about forgetting ideas, so you say, "A lot of ideas are being recommended here and I’m worried we might lose some of the ideas unless we record them. What do others think?" One more example: a couple of people are talking on their cell phones and someone says, "It looks like others have some urgent issues they need to deal with. Should we take a break to handle the calls that are coming in?" Notice that the person bringing up the issue isn’t criticizing others for taking calls. It could well be that they are handling an emergency and do need to break. If they aren’t, they’re likely to get right back to the meeting. Either way, you’re simply describing what you’re observing, passing no judgment, offering no criticism, and then checking with the group. Again, the process of stating what you see, what you think the group might want to do instead, and asking what others think can be applied to almost any problem, in almost any meeting, and from anywhere in the room. Try it in your next derailed meeting and let me know how it goes. Kerry Related Material:Wasting Time in Meetings Outbursts During Church Meetings How do you balance discussion with staying on track?

Warren Barkley's blog post was featuredThe Professional Skills Gap Narrows2015 is shaping up to be a year of accelerated change in the ways we learn, communicate and collaborate; driven by necessity, changing demographics and new ways to use old technology. As a follow up to my earlier post on Millennials and their influence on the face of corporate IT, I’ll now lay out another emerging, major trend that dovetails with the first, and that will affect us all. This post and my next will look at the "Skills Gap," and then at something we’ve dubbed "Device-olation." The professional thorn in our nation’s side - the fact that many grads enter the workforce without the real-world experience needed to succeed in business - will see a marked improvement as educators incorporate classroom technology and practices that help teach the soft skills needed for workforce preparedness. In today’s connected world, all our information is readily available through our laptops, PCs, tablets and smartphones. At work, we spend hours in meetings or small groups coming up with better ways of doing things, learning from others, and ultimately, innovating. But when you look at schools today - at least most schools - we’re still educating our children based on a 200-year-old pedagogical system. We walk out of school with a degree in our hand, and yet we have done little to develop the skills that are most important in today’s workplace. Why is that? In 2010, Dr. Sugata Mitra presented his findings on student-driven learning in a TED talk, and the results are astounding. Children learn much better when they are allowed to explore, share and collaborate than when they are sitting classroom-style and being lectured to. He shared this research four years ago, and yet many students are still being taught the "old-fashioned" way. The good news is a number of organizations and schools are thinking outside the box, and we’re seeing student-driven and project-based learning gain momentum throughout North America and Europe. I’m fortunate to be personally involved with a number of these organizations, including TAF, which offers a program to address barriers to students of color in STEM fields.TAF benefits not only the students in the program by teaching them real-world skills like needs identification, coding, and field research - it also benefits those whose lives are enriched by these students’ work. For example, Special Ed students in a nearby Tacoma school use software applications developed by TAF students. The stories are heartwarming - you can see the difference these software applications make in these students’ lives. You can watch a video about one of these students here. In other schools, like Preston Middle School in Colorado, San Elijo Middle School in California, and Bishop Kearney High School in New York, we’re seeing great traction with collaborative classrooms that are designed with project-based, highly collaborative learning in mind. And it’s working. Kids are some of the biggest advocates of this approach. Fortunately, there are many thought leaders who agree that this skills gap needs to be addressed, and they’re sharing their vision with others. We recently spoke to Innovative Educator blogger Lisa Nielsen about collaboration. She shared some great insights on how kids not only want to change the world; they are changing the world. And they can only do so when they have access to the tools we use in everyday life, and she also has the real-world examples that prove her theory. I’m encouraged by the examples mentioned above (and countless other programs in place) that we’re moving the in the right direction. As a former teacher and as the CTO of a leading ed-tech company, I welcome this trend, and I look forward to the positive effects it will have on our children and in the business world as well. But we’re not there yet. Dan Schawbel states that 50% of Generation Z learners are participating in internships before they graduate from high school - it’s not in others. Higher education needs to more fully embrace co-ops for Millennials and the generation on its heels as indicated in this Fortune article.The good news is that the conversation is happening, and I think we’ll continue to see the skills gap narrow.Warren Barkley is Chief Technology Officer of SMART Technologies.See More

Tim Vasko posted a blog postArtificial Intelligence, the Economy, and the Need for Re-EducationI read an interesting article recently titled, "Why AI Could Destroy More Jobs than it Creates, and How to Save Them" Tech Republic's Nick Heath. The article discussed a new book co-authored by two economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. The book is called The Second Machine Age, and as explained on the book’s website:"…Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee—two thinkers at the forefront of their field— make the case that we should be optimistic about the future because technological progress, 'the only free lunch that economists believe in,' is accelerating quickly past our intuitions and expectations. But we should also be mindful of our values and our choices: as technology races ahead, it may leave a lot of people, organizations and institutions behind."Building off of this, Heath’s article presents a new iteration of a familiar theory. Heath asserts that with today’s rapidly expanding technological landscape, more and more jobs are being automated, while the population steadily increases.He notes the following statistic to back up his claim:"For most of the second half of the twentieth century the economic value generated in the US - the country's productivity - grew hand-in-hand with the number of workers. But in 2000 the two measures began to diverge. From the turn of the century a gap opened up between productivity and total employment. By 2011, that delta had widened significantly, reflecting continued economic growth but no associated increase in job creation."All the way back in 1965, Moore’s Law stated that the computing power of a microprocessor would double every 18 months. This fact is still true today. But with an ever increasing population seemingly permanently on the horizon, Moore's Law gains new meaning.Heath's article provides some great insight into the role computerization is playing in today’s economy. And it certainly makes one thing clear: if you want to stay in business, have a promising career, and avoid becoming "obsolete", you have to be creative and make A.I. work for you.We take it for granted that that thing we use as a watch, camera, phone, calculator, and calendar, in actual fact gives us the computing power to manage an entire enterprise from our pocket. Now it's time to use that power effectively, before someone else figures out how to use it to replace you.The impact of technology literally stares some of us right in the face, every waking moment. However, too many people are still not effectively capitalizing on it to run their careers and companies. From paper to email, to spreadsheets, to word processors, too many business owners still believe a spreadsheet or PDF and email is sufficient to keep pace in today’s competitive climate. Unfortunately, most people don’t even realize how outdated this kind of thinking is.The simple fact is, we take advantage of mobile and technical cloud advances, without thinking about it all the time. We only think about it when something goes wrong, like it did with Apple's iCloud this past weekend. Are you going to wait until your industry is massively disrupted, or your job is usurped by an iPhone app before you take technology seriously?Increasingly, we’re seeing start-ups like Uber or AirBnB emerge only to rapidly displace long established industries, and the giants that run them. Unfortunately, these giants also employ thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of people. So for every "Growth Hacking" start-up, there are potentially be thousands of unemployed workers.Every business and every profession which fails to adopt new technologies to operate their back office, and interact with their customer market, is headed down the same path the industrial revolution started us on long ago. But more, or better machines means doesn't have to mean less people.So, what can we do?The Second Machine Age leaves readers with a strong message, and lucky for us, it's not all bad news. As the authors state in their conclusion, "'technology is not destiny, we shape our destiny." Brynjolfsson continues, "[If] we do take an active role I think we can come out on the other side much wealthier and with more shared prosperity than ever before..."What this really means: "We have to reinvent education and reskilling, and people are going to have to take it upon themselves to more aggressively learn these skills. Because the technology is changing more rapidly, it's going to be a case of lifelong learning and continuously reskilling."Tim Vasko is founder of CMaeON Innovations.See More

Recently, as my six-year-old daughter asked me for yet another Barbie, I said, "You don’t always get what you want, you need to earn it." She then said, "That’s not fair, you always get what you want. How do I get what I want?" The Crucial Conversations book happened to be sitting on my desk, so I handed it to her, and laughing I said, "Read this, it gets you what you want." Now she refuses to put down the book. It goes in the car with us everywhere—to school, you name it. When someone asks why she is reading the book, she says, "Dad said from now on I’m going to get what I want." As many conversations are with my six-year-old, the full conversation was actually quite a crucial conversation about how to earn what you need and communicate that need. For the record, she "earned" the Barbie a few days later from her grandmother through some effective communication.

Jason Prater's blog post was featuredThe Internet of Making ThingsSmart Internet connected "things" are showing up everywhere, changing our interactions with friends, family, colleagues, and nearly every aspect of the physical world. Internet of Things (IoT) discussions often center on the home, where your refrigerator communicates with your phone reminding you to buy milk when the carton is nearly - but not completely - empty; and your sneakers tell your watch how many calories you’ve burned in your morning workout.While these applications are interesting and exciting, there is even more potential in the factory of the (very near) future. I like to call the emerging connections between machines, tools, materials, people and systems on the shop floor the Internet of Making Things.Today’s factory bears little resemblance to the stereotypical image of manufacturing. Long gone are the days of repetitious assembly lines where workers create part after identical part. Today’s modern manufacturing facility is a hub of technology, full of sensors, electronic controls, and automated equipment, all interconnected to drive efficiency, quality and flexibility that are vital to a company’s success.Productivity in American factories continues to rise, as plants produce more and more with ever increasing efficiency and quality. Connected tools and machines are a key aspect of these gains. Take the IP (Internet Protocol) torque wrench in the assembly of a complex part, for example. When connected to the cloud, the IP torque wrench captures the torque applied to a specific part, the specific wrench that was used, when that wrench was last calibrated and the employee who used it. If that wrench was faulty in some way, the cloud can identity every part affected, eliminating costly downtime.Automation and the connected factory are able to produce a wider variety of products and product variations in smaller quantities more quickly, answering the market’s increasing demand for customized products. The old-style "economies of scale" that powered mass-produced consumer goods are being replaced by fast, efficient and flexible connected machines that follow the exact requirements for each product at each moment of its production.Flexible machines and programmable controllers have been around for years. What’s new is the adoption of sensors and connected devices, combined with the interconnectedness of cloud computing that increasingly coordinates information and activities to take full advantage of what these machines, and the knowledge workers who run them, can do.The Internet of Making Things is still in its infancy. Wearable technologies have the potential to further connect people with plant information, better integrating into this connected world to further improve safety, efficiency and quality.Within and beyond the four walls of the production facility, the shift to cloud-based software systems allows employees, suppliers and customers worldwide to view the status of an order, work-in-progress, inventory, equipment availability, and much more. In the not-too-distant future, visibility won’t stop when the product leaves the plant. Smart products will not only interact with the customer in new ways but will also be able to stay in contact with the producer for better long-term performance and support. Already available in some cars, On-Star equipped vehicle owners can get e-mails or text messages alerting them to otherwise unseen issues like tire wear, needed service based on mileage or time, or factory recommended recalls.Connected smart technology in the Internet of Making Things brings the processes and the products together into a new ecosystem for added customer value.Jason Prater is Vice President of Development for Plex Systems.See More

Elaine Chen's blog post was featuredHow a Technology-Push Process Led to the Reboot of Google GlassGoogle Glass exploded into the tech scene in 2012 with the pomp and circumstance of an Apple product unveiling.  It put "wearable technology" into the lexicon of the masses.  Accolades poured in from both the technology world and the fashion world.  Celebrities, politicians, runway models, even Prince Charles wore them in public.  And yet, as of January 2015, Google Glass as we knew it was no more. There are many great articles that explored what went wrong. I will not repeat the many excellent points made.  Instead, I would like to explore how Google approaches new technology development, and how that approach, together with the initial public relations hype and the lack of a killer app, ultimately led Google Glass down the path of a reboot.Google and the Technology-Push ApproachFirst of all, Google is fundamentally a technology company, run by technocrats. They even make product manager candidates do whiteboard coding during job interviews.  Google does not define and develop products like Proctor and Gamble: through market pull and problem identification.  Instead, Google consistently pursues products as technology pushes.  This approach often results in solutions that are either in search of a problem, or solves a problem in a less-than-effective manner. Think about Google+, Google Wave, Google Health, or other former Google projects which were subsequently shelved. A technology push process is not necessarily an invalid strategy for Google.  With an R&D spend of $2.18B in Q4 2014 alone, Google can afford to take large-scale risks.  So, they try many things - and some fail.  Project Glass’s first incarnation happened to be one of them.The Perils of an Over-Hyped Hardware BetaNow let us look at how the PR hype surrounding Project Glass ultimately proved to be sizzle without the steak.  We can hypothesize about why Google went public so early.  Staking a claim in wearable devices could build Google’s reputation as a thought leader in all of technology, not just software. Google might have felt pressured to claim first mover’s advantage in this emerging but crowded field.  Opening up Glass to developers allowed Google to start building an ecosystem, the importance was proved by the iPhone and its AppStore.  Last but not least, there was so much pent up curiosity that a news leak was imminent. By going public, Google could control the narrative more effectively.What happened in the next three years highlights the difficulty of managing a wildly overpublicized hardware beta program.  Google launched Project Glass to much fanfare.  However, the product was in beta - a concept many of its early fans found alien. Over time, the rough edges of the product started to disappoint its fans.  Users fell out of love with a device that solved no mainstream problems, and was not beautiful enough to be a fashion accessory.  Developers became concerned about the shrinking customer base and their interest waned.Once the hype wore off, it became evident that the emperor had no clothes.  The press turned against it.  Users abandoned it. Eventually, Google cut off life support and opted for reincarnation.A Groundbreaking Interface Without a Killer AppLastly, let us look at Google Glass as a novel interface device.  The concept promised to fundamentally reinvent how humans interacted with data, their environment, and each other. But  the device alone was insufficient.  Users needed a killer app to realize this vision - and it was nowhere to be found.If we look at advances in innovative input devices in the past 30 years, the ones that took off did so with synergistic killer apps.  The keyboard and PC had word processing. The mouse had the spreadsheet. The touch screen had mobile phones and tablets. Conversely, devices that fell by the wayside were innovative but did not come with compelling use cases. Think of the Microsoft surface powered coffee tables, or force feedback devices for gaming. For Google Glass, there were never any compelling use cases that solved real customer problems. Look at the best of what ReadWhite came up with in early 2013.  Unfortunately for Glass, the most plausible use case - discreetly taking pictures or video clips - created a massive backlash and huge negativity in the mass market.At the end of the day, Project Glass was a fabulous technology project, but it was neither a product nor a business.  Google Glass is now under the leadership of Tony Fadell.  We will have to see how the team reimagines the problem statement, and creates a solution that delights customers while solving real customer needs.Elaine Chen is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She is also the Founder and Managing Director of ConceptSpring. Follow Elaine on Twitter: @chenelaineImage: Getty ImagesSee More

One word comes to mind to adequately describe the VitalSmarts REACH 2012 trainer conference: AMAZING! For two days in August, trainers from around the world gathered at the base of the majestic Rocky Mountains in Salt Lake City for a truly remarkable experience. The new BIG Idea sessions—twenty-minute keynote speeches on a wide variety of topics—were a huge hit! With keynote speakers such as renowned psychologist Albert Bandura, VitalSmarts authors and international licensees, acclaimed author and Influencer Brian Wansink, and Facebook’s Learning and Development Manager Mike Rognlien—the BIG Idea sessions educated and entertained participants, providing them with innovative ideas to implement in their organizations and training offerings. There were plenty of surprises along the way too—including a guest appearance from VitalSmarts video actress Jackie Houston and a ballroom dance BIG Idea session on deliberate practice where participants were invited on stage to strut their stuff! Brian Wansink conducted a top-secret food experiment with the REACH participants and demonstrated the power the environment has on our eating habits. And the Trainer Appreciation dinner reached new heights with world-class entertainment from the Piano Guys! The breakout sessions throughout the two days were outstanding, offering trainers hands-on opportunities to learn new best practices and connect with trainers from across the globe. The client sessions were inspirational and educational, offering trainers new insights into how to successfully roll out VitalSmarts training offerings and change their organizations for good. What did the trainers think of REACH 2012? They overwhelmingly expressed that REACH 2012 was one of the best professional development conferences they had ever attended! But don’t just take our word for it—take a look at some of the REACH 2012 BIG Idea sessions on our VitalSmarts YouTube page and save the date for REACH 2013 to experience it all for yourself, live and in person! We hope to see you there! Related Material:From the Road: Insight from REACH 2010 From the Road: What Happens in Training, Stays in Training From the Road: Do You Know Where Your Participants Are?

Mike Barton's blog post was featuredThe Insights Community Is Taking a BreakThank you for being a part of Innovation Insights. Your contributions have made this community thrive. We are currently taking a break. Keep an eye on wired.com/insights for updates and information on our return.See More

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin - This is not just speculation by a writer, this is experimentation by a person with keen insights. I like writers who share vital behaviors and Gretchen does a great job. Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov - Wonderful, powerful, and very specific behaviors for improving teaching—at all levels and all kinds of situations. Written by someone who stood at the back of the room and noticed the difference between the good teachers and the great teachers. The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha - American poet William Carlos Williams once commented that, "Poetry is the stuff for the lack of which people die miserably every day." The Book of Awesome helps us smell the roses and find the poetry in every day. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card - Sci-fi and an interesting look at leadership and organization, of team work and commitment. Card is a great writer and has great insights into people. Related Material:Off the Author’s Bookshelf: What Ron’s Reading Off the Author’s Bookshelf: What Joseph’s Reading

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ron McMillan is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, My team is doing more work through conference calls. However, we struggle to keep everybody involved when the call consists of several people in one room and three or four people on individual call-in lines. Those of us who are "remote" feel we interrupt if we "jump in" to the conversation since we don’t get to raise our hand or see the non-verbal cues that would let us take advantage of a natural break in the conversation. This causes us to feel excluded and we don’t always get to have a say in the conversation. Can you share some strategies for getting everybody involved in a conference call? Conferenced Out  Dear Conferenced Out, To answer your question, I want to begin by sharing a sad but true story. I was a participant in a critical, but boring conference call involving twenty-two people. Someone was discussing something I wasn’t very interested in when a call came in on another line. I cleverly put the conference call on hold and answered the other line, talked for a few short minutes, and returned to the conference call. I immediately noticed the person speaking was talking so loud he was practically shouting for a few moments then he began speaking in a normal tone. A few minutes later, another call came in so I put the conference call on hold, took the new call, conversed for a few minutes, finished, and then returned to the conference call. This time there was total silence on the line. The call host then said, "Now it’s stopped. This is so strange. Why would music suddenly start playing in the middle of our conference call then stop and suddenly start again and then stop again? I’m sorry. I’ve never experienced this before." After the conference call, with a bit of experimentation, I realized that when I put people on hold, our office phone system immediately starts playing elevator music for whoever is on hold, which in this case was all of the conference call participants. My bad. There are many lessons you could learn from my story about my relative intelligence, but the lesson I would like to point out is that it’s very difficult to hold everyone’s attention on conference calls. Come on, admit it. How many of you have read and answered e-mails during a conference call? Without the face-to-face interaction, it’s more difficult to hold others’ attention and to be personally accountable to the person speaking. I absolutely believe John Naisbitt, author of Megatrends, was right when he wrote, "As human beings become capable of anonymous electronic communication they [will] concurrently need more close-up personal interaction." Let me start by saying that I strongly recommend you never have a crucial conversation using e-mail or instant messaging. Too much of the meaning is ambiguous or lost. When someone writes a sentence in all caps, does that mean he’s shouting? Excited? Mad? What does it mean when the font is all red? Use e-mail to share information, but when emotions run strong, you have opposing opinions, and stakes are high, it’s time for a face-to-face conversation. In difficult circumstances when distance or time will not allow it, then, with the greatest of reluctance, you may have to resort to the phone but know that you will be missing half of the critical data—the visual information. You will not see facial expressions, gestures, or body language. True, you will be able to hear the other person’s voice and intonation, but you have to ask a lot of clarifying questions to make sure you understand. For example: "After my last point, there was a long silence. Are you thinking about what I said or do you disagree?" When we "manage by phone" or "team by speaker," we run the risk of sacrificing effectiveness for efficiency. When using "high tech" to communicate, the "high touch" becomes much more important. This means meeting face-to-face when possible, and when it’s not possible, spending a lot of time listening, checking for understanding, and having individual conversations. When leading a meeting over the phone, use an agenda and structure questions and requests for input into the agenda. Throughout your meeting, frequently ask the following questions: "Does anyone have any questions?" "Can anyone build on that idea?" "Who has an opinion on this?" "Does anyone see this differently?" Also, remember to ask individuals specifically for their comments: "Leroy, what do you think of this proposal?" "Sabrina, I haven’t heard your view on this issue. Would you mind sharing?" Sometimes a roll call is in order on important issues: "I want to get each of your ideas on this. Let’s start with Benjamin . . ." Remember to use your AMPP skills (Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, Prime) and intentionally Explore Others’ Paths. If you are not the leader of the call, these ideas still apply. Even if you aren’t the leader, you can still say, "Rachael, how do you see this problem?" and invite others to participate. When you are a participant in a conference call and not the leader, you need to STATE your path—share your facts, tell your story, ask for other’s paths, talk tentatively, and encourage testing. You also need to initiate more than you otherwise would to get your meaning in the pool. Consider using these phrases: "I’d like to add something . . ." "Before we go on to the next topic, I would like to comment on the recommendation . . ." "I have an opinion I would like to share . . ." "Sorry to interrupt, but I want the views in our region to be considered . . ." I have personally seen the introduction of these skills change the culture of a team within three conference calls. Whether advocated by the leader or just modeled by a caring team member, we owe it to ourselves and others to get all the relevant meaning into the Pool of Shared Meaning. If we do, we not only get to enjoy the efficiencies of technology by saving time and the costs of travel, but we can also reap the benefits of being an effective team. Ron

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