Surviving and Thriving in the age of empowerment

Back in the Dark Ages – by which I mean the mid 1980s – a time before mobile phones, let alone Facebook, we somehow managed to enjoy a vibrant social life.  We relied on something far more potent than technology: we understood human behaviour.  In practical terms this meant that we could predict, with a reasonably level of certainty, which pub would be frequented by a particular group of people at a particular time.  Even in those pre behavioural economics days, we realised that people are habitual and find comfort in repetition.  We saw how behaviour is conditioned by contextual factors: the weather, the time of week, the proximity to exam deadlines, the screening of a particular TV programme.  We were insightful people.

Technology is a wonderful thing: I have written two books charting its effect on people’s behaviour and expectations, so I hope I could never be described as a Luddite.  Algorithms have become cool: Robert Harris’ new book, The Fear Index, is about a maths genius who creates a revolutionary form of artificial intelligence that tracks human emotions, enabling him to predict movements in the financial markets with uncanny accuracy.  But machines will never understand people as well as people understand people. This is why success in social media is more dependent on an understanding of human behaviour than an understanding of technology and why some of the best thinking on the subject is coming from anthropologists and social psychologists, who have an appreciation of the social and cultural impact of this new technology.

I run workshops that aim to help people to become more insightful and one of the key points I make is to trust your instincts.  Interrogation of data and people is important; social media analysis can provides us with an abundance of real time data; and algorythms have turned Google into the world’s most influential business, but I have yet to come across a breakthrough insight that didn’t come from someone’s imagination, intellect and observational skills.  Being an insightful person – and everyone can learn how to be insightful – may no longer be required to locate your mates in a pub, but it has never been more important.

Alastair Dryburgh is one of the heroes of Loose for his willingness to challenge conventional thinking.  Here, for example, is his description of forecasting: “an activity that is at best useless and at worst actually counterproductive … forecasting nourishes the dangerous illusion that we know what is going to happen.”  His advice, which concurs with one of the main themes in Loose, is to “Stop forecasting, embrace uncertainty, start managing.”  It is therefore appropriate that I should encourage you to buy Alastair’s new book: ‘Everything you know about business is wrong’, which expands the wise words in his wonderful column in Management Today into an extended critique of complacent ideas and lazy business practices.  With forensic skill and subtle wit he challenges commonly-held views on such core business disciplines as pricing, budgeting, measurement and of course forecasting and highlights how many of the initiatives undertaken by business people end up achieving the exact opposite of what was intended.

Much gnashing of teeth has greeted the news of the early closure of the Phantom of the Opera sequel, Love Never Dies, and not simply from Andrew Lloyd Webber.  It has been seen by many commentators, including David Lister in Saturday’s Independent, as symbolising a defeat for the professional critic. Despite some generally positive reviews from the professionals, Lloyd Webber’s latest production never seemed to recover from its early mauling at the hands of amateur critics on the internet.

There is an accepted principle in theatre-land that the professional critics don’t formally review a performance until all of the teething problems have been ironed out. Unfortunately, the amateur critics refuse to follow this convention, so reviews of Love Never Dies began to appear within hours of the opening performance. The professional critics joined the debate in an attempt to defend the primacy of their viewpoint compared to the uninformed opinions of bloggers, although their argument was somewhat undermined when it was discovered that a pun repeated by a number of eminent critics – ‘Paint never dries’ – actually originated from one of the amateur commentators.

Veteran critic Michael Coveney spoke for many in his profession when he suggested that, ‘Everyone is entitled to their opinion but it is not criticism.’ In his Guardian theatre blog David Cote made a typically valiant defence of his profession, even if the metaphor he used was rather untheatrical: ‘We critics, reviewers, consumer reporters – call us what you will – are the dung beetles of culture. We consume excrement, enriching the soil and protecting livestock from bacterial infection in the process. We are intrinsic to the theatre ecology. Eliminate us at your peril.’ There is little doubt that the dung beetles are fighting a losing battle against this type of evolutionary process.

To his credit, the Independent’s Lister appears very relaxed by ‘the democratisation of criticism’, suggesting that theatre billboards will increasingly feature positive blogs and tweets as well as the opinions of experts such as himself, although he doesn’t discuss where this leaves the professional critic. The fact that Variety magazine in the US has already dispensed with its chief film and theatre critics might indicate that his generation could be the last to wear the mantle of the professional critic.

An extract from my new book Loose …

It was fascinating to observe the progress of Team Sky during last summer’s Tour de France. The expensively assembled team, under the leadership of Dave Brailsford, is following the template used by Brailsford to transform the performance of Britain’s track cycling team from also-rans to the best in the world. His meticulous attention to detail and belief in ‘the aggregation of marginal gains’ (the idea that even small improvements to every facet of the team’s preparation will ultimately make a difference to its performance) played a critical factor in Britain’s domination of the velodrome during the Beijing Olympics.

Brailsford and the rest of his colleagues at Team Sky are using this same approach in a bid to win the ultimate prize in cycling, the Tour de France, by 2014. During the races, nothing is left to chance. The team use their own mattresses, pillows and duvets during their overnight hotel stops to prevent the riders suffering allergic reactions. Team briefings at the beginning of each race day take the form of PowerPoint presentations, rather than the informal discussions used by the other race teams. The team bus offers the ultimate in rider comfort, including a lighting system that can be adjusted to match the riders’ mood. The drinks bottles handed out during the race have different electrolyte mixes for each rider because they sweat in different ways. Even the team leaders admit that they are sometimes guilty of excessive analysis, but nothing will be compromised in the pursuit of excellence.

It would be fair to say that Team Sky’s debut in the Tour did not go to plan. Despite the meticulous preparation and attention to detail, the team’s riders struggled in what must be the world’s most brutal sporting event. It would be unfair to criticize Brailsford and his team right at the start of their five-year mission to win the Tour – especially given his track record – but it will be interesting to observe whether a strategy that works perfectly in the highly controllable conditions of the velodrome can work equally well in the unpredictable environment of the Tour. In the velodrome there are relatively few factors beyond the control of the team directors, other than the performance of their rivals. On the road, however, the teams have to be able to cope with the unexpected – the spectacular crash, interference from spectators and sudden changes of climate. As well as being highly organized, it requires the riders to be able to improvise and respond to situations as they arise.

The former international cricketer Ed Smith, in What Sport Tells Us About Life, claims that, ‘many of the most inspired sporting achievements, like great works of art or innovation, spring from parts of our personalities which resist rational analysis, let alone planning.’ He compares the type of professionalism exhibited by Team Sky, which ‘likes to think it is in control – that it has got a work ethic, a clear process and a precise system’, with the ‘childlike freedom and instinctiveness’ of amateurism. He quotes Brazilian football manager Felipe Scolari, when he was still living off Brazil’s success in the 2002 World Cup, rather than struggling at Chelsea: ‘My priority is to ensure that players feel more amateur than professional … we have to revert to urging players to like the game, love it, do it with joy.’

The Coalition government’s efforts to involve the electorate in helping to shape policy and spending decisions – what David Cameron describes as the ‘largest public engagement project ever launched by the British Government’ – closely follows a template created by Barack Obama.  For the second year running, Obama has appeared on YouTube in a live question and answer session, responding to video and text questions posted and chosen by the American public – what they describe in America as “a virtual townhall gathering”.   By the time the interview was broadcast last week, over 140,000 questions had been received and 1 million people had expressed their opinion on which of them should be put to the President.

As the host says in the introduction to this particular clip: “This is the internet and on the internet people love to have a more personal relationship with their elected officials.” I have no doubt that Cameron and his team are already planning their own citizen-powered question time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWwBdlOJkn4