Talking Talent

Is the next Galileo sitting at home wasting his potential watching DVDs of Star Wars instead of watching the stars themselves?  Is the next Shakespeare tapping out love texts on her mobile phone instead of writing the next Romeo and Juliet?

Luddites and techno-phobes complain that digital technologies are stifling creativity and creating a generation of unmotivated couch potatoes.

Technology has undoubtedly made life much easier for so many - but that doesn’t mean we’ve become lazy.  Instead, technology has further enabled us to expand our infinite creative potential.

The Internet has given people a means to break down barriers that once muffled the flow of information and collaboration.  With people from across the globe now able to access seemingly infinite amounts of information and to be able to collaborate and share ideas, we are entering an exciting new era.

With blogs and wikis, everyone can communicate.  With RSS feeds, everyone can read about it.  MySpace, Ning, Bebo and FaceBook help us to connect with the world. Flickr helps to sort, store and share your snaps, while YouTube let’s you show off your movie making talents.  Tagging sites like Del.ici.ous enable us to share our favourite webpages.  Gliffy provides the tools to draw and share diagrams, Googledocs eliminates the challenges of document version control, while Slideshare hosts and shares presentations.  The list is endless.

And despite what the naysayers say, Internet technologies are not making us lazier, but instead have the capacity to deliver sharp upswings in productivity.

While MySpace might seem like fun and fluff, social networks, teleconferencing, wikis and other technologies that allow interaction on a large scale are changing traditional business models and improving productivity.

Cisco Systems’ Chairman, John Chambers, recently suggested that businesses that embrace collaborative communications models, such as social networking, into their processes could see a return to 3 to 5 percent annual improvements in worker productivity.

By allowing people both in and outside of companies to connect with each other, and share information over the network, the pace of business operations will escalate.  The power of connecting will enable us to do things at a dramatically different speed.

So, in the words of science fiction writer, Robert A Heinlein, “progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”

There is no doubt we have a digital divide in Australia.

While the number of Australians connected to the Internet grows each year and costs fall, the gap between the information-rich and information-poor is still palpable.

Those on higher incomes are leaving lower income earners behind.  Those in the city have almost unlimited access to information and the capacity to be plugged in to a global economy, while country people still suffer from the tyranny of distance.  Single parents, unemployed people and older Australians are also missing out.

And in today’s wired world information is power and this digital divide can mean a dramatic inequality of opportunity.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics Household Use of Information Technology (2005-06)  reveals that while the number of households with broadband Internet connection almost doubled (to 2.3 million households), and while the number of Australian households without access to home Internet has decreased by 20 per cent (from 2002 to 3.2 million households in 2005-2006), that’s still millions of households without home access to the Internet!

Tellingly, the ABS’ 2006 Children’s Participation in Cultural and Leisure Activities survey indicated that of the 2.7 million children aged 5 to 14 years, 92 per cent used a computer and 65 per cent used the Internet at any site.

What about the other 35 per cent of children who don’t have regular access to the Internet?  Or the 8 per cent of children who aren’t using computers at all?

Those on the wrong side of this digital divide face being marginalised as the ‘net becomes an increasingly dominant feature of economic and personal life.  And for young people, this means more than being able to access MySpace and YouTube.

In the job market, for instance, the best opportunities can increasingly be found on the Web rather than via traditional sources.  As more and more companies, government services and community groups deliver their services via the Web, these disadvantages will intensify.

Broadband is a national priority - but more than that, we need to ensure that all Australians are connected to the information superhighway in the first place.

Is our education system rapidly becoming archaic as we plunge headlong into a world where people trade their DNA on eBay? Where virtual supply chains and on-demand products rule? And where people conduct virtual romances with people they’ve only met through Cyberspace?

Thought leaders in education are now suggesting that the top ten in-demand jobs for 2010 did not exist in 2004 (see Karl Fisch’s The Fischbowl). If this is the case, how do we prepare the next generation of workers for technologies that are not yet invented?

This question is vitally important to business leaders, educators, parents, politicians and recruiters in today’s world. Together, we must examine the way we are educating our kids. Ensuring our young people receive the best education possible is not so much about algebra and alliteration, but arming them with the knowledge and skills they will need to enter the workforce.

Young people today seem to be born with an innate ability for text-messaging and gaming. And while they may not be able to spell they can tell you their life story on MySpace, entertain you on YouTube, muse philosophically in the blogosphere, contribute to knowledge on Wikipedia, create cutting-edge art on Flickr.

But they learn very little of this in school.

The need for creativity in all aspects of economic and political life is beginning to be recognised. Creative talent is now gaining economic as well as symbolic currency.

Charles Leadbeater, author and Senior Research Associate with the independent think-tank Demos, says that “our children will not have to toil in dark factories, descend into pits or suffocate in mills, to hew raw materials and turn them into manufactured products. They will make their livings through their creativity, ingenuity and imagination.”

Today, 11 percent of Fortune 500 companies have corporate blogs, according to SocialText, but only a handful have a designated chief blogger.

This will certainly change, as more companies embrace the power of social media.

March 2008 marked an inflexion point in Australia. It was the month that people spent more time online than watching TV.

According to AC Nielson, Australians on average spend 13.7 hours online and only 13.3 hours watching TV.  As the eyeballs move from TV screen to PC screen, this marks a change in the way we connect with people within our existing circle of friends and, more importantly, our ability to access and interact with virtual acquaintances who have new ideas, opinions and knowledge that we can leverage in our jobs and our lives.

This is a brave new world and we are yet to understand the opportunities that might flow from digital interactions for organisations and individuals. My interest in Internet communities and how they interact goes back to the early 2000s, when I was at CSC working on global knowledge management communities.

There are many such global communities and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace (where I have profiles), Linked In for professional exchanges and Second Life where I have purchased an island for the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) and had my own avatar.

I’ve been an active blogger since 2006, at a time when just a handful of business leaders had blogs of any kinds.

While I don’t believe the concept of a ‘chief blogger’ is right for all brands, blogging can offer some companies real benefits: it can humanise a company (like Microsoft), provide transparency (like Dell) or promote a company as a great place to work (like Southwest Airlines).

My blog is my personal views on a range of topics related to talent - the attraction, retention and management and other issues which impact on how people make decisions around jobs, employers and lifestyle. 

More importantly, I am interested in generating discussion and participating in a community conversation about talent management.  So, if you have an idea to share, spark up a conversation.