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According to PwC, there are five global shifts reshaping the world and their implications for organizations, industries and wider society will be significant. The five global megatrends are:
- Demographic shifts: migration of global spending power to emerging economies
- Shifts in economic power: investments in emerging economies and volatile and rapidly changing conditions
- Accelerated urbanization: more than half of the world’s population live in urban areas and almost all of the new growth will take place in lesser known medium-sized cities of developing countries.
- Climate change and resource scarcity: increased population, urbanization and prosperity will increase the demand for energy, food and water supplies.
- Technological breakthroughs: digital revolution has no boundaries or borders and changing behavior and expectations as much as the tools to deliver new services and experiences.
In the fourth industrial age, there is a big change in people and demographics. According to Mike Quindazzi, managing director at PwC, there are more of us, we are having less children, and we are getting older. We are getting older by 30 years compared to 100 years ago. In fact, in you were born in 2017 versus 2016, you will live 10 weeks longer.
50% of population growth from now and 2050 will come from Africa. By 2030, we will add another billion people to the population. By 2050, we will add another billion. The rising middle-class from Asia is another shift in demographics. There is a rapid rise of people moving to cities: 1.5 million people are added to cities every week.
Quindazzi highlighted the massive cost reduction of computing and storage as some of the technological trends that have helped fuel the digital economy. He also points to the API economy as the driver for businesses shifting to the cloud in order to accelerate innovation velocity and grow scale.
The gig economy and sharing economy will continue to disrupt legacy business models. Every business will be a digital business and there are essential technologies that will drive digital business transformation. Some companies are working towards digitizing all of their products and services by 2020. Quindazzi also spoke about business disruption with new emerging and essential technologies including artificial intelligence and smarter applications.
Quindazzi also discussed the upcoming Davos conference and the theme of responsive and responsible leadership. Digital transformation is accelerating at unprecedented rates. All leaders need to think about building trust in the digital world. All leaders must extent their digital personas and be more accessible to all stakeholders. Companies need to take the lead on how we engage with stakeholders, develop a diverse workforce and be inclusive and collaborative.
For more insights on the five global megatrends, I highly encourage you watch our video conversation.
(1 hour, 5 minutes)
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When I looked back at our database of some 17,000 worldwide leaders participating in our training program, who hailed from companies in virtually every sector throughout the world, I found that their average age was 42. More than half were between 36 and 49. Less than 10% were under 30; less than 5% were under 27.
But the average age of supervisors in these firms was 33. In fact the typical individual in these companies became a supervisor around age 30 and remained in that role for nine years. It follows then, that if they’re not entering leadership training programs until they’re 42, they are getting no leadership training at all as supervisors. And they’re operating within the company untrained, on average, for over a decade.
The fact that so many of your managers are practicing leadership without training should alarm you. Here are three reasons why:
- Practicing without training ingrains bad habits. My children and grandchildren learned to ski at early ages. I began when I was 41. They learned the fundamentals early and well. I did not. They didn’t pick up any bad habits. I did. While they were taught correctly, I learned my skills willy-nilly — just like all those supervisors left to their own devices until they reached their 40s. Worse, I practiced my questionable skills over and over, ingraining them deeply.
- Practice makes perfect only if done correctly. Practicing for hours doesn’t automatically create excellent skills. Say, for instance, that, as an aspiring golfer, you go to the driving range and practice by hitting buckets of balls. You draw a circle 20 feet in diameter, move back a bit, and proceed to hit balls until 80% land in the circle. Then you move farther back, take a different club, and do the same thing. That is deliberate, focused, and productive practice. Perfect practice makes perfect performance.
- Your young supervisors are practicing on the job whether you’ve trained them or not. Would it not be in the organization’s and the individuals’ best interests to begin that process the moment they’re selected for that position?
For as long as I can recall, there have been those who have observed, “With all the money and effort being spent on leadership development programs, why don’t we have better leaders?” The answer to that question is obviously complex, but could a part of the answer be that we have simply waited too long to develop these skills? It may be possible to teach old dogs new tricks, but there’s no question that the sooner you begin, the easier it is.
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No matter the size of the audience or the occasion, every memorable talk is a hat trick that nails these three elements:
1. ENTERTAIN
This is the base of the starting point. Want to know how entertained your audience will be by the time you get up to talk? For starters, we all touch our phones 2,500 times a day, according to researchers at Dscout. We’re scrolling Instagram, watching SNL clips, reading fantasy football trash-talk, and listening to podcasts. This is now your competition. So how do you beat it?
Well, you have one major advantage over the latest Wait But Why article, and it is that you’re here. You’re live. You get a deeper personal connection from the beginning. Nobody needs a Wi-Fi signal or has to tap a link to watch you. You get 30 seconds of free attention.
So what do you need to do with that momentary leg up you have on your listeners’ attention? Reward it immediately. Raise interest as you get onstage, create a laugh, but most importantly, be the most into your speech of anyone there. The audience can only rise to your level of excitement—nobody else’s—so no apologizing, no self-deprecating, and no remarking, “Well, now how am I gonna follow that?!”
A good test is this: If your speech entertains one other person you’re close to (especially a friend or significant other) during a dry run, it will entertain a whole room. Start with the toughest critic first.
2. EDUCATE
Humans are learning animals. We’re always growing our minds, abilities, and knowledge. In fact, why are you on this site right now? Chances are you came here to learn something.
So what is your speech teaching? Make sure you can write out the answer to that question in fewer than 140 characters. If the essence of your message is too complicated to tweet, it’s too complicated period: “I’m teaching my employees why they should feel proud about last year’s results and excited about next year’s goals”; or, “I’m giving people new techniques to apply at work to improve their personal well-being."
3. EMPOWER
This one is the biggest trick of a good speech, the hardest to pull off, and admittedly the most ambiguous-sounding as a result. But “empowering” your listeners really all comes down to making them feel like these were all their thoughts. Not yours. We only really do what we want to do.
Remember: It can’t be your message, shared. It has to be their message, heard.
Your role is to lead listeners through a series of iterative thoughts (“iterative” because they build on one another as you progress), where they nod and think to themselves, “Yes, yes, yes.” And fortunately, there are at least three reliable tools you can use to generate this kind of empowerment in your talk:
- Pause and interact. Can you use a flip chart where you create the content together with the audience? Can you leave pauses for the audience to jump in with their own answers? Can you do a short interactive exercise or experiment using the content you just shared?
- Find a lesson that’s doable, not just interesting. We don’t want to hear how you climbed Everest if we think we never will.
- Keep it conversational. It has to feel like a coffee-shop chat with your best friend, not like a charmer onstage tossing takeaways into the audience. People want trust. That means sharing your background, your story, your warts and all.
So yes, giving a great speech that entertains, educates, and empowers is a tall task. Are you up for it?
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