I’m confronted by new challenges, hurdles and obstacles every day.  How do you streamline a process, speed up research findings or provide an answer that no one has yet thought of?  It requires creativity and imagination; not just for new problems, but problems that have been around for ages.  The perfect storm happens when a new problem is fuelled by a problem that has been around for ages. 

The headline of youth unemployment grabbed my attention this week – 1 million out of work.  This figure has recently been pushed higher by the sideways grinding of the economy, and the mess on the Continent, but something quietly happened from between 2000 and 2007: youth unemployment rose by almost 200,000 (The Times, 20 November 2011).  

But what about those youth who are disadvantaged, vulnerable, or don’t have a well-connected family network to plug them into education and finally employment?  This is the group that I’m worried about – those who have so much potential, but lack a support network.  Those who are driven, but lack a mentor or coach. 

The welfare state is supposed to help the disadvantaged and vulnerable – but is strained as it tries to preserve the state itself.  It’s time to start thinking way, way outside the box.  No one can afford to lose this generation.  How are you helping them?

Recently I’ve been closely following Seth Godin’s blog and he has some interesting ideas.  Chief among them is the idea of shipping – do ‘it’, get it out there, and see what happens.  It doesn’t have to be perfect – as perfect is the nemesis of ‘just good enough’. 

But before you just ship, you need information.  You need background, and often, need research.  The obvious starting point is harnessing your super human Google powers to bring you right to a trusted source of information.  But, this vast source is also the problem: information overload.  Information that is too general, or isn’t quite the frame of reference needed to answer the question.  Information fail?  Not quite, but close.

The past ten years have socisalised the idea of online communities (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc), but now I’m seeing more and more enterprise communities – communities for exactly what they need – and that is valuable.  Imagine using your super human Google powers, but applying it to a pre-screened and validated community of experts.  Suddenly, something very interesting has happened: the ability to ask a question to an audience which has the exact frame of reference you need for an answer.

I’ve been working on the mallowstreet project since 2009 (check out this video to learn more). ) ,

And this is exactly what we are now seeing: membership leading to connections, value and results.  Suddenly, you have the power to ship, but in an increasingly informed, and easy to achieve way. 

I wonder what the next ten years are going to look like…

My eyes were blurry, the alarm unwelcoming, the curtains were doing their job, and the sun was still in a slumber, not ready to greet the day.  Today was it.  After weeks and weeks of preparation, it was Wednesday, 18 May – the mallowstreet exchange.  I shot out of bed, adrenalin surging.  Had we done everything? What if no one came? What if the presentations did not work?  What if, what if….the questions engulfed me as made my way on the empty underground toward the British Library.

The preparation was worth it.  More than 200 attendees debated the future of pensions, learned about social media, asked the government questions, and, most importantly, built relationships.  Attendees told me they gained so much value from listening to and learning from the speakers and interacting with peers.  There was an electric energy in the air as people greeted one another and, consciously or not, expanded their networks.

The idea of networks and relationships has prompted me to order a new book by David Brooks, The Social Animal.  He argues that “relationships, our connections with others, are the root of all knowledge.”  I couldn’t agree more (not sure what I’ll think about the rest of his book), but take the view it is worth the read.  So if David’s thesis is correct, how do you meet people?

One session at the mallowstreet exchange was called the Art of Networking, presented by Andy Lopata.  He gave tips on how to introduce yourself to others in a professional environment, and more importantly highlighted what not to do.  Check out his video, '...And Death Came Third' – well worth the two minutes and nineteen second.

We’ve all got a network, but what are you doing with it?  I’m using mine to start tackling some problems and providing solutions.  How do we get young people to save?  How can we build a retirement system that redistributes and is sustainable?  People are listening, and I watch it happen daily on mallowstreet.  So when you think you have the time to make connections or make a contribution to an online forum, just remember, you may actually be helping to solve a problem.

I keep getting asked – why aren’t individuals saving for retirement?  Well, consider the following example. 

“First I have to pay the mortgage (or rent), council tax, utility bills, fund anything that went wrong from last month, try and set something aside to live on for this month, plan my holiday, do a bit of grocery shopping, new clothes, pay back overdraft, make a credit card payment so I don’t go over my limit…”

Missing is the ‘saving for retirement’ or any reference to ‘pensions contribution’.  It should be at the top of the list, but it is, in fact, because it is so long in the future, it is simply too easy to say, ‘I’ll have a look * long pause* next month’.   Relax, no worries, I’ll do it tomorrow.

You could take the argument further by saying the entire exercise is a bit futile as the individual doesn’t have the resources to amass this amount of savings and the state will ultimately act as a backstop.  However, S&P weighed in on that discussion last week. 

The rating agency (accused of moving too slowly in the past) fired a warning shot at the United States: it must sort out the deficit or risk losing its coveted AAA status. The two underlying concerns behind the S&P note were health care and social security.  The message is clear: the state contribution to retirement income must be limited and restrained, and the fractures we see in the intergenerational contract today means that it is only a matter of time until a full renegotiation. 

Once “Relax, no worries, I’ll do it tomorrow” has been replaced with “retirement savings, of course!” several questions immediately surface:

·        How much (in total) will I need to retire?

·        How much do I need to contribute to meet the amount above?

·        Where do I invest?

·        What are the options available?

·        How do I educate myself?

Most of the tools required to help individuals with retirement planning are already there.  The missing piece is communication and clear language around just how imperative it is to save for retirement, and a map helping to detail the way forward for those who know they must act.  So, until we have a framework that can easily help everyone answer the five questions above, I think most individuals will unfortunately stick to the “Relax, I’ll do it tomorrow”  attitude.

Two nights. Twelve bands. £15,000 for charity. The experience: Priceless!

Last week, I co-hosted the second annual Pensions Rocks with Charlie Thomas at the historic 100 Club in London.  Bands from the pensions industry got to perform on the same stage that has hosted Oasis, The Killers, and The Rolling Stones – just to name a few.  Each band had twenty minutes to perform their set list (it had to be ‘rock’) and three select judges chose a winner for each night.  Both nights were completely sold out and we managed to raise more than £15,000 for charity.

Despite what people may tell you, the pensions industry is not dry, boring or dull: at the 100 Club, I saw talent, enthusiasm, and excitement.   I also saw a dancefloor packed with people having a really fun night!

My favourite memory (from my privileged position in the soundbooth) was the energy shown for the bands. There were some hilarious costumes, especially those worn by the devoted fans of Pensions Corporation.  Oh, and then there was also the head-banging fan who gave someone a nose bleed! 

Here’s a clip of the first ever Pensions Rocks from May 2010 and the second is from last week (February 2011).

We will do it again, but we just need a few days to recover – the 100 Club told me that we ‘drank the bar dry’!  Do you want to participate next year?  And more importantly, if you were there either night, what’s your favourite memory? 

Most developed countries are already trying to ‘fix’ public retirement systems. This involves a blend of raising the retirement age, increasing contributions (by the individual), or reducing benefit payments.  For most Pay-As-You-Go systems, changes need to be implemented today to reduce the massive unfunded liabilities that ultimately sit on Government balance sheets. Defined Benefit Schemes have been working on this for a while: closing schemes to new entrants, closing to future accruals, and recalculating benefit payments.  Thus far, proposed changes to public systems have been met with resistance (riots in Greece, strikes in France) and in the United States, Washington has yet to really tackle the problem – they just know it is looming on the horizon.

But what about countries that have a very different demographic profile?  In my recent trip to India, I was struck by the dichotomy of wealth (slums that backed right into the airport walls, overlooked by beautiful penthouse apartments) and the definition of family.  There seemed, to me at least, to be a much stronger intergenerational contract present in India compared to the UK and America.

India is home to approximately one fifth of the world’s population, and the state system in its current form won’t provide nearly enough for those individuals who are nearing retirement now, let alone in, say, 30 years’ time.  The government is working on reforms to the system, but these are just the first steps needed to avoid mistakes made by many Western Countries.  India and other countries with a similar demographic profile are keeping an eye on what developed countries are doing to tackle the problem.

As the austerity blanket settles over Europe, and as everyone takes a measured dose of reality, I think individual retirement provision will move to the top of agenda.  It will go something like this:  if the state isn’t going to support me in old age, and my employer isn’t going to help, how am I going to avoid poverty in old age – or, am I even going to be able to retire?  And if so, at what age?  Or will I work part time?

A year ago, I spoke with my parents broadly about their ideas around retirement.  This January, my father will enter ‘Semi-Retirement’.  Everyone is looking for a solution, and if you aren’t close to retirement yet, the question is: how do I decide when to save for retirement, and how do I prioritise this in my own budget?

Many won’t know where to start – or take the view it is so far off, that ‘I don’t need to start thinking about this yet’.  Others will go searching for a platform to exchange ideas and ask questions.  But one thing is clear – a ‘magical fix’ for retirement provision seems unlikely.  I think I even need to start making a proper game plan.  Do you have one yet? 

Social Media? Write a blog?  Make new connections?  Another thing on the daily ‘to-do’ list?  Sorry, Stu – I just don’t have the time.

When I talk to people about social media, this is far and away the most common answer I receive.  The push back is no longer ‘I don’t think it works’, or ‘that’s only for my 16 year-old kid.’ Some people still tell me this, but I hear it much less than I did this time last year. 

We’ve seen a discreet paradigm shift in the way people communicate and sift, share and digest information.   Sure, I can use my superhuman Google powers to find almost any answer, but what I usually can’t quickly do is determine how relevant that information is to me.  But search engines are only half the equation – Social Media allows me to retain my superhuman Google powers AND see what my peers rate as interesting, important and thought-provoking – and I can read their comments.   Now that’s powerful. 

Just over a year ago, I helped organise an event called Trustee 100.  It was a chance for us at mallowstreet to gather 100 UK pension scheme decision makers together for a morning and discuss the problems facing the UK pensions industry, some of the possible solutions, and understand how they preferred to consume content and media.   More than 1,000 years of combined industry experience spent more than four hours together, connecting with peers, sharing ideas, participating in presentations. In real time, we experienced the ‘Wisdom of the Crowd’. 

I didn’t sleep the night before – would people actually show?  What if the technology didn’t work?  What if, what if, what if...  I learned so much that morning, but the drawback was everyone had to give the same four hours of their time to be in the same room: we were constrained by space and time. 

Social Media solves both of these constraints.  It allows people to share, connect, and collaborate from almost anywhere in the world at any time that suits them. It will never replace face-to-face meetings, or the value associated with them, but what we did experience that morning was value created when you gather a highly specialised community and give them the tools and platform to share, connect, and collaborate.

Stu, that’s very interesting, but I still don’t have the time.  In my last post, I talked about Clay Shirky’s new book, Cognitive Surplus.  He makes the following point:

“The world’s cognitive surplus is so large that small changes can have huge ramifications in aggregate.  Imagine that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people continue to consume 99 percent of the television they used to, but 1 percent of that time gets carved out for producing and sharing. The connected population still watches well over a trillion hours of TV a year; 1 percent of that is more than one hundred Wikipedia’s’ worth of participation per year.”

So, just a small shift in your time allocation can pay back tenfold.  I chose to pass up watching an episode of Mad Men this evening to put my thoughts down into a blog post.  I try to write fairly often, but only when I’ve actually got something I want to say.  People are then free to comment on my ideas, tell me they are rubbish, or ask a question.  It is a free exchange with my broader online community – a community that would have been almost impossible for me to build without social media. 

For many, the initially challenge is ‘finding the 15 minutes every day’ to participate.  It takes a bit of discipline to get started: I focus 10 minutes every morning over coffee, flipping between the BBC and my email.  I quickly started spending more time participating in online communities as my connections grew and I started gaining valuable nuggets of information and new insights.  How do you spend your free time?  Do you think you can find 15 minutes a day? Do you really not have that time?

I regularly see new websites that attempt to show an individual’s social media footprint and, in effect, measure Social Capital. Social Capital relates directly to your Personal Brand, but has a few key characteristics.  It:

·        Is an extremely difficult currency to accumulate;

·        Cannot be purchased;

·        Doesn’t depreciate.

The more you give it away (i.e. connect, contribute and collaborate), the more you get in return.   But how do you measure Social Capital? 

It isn’t as easy as balancing a cheque book or ledger.  Nor is it a sum total of ‘connections’ – it is much more subtle than that.  In a post earlier this summer, Making a new connection: Why Bother? I talked about my experience of reaching out and making new connections, and how I’ve found it beneficial.   I haven’t found a way to measure Social Capital yet, but I think there are some clear indicators.  To wrap your head around Social Capital, I think it is important to understand the underlying factors that drive behaviour.

Clay Shirky makes that point that humans ultimately want to connect, collaborate and create – and Social Media tools allow for all three of these things to happen.  To generate social capital, you’ve got to have a game plan and a bit of discipline: not buckets of extra time. 

The first step is to make sure you have an online profile (think of it as an expanded business card).  Fill out your profile – it allows people know a little more about you and get an idea of your frame of reference on your thoughts on a given matter. 

Don’t worry – you are not signing up to live the rest of your life interfacing with a computer, the Internet, or a portfolio of social or professional networking sites.  Reach out to people and connect with them, and always respond to someone’s question or comment.  Acknowledge that someone took the time to connect, send you a message, share an article, or make a comment. 

So where does all of this lead?  On Friday, I got a call from one of my LinkedIn connections.  It was from a relatively new connection.  He told me that he’d looked through my connections, and based on the people he could see I was connected with, and some comments that I’d posted (including my blog!), he wanted to know my thoughts on a few things.

Social media tools and deposits that you make to the social media bank (sharing, collaborating with people) enhance your experiences and interactions with people, allowing for incredibly focused, productive conversations with colleagues.  I’m glad I took the time up front to set up my profile, make connections, join groups, and share my thoughts with the wider community.   Have you had a similar experience, or do you find social media overwhelming?  

I think many would agree, ‘there is just not enough time in each day’.  Have days become shorter? Have we lost a few hours?  The answer, of course, is no - the length of a day remains unchanged.  So in this world of greater time pressure and longer to-do lists, how on earth, and why, would you participate in ‘Social Media’?  Is this just a fad that is going to vanish into the night? 

Let’s check out the stats.  LinkedIn has more than 60 million members, facebook boasts more than 450 million, and twitter (which does not publish membership data) is thought to have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40 million members.  The growth in membership and contribution to social media sites has been stratospheric. 

For years, companies have been hypersensitive about their brands.  This remains unchanged.  However, social media has heightened the intensity around a certain type of brand – your own, Personal Brand.  Everyone, like it or not, has a Personal Brand.  This is a collective sum total of people’s perceptions of you. Until recently, you were constrained on how quickly, and how far you could build your brand – it was a direct function of space and time, i.e. how many meetings you could attend in London in a single day.  Five, maybe six?  And if so, how long can you keep this up?  Was this really a sustainable model?

In my view, social media is a true game changer.  Now you can have an online profile which is visable to anyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  You can broadcast your message, participate in public discussions as much (or as little) as you want, and connect with likeminded people all over the world.  The time and geographical constraints have suddenly ‘vanished.’  As I wrote in my last post, it is still essential to meet contacts in person, but the sea of contacts to choose from has just got a whole lot bigger.

Today, I’ve decided to write this blog and make a small deposit in the social capital bank.  I’ll write more about social capital next week.

But more importantly – why do you choose to engage in social media?  Or, why do you think most of it is a complete waste of time?  I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

In my last blog post (Trusting Strangers: Cheltenham Races, facebook and the Wise Crowd) I talked about my experience at the Cheltenham Races and taking advice from a group of people who I had never met.  And while this crowd did help me make a few ‘educated wagers’, I never met any of them in person.  Was this a lost opportunity?

This past week I connected with about 10 new people on LinkedIn.  I must admit, I’m still trying to work out how best to use LinkedIn.  With more than 60 million members, its size is its greatest asset and downfall.  Almost everyone has a LinkedIn profile, but why? Is it just an online CV?  If you update your LinkedIn Profile, are you simply looking for a job, or trying to maximise your online presence, or is there some other reason?   A colleague of mine recently said to me, ‘being off the grid was more in vogue than being connected 24/7’.  I’m not sure I agree...

This week I tried something new.  I decided to meet up with some of my new connections in person.  And what a result!  Each person I meet up with (for a coffee, pint, lunch) exponentially enhances my online experience.  Suddenly I have a much better understanding of their frame of reference.  More importantly, however, my hurdle rate to engage with that person (be it participating in an online group, forum, or responding to a blog post) is significantly reduced. A face-to-face meeting not only helps to build my confidence in online engagement, but puts a context around interaction.

Online engagement is not about replacing engagement in person – far from it, it is about creating a better experience.  With each of my new connections, I was able to read a bit about them, see their work experience, educational background, etc.  In each meeting, the initial background discussion time was saved, so our discussion could focus on specific topics – the time we spent together, in some way, turbo-charged.

I’m going to continue meeting up with connections – it now seems like a no brainer.  I’m interested to hear about other people’s experiences.  Do you actively meet up new contacts, or take a more passive view to interacting with the online space?