Tag: collaboration

Friction points – isolation kills

Posted on by philipdodson

You need friction points – isolation kills business – by Philip Dodson

isolated

Over 50% of us will be self-employed/freelancing/solo-preneurs within the next 10 years or less. The issue for anyone who is working for themselves is the challenge of isolation.

If you work at home all day every day or as a nomad in coffee shops, three things will happen:

1 – You will find that you will not be engaging in human contact – esssential for happiness & well being

2 – You will not be hearing about new ideas or sharing yours

3 – You will not be getting the motivation that being around others, who are working, creates

These will lead to you lacking motivation, getting cut off from the latest views, ideas & thinking. It will lead to your productivity falling and it will ultimately result in you becoming Isolated.

Businesses thrive on opportunity, which often comes from a ‘friction point’ occurring by making a connection with others. This a great phrase, that Bernie Mitchell of Engaging People used when we had a ‘friction’ point, which lead to him doing a podcast on co-working with me. It sums up exactly why you need to connect face-to-face with others.

These friction points lead to opportunities being created, that would have never have happened if you were at home or in a coffee shop. They don’t happen by email or skype, they only happen when two people connect in real life.

These friction points create opportunity to share ideas, to discover new connections, to create a new network and will inevitably lead to more success in your business.

People need to be able to feel and touch your business, as your business more often than not, will be you. You are the brand, the service, the company and in the new world of a connected consumer, they will never be able to share experiences about your business, if you are at home and isolated from others every day.

So for the ever increasing number of self-employed the solution is co-working, where you can collaborate, share and connect with others.

Working for yourself should never be by yourself.

Goodbye old school

Posted on by philipdodson

Goodbye old school – by Philip Dodson

old school

The old system has run it’s course now, education, politics and business.

I am 46 and have grown up in a world where most of the values and ways of doing things were drawn from the 1800s. From a time of empires, industrialisation, capitalism, socialism, communism and so on.

The world is now entering a new age – a digital age and an entrepreneurial revolution. But even more so, it’s entering uncharted territory, 7 billion of us, dwindling resources and global issues, that need a global approach. A totally disengaged and disillusioned young – who can’t relate to the old world.

We are at a fork in the path – many will want to selfishly lead us onwards back to the old school nirvana.

The old system is stifling the creative thought, supressing the changes we need and strangling radical new ways of doing things.

Party politics no longer engages with people, as we have heard it all before, very little fresh thinking, corruption, people on all sides who are not experiencing the world as most are.

Mainly policies that are there to ensure re-election in 4-5 years time, rather than the right policies. One lot promises one thing for their followers, the others in their dogma disagree with it all and then come to power and change it. Often regardless of whether or not it works.

None of this is a political statement – it applies to all of them. The system no longer works. We need business leaders, community leaders and others to take over and work on policies together – ditch left, right centre and whatever else – bring in common sense.

Then turning to education – this is kicked around like a political ‘football’ with little real thought to the end product. Children are growing up with smart phones and tablet PC’s, yet we send them to school and sit them down to read text books. The system is largely preparing children for a world that doesn’t and will not exist by the time they leave. Is it not that 20% of the jobs today didn’t exist 5 years ago?

Just think of the technological changes that are happening, think about the entrepreneurial revolution – the fact that within 10 years self-employment will be the norm in the developed world.

We need to get entrepreneurial leaders involved more and more in education. There are already some great examples of this happening . However it is still scratching the surface.

Then the system of doing business is still very old school – however within commerce, there is a different order, here customers make the choices. Old school ‘HMV’s’ didn’t adapt and they failed.

In business some of the old ways of sales, marketing, running business, employee relations, working environments and so on, have been ditched by forward thinking organisations, as they have seen that they have failed. Just look at the rise globally of co-working and collaborative businesses.

The old system of greed and win at all costs, which blossomed in the 1980s, has to a greater or lesser extent created a great deal of the global issues we face. It for me it symbolised the last death throws of the old system, which came to an end in 2008.

With self-employment likely to dominate the next decade and beyond, there is a chance that the new ways of collaboration, sharing and helping others to succeed could well be the catalyst for massive global change in society in general.

We stand at the fork and it’s time to say ‘goodbye old school’ and start to bring back a society not driven by short-term greed, but one driven by helping others, sharing, re-creating communities and one that realises that prosperity is about people not materials.