2020 to 2021 and beyond
2020. A lovely round number to remember easily, but how could we ever forget it? It’s been a very weird year for sure. There has been some great recruitment work to do amongst the often silent markets, but not “full-on” like it has been in the past. Then wave after wave of people being made redundant or looking for changes / new opportunities, depending on how honest one is, have been in contact. Most people are looking for digital transformation leadership roles but there is a contradiction there. If the people being made redundant from digital transformation exercises were leading them, then who is left leading the digital transformations? The answer is varied from consultancies, interims, marketing and sales millennials, or simply nobody, as the change has been abandoned. Whatever the cause, this represents another shift in the apparent power in the career of the CIO. It is no longer just a CIO’s prerogative to drive the technology enabled change agenda. There are many other factors at play in world changes that also make 2020 an unfortunately historical year at a real inflexion point. In fact, so many that it might be hard to discern the way forward. Let’s look at some of the events and the future impacts.
1. The “sexy” work of the last few years in IT has been in B2C, and the shifts in retailing moving online from the high street. The conventional ERP focussed work of large companies has largely dried up. The High Street is not only dead but buried as well. B2C has, however, also been decimated by COVID-19 this last year, exacerbating the death of bricks and mortar solutions. We have been overprovisioned for years and retail occupies too much of UK GNP. Everything a shop sells which is not produced in the UK leaks revenue from the UK and erodes the multiplier effect of cash left in the UK economy. What amazes me at the moment is the obvious lack of a Buy British campaign. Perhaps we are too frightened of hacking off Europe in the face of Brexit. This needs to change and we can be subtle about it!! We have to do it, though, and we also have to focus more at the top end and sell it to the rest of the world. Rolls Royce is still arguably the world’s finest car (even if adopted by another nation). We need a Rolls Royce in many, many more markets. We cannot and don’t do volume well but let’s be creative and do top end.
2. Entertainment and hospitality have been equally damaged, meaning a real paucity of supply for the return of “better times”. The industry has been in decline anyway but the black hole this leaves in the future “inventory of entertainment” will be an opportunity for some. It may be vulture behaviour but that is business is it not? How does the cinema survive faced with 60”8k TV, fabulous sound and everything streamable on demand. Not sure at all in the long run. This is a marketplace where, again, creativity and new solutions might be possible.
3. B2B industries have been well insulated (in the main) from COVID, apart from specific sectors such as aviation and consumer transport, but the long-term shock of supply chain damage is not yet obvious. One question that has emerged in the light of the PPE shortages, however, is just how much risk protection is factored into just-in-time systems and buffer stocks? There is no doubt a new business “shape” needed there in international manufacturing and supply chain management. This is an area where the UK government needs to be more “on the money” – buffer stocks and supply chain management and rolling risk assessment. It’s a strategic role that I hear little of from government in normal times. Just-in-time isn’t such a good plan when people are dying.
4. Aviation, its inward supply chain, and aeronautics have all been badly damaged, some maybe terminally, but aviation is likely to return, albeit slowly. Our world is too small not to travel and we have become more culturally flexible than ever before. Travel is a privilege not easily surrendered. Cheap flying may not return in the same way, however, as the squeeze on the global economy promotes the staycation mentality. Space however is just starting. We are in the top 10 nations with “spatial awareness”, but we need to INVEST NOW to just stand still. This is a future speciality we might be able to address well.
5. Consumer behaviour has massively changed as well, and it is likely there will be several long-term lasting effects. The rise of local artisan producers and vendors is unlikely to wane unless a massive recession prices them out of the market, and us into the hands of the discounters. We are entering a new age of artisan endeavour, fed by climatic pressures, changing opinions of globalisation and, last but not least, process automation, AI and Robotics. It needs to be profitable and valued by a wider group of consumers. Maybe this strata is the second career we work towards - it’s what is happening now.
6. Overall consumption in the West may level off and/or decline as westerners suddenly realise the need to consume less for reasons of needing to save more. Retirement “dreams” will harden up, earned income accruing to people will decline under automation. Buying less also probably has positive climactic and earth resource benefits.
7. Given that a recession is likely and that public finances are crippled by debt and therefore social insurance and support is likely to be constrained, just what level of social disturbance is the UK likely to suffer? What are the consequential economic impacts? Is it feasible to borrow in eternity fed by flexible financial systems? That may be a clearly stupid idea on the face of it but maybe not? Where do you put money if it’s a choice between social security and policing?
8. Shipping has been laid asunder as transport of goods stalls. The cruise industry is hoping we all have short memories about plague ships, but I don’t think all of us will. There is shipping overcapacity. There are also initial tests of crewless shipping driven by satellite and AI. Again, automation takes more peoples jobs.
9. All of the above have driven down the global oil market. The price of oil has wavered above and below cost of production and thus the funds flow to higher cost producers has been choked off. If we are using less oil, then great if it is cheaper. A declining market is often characterised by falling prices as demand drops and supply-capacity is not constrained.
10. In the UK we have built an economy around property and it has often been very twisted in supply and demand. We have always needed more smaller houses and flats, and affordable solutions. Instead massive edifices in the cities have been constructed to satisfy the shift to the cities of both business and better-paid workers. Many of those offices may well remain empty going forward which will drive office rental down. Domestic property is poorly financed as leveraged building firms rely on land bank valuation to bolster balance sheets. They do not build enough fast enough. This is a huge priority in times of austerity to ensure cheap and quality housing stock is built for the needy. To me it is a “no-brainer” economic priority as it generates decent UK centric cash and profit circulation, as well as the critical social priority of housing the needy.
11. Agriculture is one of the markets most obviously attracting the attention of AI and technology and rapidly gaining a unique place in the crosshairs of technology change and natural living. This, represented by none other Jeremy Clarkson indulging his automotive and newly found agricultural leanings together. Pilotless tractors, satellite driven soil analysis, automated crop trading systems, AI driven crop rotations and decisioning. Changing priorities for subsidy that favour husbandry over raw volume of food production. Building a better environment for the UK. AI is also being deployed to define new disease and drought resistant crop varieties to help the climatic effects on crop yields around the world.
12. Music, video, picture, the news, written word, are all under massive change with new platforms emerging almost weekly. Choice through competition is feverish. In the past though I had a very simple choice. Put it in the photo album – or don’t. Now it is in which of twenty albums! Streaming has squeezed artists revenues often to a point of absurdity. Musicians were being driven to live touring again until COVID. Now there is nothing. Is everything now, immediately and cheap as chips always, therefore, a good way?
Many people far more erudite than me will write decent essays on 2020 that are far more fluent and connected than this series of observations, but I wanted to draw out some future looking thoughts for Technologists in the UK in 2021.
Nobody yet knows when COVID will end, and what will have happened between now and then, but if you are lucky enough to have managed to be productive through all the disruption, then be very grateful. Remember in 2021 to look as far forward as you can to scan horizon shifts AND at the same time do a full risk analysis. It may never happen again, but don’t bank on it. If you are consumer-facing then you have to be very smart indeed as there is no longer anything “traditional” to follow. The past means nothing, and the future is unknown. Hmm, which way to go?
Many jobs will wane, possibly quite quickly, through the application of digital technology and AI layered over it. Both fed by automatically generated and harvested data of course. Think carefully about your domain, such robotisation is closer than many of us think.
Get into Space if you can. I understand the Isle of Man and Cornwall are good places to go for space jobs. Surrey as well. Autonomous technology is a great place to work be it cars, ships or in fact anything.
Learn to think in discrete processes with modular reusability at the back of your mind. This will enable you to move faster when you really need to. Just clip together new apps. Imagine if you could have re-engineered your business in days when COVID shutdown occurred. I rest my case. Complexity is the enemy of flexibility.
If you are a creative then that is good. You are at the end of the automation queue. BUT how will you get paid when almost all “art” has become free to view?
If you serve people for necessities or luxuries, for a reason that cannot be automated then be sure to remember that “the customer is always right”. Especially when they are not. Volume is not what we should be doing. Niche and top-end is.
Buy British, especially UK caught fish and UK farm produce. Then we may not need to borrow quite as much debt as a nation.
Cities need to fully reinvent themselves. Offices need to reinvent themselves. The world of work IS reinventing itself. How do we value people in 2021?