Tag: work

Houses of the Future – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

If you’re like me, you’re probably thrilled to start seeing something other than the four walls of your own home. The Covid-19 crisis will be a long overdue start to influencing changes to the buildings we spend our time in.

The Merger – Now that information work has finally reached its mobility phase, houses and offices will start to change shape. The major change is that spaces for work and living will start to replicate each other, with differences in size and scale. We can already see it in the home. Technology that used to solely reside in offices has begun to spring up in our homes. The technology we now have in the home is usually as good and often better than what we have at work. Offices are starting to look less like cubicle farms with the arrival of lounge spaces, entertainment zones, eating areas – somewhat replicating what we see in boutique hotels. What’s ironic is that this is how things used to be pre-industrialisation. We lived where we worked. Craftsmen had workshops out the back of houses. Bakers lived on top of their shop front. Now that many of us are becoming modern day digital craftspeople, we are going back to that model.

The first part of the process was the delineation of working and leisure hours evaporated. Now it’s about to happen to our spaces and they’re starting to replicate each other.

Caves with Widgets – We’ve been living in caves for a very long time, albeit these days they come with modern day comforts. It is valuable to remind ourselves of how we got to now by looking at how long some of the current technologies in our homes have been around:

  • Letterboxes – Mail services started encouraging their installation in houses for deliveries in the mid-1800s.
  • Indoor plumbing – In the 1860s, only 5% of American houses had running water. Flush toilets were still uncommon until the mid 1900s.
  • Driveways – Only became a standard inclusion fewer than 80 years old ago.
  • Electricity – Uncommon in suburban homes until the 1930s.
  • White goods (electricity needed) – Rare in modern economies until post WWII.
  • Televisions – In 1956 in Australia
  • VCRs – Early 1980s
  • Home Computers – Mid-1980s
  • Internet – Mid-1990s

So what’s coming?

Zero Energy Buildings: The ZEB movement is a system where a building generates all of the energy it requires. In the near future, the walls and roof of every new or retrofitted building will be capable of generating power. This will be primarily through solar and micro wind turbines, as well as piezoelectric technology that converts kinetic energy generated by raindrops hitting a building to electricity – yes, this already exists. The energy rating of buildings in the future won’t just be about efficient use of energy – it will be about creating an excess, more than it needs. It will become the new normal.

Houses that Change Shape: Walls will be moveable in most apartments to maximise space usage across different hours of the day, like hotels often do in its meeting spaces. They’ll become modular. Houses of the future will be designed with non-permanent room sizes, allowing us to get more from less. Kitchens and eating spaces will be able to expand and converted back into lounge rooms or even cinema rooms.

Delivery Boxes Replace Letterboxes: The letterbox is sorely in need of an upgrade. Our houses now are the recipients of packages, not letters. You’d think e-commerce hadn’t happened yet! In the future, letterboxes will have three sections: dry, fridge and frozen, so it could take all kinds of deliveries. Letterboxes will likely be as big as a fridge and possibly underground, with a button for the courier to press, so it could rise up to take the delivery. When a delivery arrives, the recipient is notified and can view live video footage, to verify the delivery person’s identity. Using a smartphone, the recipient could open the delivery unit and check that the delivery is as ordered, using near field communication readers (RFID) and image recognition cameras. The delivery unit would be secure as a safe for delivery of high value items and be powered under a ZEB doctrine.

Upgraded Home Office and Virtual Reality Room: We can expect the home office to receive a massive upgrade. High-end home offices will be as common as gourmet kitchens, given their importance in generating income for many households. We’ll have virtual reality meeting rooms with travelator floors to make us feel that we are in the same room as someone else on the other side of the world. These spaces will lead us to question why we need to go to the office at all. These video studios will be capable of creating content to make even the most advanced YouTuber salivate. We’ll also use our VR rig, including haptic gloves and suits, to shop online for things we want to touch and experience before purchasing. We’ll also use it to exercise and browse holiday accommodation and experiences, using a treadmill to keep us stationary while we seemingly explore other places.

A.I. Enabled: Automation utilising voice and gesturing will replace traditional interactions and buttons to manage re-ordering of household items. We’ll literally be talking to the walls! This is a battleground Amazon, Google and Apple are already deeply ensconced in. Convenience will be high, but privacy and security concerns will need to be overcome for mass adoption.

Drone delivery and landing pads: Our growing parcel deliveries need to land somewhere. Apartment buildings are already being designed with landing pads on rooftops and your house will be no different. Maybe it will have an automatic opening lid that closes over after the drop off has been made or the package might go straight into a delivery box. We can also expect new houses to have rooftop landing pads for Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) vehicles that will become common within 20 years. In fact, ‘flying cars’ have a high probability of beating autonomous vehicles to deep market penetration, given they don’t have to work around existing infrastructure and pedestrian safety issues.

Smart Toilet: I’ve written about this before. We can expect it to be our health partner in life and since Alphabet had a patent approved on the smart bathroom last year, this is one of those realities which will surprise with its speed of arrival.

Smart shower: One that takes a photo of you every day… not to invade your privacy, but to ensure it knows you have a dangerous sun spot long before you do.

Glass = Screen: If you’ve always wanted a house with a view, it’s about to become a lot cheaper than anyone expects. All the glass in our homes will become web-enabled screens. The resolution of our windows will be indistinguishable from an actual view into the real world. All of a sudden, anyone can have a real-time harbour view that changes perspective on different windows in the house to deliver a very lifelike experience. Maybe owners of actual harbour mansions will monetise their views via a live feed cam? Or maybe nimble entrepreneurs can set up HD webcams in places of great beauty? Live feeds of idyllic vineyards in the Loire Valley, anyone?

Charging Stations in All Driveways: Our driving future is all electric, as is our entire economy. Expect that every place cars stop will have a charging facility on hand. If they ever stop – I’ll probably send mine out to work for me when I’m not using it.

So, if you are wondering how buildings will change, wonder no more. The exciting part is that there’s many more changes we could add to this list. In a changing world, this is where tomorrow’s jobs and industries will emerge. The opportunities created are equal for existing companies and startups. The technology for all of these ideas already exists. It’s not a question of if – it’s a matter of who and when.

I had a fun radio interview on this topic you can listen to here.

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Keep thinking.

Steve. 

The weird world of people as brands

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The new year often brings career considerations. How will we position ourselves to take the next step? These days, this involves the nuanced world of personal branding. And while it makes many of us feel squeamish to think of ourselves as a brand, it’s not a new phenomenon.

Before industrialisation, we were what we did. Just quickly scroll through the contacts list on your phone and there’s a chance you’ll see a few of the OG personal brands. Surnames like Smith, Carpenter, Taylor, Baker…  If you think personal branding has gone too far, then don’t forget our brands used to come with us everywhere, and not just appear on our LinkedIn page. Washing powder and electronics aren’t the only brands, people are too, and have been for a very long time.

But then, once we industrialised much of our branding, as economic participants at least, was derived from where we studied and the corporations we worked for. ‘She went to Harvard.’ ‘He worked directly under Henry Ford.’ We built ourselves around the institutions we spent time in. The evidence of who we were and what we were capable of was a function of where we spent time. It was their brands that we had to leverage as we became cogs in their machines. The era of being known for our output got lost, and this was for one simple reason – most of us became part of something much bigger than ourselves. For most of us, there was no longer a table we could imprint our name on, or suit with our name in the jacket pocket. Our work became shared, we only made a slither of the final output – we got lost in the system. As people, we essentially morphed into sub-brands of large corporations. It was then that the great brand reversal started to happen, as mass media infiltrated our homes.

Once upon a time, things were once just things – bread, washing powder, suits, you name it. But in order to build trust, corporations who now made what we used to make, used the branding process to personify what they were selling. In a way, things replaced people as brands. Companies had to make things seem reliable like people, because, who the hell knew who made what? The bread didn’t come from Billy’s bakery – who we knew and trusted – it came from a big factory somewhere.

The tool used to personify the products and build brands during the 20th century was mass media. The factory and the TV were the perfect partners. Big budgets and big scale were both mandatory. Together they combined to make us believe that very average things were worth more than they actually were. Much of the value, credibility and the premium price we paid was a function of the advertising. What we were consuming was ostensibly a parasocial relationship. It was a closed shop for the big and privileged – until now.

For the first time in history, people can now brand themselves at scale. The emergence of fragmented, low-cost and highly distributed media on the web means anyone can play. Anyone can build their brand, and then charge a premium for their services. Just like brand XYZ became known as a premium brand, so can we. The more well-known someone is in their industry, the more they will earn – it’s just a modern inalienable truth. I know it feels like a very uncomfortable transition, especially when the world of personal brands is filled with hucksters, and camouflaged Amway sales people on Instagram trying to sell you milkshake weight loss powders by showing their photoshopped abs. Yes, there’s lots of dodgy players out there, using the new cheap tools and make a quick buck – but isn’t there always?

What we might consider instead, is to build something respected and sustainable based on real work and insight. How do we display, using the tools available, our capability? How do we become more than our formal qualifications and experience by sharing new ideas, projects, industry transitions and connection? How do we share things of value with others and then let the law of reciprocity set in?

In simple terms, we just need to decide what we want to be known for – and take that to the market. For me it’s being the guy who understand technology’s impact on business and society – and helping people navigate the future. I study this stuff all day long, so my customers don’t have to. They can focus on their industry and plug in my skills when required.

But in a busy world, where everyone is the CEO of their own personal media corporation, it’s hard to be heard, where everyone has something to say. It might even mean we need to invest in ourselves, and actually pay to build our personal brands. Yes, advertise ourselves, just like the hero brands of the TV Industrial Complex did back in the day. It’s never been more affordable to take control of our own futures, perceptions and capabilities. If it’s good enough for corporations products, then why not people?

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Thanks for reading this year. Have a great 2019. Steve. 

The Exits Lounge

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Looking for a new job is generally a stealth project. Secretly updating CV’s, sneaking off for job interviews and quiet phone calls with recruiters. But imagine if a company encouraged staff planning on leaving to get them to help them out – better still, what if it had a formal ‘Exits Lounge’ which was a known, open company policy.

I know this sounds kinda crazy, and maybe it is, but sometimes we need to think of things in reverse, to see this could play out. Most firms have a formal recruiting process, but the exit process is informal and undercover, it’s as if they are pretending the traffic is only one way – people only come in, and they never leave. Which is kind of ridiculous. Imagine instead that employees could register their intention to leave a company. Have an honest, non judgemental discussion about why they’ve chosen to leave and be assisted along the journey.

So how might this work? Maybe they’d get assistance with improving their CV, maybe get their current employer to be a referee (if the employee deserves it). Possibly give the leaving staff member a short lead project to work on to make them more employable elsewhere. No, let’s get even weirder – imagine a physical co-working space for people who’ve decided to leave where they can work on the process of leaving, with assistance from the company, while getting full pay. The company would certainly know how happy their workers are based on how full, or empty the exits lounge was. Forget contrived culture surveys – just go see how busy the exits lounge is!

I’m certain any company which had the courage to create a formal assisted exit program would help them become an employer of choice and here’s why.

Firstly, it would be a more attractive place to take on work knowing the path out, is assisted. It would significantly reduce the risk of anyone coming in.  The company would have more time to find appropriate replacements for those on the way out. They would gather important cultural feedback from the ‘exiteers’ and have a chance to fix it – improve the way work gets done in their organisation. They’d see where the real staffing problems were – which divisions, what resources, which bosses. They might even be able to find a better or more suitable role for the person intent on leaving, before they leave and stop it. The process might even save the company money.

The kind of approach could make the company more like a learning institution, or a University where people actually expect to graduate from it – which in reality most people do. Almost no one stays at a company for life these days. It would even be a bit like a family where people learn, grow and eventually leave the home – with the help of their parents. But also, it would be a more human place to work because this process would replicate the human reality that people move on over time. And where they come from is usually regarded as quite important. “We got this recruit from Company X, you know the one with with the ‘Exists Lounge’ – all their staff are usually great.” 

The future is a weird place. Often things which seem counterintuitive and unimaginable at first become something future generations can’t imagine living without.

Our careers as projecteers

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The riskiest career choice of the future will be to have a single job. When we have a job, we not only have 100% of our cashflow linked to a single customer (employer), we see less of the changing world. For the best part of 200 years – craftspeople, artisans and farmers couldn’t compete against the industrialisation of pretty much anything. But we live in the generation, where all this is about to change. The best careers will become those of projecteers.

While no one really knows the exact technical skills we will need in the future, we do know that the world will be a very different place 10, 20 and 50 years from now. It might even be that for the first time in history we can’t specifically tell our children – that qualification XYZ, will hold them in good stead. The one thing that they, and we, will need for sure, is the ability to reinvent ourselves repeatedly through our working lives. This means that human based skills like emotional intelligence, anti-fragility, and adaptability will become increasingly important.

If we think about work, we have historically tied ourselves to titles. Often, the first question we get asked at a social gathering is what we do for a living. We psychologically link ourselves to that ‘thing’ we do to make money – and in some ways this makes it difficult for us to change direction. If traditionally we have built our economic identities like stone houses with very deep foundations, going forward it will make more sense to build economic identities like tents, that we can fold, pick up and move elsewhere. Even though we don’t know exactly where we will have to move, we know shifting constantly will be inevitable.

Then – Why has this person moved around so much? Are they unstable or incompetent?

Now – Why has this person been in the one place so long? Are they scared or incompetent?

By taking the ‘tent‘ approach, every move creates a new knowledge set. A new set of experiences created by the new environment itself. We’ll see new things and develop new ways to ‘set up the tent’. The mobility, invents the skill set. As a projecteer this is exactly what I do. Economically I change places almost everyday… it’s a weird and wonderful mix of different, yet related experiences. A keynote speech here, a c-suite strategy session there, a media interview the day after, startup mentoring and investing, a new book next year, and a hacker project or two on the side. Yet, I still maintain the single minded proposition of what I do: Experiment with emerging technology in business.

The breadth and variety of work we’ll do in the future, will be the thing that makes us more valuable to those who seek our services. The skill corporations, governments and communities will need in the future is flexibility of mind – not process efficiency.

If we’ve ever viewed our life as a movie we star in – then we all need to start thinking a lot more like big movie stars. People who will be in far more than a single blockbuster – but a large number of movies, some on the big screen, and some indy side projects. We’ll play a variety of different roles, in different movies, but each set we walk onto, we’ll bring with us what we learned on the previous gig.

If you liked this post – you’ll dig my latest book

"What’s exercise?" a question about the future of work

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Let’s imagine you somehow got your hands on a working DeLorean – and took a trip back to the not-too-distant past of the pre-industrialised world. And when you arrived, you sat down with someone and asked them this simple question over a semi-dirty glass of water at their kitchen table.

Future Human: Did you exercise today?

Pre-Industrial Human: What’s exercise?

Future Human: It’s when you move your body around and lift things to stay fit.

Pre-Industrial Human: Oh, you mean work – is exercise a new word for work? Yeah, sure, I worked today. All day, in fact. All of the daylight hours. I’m very tired.

Future Human: No no, not work…I mean extra movement of your body before or after you’ve finished work.

Pre-Industrial Human: Why would I do that? I’m exhausted. I already did that all day.

Future Human: The reason is that you want to stay fit.

Pre-Industrial Human: What’s staying fit?

Future Human: It means you keep your body in good shape – like ‘thin’, and you remain strong.

Pre-Industrial Human: But my work already does that, and everyone I know is very thin, although I’ve heard stories about the King having a big belly.

Future Human: Well, in the future people do exercise, because they mostly sit down while working, and get fat from eating too much food.

Pre- Industrial Human: Wow, they sit down at work! How much food do they have?

Future Human: As much as they want, all kinds from all over the world…. but let’s focus here…

Pre-Industrial Human: So where do they do this…exercise thing?

Future Human: In gyms, mostly, or running or swimming. Or play sports.

Pre-Industrial Human: What’s a gym? 

Future Human: A place with weights, where you lift them, or do classes like spin or aerobics. 

Pre-Industrial Human: Oh, where do they put these heavy things they lift? Who are they lifting them for?

Future Human: Oh, the weights are specially made, only for lifting. People just lift them up and down. And the classes teach people how to move their bodies…

Pre-Industrial Human: Wow, this sure sounds strange…

Future Human: Strange, well you should see how they look in their spandex…

Pre-Industrial Human: What’s spandex…

Pre Industrial revolution dirty water

Of course this conversation could go on forever, in many directions and fill the void of the Middle Ages pre-industrial mind with all kinds of physical automation and wizardry of tomorrow. The Exercise Industry, and any flow of money, work and exchange of value associated with it, is of course a pertinent example. The positive energy balance (Read here excess food intake) many humans face would not exist without the invention of machinery to remove human labour in farming and food manufacture. The consequences of outsourcing of gathering our food are not limited only to the gym, weights and spandex. We could add to the list the birth of refrigeration, packaged foods, powered transport, television, the diet industry, Jane Fonda aerobics, education, sporting brands and all manner of things which are the result of us, the first generation in human history to have more people to die from over eating than malnutrition.

For every solution technology invents, it presents two more problems to be solved. It’s a less than a zero sum game where two new revenue streams arrive for every one it takes away. New unintended problems arise and new entrepreneurial solutions can be brought to market. Everything outside of the most basic physical needs are human inventions and the result of some previous invention. But ask me what the jobs in the distant future will be and I can’t tell you, just like a pre industrial human couldn’t fathom the need for ‘exercise’. And while AI will take away the need for many forms of intellectual labour in the near term, we will find new tasks for idle humans. Of this, I have zero doubt. Yes, there will be pain for the unimaginative, unprepared and stagnant humans during the transition, but it’s not the first time this has happened and our personal future depends on our personal actions.

Who knows, perhaps an entire industry might emerge to keep our brains in shape as we outsource left brain logic to the micro chip?

Get secret free chapters of my new book – The Lessons School Forgot – out now.

Saving your best work

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

If you, like me earn your living through intellectual or emotional labour (read you don’t lift heavy things) then it’s easy to mistake the former for the latter. It’s easy to think there is a physical limit in our output capabilities, that there are only so many intellectual calories available to be burnt. And because of this we should probably save ourselves, just a little. Play it on the safe side so we still have some brain juice left for the important moment, the moment that really matters.

I used to think that too. But here’s what I found. The more I do, the more I can do. The more creative output I have, the more creative output I come up with. It feels like (at least to me personally) that the more I do, the more I receive back from the creative process. As if there is a creativity multiplier effect. I was was recently scrambling to finish the manuscript for my first book. During the process I was worried that blogging might interfere with the thoughts available for the book. I thought I should save my best work. I didn’t want to waste words on the non vital project. But what I found towards the end, was that the more I wrote the more I had. I just started pumping out the blog entries anyway, and on these days I had the largest and most prolific output for the book. It was counter intuitive to me.

The lessons for me is clear, the more we create, the more we can create. And as far as modern day work goes, it’s important we don’t confuse our physical limitations with our creative possibilities.

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Monday is your friend

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I’m typing this on  a Sunday evening. I’ve had various times in my life when I used to hate Sunday, not due to its own features and benefits, but because it was the pre-amble to Monday. Mondayitus.  The dread for Monday was so deep and worrisome that it ruined the day before it which is was a free day. And what is more ironic is that I even liked Thursday more than I liked Friday, because Friday was too close to Monday. It is strange indeed how our minds can work. Sometimes it is worth listening to the strange.

Tonight, I went for a jog and I was genuinely excited about the week ahead and couldn’t even wait for Monday to get some of my projects underway. We are doing another world first for Tomcar Australia which will be global news. I’m attending the FML this Wednesday night to help jumpstart the maker movement in my fair city Melbourne. I’m working on a few Hackathons for some big corporates. I’m doing a new talk on the ‘future of work’, which I will deliver at the co-work in the lane way for the Hub Melbourne. Working on a new technology related property  development. Shipping the Super Awesome thing & person from Romania. Working on my new book and might even be launching my new startup by the end of the week. I can’t wait.

I’ve decided that Monday is our best friend. There is nothing more telling in life than how we feel about it. Monday knows all. It is about time we started listening to our internal mental Monday sermon and tried and create a Monday that Monday actually appreciates. I ignored Monday for a while, but now I’m listening to it again and it is helping me smile.

As far as I can tell our Mondays are the ultimate arbiter of happiness.

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