The New Now | Book Review

The NEW NOW: Preparing for the 10 trends that will dominate a Post-COVID world.

By Michael McQueen

OVERVIEW

I was lucky enough to see Michael McQueen present twice over the years, and his approach is always so engaging - a good mix of insights and passion brought to life with his own perspective. When he released a book identifying the ten biggest trends to impact businesses over the next few years I knew that it would be a no-brainer to add to any leaders bookshelf.

The book sets out the ten trends, and then goes into each trend in depth, asking questions and providing new research and knowledge to help spark your own ideas, challenges and solutions. I finished this book with pages of thoughts, ideas, and questions to challenge my own and my teams thinking and planning.

FAVOURITE INSIGHT/LEARNING

What’s interesting about this book is that the trends will resonate differently for each person depending on their own personal knowledge and experience. Here are some of the trends that really stood out to me and the thoughts and questions they inspired:

• Acceleration of AI

  • If we struggle to distinguish between whether we’re talking to a robot or a human in some Customer Service environments like chatbots, what are the real capabilities here with AI and how does that impact your future workforce - what are the skills that you really need to succeed? This seems particularly topical after the release of the Tesla Bot in August 2021.

• The COVID-Conditioned Consumer

  • Thinking back to last year, we saw the huge disruption that the 2020 lockdowns created and watched how some organisations were able to leverage off that into something new and better vs. other organisations who just held on hoping for a return to normal. McKinsey said “In many respects, 2020 was an inflection point. Over the previous decade, the Australian economy had hummed along, and companies achieved stable growth. Now that the landscape has completely shifted, they can’t simply return to their established strategies. Companies that hadn’t invested in innovation as a core function prior to the pandemic are already struggling to meet new demands by clients and employees.“ We can see that in stark daylight now, brands that didn’t innovate last year, are now struggling again in this new wave of lockdowns. Will they take the opportunity to disrupt themselves?

  • Customers are open and expecting new ways to shop, how are you accomodating that? Are you creating channels that are diversified from risk? Are you providing new and innovative ways for your customer to experience your brand?

• Trust as a commodity.

  • Trust is something that is commonplace to talk about in relation to teams and collaborations - take Speed of Trust from Stephen Covey as an example. We know that people who work in an atmosphere of trust can collaborate productively, so things get done faster and at lower cost. What is a less-obvious but just as potent concept is the idea of how Trust is built and maintained between brands and consumers.

  • What are you doing to build trust between your brand with consumers? When you look at the Social Responsibility activations your brand does, are they performative or do they really bring value to the world around you?
    
    

FAVOURITE QUOTE

THOUGHT PROVOKERS

Questions for self-reflection:

• Do you and your leadership team discuss the future and the challenges it could bring?

• Do you plan for changes that may not seem possible?

• Are you flexible enough to adapt and change?

Grab your own copy of the book here: The New Now - Michael McQueen