An Age of Transformation

Wow, we made it to the end of the year! Never in my professional life I have seen so much value go up in smoke as in 2008 and 2009. The credit crunch and economic crises have hit us hard. Some economies more than others. And now what? Are we going back to the old ways or has something changed? Have we learnt anything? Are we now open to a new level of consciousness, to new ways of thinking? And what are the implications for communications? Content and media. Let me explain.

Last year, I followed the workings of banks and financial services firms in our part of the world closely. Multinationals and local players. My impression is that they are all recovering from near death experiences and heavy injuries. And now their natural reflex seems to be to return to old habits. Shifting product and looking for big margins to satisfy shareholders, playing at being the ‘ big boys’ again. And saying how important it is to regain consumer trust. Their reputations are shattered. Nobody trusts them anymore. Taxpayers across the Netherlands (and in many other countries too!) underwrote and financed the banks’ failures by injecting over €100 billion into the financial system. And rightly, citizens now expect them to serve society. President Obama just said this explicitly in his recent speech to bankers in the USA. It is time to transform and serve. That’s good company practice!

And if bankers, insurance companies and other established institutions don’t change by themselves, they will be forced by business sense or an innate sense of business survival – and transformed over the coming decades. The power is definitely shifting from supply to demand. We’ve seen this coming for years. And now, finally, it’s here. The 21^st century may have begun 10 years late but consumers, citizens and professional customers are now able to organize themselves, to unite their needs and ignite the power of new coalitions. Just one example: non-smokers and vegetarians collaborate to construct a low-cost life insurance for people with the lowest risk of heart-disease. Just think of the potential – zillions of other coalitions! The power of hidden potential. It is no longer the decisive power of numbers and the uninformed. We are racing down the future highway with empowered, informed, techno-savvy individuals who know how to connect. We are moving from the typical 20^th century ‘shotgun in the dark’ approach to the focused, pin-point laser-beam networked economy. Flash insights. Synaptic dimensions. Driving it? The internet of course.  New smart applications, new associations, new groups, new collaborative tools and as much bandwidth as you can handle. It enables individuals to become powerful. Together I am strong. That’s the mantra for the next 10 years. Rabobank, the good old cooperative Netherlands bank, has this at the heart of its strategy.

Organizations, brands, governments and their leaders should facilitate this. Bring the power and competences of their organizations into a totally connected world. Empower people and businesses and you’ll move up the value chain. Acting with a distinctive performance and delivering value in a loosely coupled layer that surfs on top of their generic infrastructures. Almost utilities. Soft humming computer centres, totally efficient and 24/7 reliable. The future is for the ‘connectors’, those individuals, directors and leaders that bring new coalitions to the stage. Social media are great. Guiding and educating people to unleash the potential of this whole new dimension is the challenge for professional communicators. Fully open and fully transparent in what you bring to, and take from, the table. Unfettered access to a world of digital information and practical business opportunities. A respected citizen contributing to society. And that is exactly where it all began. Happy 2010!

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