Business and Development Trends for 2011

Business and Development Trends for 2011

Some of my observations:

• Technology will move from implementation alternative to strategic factor. That is, technological potential will determine products, services, and relationships, and not merely serve as after-the-fact routes for them.

• Work will bifurcate into the blazingly simple (basic services, such as serving coffee, driving a bus, cooking basic meals) and the increasingly complex. Most jobs will require higher and higher cognitive abilities as options increase and responses have considerably different qualities of result.

• Globalization and it’s attendant multiculturalism will continue to affect more and more organizations, down to the “mom and pop” small business. Serious societal problems will occur in Europe, where birth rates aren’t replacing deaths and imported labor is mandatory, yet assimilation has never been a strong point.

• Insourcing will grow, as organizations are no longer willing to trade the lower costs of overseas call centers, for example, for the increasing customer dissatisfaction and abandonment due to the largely terrible service provided offshore. The “return on customer service” will be a priority.

• Volunteerism will grow in response to financial cutbacks from organizations and government sources. This will include both individual efforts and organizations “loaning” talent to certain causes and groups.

• The stock market will go up substantially over the year (as will profits) as people accept the fact that we have successfully weathered some of the worst conditions imaginable over the past couple of years, and the recovery is simply awaiting more belief.

• Human resources and training functions will continue to attenuate, with their transactional work given to external specialists and the transformational work vested either in line operations or external consultants.

• The “value proposition” of organizations will become more important in consumers’ decisions about spending. Branding will evolve to embrace both business and social values.

• Value will be a factor of customer loyalty and tangible programs to retain customers and gain referral business. Social media platforms will continue to be tangential to “high touch” tactics, especially by retailers. (According to Consultants News from Kennedy Consulting, Peterborough, NH, “Customers enrolled in traditional loyalty programs outspend social media users by a factor of 10 or more.”)

• The growing gap in society will be a knowledge gap, which will impact work acquisition and accumulation of wealth. There will be a focused, new emphasis on education being high quality and affordable for all.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.