Entrepreneurship often carries an air of glamor and boundless opportunity. For me though, it was neither a choice nor a planned move; it was a necessity. In 2019, I found myself stepping out of a senior leadership role at a bank, leaving behind the comfort of a stable sal- ary and the relative predictability of corporate life. What lay ahead was a journey of fear, uncertainty, doubt, and ultimately transformation.



It was the retrenchments that forced my hand. I had to make a difficult decision. Do I stay and fight for a role with no guarantees or take a package and walk away? I chose to run, hopeful, perhaps naively, that I could establish a boutique consultancy focused on corporate innovation.



Amazingly, I landed my first client almost immediately, a stroke of luck that initially vali- dated my belief in the new path.



But all projects end. Nine months later, as my first assignment wrapped up, reality set in. I hadn’t nurtured my network or built a pipeline for future clients. I assumed that initial success would automat- ically translate into ongoing demand. It didn’t.



Approaching Christmas with no prospects, no income, and mounting anxiety, was my lowest point. The fear of failing my family weighed heavily, and I often found myself taking deep, deliberate breaths just to keep going.



Yet, it was during this period of uncertainty that I began to learn how to become an entrepreneur.



And the first lesson was to learn how to control my emotions, particularly those of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, what entrepreneurs call ‘FUD’, as they had become constant companions. It was only when I stopped trying to suppress them but rather em- braced them that I was truly able to make progress in my business.



I started making cold calls. I tried doing live interviews. I volunteered to write a column. I started lecturing. I started a podcast. I offered coaching to senior executives.



I felt like an imposter. I embarrassed myself. But I took these feelings of FUD as an indicator that I was trying new things.



And that was good because it meant I was growing.



I was building resilience.



And it helped me to stop thinking in terms of success or failure and instead had me thinking more about actions and reactions.



Removing the fear of failure and replacing it with curiosity about the possibilities was, for me at least, an epiphany.



But much as I felt like these new experiences were putting me in the right places, I was still struggling to convert the experiences into business opportunities.



And that was because I was not actively looking for the signals within the noise.



Rather than getting out to potential clients and observing their actions, I had been asking my close friends and family for their feedback. And much as meant well, their well wishes were not reflective e marketplace. 



I had taken the easy route to find affirmation rather than the cold, clinical path an entrepreneur s to take to validate that there is demand for their product or service.



So, now, I watch for the signals. How many of my mailers were opened? How many pitches have converted? What was the body language like in the meeting? How many days did it take to get a response? Where are the referrals coming from?



Fast forward five years, and I’m still a micro-entre- preneur, facing FUD every day. But now, I see these challenges as part of the journey.



That innovation consultancy has now morphed into a PR and marketing agency that generates leads for others by hosting thought-leadership events.



And I still make cold calls, do live interviews, write a column, lecture, podcast, and provide coaching to senior executives.



And being totally honest, I still feel like a bit of an imposter.



But I have found my niche and have started to explore ways to scale. And I now enjoy what I do and have less worries about feeding my family.



So if you are thinking about, or have started on the journey of becoming a micro-entrepreneur, remember this. Your path will not be the same as mine. But if you embrace your fears, look for the signals in the noise, and experiment continually, you will increase your chances of building a sustainable and fulfilling business.



I wish you luck!

Female artist concentrating while doing craft at table in living room

Lessons From The Edge And Facing Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD): A Micro-Entrepreneur’s Journey

You’re working in a large corporation, and you’ve been given two choices.



Choice one guarantees a profit of $1 million in the next 12 months. It’s safe, predictable, and secure.



Choice two, however, gives you the opportunity to make $1 billion. But there’s a catch: your chance of success is only 1%.



Mathematically, the answer seems obvious. One percent of $1 billion is still $10 million; 10 times more than the first choice.



But what would you choose?



This question was posed to me and a bunch of successful entrepreneurs at an event in Los Angeles by Astro Teller, CEO of X, the radical innovation arm and moonshot factory of Alphabet.



They all voted for the second choice. Which, if you are a venture capitalist, I’d expect, as the evidence is clear; extreme bets pay off in the long run.



According to CB Insights, 67% of venture capital (VC)- backed startups fail, which means that great VCs rely on a small percentage of their investments making exponential returns. They quite literally rely on the one in 20 bet, bringing back a 100 or even 1,000-fold or more returns.



The mindset is home runs matter, strikeouts don’t.



Missing out on the next Google or Airbnb is the real failure, not losing on the ones that didn’t work out. For VCs to thrive, therefore, they have to take the 1% bet.



And thrive they do, because as at May 2024, there were over 1,200 unicorns — startups valued at over $1 billion; with a combined value of approximately $3.8 trillion.



This is of course all great if you work in venture capital. But what about, if you, like I used to, work in corporate?



For me, there was no way I would have ever chosen option two. And neither would my peers. It wasn’t because we didn’t understand the math; it was because we were afraid.



Because corporates are structured to focus on certainty.



I wasn’t paid to fail or take radical bets. I was paid to deliver consistent, predictable results.



So, I know from experience just how difficult it is to push for bold, unconventional ideas in large, legacy organizations. The resistance to change can be overwhelming. Those corporate antibodies make any wannabe intrapreneurs, like I once was, feel like outcasts.



Which is why 99% of corporate leaders choose the safe bets, over and over again. It’s about self-preservation and avoiding career-ending mistakes.



All well and good you might say, if it wasn’t for the fact that predictable companies are unlikely to survive the next decade.



If you think this sounds extreme, consider this. In 1974, the average lifespan of a Fortune 500 company was 75 years. Today, only 12% of those companies remain, and the average lifespan has plummeted to just 15.



What’s pushing them out of business? The answer is obviously venture capital.



An industry that has mastered the art of the 1% bet has learned to disrupt corporates that are too scared to take risks. VCs fund innovative startups that move fast, embrace uncertainty, scale quickly and push incumbents to the brink.



So, the reality for corporations today is therefore stark. Playing it safe is the riskiest choice of all. In an era of rapid disruption, certain bets will never create the breakthroughs needed to stay ahead.



Most corporate leaders I think know this, but are simply too afraid to take the 1% bets. It doesn’t matter how much data, research, or logic is applied. Fear of failure drives their decision-making.



But if the evidence is so clear, that corporates need to take more risks to remain relevant, what can be done to encourage their leadership teams to take risker decisions?



One answer is to change the incentives, to reward executives for driving innovation programs within their organizations, in a similar way to how Alphabet has with its X company.



But the paradox here is that this requires a change in mindset from the very people who created the problem in the first place.



The board.



And to get them to change their opinions about incentives and governance can only really happen if you can get them to believe that the company is facing an existential crisis.



Not easy. But boards that realize the adverse risks of being too prudent and therefore work with their executives, to encourage their intrapreneurs to take the 1% bets, are far more likely to survive than those that don’t

Finding the potential to improve their profits

Expert-Speak: The 1% Bet, Are You Afraid To Take It?

Have you found your niche? I received a lot of advice when I set up my company, but perhaps the most important consisted of just three words: Find Your Niche.



Five years later, I’m still struggling to apply this principle. Interestingly though, so are most of the companies I deal with.



So why is this, and what are we missing out on exactly? Well, let’s start by defining what a niche business is.



Per ChatGPT, it’s “a company that focuses on a specific segment of the market, catering to a particular group of customers with specialized needs or interests”.



Nerve Money provides a great example of what it means to be niche. If you have not heard of them, that’s because you are not a musician or comedian in need of a business banking app. You see, Nerve only focuses on delivering banking services to artists living in America.



Like all niche businesses, Nerve has a huge advantage in that it has fewer competitors. In the United States, thousands of banks fight for market share with similar products and services. But Nerve isn’t competing against the likes of JP Morgan and Citibank. Its founders believe they have found a differentiated offering that will appeal directly to American artists who want help with invoicing and payments.



But it’s examples like this that simultaneously highlight the benefits of going niche whilst scaring business owners away from trying to find theirs.



And that’s because size matters!



Nerve, for example, may face less competition, but they are restricted to the three million people who sing songs and play guitars. Most bankers I know would treat this as a passion project and would never imagine taking the idea to go niche to their leadership teams.



However, the fear that going niche means missing out on larger opportunities, is also a fallacy. Because niche doesn’t have to limit your upside.



In fact, some of the biggest and most well-known businesses in the world are actually niche.



Have you, for example, heard of Patagonia? Yes?



Well, they achieved global success by targeting outdoor enthusiasts who value high-quality, environmentally-friendly clothing.



Or, what about Nvidia?



Their initial niche was GPUs designed for gamers. And now they have found a bigger niche where they provide AI chips for data centers, with over 40% of their revenue coming from Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta.



As an aside, at the time of writing, this niche business is now worth just over $3 trillion, and they are the second-most valuable company in the world.



That puts them just ahead of Apple, who many would argue also deserve to be considered niche.



So, niche most definitely does not mean small. It does mean narrowing your focus so you really zoom in on delivering quality, differentiated services that solve real problems and generate real value for your clients.



And what excites me most about this idea of ‘going niche to thrive’ is that the opportunity to succeed has now been amplified a thousandfold because of the arrival of artificial intelligence and large language models.



These technologies allow us, for the first time, to design and distribute an infinite array of products tailored to solve end-user problems in highly personalized ways.



If you’re wondering where the demand will come from, rest assured. We each have an endless capacity to imagine new problems, and each one, much like fingerprints, will always require a unique solution.



But will big businesses, like JP Morgan, have the wherewithal to use their capital and resources to create hundreds of differentiated brands that cater to every possible human whim?



Or will it be the century for startups, which, like Nerve, leverage the democratization of technology to collectively solve for these infinite use cases?



I don’t know, although I do have my hopes and suspicions.



Ultimately, whether AI drives huge consolidation or mass fragmentation, it is clear that in both cases, the spoils will go to those that move away from second-rate generic offerings to instead focus on niche services that solve our unique problems at scale. As business leaders, it has never been more critical to find our niche. So, I’m going to double down on finding mine. Have you found yours?

Marketing segmentation

Expert-Speak: ‘It Has Never Been More Critical To Find Our Niche’

When I worked in large corporate environments, I often sought feedback. Sometimes, the feedback really hurt. But did it make me a better leader? Looking back, I’m not sure. Experience, experimentation, and learning from numerous mistakes were, in my opinion, far more influential.However, this article isn’t about how feedback can sting personally with questionable upsides; I’m actually proposing that companies reconsider relying on consumer feedback altogether.



Because, while it’s commonly assumed that feedback o  ers valuable insights, time after time, reality often paints a di  erent picture. Consider this: in a large Royal Automobile Club (RAC) survey conducted in the United Kingdom (U.K.) in 2017, a staggering 91% of drivers self-identifi ed as law-abiding. However, when comparing this self-assessment to concrete data from traffic cameras, 48% of drivers exceed the speed limits on highways. 



Fortunately, the U.K. government chose to ignore driver feedback and spent billions of dollars trying to fi nd ways to discourage speeding and improve road safety.So why do we often see huge discrepancies between self-reported beliefs and observed behaviors?



Social desirability bias, where we try to present ourselves in a positive light, is one possible explanation. Selective memory is another. In fact, there are many, many reasons why our opinions don’t align to reality.But it’s not just governments that need to be aware of the risk of making decisions based on people’s opinions. Companies do, too.For example, one of the most widely reported new product failures ever, was ‘New Coke’, a slightly sweeter drink that Coca-Cola introduced in 1995.Despite the fact they had feedback from hundreds of thousands of people that they preferred the new fl avor, when it was introduced on to supermarket shelves, no one bought it. 



It just didn’t sell. And people complained in their thousands, which ultimately led to the original version being reintroduced.What’s di  erent from the RAC survey though, is that this was a blind taste test, so bias should not have been a factor.So why didn’t people run out and buy New Coke in droves when those same people had said it tasted so good?Poor marketing? A deep-routed love for an iconic American brand? The fact that taste tests obviously do not align to how people actually consume drinks?



There are many theories, but it’s my view that business leaders shouldn’t waste time trying to unpack the differences between stated preferences and observed realities. Instead, they should focus on understanding what people will do in real-world scenarios by designing and running experiments that test actual behaviors in real-world settings.



The story of Five Guys showcases what I mean perfectly. If you have never had a Five Guys burger, I thoroughly recommend it, although you may need a second mortgage as they are expensive.Jerry Murrell started the burger chain back in 1986 in America by “finding a place where the store is out of the way, and where nobody can see it”. He didn’t advertise, and he only used premium ingredients.No market research. No focus groups. No consumer surveys.



His view was: “If we can put it where it’s hard to fi nd, but we still get people coming, then we know we’ve got something.”



Later on, as they were considering franchising, they tested market demand by placing a sign outside one of their stores, which read: “If you are in a hurry, there are a lot of really good burger places nearby.”Crazy? No, it was genius.Instead of trying to encourage people to eat their product, they actively dissuaded them.



Yet the queues still stretched out the door. And from that simple set of tests, Murrell knew he had a product that could be rolled out everywhere.



Compare and contrast to the likely outcome if he’d taken the more orthodox route and asked people whether they would be happy to pay infl ated prices for a product that was similar to others on the market, just with longer wait times?



Instead, by testing his ideas in the wild, observing behaviors, and adapting as necessary, Murrell was able to create a multi-billion-dollar franchise and develop a new market sector with premium stores in pretty much every major city around the world.So, stop asking consumers what they think. Feedback really does hurt. Start fi nding ways to watch what they do instead.



P.S: When the original Coke was reintroduced, sales rocketed, and it quickly regained its position as the world’s top-selling sugar cola.

Woman Reviews Paperwork in Conference Room

EXPERT-SPEAK: Stop Asking For Feedback. Why It Can Really Hurt

What do Uber, Netflix and TikTok have in common?



It’s one word.



And working out how to remove it will become the most important strategic discussion for CEOs across the globe in the coming years.



It should already be the most important word.



And that word is friction.



The companies I named at the start are all early examples of how you can have global success by removing friction from your customer’s lives.



Uber, for example, removes friction by making it much easier and faster to pick up a ride than the metered taxi model it replaced.



Netflix removes friction by delivering quality, binge- able content without delaying consumer gratification with adverts or timetables.



And TikTok takes it to another level by removing the friction of viewers needing to spend time choosing what to watch. Its algorithm calculates what people want based on how they interact with the app. In fact, the more you think about it, the more obvious it becomes that the best companies are masters at removing friction. Google (frictionless search), Wise (frictionless  cross- border payments) and Amazon (frictionless shopping) are just three more examples.



On the other hand, the brands we love to hate are the ones that waste our most precious asset. Time.



For example, don’t you get frustrated with the excessive form-filling when hiring a car, queueing at a bank branch, or holding for a call center agent?



I know I do.



Fortunately, this is all about to change, and companies that have clung on to life like limpets despite wasting millions of hours of their customers’ lives will have to adapt to survive because of the widespread adoption of large language models, like ChatGPT.



Take the example of Klarna, a leading global payments and shopping service.



On February 27 2024, they announced that their new AI assistant had handled two-thirds of customer chats in its first month. That’s the equivalent workload of 700 full-time agents, which equates to an estimated



$40-million improvement in their bottom line. They went on to say that the AI agents were on par with customer satisfaction scores, were more accurate in errand resolution (leading to a 25% drop in repeat inquiries) and were able to resolve queries in less than two minutes, compared to the previous 11.



You don’t have to be a call center expert to understand that these are just staggering improvements which showcase the potential of moving from human to artificial intelligence. And you have to remember that this is version 0.1, and we should expect exponential improvements over the next few years.



In fact, the idea that a machine will be able to better communicate with humans in a more personalized, knowledgeable, and empathetic manner is no longer just science fiction. It’s fast becoming a science fact. 



Having just spent a wasted hour on the phone with my internet service provider, I can’t wait. I would pay extra to be able to deal with a bot that listens to my problems, understands my history, is able to take decisions without escalating, can respond not just in my language but in my accent or dialect and is able to pick up on any number of visual and audio queues to better understand me and make me feel valued and appreciated. Perhaps even loved.



And if this leads to hours-long call times because customers feel compelled to share their personal trials and tribulations, why not?



After all, our buying decisions are based on emotions, and who better to exploit that than a machine?



Because unlike human agents, the virtual kind are available 24/7 in every single corner of the globe and they know more about us than any human ever can.



These are not just my fantasies. The markets agree. When Klarna shared its AI successes, it was reported that a leading traditional call center company saw its share price drop in just one day.



CEOs now have no choice but to switch their investments from human to artificial intelligence to provide frictionless services.



The benefits for investors and customers are clear. It’s equally obvious that the millions of knowledge workers who operate today’s phones will have to find new vocations, and they will have to find them fast.



Which begs one big question. Do we really want a frictionless world if the cost is that human capital becomes worthless

TikTok To Be Banned From UK Government Phones

Remove This To Win, But Beware Of The Consequences

Five years ago, I couldn’t imagine asking boards and business leaders whether robots would one day run their companies.



However, the massive increase in awareness of the potential of large language models is forcing executives to explore how to use robots and artificial intelligence in day-to-day decision-making.



In fact, the rise of executive robots has already started.



For example, in May 2023, Forbes reported that Dictador, a progressive premium brand rum distiller, had appointed an AI CEO called Mika.



It is gimmicky for sure, as humans are still very much controlling her AI strings, but as Mika reportedly said in an interview with Reuters, “My decision-making process relies on extensive data analysis and aligning with the company’s strategic objectives.” She went on to explain how she was devoid of personal bias, which helps ensure that strategic choices are prioritized in line with the organization’s best interests, not hers.



This sounds amazing. So, is Mika the forerunner of the mass adoption of AI for corporate governance and leadership roles?



For once, the likely answer is yes, absolutely.



For starters, the demand for a solution like this is apparent.



Humans regularly make bad decisions, and more often than not, this leads to someone losing a lot of money.



Why, for example, did OpenAI’s board sack Sam Altmann (before he returned as CEO in November last year)?



What led Elon Musk to rebrand Twitter to X?



And why didn’t Silicon Valley Bank diversify its risk away from startups?



Decisions like these wipe out trillions of dollars of value every single year. And these three examples are just the tip of the iceberg.



Further, those impacted aren’t just the super-wealthy. Often, it’s the poorest who see their life savings and pensions hit hardest.



All of which means there is a huge interest from everyone, from governments to investors, to find ways to improve decision- making and corporate governance.



We already spend billions of dollars for consultants and business schools to develop leaders and models to help companies maximize profits while minimizing risks.



But these billions will quickly switch to AI alternatives if there is even the smallest of probabilities that technology will help improve a stock’s potential returns.



So, the demand is there.



But how long will we have to wait for the likes of the already hugely-impressive ChatGPT to offer intelligence that can not only answer questions in narrow fields but actually analyze data from multiple sources, draw inferences, consider interdependencies, develop execution plans, draw up funding requirements, consider resource allocations, raise funding and build support along with all the other tasks and activities that are required in any modern-day business?



Mustafa Suleyman, founder of DeepMind and Inflection.AI, explores this question in his recent bestseller, The Coming Wave.



Specifically, he asks how long it will be before machines answer and act on prompts such as “Please design and execute a strategy that will allow me to make $1mill on Amazon in as few months as possible with just $100K of investment.”



His conclusion? “Aside from the legal requirements of registering as a business on the marketplace and getting a bank account, all of this seems to me eminently doable. I think it will be done within the next year and probably fully autonomously within three to five.”



When an industry insider as respected as Suleyman makes a comment like this, we should sit up and listen.



And it makes absolute sense when you consider that a potent combination of factors is driving development in AI. Breakthroughs in machine learning algorithms, dramatic increases in computing power, the abundance of extensive data sets, advancements in cloud computing, enhanced global connectivity, escalating demand across industries and the democratization of access through open-source initiatives are just some of the factors propelling it at exponential rates.



And, of course, the biggest factor of all is perhaps the simple fact that we are now using AI to build AI, as more and more code is being written by machines, not developers. So perhaps the real question isn’t whether or even when robots will run companies. Shareholders and boards might do better considering what types of leaders they need to employ to manage the transition from human to augmented to algorithmic leadership. This is not an easy question to answer. There is no template for designing leadership systems for robots. Perhaps ChatGPT has the answer?

Robot working at desk, 3D Rendering

Expert-Speak: Will Robots Run Companies?

In 1943, the Royal Air Force looked for quick fixes to improve the probability that their bombers could complete their missions and successfully return home. One option was to add armor-plating, but what was the optimal placement which would ensure maximum protection without compromising the aircraft’s performance?



The accepted thinking, based on the data collected from returning bombers, was that the wings, nose, and fuselage should be armored up. They, after all, had the most bullet holes.



It took a gifted mathematician, Abraham Wald, to highlight that the best solution would, in reality, be to armor the three areas that never seemed to get hit: the cockpit, the engines, and the tail.



He had correctly hypothesized that the bullet patterns would be evenly distributed and, therefore, the planes that did not return had been taken down due to weaknesses in these three key areas.



This is a wonderful story as it highlights how, if you want to be effective using data for strategic decision-making, you have to think deeply about both the data you have and the data you don’t.



Companies, surprisingly, despite their significant investment in technology, still seem to succumb to their own version of this data selection bias.



For while they do not have to worry about the negative consequences of suboptimal armoring, they do need to optimize the placement of resources, to ensure they provide maximum customer value without compromising their ability to scale profitably.



The data they consistently seem to ignore when making these types of resource decisions is that which exposes the real value they bring to their clients.



I’ll use the case of mid-size Asian bank, DBS Bank, as an example. For years they had managed their business using key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs helped them to focus on efficiently distributing their products to millions of retail customers.



Call centers, for example, would typically focus on reducing call abandonment, queuing times, handling times, and improving first call resolutions.



And I suspect that over time DBS were able to improve productivity and offer a more streamlined service to their clients.



But although these metrics no doubt helped the company reduce its costs, it reportedly added extra ones for their customers.



And the cost that seemingly annoyed their customers the most was the extra hours they had to waste, dealing with the bank.



So it was Paul Cobban and his team who realized they were managing using the data they had, not the data they needed. So they pivoted and reset the strategy to focus on improving just one metric: reducing the time customers spend dealing with them. Now, their teams had to think more deeply about how to ensure their customers didn’t have to call centers, write emails, travel to branches, or wait in long queues.



Cobban estimated that this process was able to “take out at least 250 million wasted customer hours per year”, as per a 2016 article in Forbes.



This helped DBS transform from being recognized as one of the worst banks in Singapore to becoming one of the best and most loved.



It must have taken courage for the team to stop worrying about internal metrics and start trying to develop customer-led ones.



Especially when business schools and consultants are still extolling the virtues of balanced scorecards based on the assumption you can’t manage what you can’t measure.



The truth is, these management systems tend to reinforce selection bias. This occurs as executives often shape strategies around what is straightforward to manage and quantify, rather than exploring the often ethereal data sets that help identify where the real client value lies.



Aligning compensation with easily quantifiable metrics such as revenue, profit margins, or operational efficiency is much simpler than assessing the value a client derives because you saved him time, or amplified his brand, or increased his profits, or made him happier, or reduced his stress levels.



Still, working out the bullet patterns on planes that are hundreds of meters below the sea wasn’t easy either.



Predicting how best to serve your customers, without understanding the actual value you bring them may have worked in a world where change is slow and the future is predictable.



That world, I’m afraid, has gone.

Business people working in a board room with a laptop and digital tablet

Why KPIs Can Kill Companies

If you wanted to be a great footballer, would it make sense to avoid kicking the ball for the first two minutes of every game?



The intuitive answer is obviously no.



There is no reason to believe that doing nothing could ever be a good strategy.



But surprisingly, we know that Lionel Messi does exactly that.



He quite literally just walks around and watches, which explains why he rarely scores in the first five minutes and in the first two minutes of a game.



There is, however, method to this madness because not only does Messi use this time to quieten his nerves, but he also uses it to develop his game plan.



Pep Guardiola, who coached him from 2008 to 2012, explained that he’s not being lazy. He is actually incredibly engaged, as he is watching the opposition in order to understand where the defensive weak points are.



Messi provides a unique example of how, by analyzing and then acting on data, we can give ourselves a competitive edge.



And data analysis, when done well, can also help companies unlock huge opportunities by allowing them to make decisions that, like Messi’s, seem intuitively wrong.



Take Yongqianbao, a Chinese financial services provider.



By analyzing consumer behavior, they know that people who type faster are less likely to default, which in turn allows them to provide credit at better rates than their competitors.



Another example comes from the video streaming industry. Conventional wisdom has always been that you should give your customers an interface that provides them with plenty of choices about what to watch. Choice was seen as a key feature if you wanted your app to be successful.



But thanks to TikTok, we have learned that giving consumers a choice isn’t a feature; it’s actually more of a bug.



Think for a minute about how you interact with TikTok on your device.



You just open the app and start watching, right? If you like what you see, you keep watching. If you don’t, you scroll on.



TikTok has ignored the conventional wisdom and removed choice to ensure they collect better data for their algorithms. This, in turn, allows them to deliver incredibly- accurate content based on what we actually want, not what we think we want.



Our taps and swipes have enabled them to create a platform that reportedly has over 1 billion users and average viewing times that are estimated to surpass YouTube by 12 or more minutes a day.



Anecdotes like this showcase why leaders should think less about using their “experience” or “intuition” when making decisions and instead invest more of their time and money into data-led decision-making.



Indeed, when we zoom out, it should not be surprising to learn that nine of the most valuable companies in the world are successful either because of their clever use of data or because they help their clients better use data at scale.



But if data is indeed the new oil, why do the majority of companies seem unwilling or at least unable to monetize it in the same way the top tech firms have?



Historically, cost would have been the obvious answer, but this is less relevant today, as cloud and other related technologies are making it easier and cheaper for everyone to analyze data at scale.



This leads me to conclude that the real barrier to tech- enablement comes down to the organization’s cultural maturity.



If you want to truly embrace the power of data across an organization, you can only do this if you grant more people the authority to investigate and use algorithms to make business decisions in real-time. This means delegating decision-making. Encouraging continual learning. Allowing experimentation. Accepting that mistakes will be made. Not many organizations have leadership teams that are bold enough to truly trust their people with these levels of autonomy.



But those that do have will have a significant advantage because true digitization only comes when you are both tech-enabled and human- empowered.

Businesswoman viewing graphs on digital tablet in business meeting

Data Offers Huge Opportunities.But Only If You Trust Your People

Nolwazi* lives in a township in South Africa. She works in the informal sector and was recently turned down for a loan of $80,000.



Having heard her story, I can’t understand why she was denied the loan. And I think this is indicative of why African entrepreneurs have more advantages than ever.



If you think you’d have taken the same decision as the bank, I need to add a few more details.



Nolwazi might live in one of the poorer areas of South Africa, but she is certainly not poor. She chooses to live there as she can run a thriving backroom rental business.



She started out renting one room from her formal dwelling but now lives in a property where she can rent out 11 units at a time. She also owns a second property which she rents out to students. Her average backroom income is now approximately $8,000 per month, which is probably substantially more than the bank manager who declined her loan application.



She wanted the loan to build student accommodation on land she already owned next to a major university.



After six weeks of deliberation, the bank turned down her application.



The story doesn’t finish here because Nolwazi decided to run an experiment.



She went to a different branch of the same bank and, applied for a car loan of $80,000 for a new Mercedes. It was approved in 20 minutes.



Why would a bank prefer to lend $80,000 for something that depreciates when they could have taken the safer bet of funding a valid capital-based business enterprise?



It was GG Alcock, best-selling author of Kasinomics, who got me thinking about the answer to this question when he drew my attention to this and other stories from township entrepreneurs.



The backroom rental industry, which Nolwazi forms part of, is estimated to generate over R50 billion ($2.6 billion) per annum, as owners rent out their rooms for accommodation, storage, corner shops (spazas), garages, takeaways, workshops, hair salons, beauty parlors and other services.



Nolwazi’s story isn’t, therefore, unique. It’s an allegory that showcases how vibrant the informal sector is and why millions of Africans are choosing to stay in townships, either for cheaper rents or to run their own entrepreneurial ventures.



And it’s a story that supports my view that local African entrepreneurs have never had so much opportunity, for two key reasons.



The first is that big businesses will always find it challenging to identify and exploit the informal sector because of a mix of prejudice and ignorance.



I’m speaking from experience here, as in all of my years working in financial services, I can’t remember ever being asked to investigate opportunities in the informal sector. Instead, established businesses are predisposed to focus on improving what they have, whereas entrepreneurs are the only people looking to solve existing problems in new markets.



The second reason entrepreneurs will win in these markets is because of the democratization of virtually everything you now need to run a successful business.



This is a relatively new phenomenon which is being driven by the confluence of improved technologies, more financing options and the ability to access skilled labor from anywhere on the planet.



And if you need a guiding hand that helps you navigate every step from idea to IPO, hundreds of African-based incubators and accelerators are now designed to help you do exactly that.



What was once the preserve of the wealthiest companies in the wealthiest countries is now accessible in virtually every major African city. Simply put, if you identify an opportunity and have enough grit and determination to give it a go, it’s never been easier to convert your dream into reality.



Oh, and if you were wondering what happened to Nolwazi, I’m happy to report she eventually did receive her loan.



And no, it was not provided by one of the large incumbent banks.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="15" height="14" src="">The opportunity for African entrepreneurs has never been so great.

Suburb in Soweto township

New Advantages And OpportunitiesFor African Entrepreneurs

How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.



“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”



This passage from American writer Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises perfectly summarizes the process almost every organization eventually faces. 



Or at least it did up until Tuesday, May 2. Because that was the day when ChatGPT claimed its first victim, the online education platform Chegg.



It seems gone are the days when companies could expect a death spiral of years and years before the CEOs called it a day. 



Blockbusters and Blackberry are two examples that spring to mind. But Chegg’s stock plummeted by more than 50% in just a few hours, and at the time of writing this piece, it was worth just a third of what it was prior to the launch of ChatGPT.



The reason of course, why every business ultimately fails is because the market shifts.



In Blackberry’s case, they lost out as consumers decided they didn’t want keyboards.



For Blockbusters, their customers decided to stay at home and stream.



And for Chegg, Wall Street is predicting that they will lose their students to generative AI.



What’s fascinating and scary though, is we have just entered a phase of business disruption that is exponential in nature. AI, Cloud, 5G, IoT and a host of other technologies are working perfectly in concert to allow anyone in the world to develop new products and services at a fraction of historical costs in record time.



ChatGPT is a case in point. 



On release, it registered 1 million users in one week and hit the 100 million mark within two months. That’s 5x faster than TikTok managed; 30x faster than Facebook. So with barriers falling left right and center because of technological advancements, what must boards do to improve their company’s survival chances?



If you guessed innovate, you are partially right. Boards absolutely need to impress on their executive teams the importance of doubling down on their innovation strategies.



But this will only work if boards think laterally about deliberate actions they can take to encourage their executive teams to become less hubristic.



Because leadership hubris is the catalyst of inertia, not innovation, and inertia is what ultimately kills most organizations. To be fair to executives, they operate in environments that encourage overconfidence.



When you are running a successful multi-billion dollar business, it’s not easy to consider the possibility that it could be fallible, or worse, that it might fail on your watch. I for one don’t know many CEOs who’ll admit they are fearful of being disrupted. And those that do typically fail to place the necessary disruptive business bets.



How can companies remove hubris from their executive teams? 



I humbly suggest by setting up environments that culture a certain amount of fear and a huge amount of curiosity. One of the best examples of a leadership team that encourages this is Amazon. Jeff Bezos is well-known for emphasizing the importance of staying paranoid and maintaining a sense of urgency.



In his 2017 shareholder letter he wrote: “Day 2 business is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.” 



The goal?



To encourage his team to continually think like a startup, not a multi-billion dollar listed entity. And this idea then gets consistently reinforced in a multitude of ways, ranging from their choice of building names



(Amazon’s head office is named Day 1) to how they encourage executives to make decisions carefully when the outcomes are irreversible, but quickly in all other instances (the two-door/ one-door model).



These systems and frameworks were deliberately introduced to encourage healthy levels of paranoia that in turn, helped motivate a culture of curiosity.



It should not be surprising when successful innovators state that “curiosity” is mission-critical. What is surprising is how knowing this, so few boards demand their leadership teams implement systems to agitate and encourage curiosity.



Perhaps this was acceptable when we lived in a world where change was glacial. But in a world where bankruptcy may skip the slowly part and just come suddenly, boards need to stop worrying about the risks of doing business and start cultivating leaders who understand the need to adapt or die and have the curiosity and courage to attempt to do just that.

Co-workers having meeting with laptop in conference room

Adapt Or Die: What Must Boards Do To Improve Their Company’s Survival Chances?

What do all great leaders have in common?



Number one on my list is they have all achieved mastery in using storytelling to influence at scale.



The book Uncle Tom’s Cabin is widely recognized as having contributed to the end of slavery in the United States. The novel humanized slaves, portraying them as complex characters with emotions, families, and dignity, rather than just as property.



It was a powerful story which polarized opinion and catalyzed support for the abolitionist movement that eventually saw the ending of slavery in 1865.



Powerful stuff, but we shouldn’t be surprised.



Because stories are what have driven human behaviors since the beginning of time. In fact, stories have shaped our history in every regard, whether that relates to religion, politics or the underlying fabric of different cultures around the world.



It should therefore be no surprise that effective storytelling is a powerful tool in business.



By telling stories that emotionally resonate, we can influence others to do incredible things.



And business is all about influence.



Influencing investors to stay the course.



Staff to be more productive and innovative.



Customers to become advocates.



And I’m not the only one who believes in storytelling’s power.



Steve Denning, a former executive of the World Bank, said: “When it comes to inspiring people to embrace a vision or a change in behavior, storytelling isn’t just better than the other tools, it’s the only thing that works.”



Steve Jobs was perhaps one of the greatest proponents of the power of storytelling in business. As he once said, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”



One of the best examples of how he inspired people with fantasy, not fact, came when he successfully asked American businessman John Sculley to leave PepsiCo and join Apple.



“Do you want to sell fizzy water for the rest of your life or come and help me change the world?” Sculley later said that question landed like a punch in the gut.



If stories are such powerful business tools, why don’t more businesses use them?



Well, purposeful organizations do, and it is central to their success.



A purpose-driven company typically sets social or environmental goals as the primary purpose or mission.



For-profits, on the other hand, follow American economist Milton Friedman’s doctrine that an entity’s greatest responsibility is to satisfy its shareholders. Interestingly, researchers are consistently showing that purposeful organizations are typically outperforming their profit-driven peers.



For example, the book Firms of Endearment showcases how purpose-driven companies like TOMS, Unilever, Ikea and Amazon have, on average, outperformed the S&amp;P500 by 14 times over 15 years from 1998 to 2013.



And if you are looking for more anecdotal evidence, just write down your 10 favorite successful companies. I’d expect the majority to be purpose-led.



The most recent case study is, of course, OpenAI.



Their flagship product ChatGPT gained 100 million users within two months, making it the fastest growing consumer application in history.



But their purpose wasn’t to make a profit. Instead, they focused on “creating safe artificial intelligence that benefits all of humanity”.



Despite their best efforts they are now worth billions! Ok, so back to the why. Why are purposeful organizations such better storytellers and, therefore, influencers?



Well, for starters, for-profits have no inspiring stories to tell.



When your goal is to make money for the sake of making money, and your dream only extends to making more money, what role can you play in a story other than that of the villain?



On the other hand, purposedriven organizations offer ample storytelling opportunities because their purpose is the story, and their staff are the heroes who all want to be part of a movement that benefits society.



And that’s the type of environment that fosters trust, collaboration and innovation.



Purpose allows for storytelling. Storytelling lets you influence. Influence is key to success.



That’s why most of the leaders profiled in this edition have probably mastered using storytelling to influence at scale.

Entrepreneur Using Laptop At Home Office

Why Storytelling Is A Powerful Tool In Business

I was recently asked to comment on how the opportunities for women leaders have changed since I started work. And then, I was asked to share some thoughts about what changes we can expect over the next decade.



To the first question, my answer was simple. Not much. According to the World Economic Forum, only 15% of the Fortune 500 are run by women. In South Africa where I’m located, this drops to only 7% for Johannesburg Stock Exchangelisted companies.



And that’s despite billions being spent on diversity training, new hiring models and anti-bias algorithms.



Having lived through and led many cultural change programs, I’m not surprised. It is ridiculously hard to try and change human behavior.



And HR-led diversity initiatives are trying to fix behaviors that have become systemic and entrenched over decades. I don’t know if these behaviors were created by genetics or the persistent pre-teen brainwashing about what our respective roles in society should be.



I do know that unwinding behaviors, that have developed with 20-plus years of application prior to even entering the workforce, is always going to be a tough ask for any HR team, no matter how right, how passionate, and how resourced.



Depressing as this may be, I am still incredibly upbeat about the possibilities opening up for female leaders to do incredible things over the next decade.



But this change will not come because the incumbent male leaders have an epiphany about the benefits of diversity. It will be driven by organizations changing in a way that aligns better to diversified leadership.



And the good news is this transformation has already started.



Over the last decade, we have seen more and more examples of companies that focus on “doing good”, outperforming their profit-at-all-cost competitors. Case study after case study has shown how purpose-led companies have happier customers, more engaged employees and better support from their investors.



Patagonia, as one example, has cemented its place as a premium outdoor brand by focusing on using business to save the planet.



Thousands of other companies are now seeking accreditation from organizations like the US Based B-Corp, to showcase how they are using business to benefit people, communities and the planet.n(If you know Ben &amp; Jerry’s or Lemonade, they are both registered B-Corps.) 



And listed companies are also facing more pressure from institutional investors to apply the United Nations-led Sustainable Development Goals. BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink has written regularly about how he is more likely to invest in businesses that make “a positive contribution to society”.



So the shift from “for-profit” looks to have momentum. This will obviously challenge those incumbents that have a symbiotic relationship between the CEO’s bonuses and shareholder returns, as purposeful organizations have more complex and ambiguous environments to manage.



This might mean taking the hard decisions not to operate in oppressive jurisdictions, accelerating the switch to renewables or doubling junior pay.



Bad for bonuses. Good for the planet.



Managing these trade-offs will require conviction, courage and curiosity, because there is no playbook for this new model.



And that is precisely why the opportunity for female leaders is better than ever before.



This new-styled leadership model is not male-dominated and females are already trailblazing in these somewhat unchartered waters.



Take Indra Nooyi for example. As PepsiCo’s CEO prior to 2018, she introduced “performance with purpose”, sold off a profitable set of food brands that didn’t align with her vision and made significant inroads in rebalancing the portfolio towards healthier, more sustainable food and drink offerings.



Transformation stories from leaders like Nooyi demonstrate why purpose is a more powerful motivator than profit, and how curious and courageous female leaders can drive transformation programs that benefit society as a whole. So, there is real opportunity for women in this new leadership paradigm. And we, as in society as a whole, really need them now to help transform business into a force for good, that can improve lives and save our planet.



This requires radical change. And diversity will be a critical step in achieving this.



The writer curates thought leadership events that help executive teams transform their organizations; visit coliniles.com

Colin Iles

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA