2023 - The Great Reflection.....

As I sat down to write my annual tradition of "predictions" in late December I realized that 2023 was feeling very different from the years before it. Specifically, as I spoke to customers and colleagues around the world it became clear to me that we are all spending a lot more time reflecting on the decisions and events of the last few years, digesting the outcomes of those decisions and spending a little more time thinking about our priorities and focus for 2023 before jumping in.

Let's be fair. For the last 2 1/2 years we have all lived through a ton of change and have had very limited time to reflect and think about strategy in the face of "clear and present" decisions relating to the pandemic, inflation, supply chain and even war. Simply put, while as leaders we all want to balance our time effectively, the pace and impact of these events challenged us all.

As we enter 2023, I believe it is the right time for us to reflect on the current state and take stock of the decisions we made over the last few years. Personally, I am asking myself and my team to reflect on the following 5 questions -

1. How are you feeling and how are you doing with respect to balancing your personal health, family and work? Reflect on the balance across each of those areas
2. Where are the largest opportunities for growth in your life and your business over the next 24 months? How does the current reality differ from what you expected 24 months ago? Reflect and quantify what they would mean for your business
3. What are the resources, tools and skills you need in order to capture those opportunities? How does it differ from what your current reality? Reflect on whether you have what you need and/or what major gaps exist that will prevent you from achieving them
4. What opportunities are there to increase your network and the efficiency and effectiveness of the people you interact with day-to-day? How can your people get more done in the same amount of time and feel a great sense of purpose? Talk to your teams about what is holding them back to ensure you truly understand it
5. What is the most important thing for your team to accomplish this year? You can only pick one! Reflect on the impact of this achievement and what it mean for your company and your individual team members

Personally, I'm inspired about what lies ahead! Although we have all been moving at a frenetic pace, global progress with respect to digitization and digitalization is impressive. In our personal and professional lives we are all leveraging technology and data to augment our own productivity, improve our health and safety and communicate more effectively with one another.

In terms of my predictions and outlook for 2023 - Here are 3 predictions I see coming to life in the next 12-24 months.

1. Hybrid Work finds it footing - Hybrid work will evolve from a buzzword to a reality as companies leverage the feedback from their employees to bring together the collaborative/social aspects of the traditional office with the convenience/focus of the home office. Collaboration suites (Zoom, Cisco, Microsoft, Google) will continue to improve their platforms but ultimately nothing will replace the satisfaction and cultural boost of a productive in-person gathering. Personally, I will be prioritizing my in-office time for building relationships, collaboration and problem solving. There is a delicate balance here but I am confident we will set a stable foundation for the future.
2. Augmented reality becomes part of our daily lives - We've come a long way since the initial buzz of AR with Pokemon GO in 2016. When I look at the advances in personal camera technology (phones, tablets, cars) coupled with the affordable access of network and data storage I see tremendous opportunity for mainstream adoption here. We are probably a few years off from "smart contact lenses" but I do think in the next 2 years we will see in-car camera and smartphones become the gateways to AR offering consumers a richer experience and merchandisers new opportunities to interact with their customers.
3. OpenAI will take smart assistants to the next level (and bring some challenges as well) - I still remember back in 2009 when Wolfram Alpha brought to the world one of the first computational knowledge engines. Since then, I've enjoyed watching Siri, Alexa and Google take natural language processing and leveraging the internet, machine learning and artificial intelligence bring smart assistants into our homes. OpenGPT based on the OpenAI project has the potential to bring all of this together and allow humans to talk to pose all sorts of questions in natural language and get a deep and well researched answer. The potential here has wide reaching implications as it relates to the way we all think about education, healthcare and even media and the arts.

Happy New Year to all! I would love to hear your feedback so feel free to share it below!

Shawn