It was only a quick question… “if I forward an email, can other people see that I have done so?”

‘Pretty straightforward’, I opined… yet on further thought, it was a much smarter question than I gave credit for… and one that illustrated a couple of underlying truths or trends.

No Slacking

Now I am someone who has grown up with email… I have a fondness for Outlook, and dare I say, Lotus Notes and ccMail too!

But, rather than taking this perspective let’s view it from the perspective of someone (likely younger) who has grown up with social media, Slack, or Snapchat as their primary forms of communication instead.

Here, everything is tracked; You can instantly see if a message has been delivered, read, or forwarded. And, from this perspective, the question suddenly makes a lot of sense. Why, of course, should a forwarded email not be visible?

Now for most of us in the world of work, and especially for those over 30, we know the answer – forwarding an email is not trackable – generally speaking at least. That is the way legacy email works.

But, taking a step back, and despite the actual answer, who in fact is making the safer assumption and is better prepared for communication in the 21st century?

Is it those in the email paradigm, with assumptions around communication is not being tracked, or the (younger) part where a base assumption is that everything can be tracked, and visible, somewhere where you need to be careful?… all of a sudden, I feel old!

Recently I have spent a fair bit of time discovering and discussing cybersecurity, and it’s been quite concerning.

It is not only what we see, but also what’s going on under the surface (the stuff that we are not aware of) that is troubling. New technology, hacking techniques and even social engineering is increasingly being used.

Yet the level of awareness, for most of us, is really not where it needs to be.

It is easy to be caught out, get surprised – all of which can result in a lot of complications that need to be resolved. This can happen even more easily if our paradigms of how the world works are stuck in the past too.

The Open Ocean

‘The old days’, where we worked in smaller communities, knew people, trusted and (dare I say) had even met them, are fading fast… it was a warmer but smaller pond back then.

Now it seems we are increasingly being thrust into the global ocean, cold, dark and less explored. Undoubtedly possibilities seem endless, yet the dangers are more ever-present… and our guard needs to be up.

Despite this, the underlying truth from the question was actually something quite reassuring.

Younger generations are far more prepared for swimming in this new reality than someone, like myself, who finds some of this unfamiliar.

They have the sense to ask the right questions and be cautious by nature. By doing so, they are much better prepared to take advantage of all the opportunities out there.

For the rest of us… it is not quite time to close the spreadsheets and put the permanent out-of-office message on just yet… but as ever it is worth listening and observing the little things to see how things are changing. It helps us be flexible and adapt.

Remember not all is lost; we can change our paradigms too… 🙂 Now, where are my slippers?

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending an event around resilience, in the world of consumer duty and cyber threats, in Manchester. All very interesting, and I walked away with the feeling that what we think we know is merely just a fraction of what is really going on.

It was an, albeit a concerning, eye-opener to the need to be prepared and being operationally (and indeed cyber) resilient to potential risks.

The event, built upon a prior session in London, more focused on the public sector, which highlighted digital threats posed by state actors and criminal entities (the size of a large G7 economy these days).

Most of the time, we are just not aware of what is going on… yet in the background, there are relentless attempts at extortion, brand damage, and other malicious intents. It seems to be getting worse, and indeed highlighted the week before, upon visiting the British Library, finding that they had had a ransomware attack too).

Dyb-Dob – Be Prepared

All of this did make me think on the way home about preparedness. Why is it we are all too ready to spend money on growth and new exciting tech?… Yet preparedness or protective measures for future threats, some even yet to be determined, not so much.

When losses remain unseen, investment in defences often feels unnecessary. Yet, without the investment, if something occurs, can have of much greater impact and stress for all involved. It is one of our human cognitive biases or blind spots… loss aversion, I think?

It is also true in the world of Accounts Receivable, Collections, and Recoveries.

How many leaders of these functions have struggled to explain the need for gathering data from upstream processes (updated contact details, potential vulnerabilities, financial difficulties), or educating customers, providing support when times are good… rather than having to gather this information once the customer is already having challenges and under stress?

… and as for technology investment, this is why many still struggle with spreadsheets, multiple systems, and manual processes, whilst the onboarding process is seamless and slick.

There’s often a discernible imbalance in investment, favouring growth over preventive and supportive strategies.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. To some extent with the Consumer Duty, in financial services at least, the FCA has come to the rescue, requiring resilience and good customer outcomes across the entire customer journey… as a compliance requirement, it should help.

Social Ideas

Getting out and about meeting new people I am still finding really refreshing. Not just for the ideas sparked from any event content, but also for the informal discussion too.

At the event, in London, the lunchtime discussion turned to the media reports of the day around social media consumption of news, and how this is changing the media landscape, especially amongst the ‘youth’ of today.

Apart from thinking I am sure I heard the same concerns and dangers highlighted by my parents in the 1980s about television, I also realised that most of my news is already from X/Twitter, curated video clips from TikTok/Instagram, leading to watching long-form content on YouTube. (I am definitely not in the ‘younger’ demographic btw!)

Little of my media consumption is traditional media (Live TV or newspapers). You can see the challenges they are under, especially for niche content (science/tech discussions and food videos in my case).

Room for Reading

This splurge of new media formats has, undoubtedly impacted my reading behaviour too.

I have never been an avid reader but trained myself to do so really to access ideas in non-fiction or business books in particular. With the advent of short-form videos, however, this has become increasingly frustrating.

I mean, why read 250 pages to express ideas that could be explained in 6 pages of PowerPoint, in a talk online? It is just so much more efficient.

Yet, a recent sci-fi thriller on Netflix this weekend gave me another view. That is just how great fiction is at exploring hypothetical scenarios and questions. The film was thought-provoking, as good ideas are, and with some good storytelling had me thinking about it all weekend.

This together with the lunchtime discussion has me reevaluating reading fiction again… Maybe a resolution to revisit a good book or two… now I just need to find a bit of time, and get into the habit!

Have a good week everyone.

(thanks to the Fournet team for the event invites)