I have previously written about “Having the Right Digital Mindset” where I covered six topic areas to help shape your Digital Mindset.

• Business
• Technology
• Social
• Personal
• Application
• Learning

In this series of blog posts I will expand on each of these topics.

Having the Right Digital Mindset: Social

The social area covers how you interact with the rest of the world, including your work and family life. Being social is not just around how you use the tools and what you communicate, but also what you don’t say and being Social Media Savvy on your communications.

There are many different social channels available today. The latest We Are Social 2019 figures reports 3.48 Billion social media users. That’s a lot of posts, selfies, tweets and a lot of data.  With all of this going on searching through Social Media is literally “drinking from the fire hose”. There is no right or wrong mix of channels to use, however when deciding which channel to use, you should consider who and where your audience is.

The graph below illustrates the number of users (in millions) in the top used social channels. Source: Statista

Choosing and focusing on the social channels that are right for you and your business, then refining your following and search results can bring a wealth of knowledge on what is happening around your area of interest.

Building a Personal Knowledge Management System is one way of keeping in touch with what is happening and trending on topics that you are interested in on Social Media.

One of the most important things to remember is that when you post its online and visible to the world even if its a private group. That might sound scary and put you off using social media, but it shouldn’t. It means think about what you say on Social Media because once its online anyone could re-post your comments from what you think is a private group to an open group.

Setting yourself a series of Social Media Rules will help define when and what you should put in the public domain and when not to.

For this reason, I keep my social channels separate from work and family/friends as different channels appreciate different topics. This also means you can set different security settings on family/friends channels to that of being open.

The news is often reporting on bad things said on a social channel or trawling up something that someone posted many years ago.

Here are my top 5 Social Media Rules

• Choose your Social Channels
• Listen, Research, Listen Again
• Be Authentic And True
• Keep It Regular and Relevant
• Think Security

Further Reading

Blog Posts and Articles:

• Personal Knowledge Management System
• Social Media Rules
• 2019 WAS Social Report (PDF)

I have previously written about “Having the Right Digital Mindset” where I covered six topic areas to help shape your Digital Mindset.

• Business
• Technology
• Social
• Personal
• Application
• Learning

In this series of blog posts I will expand on each of these topics.

Having the Right Digital Mindset: Technology

Technology plays a part in any Digital Transformation, however its not the full answer, building your Digital Mindset is key. That said, it is important to keep up to date with the latest innovations, road maps and trends for the industry/sector you work in.

Technology should be seen as an enabler to help a business meeting its Business Outcomes and Goals rather than a dictator on the direction you should mould your business around. It is important to invest in  the right digital technology capabilities to drive this.

The abundance of services that provide “Cloud” and “As a Service” capabilities are allowing businesses to adpot new ways of working and look at meeting business outcomes using a different approach in an agile manner to the traditional types of technologies and waterfall implementations. Building a partner eco system from many different suppliers provides the best of breed solutions without the need to rely on a single partner.

Further Reading

Blog Posts and Articles:

• Having the Right Digital Mindset
• Having the Right Digital Mindset: Business (Change, Agility and a Growth Mindset)
• Digitally Fit 2018 Roundup of posts
• Digital Transformation is about mindset as much as it is about technology

One of the Internet’s secret sides is the Dark Web which is one of those places that you may know of its existence from news articles where data hacked from systems is sold. Its one of those places most of us don’t really want to access, but want to know if any of our data is on there. Its certainly a place where the bounds of GDPR can’t reach either.

Some services such as https://haveibeenpwned.com/ allow you to check to see if any of your data exists on the dark web. The main identification normally searched for is an email address.

Its always good when you get the message:

Good news — no pwnage found!

No breached accounts and no pastes (subscribe to search sensitive breaches)

They offer a subscription service that will check to see if you have been breached and be notified if you are in the future.

Firefox have now joined in providing this type of service to its users https://monitor.firefox.com/.

Its good to see the launch of another checking service that allow you to see if your data (Now out of beta testing).

Another good message:

So far, so good

Your account did not appear in our basic scan. That’s good news, but data breaches can happen any time and there is still more you can do. Subscribe to Firefox Monitor for a full report, alerts when new breaches happen, and tips on protecting your passwords.

You can never have enough checking tools.

Further Reading:

Introducing Firefox Monitor, Helping People Take Control After a Data Breach

If your data is found on the dark web, Firefox Monitor will let you know

Monday morning, I arrived at the office to start the working week. I carried out my morning ritual of turning on my laptop and whilst waiting for it to run it boot up process and load all of its resident security and authorisation software, I grabbed my morning coffee. Upon returning to my desk and logging on, a message popped up for me to go and see my manager.

Knocking on her door, she invited me in, morning pleasantries and what did you do at the weekend conversation, she proceeded to tell me some bad news.

“I`m sorry but we are going to have to let you go. Your employment with the company is being terminated with immediate effect.”

There followed what felt like a long pause as this news sank in.

She continued “As you may know we have been working on a programme of automation within the business and there is now an automated process doing your job.”

I felt the ground open up beneath me and the huge sinking feeling cover my whole body.

I’d been replaced by a robot. Not a shinny looking Sci-Fi robot but a series of robotic processes had replaced me.

I was left asking myself a number of questions….. Why me? Where had I gone wrong? what could I have done? What should I do now?

Okay the above is a story (I haven’t lost my job not as far as I know), but it’s a conversation that people fear may happen with the innovation in todays world.

The world of computing, robots, robotic process automation machine learning and artificial intelligence is progressing at a rate where it could enhance jobs (Cobots) and maybe in the future replace some jobs altogether.

So what can you do to stop this happening in the future?  The key to this question lies with you. You have to have the right mindset and look at continuous learning and reinvention at a personal level.

Standing still in a job is no longer a safe place. The old utopia of a job for life as definitely expired (there may be one or two exceptions to this rule) but in the main its true.

Where ever you are in your career, you need to keep your skills up to date. The younger generations get this concept as they are growing up with it and its enforced from leaving school. The middle and older generations did do this but for the majority a level of complacency kicks in and you reach a plateau where you feel that learning anything new isn’t for you. Why should you spend your own personal time and money investing in your future.

Personal investment in time and some cost might seem like an invasion into your own “Personal Time”, but workplaces are changing/have changed to expect this as others are already doing this.

Access to information, training/courses has changed dramatically over the years with the internet and the growth in free online courses. There are lots of places you can gain skills and knowledge without spending much money or none at all. The ability to buy a full set of AWS or Microsoft course for £10.00 which would have been a lot more in the past (and have to be done in a classroom) is driving an explosion of certified individuals coming on to the market from leaving school, college, university. Experience does play a part in this, however this can be gained online these days. Its not the same for all industries though as some do require apprenticeships to gather the rights skills, but do you know the latest methods and skills to keep up?

Is the investment in time and money really worth it. Would you rather spend that £10.00 on something else and your time doing something else. Yes most probably, but what is the long term investment? For me it’s being employable and keeping the rest of my salary coming in.

Next time your sat on your couch watching TV, think could I invest this time more productively, then watch TV later as a reward for doing that bit of learning?

So you have been investing in your skillset and learning new things. How could that initial conversation have changed.

Monday morning, I arrived at the office to start the working week. I carried out my morning ritual of turning on my laptop and whilst waiting for it to run it boot up process and load all of its resident security and authorisation software, I grabbed my morning coffee. Upon returning to my desk and logging on, a message popped up from my Cobot/Automated Process for me to check some things that it couldn’t understand. I will enter the correct parameters this morning so the ML/AI engine can solve these issues in the future.. Also my manager wants to see me.

Knocking on her door, she invited me in, morning pleasantries and what did you do at the weekend conversation, I proceeded to explain my next idea for automating one of the existing processes and how I could reinvest my time in looking at additional process automation in the business, also doing some R&D into a new product that could help the business increase sales.

“That’s great news. When can you have the details ready by? Congratulations on your latest qualification, we could use your new skills on the Advent project. Would you like to do some work on that project?”

I go back to my desk and start to drink my now warm coffee, with the new tasks in hand and set my skills on changing the ML/AI engine to assist me further to allow some time to further my training on a new course that I want to do.

Related Blog Posts

A-Z of Digital – T is for Twenty First Century Digital

Digital Mindset

The Nature and Cycle of CPD

Recording your CPD

How much CPD/Training should you be doing?

Digital Fit in 2018: Balancing the Noise

A-Z of Digital – K is for Knowledge

A-Z of Digital – S is for Social