There is Nothing New Here (2016 resolutions & trends)

There is Nothing New Here
(2016 resolutions & trends)

With the arrival of a new year and a departure of an old one social media tends to be filled with business and personal resolutions , new year goals , analytic of the past year and sometimes we can see “I told you so “ articles.

In their very important report  training industry magazine did a great job looking at the top trends in the training world for 2015, let take a look at the top 4 trends:

1.  Story telling.
2.  Use of big data analytics.
3. Formalization of mentoring and coaching.
4. Work force readiness.

This could be great from a business or training prospective yet what interest me the most while reading the top 5 trends is that there is nothing new here, in terms of human thought.

The art of storytelling is as ancient as the human existence, the neurological effects of storytelling can make new neurons connections through combining both logical and metaphysical thoughts, it makes connections between reality and fantasy and between metaphorical and direct communication. Yet storytelling as a practice has been with humans as old as they can remember.

The second trend mentioned in the report was the use of big data analytic, in his book the organized mind DanielJ. Levitin mentioned a story of a Romanian student that visited the states to do her studies.  Daniel mentioned that he meet that Romanian student and she was overwhelmed by the choices of pens , she said that back home you had only 3 choices and most of the time there was scarcity of them yet in the states the choices seems to be overwhelming.

What happened to that student happens to companies and corporate daily they get overwhelmed by data to either outsource or keep the services in house, to spend more on certain kind of actives or to be conservative this year. Because by the end of the day companies are just the collective minds of the individuals working within them.

Our ancestors suffered the same overwhelming big data dilemma during the agriculture revolution around 12,500 years ago, which crops should they plant? , where should they plant them? How deep should they dig? And which crop to plant first?

The third point of the report was the formalization of mentoring and coaching actually Wikipedia did a good job on the history of the same topic and here is the quote.

“The roots of the practice are lost in antiquity. The word itself was inspired by the character of Mentor in Homer's Odyssey. Though the actual Mentor in the story is a somewhat ineffective old man, the goddess Athena takes on his appearance in order to guide young Telemachus in his time of difficulty.

Historically significant systems of mentorship include the guru - disciple tradition practiced in Hinduism and Buddhism, Elders, the discipleship system practiced by Rabbinical Judaism and the Christian church, and apprenticing under the medieval guild system.

In the United States, advocates for workplace equity in the second half of the twentieth century popularized the term “mentor” and concept of career mentorship as part of a larger social capital lexicon—which also includes terms such as glass ceiling, networking, role model, and gatekeeper—serving to identify and address the problems barring non-dominant groups from professional success. Mainstream business literature subsequently adopted the terms and concepts, promoting them as pathways to success for all career climbers. In 1970 these terms were not in the general American vocabulary; by the mid-1990s they had become part of everyday speech”.

Coaching has been embedded in most religious teachings and it’s a cross cultural practice that is certainly way older than 2014.

Finally in the list of 4 we have the readiness of the work force which is a question that was asked repetitively. We can track business school of thought back to the 1880’s to what is known as the scientific school of management In the late 19th century, management decisions were often arbitrary and workers often worked at an intentionally slow pace. There was little in the way of systematic management and workers and management were often in conflict.

Scientific management was introduced in an attempt to create a mental revolution in the workplace. It can be defined as the systematic study of work methods in order to improve efficiency. Frederick W. Taylor was its main proponent. Other major contributors were Frank Gilbreth, Lillian Gilbreth, and Henry Gantt.

There are some questions that are un answered. Is these topics of such an importance that time doesn’t affect its virility?

Could it be that with every new management generation we ask the same questions that were asked before and we have a slower learning curve than we think?
What makes things trend and why do topics become viral?
I will attempt to answer this question in part 2 of this article.

Twitter : @fouad_khafaga