The Thread Briefing: meta-trends, Meta Trends, leverage points and African radio.
Hello campers…
This fortnight’s issue includes trends about trends, the power of incrementalism, a reminder that some people still use Facebook, and much more juicy insightful goodness. As ever, let us know your thoughts.
:: What’s keeping us busy ::
This past fortnight we’ve mostly been prepping for and running a two day healthcare innovation workshop for 40 participants from 27 different organisations. It was intense but a huge success and a powerful reminder of how impactful face-to-face sessions can be when working through difficult challenges and answering complex questions, especially when there are many competing viewpoints and perspectives.
:: What we’ve been reading & thinking about ::
Progress often looks like dystopia
For those of you feeling a bit down at the thought of AI taking over the world, crowding out human creativity and generally optimising for paper clips, this 7min video from Kevin Kelly (super smart founder of Wired magazine) might be the perfect tonic. We loved his emphasis on the power of imagination: we need to envision a better future before we can create one. Yet many of the visions of tech are either depressingly dystopian or utopian and unrealistic. Both utopian and dystopian visions also miss the fact that incremental improvements - what he calls “crawling towards betterment” - is not only feasible, but our most likely route to a better world. Something he calls ‘Protopia’.
Meta-trends
Matt Klein, Head of Insight at Reddit, recently launched his annual meta-trends report. A fascinating analysis of 56 trends reports to identify common themes and underlying drivers, but also highlight what is missing. Having seen how the sausage gets made first hand on some of these Trends reports we can vouch for his critique that often these reports are more about the wishes of the hip and homogenous young things writing them, rather than an accurate summary of key shifts in our culture. Importantly, most trend reports also paint a picture of inevitability rather than probability. For every trend there is usually a counter trend - see the rise of misogynist binfluencer Andrew Tate among young people who were supposedly all super liberal; the rise of fast fashion among a generation who care about the planet, and the thirst for in-person experiences and nature despite the rhetoric about ‘immersive’ virtual worlds. We contain multitudes. Read the report here.
Meta Trends
A few things jumped out to us about Meta’s earnings this week. Despite the pronouncements of doom last year and the ridiculing of its attempt to will the metaverse into existence through sheer force (and billions of dollars of CAPEX), it’s astonishing how well it continues to defy the naysayers. It was also a reminder just how colossal the company really is. Because remember ‘no-one uses facebook anymore’…
3.7 billion monthly users across FB, Insta and WhatsApp, and 2 billion DAUs just on Facebook. This is the ‘highest it’s ever been’. 🤯
There are large chunks of their business that have lots of headroom for monetisation, including TikTok copy-cat Reels, and perhaps more importantly messaging for businesses, which is now bringing in a not-too-shabby sum of $10billion per quarter. 💰💰💰
While slower growth is on the horizon it’s worth taking a moment to recognise what a cash generating monstrosity Zuck-Corp has been - revenue has grown 38% CAGR over the last TEN years, while net income has grown at a 66% CAGR over the same period!
Trigger Warning
We’re big fans of systems thinking here at Thread, and in particular the idea of leverage points. I.e. places to intervene in a system where a small change in one thing can produce a big change in everything. For instance, during a project on improving customer experience and reducing complaints we found that an important leverage point was the target and KPI set for call centre workers. We helped the board realise that changing targets (and incentives) for staff from volume of calls per hour to % of calls resolved on the first call, would lead to a disproportionately better customer experience, because those answering the phones would be incentivised to do everything they can to resolve the call then and there rather than focused on getting off the call as soon as possible and passing the buck. It also ended up reducing overall call volume and therefore OPEX.
So we were naturally fascinated by this new report by SystemIQ which identified a set of ‘super leverage’ points that could accelerate the transition to a post-carbon world:
mandates for the sale of electric vehicles
mandates requiring “green ammonia” to be used in the manufacturing of agricultural fertilisers
redirecting public procurement of plant-based proteins
These changes could trigger a cascade of tipping points, leading to cheaper batteries to help solar and wind scale-up in the electricity sector, cheaper hydrogen opening up decarbonisation for the shipping and steel industries, and reduced pressure for deforestation.
This is a good summary of the report by Andrew Curry, and for an introduction to systems thinking and leverage points, this is a short post with a great visual, based on the work of pioneering systems thinker Donella Meadows.
And finally, some music.
And finally, our regular segment where we prove this hasn’t been generated by ChatGPT trained on other consultancy newsletters, check out Mother of Mankind: a celebration of African music complete with awesome radio shows and playlists for those of us looking to broaden your aural horizons by DJ, radio host and record collector Tom Hickey. Enjoy.