Here are my predictions for 2023 – some you may (will!) agree with. Others may be up for debate!!!! Whatever your view, enjoy the ride – 2023 will be a year of more change, whether we like it or not.
#1 Remote work will plummet as the long-term impact of being absent from social interaction and the opportunity to learn from peers, on creative thinking, strategy and growth, becomes ever more apparent
#2 Corporates that keep working in the same way they have always done, will become slower and slower and consequently continue to lose the good people that want to make a change
#3 B Corp will become part of our everyday language in the Western world as businesses across every sphere begin to wake up to the requirements to ACTUALLY do work for good, even if only to drive up share price
#4 Salespeople that continue to discount the impact AI will have on their roles, and sell the way they have always done, will slip further behind those that embrace AI, (clever) automation, and the need to understand how people buy. Technology is changing the buying process and most salespeople won’t be needed
#5 LinkedIn will clock on to the “influencers” with 30,000 followers, yet share awful and unengaging content, and will stamp down on the automation that is squeezing out good content
#6 Talking of content, content fatigue will accelerate as people become less and less tolerant of feeds full of irrelevant, scraped, “me too” and pointless posts, articles and videos that get in the way of real insight. Curators are the next creators. Be original, be insightful, be smart, be funny, elevate other peoples’ stories – or get out of the way!
#7 Reading and the Thames Valley will gain attention as not just a telco and tech hub, but as a major destination for the film and creative industries, with startups choosing Reading for their European HQ, and new enterprises moving here. Belgium is interesting too and definitely one to watch (Manual.to).
#8 The practices adopted by fast-growing tech startups you've never heard of, will no longer offer a massive advantage because it's clear these companies and growth strategies were never sustainable. It was easy to grow for a long time because of unreasonable practices propped up by cheap money, that got pumped into product development and ad spend regardless of revenue. The market is much more attuned to this now.
#9 Founders that have replaced their LinkedIn avatar with a funny frog picture, will do less well than those people with a picture of themselves (ideally a smiling one like Andrea Sexton 😀 ).
#10 Business owners and boards that work long hours and challenge everything, will continue to outperform those that work 9-5 or less, or spend a lot of time on the golf course. Hard work and passion always trump laziness and ambivalence, and those in particular that believe business can be a force for good, will succeed because they strive to be the best at what they do.
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