What you will learn:

What is the 10/10 rule

How to change your mindset.

About the Educator:

Transcript:

The 10/10 rule does not exist anymore.

[00:00:00] Hello Mfon great to see you. 

[00:00:01] Hey hello Jens It's great to be here and great to see you.

[00:00:07] Mfon before we go into the topic, tell us a little bit about who you are and introduce

[00:00:12] yourself. My name's Dr. Mfon Akpan. I am assistant professor of accounting at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And I'm excited to be here.

[00:00:27] What is the topic that you would like to talk about today?

[00:00:32] I'd like to really talk about the 10/10 rule and Jens, when we talked about doing this I had to get some inspiration and I get my inspiration from Netflix. I was watching a movie and it's a very good movie. It's called Me Time with Kevin Hart and Mark Walberg.

[00:00:56] So two of my favorite actors. And I'm watching this movie and there's a scene in the movie where Mark Wahlberg's character and Kevin Hart they're together and they're best friends. And Mark Wahlberg is really he's bragging on Kevin Hart because Kevin Hart's a musician, so they're in a group of room full people, and Mark Wahlberg's character says, hey this is my friend, he's a musician.

[00:01:30] He created a whole album. He was so excited about it. And then everybody in the room, they were saying okay, this is great. Where can we download the album? And then Kevin Hart's character, he looks at them and he says you can't download it. It's on CD. So everybody's looking and then one person's What's a cd?

[00:01:55] So then I said, That's what we're gonna talk about. When I meet Jens and it really what popped into my mind was something called the 10/10 Rule, which an author, it's a great book by Steven Johnson. It's the title of the book is Where Good Ideas come from. And I know you love this Jens the natural history of innovation.

[00:02:19] And in the book, he talks about this 10/10 Rule, and he gives an example of how it used to take 10 years for technology to be developed and then 10 years for it to be adopted. And one of the examples that he gives is a black and white TV to color tv, right? So if you think about it, what's interesting about that and how this all ties into Netflix and this Movie is that you think about that 20 years, many people call that a generation.

[00:02:58] So you would think I've got black and white TV and then my kids will have something else. They'll have color tv, but I'll keep using black and white tv. That doesn't apply right now because technology is advancing so fast. And I thought that that tieing in, because I know you are a guru on innovation.

[00:03:16] And that tied in to the point where, because I can remember CDs, I'm not gonna date myself, but I can remember CD. And there's literally someone there wait a minute, what is a cd? So what I'd like for those individuals who are entrepreneurs or intrepreneurs to take away from this and from all of this with the movie and the 10 10 rule, is that defense is necessary and offense is mandatory.

[00:03:48] So that's the through line for today.

[00:03:49] it's mandatory that you have to be working on innovation, looking for ways to innovate and improve your business, improve your processes. Defense on that side means you've gotta also know what your competition is doing or what is out there in the marketplace. And if need be, you've gotta copy it or figure out a way to either improve upon what other people are doing.

[00:04:13] In order to really stay in the game, if you look at it from perspective, and also give that caveat from an entrepreneurship perspective as well. So that's where that comes from Jens. 

[00:04:27] If we keep this spinning. From an improvement perspective. One part is of course, if you're working in a large organization, then you are more the intrepreneur.

[00:04:36] You are thinking differently. What does it mean if you say, let's go into offense. Offense is mandatory from how do you work with yourself on your skill set and developing yourself. 

[00:04:52] You really have to work on number one, understanding your marketplace and you really have to have your feelers out into what else is going on in the marketplace.

[00:05:06] So I can give you a personal example and I can give you a business example. For my example, as a professor, I know at this time I'm fighting agains screen time, and when I say screen time, the phone, right? Students being on their phone. And that could be anything from watching movies to being on TikTok or on Snapchat or some type of app.

[00:05:33] I also know, as well as publishers know that most students are not going to read if I told my students to read 30 page. They're not going to read 30 pages, and most textbooks are more so reference materials. So they use 'em. So if you give questions, they'll go to the book and reference it, not necessarily read it.

[00:05:56] So that's understanding the environment, So either you're going against the grain or you're going with the grain. What happens, you have publishers, and I guess I'll give a plug to McGraw Hill. They have something called Smart Book where you assign the smart book, it has questions and if they get it wrong, it takes them to the textbook where they can read the material so they're not reading the whole material, but they're covering the concepts and it keeps them engaged.

[00:06:24] Understanding that is key. So that's one example. The other example from the business side and this and I guess it's ironic and this is matter of fact, I was in class yesterday, we were talking about this. If you have the Netflix app on your phone, they have a little tab that says Labs, and it looks like TikTok.

[00:06:46] And I was telling my students says, Go ahead, Go download the Netflix. Go and look at it on your phone. It looks like TikTok. Because, and you may say Netflix is streaming, they streaming movies and content. So this ties into the question you were asking. You have to be aware of what's going on in not only in the streaming market.

[00:07:04] So Netflix is facing competition from other streaming platforms, right? They're eating away at their market share. So that's competition, but also they're facing competition for screen time. Because now you have social media, people are spending more time on TikTok versus Netflix. So here's the offense.

[00:07:28] They've gotta constantly being innovative with their content business model, moving from buying content to licensing content, adapting their platform to become more engaging against other streaming platforms. But on the defense, They're copying TikTok to try to keep people on their platform and grab screen time.

[00:07:51] So you've got that offense which they have to continue to do because you've got competition eating away at market share, and then you have the defense pulling away as well from other areas. So that, that's how that ties in. 

[00:08:04] I love the example you said from a student perspective. Because if we talk about leadership and bringing young people into the workforce, they're coming from such a different background than the two of us grew up. You said CDs. I still remember tapes.

[00:08:22] That requires one part from both directions. The senior leaders in an organization or in a startup or in a business.

[00:08:30] Like you do as a professor, take the students in a completely different way. And the other part is from a student perspective, going into the organizations and trying to lead themselves and lead pieces of the organization afterwards. Understanding the complexity, like you said with the 10/10 rule we come from different worlds and we need to learn to work with each other.

[00:08:54] And if you're a leader in this context. That requires a different

[00:08:58] mindset. That's true. The situation now is we have different generations all at the workplace versus we one large group, or from one generation or where you think about one generation is passing the baton to another.

[00:09:15] No we don't have that. And you have to understand it and from a business perspective, you have to be able to adapt and really maneuver. That was a good point with that. And that's the offense. You have to understand the environment and you have to be active.

[00:09:32] As a professor, I can't make myself younger. I wish I could. I try my best, but I can look at the data, I can understand what younger people are doing. I can understand who are my students, what are their age groups, what are they into, what things are they doing so I can continue to move forward and innovate in the classroom, to work with them, and then find particular partners or publishers. And using textbook and materials that align with that. Then on the flip side, I gotta see what other people are doing. So if I find something that's interesting or someone else is doing, that's my defense. I gotta, okay, I gotta figure out, maybe I copy this and I figure out, okay, they're doing this.

[00:10:18] Maybe I take that and steal that idea and then use that to help to develop and grow. 

[00:10:23] One of the things you have done different than what I have experienced, at least in my education, you have work with the new tools out there. You gave the example that you have been teaching using Instagram for example. That you're going life on Instagram teaching your students, which for me is like not existing in from a formal university perspective where I grew up, like never ever that a professor would ever do that. I like that very much that you are going with the technology and what's going on from a trend perspective to enable your students to provide the right skills.

[00:11:03] but you adapting to where they are, rather them trying to get them into, like you said, reading books, sitting a long time in the library and studying, which I guess they do as well, but it's just different types of learning these days. 

[00:11:20] Yeah, because if you think about the student today, they're multitasking constantly.

[00:11:27] And you think about the individual. So you and I, if you think about it and you look at the data and I looked at some numbers and I'm just throwing numbers out there. So they talk about screen time on your phone being, six hours or eight hours, and you see these long periods of time.

[00:11:45] And I said how is that possible? How can you be on Netflix and on your phone? And because you're on multiple platforms, so you might be at home and you've got Netflix on for a movie that's two hours, but you're also scrolling through Instagram, right? Or you're checking your email.

[00:12:02] You're on your phone, so you have to think. The people are multitasking. They're doing multiple things so when you talk about the example about the students sitting down and reading, Yeah. They'll read, they'll go to the library, but they're not just gonna sit there and read the book.

[00:12:17] They're gonna read a little bit. They're gonna get onto to the phone. They're gonna check this, they're gonna chat here, send a message. So you have to keep that in mind. For me, where my students are, but also where your customers are as well.

[00:12:29] Another example of that, when you think about business, and I'm always into the social media aspect of this because I like to see how the, these battles, I call them battles that are going on and right now , there's a battle. The first battle you saw with Instagram copying TikTok.

[00:12:50] And the reels. And then what is it? Be Real came out in France. It's a French app that became the number one app. And TikTok has copied Be Real with TikTok now. So I don't know if anyone has seen that feature. And then there's another app. That was actually part of Facebook bought it's based off of a Facebook app now.

[00:13:14] I can't think of the name of it. But there's another app that's now it's number one and it, you send secret messages to people and it's only for high school students, and that's the number one. So you see all of these twists and turns and battles and copying here and there to keep that screen time, That's what I call the defense.

[00:13:33] To pull people or to keep people on the platform. TikTok is copying be real to keep people from leaving TikTok and going to be real, And Instagram is copying TikTok to try to maintain people on its platform as well while it's trying to innovate. So I think that's very interesting. And all of this is happening at almost real time.

[00:13:58] So if you think about and I go back to, let's say 2019, if I talked to some of my students about TikTok, they would laugh. They said, What are you talking about? That's for little babies. Little kids get on TikTok. And now, I think in the United States

[00:14:14] they have 200 million users. And no one's laughing. . Yeah. It's huge. So this is very interesting. Yeah. 

[00:14:20] I just realized that I have now a couple of followers who are business followers on TikTok, because I'm posting my videos there as well. So it's not the small kids, at least from a photo and from a name perspective, these are 50 year old.

[00:14:35] It's quite interesting. Yes. Yeah. There's a question from Paul, which fits into the topic. So he's asking if there are any tips on how to keep yourself across all the different angles in relation to what you need to be defending against.

[00:14:53] First of all know your industry so know the area that you're in. Learn as much as possible about the industry or the area that you're in, and then understand where you fit in that area. If you think about tools to help you do that, there's something, you're in the Netherlands, Dr.

[00:15:13] Alexander Osterwalder. Who's from the Netherlands? He has a business model canvas. That's a great tool to work on, but know your area, know your business. Then you have to really just have your feelers out into different areas, and look for different ideas in different spaces.

[00:15:36] I think that is, very important. So in other words, having an open mind. And on that point just a tip and what really resonated with me. I was listening to a podcast, I think it's the podcast it's billionaire mindset, billionaire podcast. I was listening to this podcast.

[00:15:58] They had the guest on there and the guy was saying, he read an absurd amount of books. It was like 20 books a week or something. It was a number. The guy, gave out this number of books that he's reading, and the host asked him, I'm like, Wait a minute, How do you read these books? And I'm wondering, how did the guy read, all of these books? And he said he's trained himself, number one, to listen to audio books on high speed.

[00:16:25] The second is, he's listening to these books because he's training his mind and his mindset that if I can get one idea, so I listen to this and I'm just looking for one idea and he listens to all types of different material from different industries, different areas, different books.

[00:16:48] If I can get one idea. That idea might help me to make more money. That's really what it came down to. So he is constantly listening and looking for new ideas. So I think that's important as well, knowing your industry and having that mindset on ways to improve, right? And how you can maneuver and improve and do something better.

[00:17:09] And then also looking for other ideas from wherever you can get it to add it to your industry. Like I gave that example with Netflix. , which is a streaming platform. They're copying TikTok on their app. Which is a social media app. If you go on Netflix, they have a little thing where you can like, so it's just like you, you're on Facebook or something, you can like the movies and add your favorites.

[00:17:33] So looking for different ways to improve. 

[00:17:36] I would like to add, cause I'm doing the same with audio books by the way. Not 23 books per week, but one or two I'm managing as well. If you double the speed, it's quite cool. I like the idea of getting just one idea because you don't need to listen to the whole book to get that one idea.

[00:17:52] I agree this learning mindset at least what I have seen for myself as well when I grew up, when it comes to working in a, in an organization, working in a corporate, you think you only have one way to succeed.

[00:18:06] One right way. In today's time where things are moving so fast, it's better to learn different things and getting different perspectives because you have a far better breadth of what's going on in this world. If you just read, let's say if we take this topic's leadership and you're not looking into history, you're not looking into technology development, you will miss out in understanding things like you mentioned with TikTok and the different technologies and as well the multitasking part.

[00:18:35] Yes. That's true. And I think you have to get comfortable with I guess I'll quote Yoda. You have to unlearn what you've learned and. You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and being able to focusing on skills and understanding how things are, because it is moving so fast and things can change and you need to be able to discern what is important.

[00:19:01] When you talk about leadership I think about, there's different theories on leadership. One of my favorite is Dr. Douglas McGregor, Theory X Theory Y, and he came up with that, I think in the 1960s now, then someone else, Theory X, y, and then Z. So they added another one.

[00:19:18] And then you'll see there's different spins on that. So things continuously maneuver and are changing. Another example is in my field accounting, there's a business intelligence software, so a Microsoft Power bi. That's big in the conversation. Tableau is big in the conversation.

[00:19:38] So you have to be willing to have an open mind and also to have a sense of I call it friendly competition. In other words what can I do better? And that doesn't have to be a negative thing, if your going back to what Paul was asking, if you know your industry, your environment, you know your closest competitors, you know who's ahead of you, behind you next to you.

[00:20:00] What can I do that's better? How can I enhance that? And that doesn't have to be a bad thing. That can be friendly competition as well. Getting 

[00:20:09] us towards the end of our conversation, I want to ask you two questions. One is what are tips you would give to young people that are starting into the world of working, like leaving the university, starting working, and want to approach a leadership career?

[00:20:29] What would be one or two tips you would give them in starting their life in that way. 

[00:20:35] I give them two. So one is think long term. So right now at least here in the US many of younger individuals entering the workforce. If they're not getting promoted within, six months, eight months, they're looking to leave.

[00:20:54] So they're looking to go to another job. So there's not that thought of longevity, which in the end and in my opinion, can impact them because they haven't built up that if they're constantly leaving and not having that long term view. Of a career or the employment, they wind up not having a long work history or developing skills or buil building things.

[00:21:22] So I'm not saying that they need to stay somewhere for, 10 years, but if you're thinking about leaving in six months, if you're not getting promoted to go somewhere else, that can impact you in the long run. The other thing is to find a mentor. I think having a mentor is very important.

[00:21:41] Particularly someone who's ahead of you. And many times mentors can be in person. Mentor may be hard to find if you can't connect with someone personally. Then there's books. Get a book read about someone, what they've done, and help to level set your perspective. So I think those two things.

[00:22:02] Long term thinking and having a mentor. 

[00:22:06] If we turn this towards an experience, let's say manager in an organization, someone who is, 20 years in their career having responsibility in an organization, what would you tell them from a leadership perspective what they should think?

[00:22:23] From the leadership to have an open mind to understand the workforce and particularly the workforce and their organization. So the workplace in general, we talk about millennial, but we've got baby boomers, Gen X. Gen Z there's generation alphas entering the workforce as well.

[00:22:43] So we've got all of these generations in the workforce. So understanding their needs, what they're looking for, and then also understanding the workforce in your organization. And again it goes to having that open mind you gotta go with the grain or else if you're going against it, you're really fighting.

[00:23:02] You're fighting against what's mo moving forward, right? So I think you, you've gotta have that forward thinking view. Also friendly competition. You gotta be competitive looking for ways to innovate what you can do to move ahead, because if you don't, someone else will. And that could be detrimental to your organiz.

[00:23:23] Mfon. Thank you very much for spending the time with me.

[00:23:26] It was a pleasure having you on this succeed platform and it's really appreciated that you took the time. Thank you very much. 

[00:23:35] Yeah, it's an honor. Thank you.