Welcome back to another episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, where we detangle how to live and thrive as business owners and business leaders, while all the while demonstrating authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose. I'm your host, Erin Patchell, and today we're talking about what to expect in 2024. We're also going to set some intentions for season two of weirdos in the workplace, and I'm going to make some commitments on behalf of my company, positivist group. Stay tuned. By all accounts, is going to be kind of a weird year. Canadian SME magazine, BDC, Harvard Business Review, and so many others are doing their best to predict the future so that we don't have to. And I know that nobody can predict the future. It's literally impossible.
But there are definitely some trends I think that we need to keep our eye on as small and medium sized business owners or folks who are leading organizations here in Canada. And the first trend I'd like to talk about is hyper personalization. And so hyper personalization is something that we have started to see in the last ten years. It's going to continue long into the future. And I think that we can all agree that with the advances of AI and the fact that organizations are capable of hyper personalizing using AI and machine learning, it's going to become much more important for organizations to get on that bandwagon. And the hyper personalization bandwagon is simultaneously aligned with the trust violations. So this year, I think we've seen since, even before the pandemic, we've been seeing trust at an all time low. This shows up in all kinds of ways, but it shows up in the way that our politics are fractured.
It shows up in the way that we're seeing conspiracy theories, tons of conspiracy theories online. It shows up in our everyday relationships and friction within the workplace. It shows up in employee engagement. It shows up in retaining our employees. So we're in a very low trust environment. Nobody really knows who to trust what's real anymore. We have deep fakes online. And so this erosion of trust is going to, I think, dramatically affect small businesses and large businesses all over the world in 2024 and beyond.
And I think it's only going to get worse because we really don't have any checks and balances right now. When it comes to AI, there's not really any way of knowing what's real. Obviously, some of the deep fakes are really obvious, but some of them are really quite good. So skepticism is the order of the day. Critical thinking is the order of the day. And with that, really focusing more on those one to one relationships. Building trust in a very personal way with your employees and with your customers is going to be paramount. Some of the ways that I think businesses are going to need to evolve in order to build more trust is through that omnichannel, brand communication through engaging customers using voice and video media, either one to one or one to many.
Taking, like we said, a far more personalized approach to everything that you do. I think relying on one channel, for example, like Google Adwords or I guess Google Ads now and Facebook is no longer going to work out, really. You need to be on every platform and you need to build a multi generational audience. How can we create more human to human interactive moments? Moments that we're being vulnerable, moments where we're being honest, moments where we're demonstrating transparency. We're bringing our customers along a journey along. They're feeling like they're part of our story. Another really important trend is the fact that people are getting very selective about where they're spending their money. Customers are getting a lot more real about wanting to align with corporate values, not buying international, buying local.
There's definitely a kind of deglobalization effect happening or a localization effect happening. And part of that was partly due to the supply chain issues. Part of that is issues with values of different countries that we may have been purchasing from before. There's starting to be a trend in the direction of minimalism and value for dollar, but not at the expensive values. So in summary, customers are learning that every dollar matters. They don't have as much disposable income as they used to be used to, and they're seeking quality over quantity. Basically, we have to give them a reason to buy from you. The BDC, that's the business Development bank of Canada, recommends a strong focus on human resources management to recruit and retain the best people.
I mean, obviously, in our observations, employee engagement and retention is not an HR issue. That's something that has become very apparent over the last several years of failed employee engagement projects and failed employee retention projects, is HR cannot just hold up the entire organization. HR is almost never the reason why employees become disengaged or leave their companies. It is a management problem, not an HR problem, and often it's an operational problem. So if you're in HR and you feel like you're pushing a boulder up a hill and like, banging your head against a wall, that's probably why you need to advocate that. This is a whole team challenge. This is a whole team opportunity. It might be something that needs to be built into your operating model and you only have so much influence.
So cross functional teaming, when it comes to solving some of these people problems, is going to be the order of business in 2024. It's always been important, just as being client focused or customer focused has always been important, but we need that much more of a focus on these areas. We need to be brutal when it comes to decision making. We need to just totally cut the fat and focus on making sure we're building those really strong foundations for teaming and building that total transparency. I mean, not total transparency, we're never totally transparent. But when it comes to decision making, we need to understand why. It enables us to understand the cross functional teaming enables us to understand how every single change impacts every corner of the organization in order for us to make better upfront decisions. It's like renovating a house.
If you had a tool, most of you have probably renovated a house or have known someone who's renovated a house, right? So if you had a tool that allowed you to see through every single wall and understand the plumbing, the wiring, the structure, all ahead of time, before you took out the walls to the kitchen and found knob and tube wiring and questionable vermiculate, and yes, I'm speaking from experience here, then you'd have to be crazy to go ahead with the demo unless you saw that everything was like perfectly well and good and you had the budget for it and there were no issues. So making sure that you have that transparency, that crossed functional teaming, that information gives you clarity to make sure you know what the issues are before they become issues. Of course, that only works if your team is willing to be honest. So your relationship equity becomes the most important tool into your toolbox. And so we're circling back here. We're circling back to trust. Every positive interaction, every moment of support, every successful collaboration deposits that equity, that relationship equity and builds trust and goodwill. Goodwill, holy moly, so important.
Conversely, those misunderstandings, conflicts, or negative interactions, or absent interactions are withdrawals. So your goal as a business owner or business leader isn't just to keep your relationship bank account in the black. It's to have such a strong bank account that even if something traumatic happens, like a decision that you have no other choice to make but that you know will negatively affect the team, for example, that you have little question that the team will know for sure that you did the best that you could in the scenario because you actually care and you've demonstrated that you care about them over and over and over again. So the question of the day is, can your team trust you to make smart decisions and do your best to take care of them? In a more hierarchical organization, it starts at the top. That's probably you. That might be you. If the leader at the top isn't worthy of trust, the trust connection with the company will always be broken. There will be always a gaping hole at the bottom that you're trying to fill.
So don't do these things. Don't demonstrate poor judgment and not listen to your team members concerns. Don't burn bridges. Don't be generally uncooperative or stubborn about always having your own way. Don't be unwilling to change, even if there are decent reasons to do so. Don't not make amends for past mistakes, and definitely make sure you acknowledge them. Don't break confidentiality. Don't lie, and you'd be shocked how many leaders directly lie to their teams.
Don't be a hypocrite. Don't use dirty tactics or cheating. As soon as you start playing dirty, nobody on your team's going to trust you again because they know that that's your character. Don't manipulate others. And that goes for the same as soon as you start manipulating people, and anyone who becomes aware of that manipulation is no longer ever going to trust you. And yes, there is a gigantic chasm of a difference between manipulation and influence. They're totally different things. And despite all of these sort of challenges that I've just mentioned, the BDC actually predicts that the economy is going to be pretty resilient in 2024, with economic growth hovering around 1%, with inflation a little bit higher, around 3% potentially.
And these are just estimates from their most recent report. So who knows what's going to change if you are trying to grow a business in 2024? Some potentially good news for you, as long as you have a clear path to profitability. BDC is predicting that investors will favor companies that have a very solid business case, so having your business plan is going to be more important than ever. If you are in an industry that is related to the environment, social or governance, then you will probably have a better shot. So integrating these principles and values into your work is going to be especially important going forward. And the one thing that I hope that maybe is a good takeaway from this episode is solving problems quickly. Don't let problems fester. I think that we need to address them while they're as small as possible and being transparent about what the problems are with your team members as much as you can and being really just as real and practical as possible through the decision making process.
I don't think this is the year for like pie in the sky airy fairy thinking. I think really this is the year to get seriously practical and solutions focused and targeted. And sometimes the beauty of constraints is that it makes us more innovative anyways, right? So once we know where the boundaries are, the guardrails are, we can play within them. And honestly, some of the greatest innovations have come from within a very small box or in a garage. Even. So, I'm looking forward to seeing what amazing innovations come out in 2024, despite the fact that maybe funding is a little bit more challenging to acquire and we're not as expansively thinking perhaps as we are in other years. Before we wrap up today's episode, I just want to say that we're really excited for season two of weirdos in the workplace. We're bringing on 30 professional problem solvers to help diagnose and problem solve real customer and challenges from our listeners just like you.
And so if you have a story that you'd like to share about something that's going on, could be anything in the world. It could be anything from grants funding, to diversity equity inclusion, to building and implementing your environmental, social and governance plan to Bob's your uncle. Seriously, any problem you have at work, if it's a people problem or an operational problem or a sales problem, I'm inviting a whole bunch of diverse people onto the show and we're going to literally problem solve your problem in real time. So that should be a lot of fun. For my company, positivist group, we are getting really practical this year. We are hyper focusing on projects, internal and external projects, and we're totally cutting the fat and getting rid of all of the distractions. So that is definitely I'm trying to follow my own advice and we've got some really interesting projects in the accessibility and inclusion space that I'm really excited to announce. If you do follow us on social media at Positivist Group or on LinkedIn, LinkedIn.com Slash company Slash positivist group or myself, erinpachel, then you can follow along with that.
Otherwise, I will leave you with a quote from one of my favorite authors. In case you didn't know, I am a bit of a fantasy fiction junkie and love the I've been reading over and over and over again for most of my life, the series Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and so this quote is from Fires of Heaven: "The oak fought the wind, and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived."
And I do feel like that is a great quote for 2024. So as always, stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.
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If you like this episode of Weirdos in the workplace, don't forget to like and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. You can reach us online at Positivist.ca or on most social media platforms @positivistgroup. Have a beautiful day at work.
