As more and more of us enter the post-digital era, companies centered around human beings and the dramatic quest for our survival on this planet will be the only ones to thrive in the upcoming future. These could be their core values.
Integrity
There's no more time left to play mind-games with consumers.
The last decade has raised awareness on many of the dirty tricks used by companies, so consumers feel anything less than empowered. In response, companies have become fully transparent in what their real purpose is to the global community. And they make it clear by stating how much they are profiting for each solution or experience they're offering, and by keeping communication with clients clear and straightforward—no beating around the bushes.
This is not good news for advertising and marketing, though. There has been a continuous rise of organic channels that spread the pros and cons of what each company is offering, and resourceful users focus on evaluating the real impact of their relationship with companies on their lives. Aggressive digital marketing campaigns and ads lost most of its space in this new world, but there is still space for some organic marketing.
Commitment
Forget the idea of selling technology just for the sake of it.
Technology has become widely available, and the appeal is gone. To get the idea, imagine a TV ad presenting a portable phone that, besides being able to make calls, has access to the Internet. Would you be excited and rush to buy it?
But that doesn't mean consumers are giving up the idea of buying and using technology, it means that consumers are becoming much more selective in what type and how much tech they want to add to their lives.
The new consumer behavior created a need for companies to double down on their effort to find their purpose so they could align it to every process inside the company, redesigning its internal structure.
Excellence
Post-Digital era companies will have to deliver state-of-art personalized products that consider the impact on the planet created during the entire production chain or experience and afterward.
In the last decade, products and services evolved into solutions and experiences, and we learned that it was possible to buy almost anything on the Internet. This year (2020), we got hit by a pandemic that taught us that no human is an island and, for example, if the product we're buying is degrading Siberia's environment, we're not free of the consequences, regardless of who we are or where we live. Because we now understand this, companies clearly display the impact on our planet when they present us their solutions and experiences, so we can keep that in mind when making buying decisions.
This doesn't mean we are offered environmental-impact free options. But we have a clear understanding of the real price we're paying beyond the announced price and taxes: the cost animals and ecosystems are also paying related to our purchase.
Client Satisfaction
Would you buy a tech solution that makes coffee every time you shout, "Gimme coffee!"? Yes? And would you still buy it if you knew that the coffee machine producer employed underpaid employees in dreadful work conditions, dumped tons of plastic into the sea, and profited millions of dollars last year without investing back to the community?
Maintaining a strong relationship with clients is much harder now, so humane tech companies need everyone inside their business to be on board the company's values.
Teams are inclusive, diverse, and multi-disciplinary. Stellar professionals that used to appear like successful and competent leaders in previous-era-companies but only acted selfishly and with ignorance have zero room inside humane tech companies. Instead, servant leaders with genuine experience in using kindness and empathy to boost motivation and revenues to the skies are all over the place. They created a virtuous circle that reached consumer satisfaction. Somehow, clients get to know what happens inside businesses and feel much prone to buying when they perceive a progressive and inclusive organizational climate.
Although these may represent values still far from the reality of many companies today, I believe that change is not only possible but absolutely urgent. No law in the universe forces us to create organizations in a certain way or requires us to act the way we decide to do.
In the end, we're just people granting powers to other people. But that doesn't mean the universe doesn't have its laws. And we're already paying for have been ignoring them for so long.