CONGRESSO DE SECRETÁRIAS

Palestra: THE NEW NETWORK ECONOMY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE GLOBALIZATION OF EDUCATION AND THE SOCIALIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE SECRETARIAL PROFESSION

Remarks by Thomas A. Watters CAE
Executive Director of The International Association of Administrative Professionals

Good morning. Well, I've waited patiently for my turn to talk to you, and now I have it. I can tell already you're a great group, and not unlike the groups of administrative professionals that I talk to regularly in the United States. And I can see already that as one of your first speakers this week I have a serious responsibility here.

But before I do begin, I feel a little like Groucho Marx, who once said, "Before I start, I have something important to say!" You know already that my job for many years now has been to serve as the executive director of the International Association of Administrative Professionals. What you probably don't know, though, is how much my job is like yours. As executive director, my job is to serve our international board and the members in a support role - just like yours. They tell me where they want to go, and I do whatever it takes, within reason of course, to get them there.

Up until about ten years ago, my job, that is, an executive director's job, was usually called by most associations an executive secretary. And actually, it was a good title. It was very descriptive of what I do on an everyday basis.

I tell you that today because I think it's important that you know that I understand what you do, and the importance of everything you do, on an everyday basis.

I want to focus tonight on several points, and try to bring them together in a way that will highlight some of the major changes your companies face. Then I want to talk about how you can make yourselves more valuable to your companies by understanding these change, and using them to your companies' advantages. And I want to talk about what IAAP has been doing to use these changes to our advantage, and how important the impact of the internet has been in the socialization of knowledge, and the huge part it's played in the globalization of this profession.

And finally, I want to focus on some things you can do to make yourselves more valuable to your companies, utilizing some of the information I'm going to talk about.

So, I want to begin by spending some time today talking about why I think the admins here are very key players in each of their companies' futures - how you can play a crucial role in whether or not your companies will be successful in the coming years.

I'm sure you see a lot of changes taking place in your companies today. But how do these changes we all face effect you directly, as secretaries and administrative professionals? What are some of the significant changes that your companies are going to have to deal with in the near future?

I believe that some of the most significant, and some of the most basic changes, will involve you personally in many ways. What you do, and how you adapt to change, is going to play a large part in how successful your companies are.

And in many cases, I think you can actually help lead your companies to effective change. So I want to talk today about one very important philosophical change in the way your companies are going to have to start doing business with your customers in this new internet age.

Most of you have probably not read a book called New Rules for the New Economy by Kevin Kelly. It's not on the bestseller list, I'm sure, and it may not have been translated into Portuguese, so not many of you are likely to have seen it. But Kelly is most famous because he's the founder and editor of Wired magazine, and the first person to put a major magazine on-line, so some of you may know who he is.

In his book he talks about the future of organizations and businesses, and he believes that those organizations which will be most successful in the future will be those which begin viewing their business, and especially their customers, in an altogether different way than they have in the past.

In associations, of course, our customers are our members. In your businesses, you all have customers of some kind, and you're all used to dealing with those customers in a particular way. But all that's changing.

Kelly says that the coming economy will be based not on manufacturing, or on productivity, nor even on the distribution of information, which is, of course, what

we've been hearing for the last five or ten years. He says that the future of successful businesses is going to be based on communication and relationships - on trust, and loyalty - resulting in a new network economy unlike anything we've dealt with before.

You see, communication is no longer just a section of the economy, it is the economy. And networks are the key building block.

Now obviously, there are lots of different kinds of networks, so let me give you one example that's typical - a personal example. Even when I'm at home on a weekend I can't escape the network I'm involved in. I go into my extra bedroom where I keep my home office, and I check my messages.

Then, I can pick up the phone and access my voice mail at work and answer messages there, or forward them. Then, I turn on my computer and get my email at home, and then my email at work.

Even in my car, I can turn on my digital phone, access a third voice mail system, make calls, return calls, or even access my voice mail at work or home again. If I want, I can even have my email routed direct to my cell phone for a digital readout.

I can access the IAAP website and talk to members in a chatroom, or leave an important item on a bulletin board. And it's not all work. Some of it's personal. I might have email from one of the many online retailers from whom I buy books, or camping supplies, or running shoes.

They're all telling me about the latest bargains, and they even keep track of what I previously bought, so they can tell me more about similar products, or closeouts.

Sound familiar? I know companies like Amazon.com and others are active here in Brazil, so I'm sure you can picture what I'm talking about. That's just one type of network. There're a lot of others. Today's modern farmer rides on a tractor in an air-conditioned cab that's like a portable office, listening to his radio. He has a phone, a satellite-driven Global Positioning device, telling him exactly where he is at all times. He has sensors on the tractor which tell him what's going on beneath him.

At home, his computer is connected to weather data, worldwide grain markets, his bank, moisture detectors in the soil, digitized maps, and spreadsheets of his cash flow.

Truck drivers are parts of similar networks. Today, only 18% of our economy is in manufacturing, and three-fourths of those people deal in networking jobs - moving information about their products rather than the products themselves. We already no longer have a manufacturing based economy. Even for those of you in the manufacturing industry, most of your people are already in networking jobs.

So, with the decreased importance of productivity, relationships have become the main economic event - and the central economic imperative of the new network economy will be to amplify relationships. Successful businesses will need to recognize that relationships are the key to their success, and the ones that don't will get left behind by those who recognize all this the soonest.

So, this is where you come in. You can help your companies recognize all this. You can help raise their awareness of what has become a rapidly changing situation. As information becomes more common, it's less valuable as a product or service. As it becomes more common, everyone has more, quicker, and better, access to it, including your competitors.

One thing we have to realize is that the internet has actually cheapened the value of information as a product. Everyone has it, everyone can get it, and it's free. It used to be that an organization like IAAP or FENNASEC could look at its information as their key product. but not any longer. Today, we have to recognize that information is cheap. People are looking for more. They want a relationship with the organizations they have a choice about belonging to, and that's true for your businesses as well as our associations.

For us in the association business, the internet is a two edged sword - it offers unlimited new opportunities, but it also presents us with the biggest challenge we've faced in decades. New websites today have hundreds of people working on their sites full time - IAAP has one. Fennasec, I imagine is in a similar situation. Will we be able to compete with them? Not unless we're very creative.

Now, there are a number of factors happening simultaneously that play into this new networking concept. One of the most interesting phenomena about this new economy that Kelly discusses is that in true business networks the separation between customers, and your own employees, begins to vanish.

For example, within IAAP, we now ask our members to download a lot of their own materials from our website. A member can access the site, fill out their registration for our convention or one of our seminars online, and email it to us directly - doing some of the work that an employee used to do.

Someday we'll probably have our entire database

on line, allowing our chapter officers to change their own rosters, and allowing members to make their own address changes.

If anyone here happens to be in the printing business, you've probably already recognized the huge threat this holds for your companies. Why should companies continue to pay to print materials that immediately go out of date, then pay for inventory costs and storage space, and the costs of shipping and handling, when you can simply put the same things on your web site and let them be down loaded by your customers at will?

How many times recently have you had the experience of asking some company to send or fax you something, and they tell you it's available only on their website? This trend is already having a huge effect on the print industry, and many other organizations have similar challenges to face.

But think about this customer versus employee concept. You go to the gas station, you pump your own gas.

You go to the bank, you drive up to an ATM and act as your own teller. You go to the neighborhood 7-11 and fix your own soda. You go to the restaurant, you might make your own salad at the salad bar.

Are you being the clever self-helper that they want you to believe you are, or are you simply part of that company's cost reduction plan? You see, there's really not much difference in this new network economy. And there's a good reason this change plays into networking. The more customers participate in the preparation of the product - the more they like it.

Now there's a key idea here that's important to understand. On line companies like AOL weren't

successful until they stopped trying to base all

their success on selling things on line, and realized that

the customers were acting as employees by creating the product themselves - posting their own information, websites and chatrooms. In other words, creating networks for AOL that didn't cost AOL a thing.

What do we need to learn about this for our own businesses? First, we need to understand this is a consequence of the rapid socialization of knowledge - the internet virtually insures that what's successful in one culture will be spread around the world almost immediately. The lag time of knowledge spreading from one culture to another is almost non-existent - there is no lag time.

Second, we have to accept an additional premise -- that the more customers have to do with creating the product, the more likely they are to be satisfied with the result. In many cases they've taught the business how to please them, and the organization now has a fuller relationship with them.

And it's critical that the information flows back and forth - we have to learn more about our customers and then share with them what we learn, for more feedback, then more learning, and the cycle goes on and on.

Successful organizations have to first, learn what the customer wants, then create what they want, then, remember what they want.

Who does this? How about Amazon.com? Let me tell you about one I deal with all the time to make my point - an on line company called Road Runner sports. I do a lot of long distance running, and I buy a lot of running shoes - sometimes six or seven pair a year. Road Runner Sports knows that. Six months ago, I bought a pair of Nike Tempests - a shoe I really like. Four months later, they sent me an email telling me the Tempests were on sale. Last week, I got another message saying that shoe was about to be discontinued, and this would be my last chance to buy a pair.

They're not stupid - they've learned my buying habits, they've remembered, and now they're anticipating my needs. They know by now I'm about ready for another pair of those shoes.

They even had me fill out a survey to find out how often I run, how far, how heavy I am, and whether I run on pavement or trails, so they can tailor their promotions to my needs.

They're communicating with me like I'm a friend - and in a sense, I am. They've built a personal relationship with me. So I ask the question. are you doing the same in your businesses?

When you buy a book from Amazon.com, they keep track of what you buy. They put your data into a computer

program that tells them about other books you might be interested in, (based on what you already bought), then, they send you information on those by email.

There are software programs now - the predominant one, I believe, is called Firefly - and it's a web-based recommendation engine, that even identifies what they call your "taste space." If you tell them, for example, your favorite ten CD's, they put that information into a database that compares your top ten with the top ten of five hundred thousand other people. It then produces a list that anticipates what you'll enjoy, and then periodically offers you a personalized list of CD's that there's a pretty good chance you'll like. Amazon and Barnes and Noble are already using this.

Now, here's another important basic concept that underlies the significance this whole relationship idea can hold for your company: since relationships involve two people investing in them, their value increases twice as fast as an investment by one.

That means the cost of switching relationships is twice as high as when the customer hasn't been allowed to participate. If you leave a relationship, you surrender twice the value, so you're less likely to leave. And guess whose responsibility it is to let the customer participate? Yours, and your company's.

If you leave a relationship, you surrender twice the value. You give up everything you've put into it, and all the other party's put into it. Think about it - that's why frequent flyer clubs work, it's why you go back to the same travel agent again and again. You've already invested the time of educating them about the product you want.

It's why you go back to the same hair stylist, because they already know your tastes and preferences.

Your company needs to recognize this same thing, and build similar relationships - just at a higher level. And again, who's likely to be the key person on the business end of this relationship? In many cases, the secretaries. the administrative professionals.

Now there's another piece to all this. It's called customization. It's no longer a "one size fits all world."

Johnson and Johnson now has sixty different kinds of dental floss on the shelf. There are more than 800 brands of cereals to choose from in the grocery store.

I went into a pharmacy recently and just to prove my point I counted 120 different styles and sizes of toothbrushes.

Do you have Starbucks here? They're one of the fastest growing companies in the world. When you walk into a Starbucks, you can choose regular or decaf, hot or cold, regular coffee, espresso, cappucino, mocha, latte, café au lait, café cocoa -- short, medium, tall or extra tall, in a paper cup or a mug, with nutmeg, vanilla, cocoa or cinnamon, get a shot of your favorite liquer thrown in, and then have your choice of a whole case of pastries to boot. That's the way the world is today. Nobody just wants a plain cup of coffee anymore. (If you don't believe it, get in line for one sometimes at Starbucks and just see how long it takes you to get to the front!)

Your companies have to adjust to this mentality. You can help them open up their eyes to the changing nature of their customers.

And most important, customization allows the customer to feel like they're helping to create the product, and therefore, again, in a real relationship with you.

Personally, I think it's kind of interesting that (in English at least) the word customer, and the word customization, both came from the same Latin root word - somewhere along the line we forgot that, but we're being reminded about it now.

The other important concept in all this is that one of the prime intentions of networked technology is to make the customer smarter. To do this, you need to share your knowledge with the customer. It may be knowledge about the product, or it may be what you know about them. It could even be what you used to think of as proprietary knowledge - knowledge you thought was yours, and not to share.

You see, in the networked economy, we need to recognize that: "Whoever has the smartest customer wins." Again, let me talk about Amazon.com. When you click onto their website, what do you find? Sure, you find books for sale, but you also find reviews - and not just reviews by professional critics. You find reviews by other customers and readers, and even a place for you to write your own review to share with others.

That's not only one way of sharing knowledge, and making the customer smarter, but it's another way of aligning the customers into networks where they feel, again, like they're contributing to the product, or the service.

So, how do you make your customers smarter? You connect them to each other. Just like Amazon. you let them exchange their own ideas and information. Companies used to be afraid of this. When I first started in the association business, our most dreaded event was

convention. Why? Because that's where everybody was able to get together and find out that the mistake we made with one person, you probably made with a lot of others.

But today, we recognize that the customer knows best what they want, and how we can provide it.

How do you connect them? If you have a website, encourage chatrooms, bulletin boards, and other vehicles that allow the customers to exchange information. Let them learn from you, you learn from them, and let them learn from each other.

The smartest thing we can do for our own businesses today is to connect customers into a collective intelligence. Start your own user groups. Ask for input. Do focus group research on line. Start quality circle chatrooms.

You know, it's interesting, user groups really began with software and hardware companies, and they were first seen as a sign of failure. Customers were actually having to service themselves, by sharing their problems and their own solutions, because the software companies couldn't

keep up. In reality, user groups were a sign of a new intelligence - a new form of collective intelligence. Not only did they make the product better, they started making the users smarter.

Smart companies now learn from their users, use the information to improve the product, then feed the information back again, and create a cycle of ever growing knowledge.

But there is a risk. You have to be good. You'll be challenged all the time. User groups are better than advertising when the customers are happy, but they can be a serious problem when they're not.

As administrative professionals, you can not only help set all this up and maintain it, but in some cases you can even give provide the concept. Tell your companies how important it is. Don't just wait to provide the logistics - plant the idea.

That's how you make yourself most valuable to your companies - and in the long run, it will benefit you personally by increasing your value to your employer.

But the bottom line is: The world's best experts on your service or product don't work for your company - they're your customers. The key to this relationship is trust. Without it, your company's going to flounder in the new economy. It can't be bought. It can't be instant. It accumulates slowly, and it can be lost in seconds.

For trust to grow, customers need to know what you know about them, and they need to feel like their input is being heard and used. That begins the relationship.

So, what are your strategies? How can your companies make use of all this knowledge? How can you make use of it to help your company, and to help yourself?

First, you need to help make your customers as smart as you are about your products and services. You know it

yourselves -- it's tough to be a consumer today - and any help you give will be rewarded by loyalty. As secretaries and administrative professionals, you need to share this secret with your organization, and it won't be long before they realize you were way out in front of the challenge.

Second, connect customers to customers. There's nothing more powerful. The customers will teach you more about your products, faster, than any other way you can learn. Use your technology and computer skills to help provide your company with opportunities how to do this, and advise others on how it can be done.

Show them how to make the best use of the technology you already have available to connect your customers. Most companies don't realize this yet - so you can help lead the way.

Third, learn from your customers. You're on the front line - talk to them. Be open minded, and don't feel threatened. Believe me, they won't think less of you for listening to their concerns.

Fourth, customize your services. Look for every opportunity to specialize your product. Remember that personal service builds personal relationships. And that's what the new economy is all about.

Finally, imagine your customers as employees. Customers want to be involved at some level in the creation of the product. Use technology to let them play a role. They can only do this if you allow them to. And who's in a better position to do this than the administrative professionals who are out there on the front line?

I can't emphasize enough how big a part the administrative professional can play in all this. There are new rules, and many companies don't understand them. But if they're going to stay competitive, they'll have to learn them, and the sooner the better.

You can help guide them. Let them know how important all this is, and how they can make better use of the technology that they already have. In most cases, they just need to realize how to better use what they already have available.

In IAAP, we're trying to capitalize on all these new concepts - new rules for the game, you might say. We've created our own website, and that's a new tool that none of us had a few years ago, and it's the single biggest step towards the true globalization of this profession that's ever occurred. The internet is making the world smaller, and increasing the need for international standards, such as the CPS rating for admins everywhere. And it's happening in all professions. The impact of the internet on the world is bigger than the invention of the telephone, it's bigger than radio or TV, it's bigger than the Renaissance. In fact, the Renaissance might not be a bad analogy. Someday, a hundred years or so from now, historians will be looking back and saying that the pre-1990's were the real Dark Ages.

The internet allows us at IAAP to take all that we've been doing for many years in the U.S. and just a few other countries and spread that knowledge around the world. For example, we started the International Summit - an every three year meeting of all the secretarial associations in the world - we started that ten years ago, but the concept really didn't have much impact until we were able to tie it all together through the use of the internet, linking all of the associations together in a mode of instant communication.

Our member at large concept, where people from countries everywhere join IAAP as individuals, but don't belong to local chapters, didn't take off and become successful until the internet allowed us to share our information with the world. Now, it's a simple matter for anyone anywhere to get on their PC, do a keyword search for the word "secretary", and within seconds they're on our website, connected with secretaries everywhere in the world.

Our CPS program is now being given in 16 countries, and more are getting involved each year. The new networks available to us - primarily through the internet - are very quickly globalizing this profession. Secretaries in Asia are talking to secretaries in Brazil. and secretaries in Brazil are talking to secretaries in the United States, and the circle goes on and on. they're learning from each, creating their own products, and making each other smarter... Just like Kelly talked about in his book.

A secretary in Hong Kong who has a problem in Powerpoint or the newest release of Microsoft Word posts a question on a chatroom on our website, or any of hundreds of others, and an hour later receives a solution from a secretary in Guatemala. Not only is this a lightening fast socialization of knowledge - it's an important and monumental step towards the establishment of international standards for this profession - for the first time. Not since Microsoft software began standardizing computers around the world has anything had as big an impact on this profession.

Microsoft, by the way, and in my opinion, has been the biggest single factor in standardizing how we all do our work. I don't think there's ever been a private company that's had the impact on a profession that they've had. Think about it. you or I can go anywhere in the world, sit down at anyone's computer, and we instantly know how to operate it, manipulate it, send messages or documents, or a hundred other things. Right now I believe our government is making a monumental mistake in attempting to identify Microsoft as a monopoly in the U.S. and trying to break them up into a number of smaller, competitive companies. It may spread the wealth to other computer software companies, but it will be a major step backwards from the most complete standardization of resources the world's ever seen.

IAAP is taking advantage of this need for standardization through its CPS program - the Certified Professional Secretary. For many years the CPS rating has been the benchmark of excellence in the secretarial profession, but it was primarily a U.S.-oriented program. It had some following in a handful of other countries, but primarily, it was North American based. It assured employers that any secretary or other administrative professional who had the letters CPS after his or her name was knowledgeable and experienced in several basic areas critical to success in this profession. It helped not only the employer easily identify a good potential secretary, it helped the secretary get a good job. Upon certifying, she was immediately recognized by corporations, and her peers, as being among the best in the profession.

In the U.S., it's the equivalent to an advanced degree in secretarial science. It demonstrates proficiency in finance and business law, office systems and administration, and management. But most important, it assures an employer that the applicant has met minimal experiential requirements as well - in other words, that she has had adequate real-life work experience. In the U.S., it's the best thing a secretary can have on her resume.

Now, with the globalization of this profession, a secretary in Malaysia, South Africa or even Brazil can meet the same standards, and be assured that whereever he or she might go in the world that they'll be recognized as a competent, qualified, certified professional secretary.

I mentioned earlier that the CPS examination is now being administered in 16 countries. But what's new is that it's now being licensed to other organizations in seven countries, and that means it's being not only administered in these countries, but actively promoted and marketed there as well. Privately offered CPS review courses are becoming commonplace around the world.

And once again the internet - the great standardizer - the network of all networks - comes into play. How? Any secretary, anywhere in the world, can sign on to her home computer and within minutes be participating live in an on-line CPS review course that will help prepare her to pass the CPS examination. So we have not just globalization of the CPS rating, but of the educational process as well.

For those of you interested in the CPS, stop by our website. Or discuss its possibilities for you within your work group, your company, or even your association. It is the only truly global certification offered in the world today.

It's a new world out there. Be a part of it. I hope you go to work Monday with a new outlook. But don't keep it to yourself. Use it to your organization's advantage, and to your advantage. Show off a little.

This profession is just like all the others. Everyone wants to get ahead, and the latest knowledge and ideas will always be the best way to keep your career on track and moving forward.

It's been great to be here with you. I hope the subject of the new economy is something you found interesting, and I hope it's something you can use to advance yourself and your own interests. I hope I've been able to relate to you how this profession is becoming truly standardized for the first time. And I hope I've stimulated some interest in the CPS program, and how it might benefit you and your employers.

It's been an honor to be your speaker today, and I thank you again for having me.