Each year, at our Sperry Van Ness® (SVN) National Conference, I talk to our commercial real estate advisors and business owners about game-changing trends. Game-changers occur when people are doing things (working, playing, living) differently than they used just a few years ago. This year, we have four categories. Communication, Design, Collaboration and Distribution.
Trends in Communication
The following video features the first portion of my 2015 talk on trends. Watch the video and read the takeaways below.
Main takeaways in communication trends:
- It’s here: the generational tipping point. The oldest Millennials are now 35, which means by 2020, they will be 40 and it will be their workplace in which we are working. This is already changing how we communicate in business.
- We have entered a time where generational expectations of response times in business are mismatched. Millennials expect immediacy while Boomers are more comfortable with an hour or even a day.
- Texting has become a standard and accepted form of communication in many businesses.
- Every new platform now emphasizes pictures. Facebook keeps making pictures bigger than words, Twitter had to adjust to this reality to remain relevant. Instagram and Snapchat put pictures front and center rather than any text. Even texts contain emoticons and emojis. If you don’t know the difference between the last two … watch the video!
- Millennials and Gen Z also use different platforms for different types of communications. It’s not about blending the platforms together into a superplatform; it’s about accepting that there are multiple systems and platforms for communication.
In summation, the way we communicate in business is going to change drastically within the next 5 years as the Millennials grow into leadership roles and Generation Z enters the workforce. We will see more and more communications platforms being used within single organizations, each with a different purpose. These will include document sharing platforms and visual conferencing apps that will not just replace in-person meetings, but one-on-one telephone conversations as well. Email itself needs reinvention to remain relevant. Programs like Google Inbox are already attempting to do so, because as soon as we can easily share documents via texts and visual conferencing apps, email will lose some of its luster.
At Sperry Van Ness International Corporation, we are watching these trends to see how they affect the commercial real estate industry. Our goal is to capitalize on these trends so that our advisors are using the most powerful tools to the benefit of their clients.
To view the rest of the speech please visit our YouTube page.