Andrea Iorio – Keynote Speaker

A new Skillset for the Digital Transformation

In the world of Digital Transformation, technology is a means, not the end. It is primarily a human transformation.

In this lecture, which is Andrea’s best-seller, he addresses the main new skills necessary for workers of all areas and sectors to be able to reinvent themselves and navigate their organizations in the world of Digital Transformation.

From the description of what Andrea defines the “5 great forces of the Digital world”, he expands the vision of human competences of the digital age – with a mix of cases, storytelling and practical tools that make his listeners more open and engaged in a process of behavioral change and cultural – , being that the skillset comprises:

• Cognitive flexibility
• Maker’s attitude
• Human behavior specialist
• Beginner’s mindset
• Digital altruism

Customer-Centricity and CRM 4.0

It is a fact that the changes in the Digital world, even more accelerated by the pandemic, have radically changed the role of the customer and of the end consumer with respect to businesses.

If in the analog world, the customer had a more passive and reactive posture, today he is more empowered (due to 4 main factors, which Andrea describes in the keynote), more demanding, he holds the power, and expects nothing less than customization and absolute transparency.

How to change customer relationship formats then?

Andrea lists 3 main pillars of change, in this engaging talk perfect for Marketing and Sales teams:

1 – “Know who you are talking to”: use data to personalize the relationship;

2 – “Do not sell a product or service, but an experience”;

3 – “Make it humane”: practice active listening and consultative dialogue.

Soft Skills and Emotional Intelligence

Till recently, in a predominantly analog world, the intelligence of an employee or leader was measured primarily by their IQ.

But in a world where technology already performs many of these “rational” tasks better than we do (think about whether an Artificial Intelligence is better at making calculations than a human being?), it is necessary to redefine our intelligence contemplating Emotional Intelligence – popularized in the 1990s by the psychologist Daniel Goleman) – because it is what makes us typically human.

Emotional Intelligence, after all, is the breeding ground for Soft Skills (while our IQ is for our hard skills). But for a long time Soft Skills have not been a priority in the work environment: why? Fundamentally due to the fact that they are hard to measure.

But in this talk, with his revolutionary theory on Soft Skills, Andrea solves this problem and redefines the range of Soft skills, contemplating:

• Metacognition

• Collaboration

• Critical Thinking

• Adaptability

• Creativity

• Agility

The 3 Secrets of the "Invisible Marketing"

In this lecture, Andrea discusses the trends and strategies that have been revolutionizing the way we do marketing in the Digital Age.

Using the case of Tinder, of which he was Director in Latin America for 5 years, and of other successful companies, he reveals how the platform reached the top of the App Store’s highest-grossing Apps in Brazil in 2017: that is, thanks to the theory of “Invisible Marketing”.

In other words, a new way to make marketing more organic, more spontaneous, more personalized, and ultimately faster and cheaper!

3 steps are the basis of the virtuous circle that he defines of “Invisible Marketing”:

• A more conversational and less transactional relationship;

• Focus on selling an experience and not just a product or service;

• Aspiration in order to obtain “brand love”.

How to Boost Sales in a Digital World

The question that every salesperson asks themselves, in the face of Digital Transformation, is: will I continue to be relevant? What will my role be? Will technology replace me?

These are normal questions to ask, given the changes that the Digital world has introduced in sales and customer relationships. But faced with the fear of replacement by technology, Andrea shows the audience that no, we will not be replaced as sales force, but on the contrary – we will be reinforced.

Because the more sales teams outsource to technology what it knows how to perform best (the entire transactional aspect) in the relationship with the customer, it will free more time and emotional resources available for us to truly learn to focus more on the customer and to accelerate our sales in the Digital world.

In this talk, Andrea shares the necessary tools for this salesperson transformation in the Digital world.

Antifragility and Error Culture

In the Digital world, just being resilient is no longer enough: we need to be antifragile.

Resilience comes from the Latin word resilire,that means to “get back to the normal state”: In a world where we experiment more, and fail more as a consequence, organizations and leaders cannot just return to their previous state after a failure, they need to come back stronger.

This is antifragility, that is, our ability to reinforce ourselves through chaos, mistakes, uncertainty – as economist Nassim Taleb has so well theorized.

Therefore, in order to become antifragile, we first need to understand that not every error is bad (and in the lecture, Andrea describes the 3 major categories of error, following the model of Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School), as well as proposing a new model of interpretation of mistakes, which includes:

• Errors seen as a natural by-product of the innovation process, and an outcome that teaches us something;

• a good professional measured by his ability to learn from mistakes;

• the leader’s role becomes one of maximizing learning from mistakes.

The Future of Work and Jobs of the Future

A report by Dell Technologies points out that “85% of the jobs that will exist in 2035 haven’t even been invented yet”. The question then becomes: how do I prepare myself for such an unpredictable job market?

The truth is that we inherited from an analog world the belief that in the career we need to follow linear and specialized trajectories, and that in this way we will succeed. The problem is that faced with such an unpredictable and uncertain future of work, we need to change our way of thinking about careers.

In this talk, Andrea explores the future of the job market, presenting the careers that will be most transformed by the Digital Revolution, as well as pointing out the highest skills – for listeners to prepare for the Future of Work and for the Jobs of the Future.