Category: blog

6 Reasons Why Website Speed Matters & How Amazon Would Lose $1.6 Billion If It Slowed Down

6 Reasons Why Website Speed Matters & How Amazon Would Lose $1.6 Billion If It Slowed Down

Posted on by admin

6 Reasons Why Website Speed Matters & How Amazon Would Lose $1.6 Billion If It Slowed Down

How long do you wait for a website to load?

Well, according to statistics, half of us don’t even wait two seconds for website content to pop up!

Simon / Pixabay

That’s why I created the Bitcatcha speed checker. I wanted to make sure my server was reacting as fast as possible. And I want to help you test yours as well.

But, why is website load speed so important? What difference does a fraction of a second make?

The answer? It makes a big difference! It affects user experience, search rankings, and even sales and conversions.

1. Website speed is the first impression you ever make

First impressions are vital on the web.

Your customers, readers, and website visitors make an instant judgement about you and your business.

If your website loads fast, you’ve instantly made a strong first impression. It’s a quick-win for user experience! If it loads fast, your new visitor is immediately happy.

 

It’s pure psychology. We consider fast websites to be professional and reliable. We relate speed to efficiency, trust, and confidence.

 

“If it’s fast, it must be professional!”

 

A slow website, on the other hand, makes us think it’s unsafe, insecure, and untrustworthy. And it’s really difficult to turn around that negative first impression.

 

 

You don’t get a second chance when it comes to user experience. Nearly 80% of your potential audience aren’t coming back.

 

2. We expect speed!

 

The internet sets a high bar when it comes to site speed. We expect, and demand fast loading times.

 

Here are the hard facts:

 

  • 47% of people expect your site to load in less than 2 seconds.
  • 40% will abandon it entirely if it takes longer than 3 seconds.

 

You get a little bit more room to move with mobile visitors, but not much.

 

  • 85% of internet users expect a mobile site to load as fast or faster than on their desktop.

 

All stats courtesy of Kissmetrics.com

 

When we’re on the move, we tend to be even less patient. We want answers fast!

People's Expectations On Mobile Loading Speed

 

It’s clear that we all expect quick results whether we’re on a laptop, desktop, tablet, or mobile phone. Think about how you use the internet every day. You’re looking for quick answers and immediate results.

 

When it comes to well-known and authority sites, people are willing to wait a little longer. If you’re Google or Facebook, visitors will tolerate a small delay, because they’re an established name.

 

Unfortunately, for small businesses and startups, you don’t always have that luxury. It’s best to be as fast as possible right from the start.

 

3. User experience

 

I’ve written a lot about user experience and UX design. I think it’s one of the few ways that websites can really set themselves apart from the competition.

 

At it’s core, good UX design is all about creating a fantastic and simple experience for your visitors. There are two basic factors involved in a positive user experience:

 

  • Give visitors what they’re looking for
  • Give it to them fast.

 

That’s why website load speed is your number one priority when it comes to user experience. People visiting your website are looking for something. Give it to them as quickly as possible.

 

As soon as your visitors are confused or frustrated, you’ve done something wrong. And nothing frustrates us like a slow website!

 

4. Slow websites kills conversions

 

Let’s quickly revisit one of the first stats we showed you:

 

  • 40% of people will abandon your site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

 

Now, let’s say 100,000 people visit your site every month. If you slowed down to 4 seconds, you could lose 40,000 potential customers.

 

40,000!

 

If slow load speeds are driving people away, then it’s driving your sales away. This isn’t just speculation either. Some of the biggest companies on the planet have tested this out.

 

  • Amazon did tests that showed they would lose $1.6 BILLION every year if they slowed down by just one second.

 

And Amazon are an established, recognisable company. If customers won’t wait just one extra second for Amazon, what chance have the rest of us got?

 

5. The long-term effect of slow website speed

 

We’ve established that slow loading speed leads to an instant drop-off in visitors. Nearly half of your potential visitors have already vanished. But there is a long-term effect here too. That long loading time gradually stunts your natural growth and word-of-mouth.

 

Customers slowly stop referring your service to others because of a poor experience. Established websites are less likely to link back to your content. It might even put people off signing up to your newsletter.

 

We often link a slow website to a lack of credibility, which may hurt your brand in the long run.

 

6. Website speed affects your Google rank

 

Google have a self-confessed love of speed.

 

“We’re striving to make the whole web fast”

 

They’re on a mission to make sure the internet is super speedy, easily accessible, and useful. So far, they’re doing a pretty good job.

 

There’s a lot of information out there about Google, load speed, and your search ranking. Some of it true, some of it not so much. Here’s what we know for sure from the mouths of Google themselves.

 

  • Google do take website load speed into account when ranking websites (announced in 2010)
  • But, it is a very small ‘signal’ (compared to relevance and authority)

 

“While site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal”

 

It basically means that the average websites won’t see much change. But, if your site is super slow, you will suffer.

 

But, here’s the interesting bit:

 

“Google will reduce the amount of crawlers it sends to your site if your server is slower than two seconds.”

 

That means Google is less likely to pick up your latest blog post, or notice any other recent updates. And that might harm you.

 

To make sure your server speed is up to standard, use our Bitcatcha server speed checker, and make sure your site measures up. If it’s less than two seconds, you might be effectively hiding yourself from Google’s crawlers.

 

Pro-tip : If your website is running on WordPress, be sure to check out these managed WordPress hosting because their services are well optimized for speed.

 

Speed matters. It affects your user experience, it it affects your search ranking. It affects your sales and conversions.

 

If you’re wondering how your server speed measures up, head over to our speed checker now, and compare your site against millions of others.

 

If you have any questions or thoughts on website load speed or server response times, please leave a comment below!

 

 

By Daren Low         June 04, 2019   Web Development    Advertising Disclosure
41 SEO Terms Explained, an SEO Glossary

41 SEO Terms Explained, an SEO Glossary

Posted on by John Rainford
PhotoMIX-Company / Pixabay

SEO Glossary
1. 301 redirect
First let’s talk redirecting in general. Redirection happens when you visit one specific page and immediately after that you’re being automatically redirected to a different page (with a different URL).

Essentially, there are two types of redirection: temporary and permanent. From a user’s perspective there’s no difference between them, but there is one from a search engine’s perspective. 301 redirect is a permanent redirection. It informs search engines that the page they’re trying to access has changed its address permanently. This means that whatever rankings the page already has should be transferred to the new address (this doesn’t happen with a temporary redirection).

2. Alt tag
It’s an HTML attribute of the IMG tag. The IMG tag is responsible for displaying images. The alt tag/attribute is the text that gets displayed in case the image can’t be loaded (if the file is missing, for example).

To give you an example, here’s what a standard IMG tag could look like:

Alt tags have some SEO value. The thing is that Google can’t (at least at the moment) see what the actual image presents, but it can read the alt tag. There’s no better way of informing Google what’s on your images than by using alt tags.

3. Anchor text
Every link consists of two main elements. There’s the web address that the link is pointing to (the destination) and there’s the anchor text. The anchor text is the text that works as the link.

The easiest way of explaining this is to give you an example. Here’s a link to my resource and education page: online business resources. The destination of this link is http://newinternetorder.com/tools/, and the anchor text is “online business resources”.

Anchor texts are particularly important for SEO. Whenever you’re trying to get a link back to your website it’s good to have a relevant keyword as the anchor text.

4. Backlinks
Backlink is simply a link placed on someone else’s website that points back to your site. Backlinks are one of the most important factors for SEO. Getting a lot of backlinks with relevant anchor texts is the shortest way of improving your search engine rankings.

5. Black hat SEO
Like everything SEO has its dark side too. Black hat SEO is the name for all SEO practices that are known for being manipulative or unethical, and in the long run can hurt your website, or even get it banned from search engines.

Of course, there’s a very thin line between “perfectly fine” and “unethical” … one day some SEO practices are OK, and the other they are suddenly black hat, so there’s no exact list of such practices.

6. Canonical tag
It’s an HTML link element that lets webmasters to inform search engines about some duplicate content pages they’ve created. The tag is placed in the HEAD section of the HTML structure. Here’s what it looks like:

This tag informs that the current page is a copy of the page located under the address set in the canonical tag (href).

The main idea is that when a search engine sees this tag it does not rank that page, but transfers all the rankings to the canonical page. So in essence it’s very similar to the 301 redirect.

7. Cloaking (page cloaking)
It’s a practice of taking a webpage and building it in a way so it displays different content to people and to search engines. That way, at least in theory, you can get good ranking for your desired keywords (by presenting an optimized page to the spiders) and then present real people with unrelated offers and content. While this might work from a marketing standpoint it can also get you penalized or even banned very quickly.

8. Deep linking
Let me quote Wikipedia here:

On the World Wide Web, deep linking is making a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on a website, instead of that website’s main or home page. Such links are called deep links.

Deep links are particularly valuable for SEO. Linking to specific pages within your site with a good anchor text improves the rankings of these pages. Essentially, building deep links is where SEO game is won or lost.

9. Do-follow link
It’s a standard HTML link that doesn’t have the rel=”nofollow” attribute. Do-follow links are the most valuable ones from an SEO perspective.

10. Domain name (and hosting)
Domain is your unique address on the internet. For example the domain of this blog is newinternetorder.com. You can get a shiny new domain at GoDaddy for just $6 or so.

Hosting, or a web host, is where your website is kept/stored on the web. You need a web host to be a website owner. You can get really affordable hosting at Host Gator for $3.96 a month.

11. Duplicate content
If you have two separate pages within your website that have the same content on them (or very similar content) then you have duplicate content. Duplicate content is believed to be a bad thing for SEO. Google doesn’t like sites that use the same piece of content over and over again, and they often penalize them for it.

If you think that you are safe then think again. Let me give you an example. If your site runs on WordPress, and if you’re using similar categories and tags (like for example a tag “business” and a category “business”) then the listing pages for your tags and categories will probably be very similar if not exactly the same. That is a prime example of duplicate content.

12. Keywords
There are many definitions of keywords. Let me share the one that matters for SEO.

Keywords are single words or whole phrases of a particular SEO importance for a given page or website.

For example, if I’m writing an article about choosing the best gardening equipment, my main keyword could be “gardening equipment“. It is the keyword I want to rank for because I want people to find this article when they input “gardening equipment” into Google.

Another example is this very list. The main keyword here is SEO glossary. I want people to find this post by putting “SEO glossary” into Google.

13. Keyword density
Keyword density is a number describing how often does a specific phrase appear in a piece of text. To calculate it you just have to divide the number of times your keyword appears in a piece of text by the total number of words this piece of text has, and then multiply the result by 100. The final result will be expressed as a percentage score.

Keyword density is believed to have an effect on SEO. The reasoning behind it is that if a given phrase has a high density score then it means that the text is clearly about that phrase, so it probably should get good rankings for it. Unfortunately this practice doesn’t work so well like it used to in the past.

14. Keyword stuffing
If you take a random piece of text in English some words will occur more frequently than the other. For example, words like: and, or, it occur very frequently, while words like: powerhouse, mushrooming occur very rarely. Keyword stuffing is a practice of taking a word or a phrase and repeating it very often in a piece of text. Usually to the point where the text no longer looks natural, all for the purpose of increasing keyword density of your desired phrase.

While working on keyword density is no longer believed to work, keyword stuffing does work, but it works against you. Stuffing your text with keywords is sure to backfire.

15. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
The standard definition of LSI is truly impossible to understand so I’m not going to bring it up here. Instead here’s a more digestible one.

LSI is considered to be an important factor for search engines when ranking your page. It’s said that search engines analyze the content on your page and search for LSI keywords supporting your main keyword. If they find such keywords your page gets a boost in rankings for your main keyword.

LSI keywords are keywords that are similar to your main one – keywords that are usually found along your main keyword in the natural language.

For example, if your main keyword is “gardening equipment” and you’re using it a lot in your article it would be great to use some LSI keywords as well, such as: “plants“, “garden“, “vegetables“, “planting“, etc. These are the keywords that would be mentioned naturally in a genuine conversation.

In other words, LSI is a way of checking whether the text is genuine or just stuffed with random keywords purely for improving rankings.

16. Linkbait
It’s like fishing bite only for links. Basically, it’s a piece of highly viral content. Content that is most likely to attract a lot of links, hence – linkbait.

Creating linkbait content is usually very hard even though the principles are simple. There are a couple of ways you can choose: (1) create something really funny, (2) create something of exceptional quality, (3) create something that brings a lot of value for free.

Linkbait content is not only text. Videos, pictures, graphics, and audio work equally well.

17. Link building
This is one of the biggest SEO terms. Link building is simply a process of getting backlinks to your page. For example, if you’re publishing articles on ezinearticles.com with a link to your site then you’re doing some link building.

One more thing. Link building is considered to be the most important element of every SEO strategy. If you want to have a well ranked page you have to get backlinks to it.

18. Link farm
It’s a network of websites that link to each other for the sole purpose of increasing their rankings and PageRanks. Let me give you an example. If you ware to create a link farm (don’t!) you could launch 4 different websites, for example. Each on a different server. Then you would link page #1 to pages #2, #3, #4. Page #2 to pages #1, #3, #4, and so on. Basically, every page links to every other page. Such a network isn’t very powerful when it contains only 4 sites, but when they’re hundreds or thousands of them (which isn’t uncommon) then it’s a completely different story. BUT!

This is considered as a “black hat” SEO technique. Don’t take part in it unless you want your site to get penalized.

19. Link sculpting
By using the “nofollow” attribute of a link you can make some of the links on your site unimportant from an SEO point of view. Therefore, by using this attribute skillfully you can “sculpt” the PageRanks of certain pages within your website. You can increase the visibility of some pages by granting them with follow links and decrease the visibility of others by using nofollow links.

This whole technique requires a lot of practice and knowledge to do it properly. What’s more, many people believe that it’s no longer that effective due to Google’s new approach for handling nofollow links.

20. Meta description
It’s a short description of a blog/page/post used mostly by search engines. This description is not displayed anywhere on the blog.

Here’s how Google uses it. Whenever someone googles a specific keyphrase Google makes a decision which websites should be displayed and in what order. For each website Google displays a title and a short description. Google has two ways of putting this description together:

If the meta description of the website contains the keyphrase used by the user then Google displays the meta description.
If the meta description doesn’t contain the keyphrase then Google displays a fragment of the website’s content that does contain it.
If you’re using WordPress then meta description for each page or post can be set using the All In One SEO Pack plugin.

21. Meta keywords
It’s a list of keywords and keyphrases for each blog/page/post used mostly by search engines.

Nowadays, many people think that the major search engines don’t pay any attention to this element while ranking websites. And it’s probably the case. Nevertheless, setting proper keywords won’t do you any harm.

Therefore including your main keyword on the meta keywords list might be a good idea. For this post, I’d include SEO glossary and SEO terms.

If you’re using WordPress then meta keywords for each page or post can be set using the All In One SEO Pack plugin.

22. Meta tags
Meta tags consist of two main elements: meta description, and meta keywords. Meta tags are placed in the HEAD section of the HTML structure of your page. The information contained in those tags is usually not meant for the users but for the search engines. It helps them determine what the page is about. Therefore it might be worth to set them manually for each page or post within your blog.

If you’re using WordPress then all meta tags for each page or post can be set using the All In One SEO Pack plugin.

23. Natural links
All links your page has acquired naturally without you actively building them.

For example, if you’ve written a great post that gets viral on twitter and a lot of people end up linking to it because they like it so much, all those links are natural links.

24. Nofollow
“Nofollow” is a very popular term in today’s SEO. When in fact it’s just an optional attribute of a link. However, its “optionalism” doesn’t make it unimportant. In fact, it’s the most important attribute from a SEO standpoint.

By default every link is a follow link. This means that whenever a search engine encounters a link, it follows it. Checks where it leads to, and basically takes it as a vote. A vote by the linking website to the website that is being linked to. The nofollow attribute notifies the search engines that they shouldn’t even pay attention to such a link – no vote, no link juice.

From a user’s perspective nofollow links look exactly the same as their follow brothers and sisters.

In order to create a nofollow link just add one extra attribute to an HTML link:

rel=”nofollow”

An example nofollow link:

Wikipedia

25. Off-page SEO
The are two main elements of SEO: “on-page” and “off-page”. Off-page practices are everything you do outside your page to improve its rankings.

Basically, the main element of off-page SEO is link building.

26. On-page SEO
The are two main elements of SEO: “on-page” and “off-page”. On-page practices are everything you do on your page to improve its rankings.

This includes things like: tuning the HTML structure, improving title tags and descriptions, making your site load faster, checking the keyword usage and density, improving the internal linking structure (the way your pages are linked to each other), etc.

27. Organic search
You’re doing organic search when you visit Google, input a phrase and push the search button.

28. Organic search results (natural search results)
When you do a search on Google the results will most often come in two columns. The column on the right presents the paid results (AdWords ads that someone has bought). The column on the left presents the organic search results.

Getting high rankings in organic search results is what the SEO game is all about.

29. PageRank
PageRank or PR is an algorithm first created by Larry Page (one of two founding fathers of Google) to calculate (although “estimate” might be a better word here) the importance of a given website. No one is 100% certain about how it actually works or what all the factors are because Google is not very open in that matter. However, one of commonly believed opinions are that one of the deciding factors is the number of backlinks a site has and the PageRanks of the sites linking to it. So basically, the more links you have, and the better PageRank these linking sites have the better your PageRank will be.

It’s not surprising but pages with highest PageRanks are usually ones that are highly recognizable and popular around the internet. For example, Google.com itself has a PR of 10. Facebook is PR9 website. Yahoo – PR9.

30. Robots.txt
This is a file. One that’s particularly important for SEO. It notifies the search engines which areas of your blog are restricted for them. Restricting search engines from accessing some of your pages might not sound that tempting at first but in fact it’s a valuable thing. First of all, you can exclude all your admin pages from indexing (for example, pages in the wp-admin section of your WordPress blog). You can also use it to prevent search engines from seeing duplicate content on your site. What you do, for example, is prevent them from accessing the category listings on your blog, so only the tag listings are indexed, or the other way around. Very useful file. You can (and should) learn more about it here:

Robots.txt Optimization
Best Robots.txt For WordPress
31. Sandbox, supplemental index
Google is believed to have a second index called the sandbox (or the supplemental index). Not every new page appears in the main index straight away. Some of them are put into the sandbox until Google decides that they are worthy of appearing in the main index – the one you see whenever you do a standard search on Google. Websites that are placed in the sandbox don’t appear for normal searches. This means that being in the sandbox is the worst that can happen to your site.

32. Search engine
What you see at google.com is a search engine. Essentially, search engines are software applications. Their main task is to search the internet for a given phrase. Search engines have specific algorithms for doing this. These algorithms have a way of deciding which sites should appear first in the search results (which sites are the most relevant).

The exact algorithms search engines use are not shared to the public. That’s why everybody involved with SEO can only guess what needs to be done to improve site rankings.

No surprise here, the biggest and most respected search engine is Google.

33. SEM
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. In other words it means “marketing via search engines”. Marketing or promoting your products or services via search engines can be done in two main ways. You either optimize your site so it appears at a high spot in organic search results, or pay for the clicks directly, in which case your site is listed under the “sponsored listings” section.

34. SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a practice of improving site’s rankings in the search engines for given keywords. When doing SEO you need to take care of both on-page and off-page SEO. The actual tasks that need to be done are changing almost every day. What was working perfectly yesterday may not be working at all tomorrow. That’s just the reality of SEO. It’s why SEO is never a one-time task but an ongoing work.

35. SERP
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page (SERPS – Search Engine Results Pages). This is a page that gets displayed when you search for a keyword on Google or other search engine.

36. Spider (crawler, bot, robot)
Search engine spider is a special piece of software that browses the web, looks for new sites, checks what’s going on on them and sends the data back to Google (or other search engine) so they can index and rank these sites.

37. Supplemental result
Let me quote Wikipedia on this one.

Supplemental Result is a URL residing in Google’s supplemental index [i.e. sandbox], a secondary database containing pages of less importance, as measured primarily by Google’s PageRank algorithm. […] A supplemental page will still rank in search results, but only if there are not enough pages in the main index that are returned within the search.

38. Title tag
Every page has a title tag. From a user’s standpoint the title tag is visible only in one place – your browser’s title bar.

For example, the title tag of the page you’re reading right now is: “SEO Glossary – 41 SEO Terms Explained“. It’s a very important SEO factor. There’s no better way for search engines to find out what the page is about than by looking at the title tag, that’s why you need to spend a moment on coming up with a good title tag.

How to set up a title tag.

If you’re using WordPress then the whole thing is rather simple. First of all, every new post receives a title tag that’s the same as the title of the post. However, if you want to change the title tag you need a plugin – All In One SEO Pack, for example. This plugin provides a really simple way of changing the title tag of any page or post on your blog.

39. URL (URI)
Not getting into boring technical details it’s simply the address of a specific web page.

For example, the URL of the post you’re currently reading is:

41 SEO Terms Explained, an SEO Glossary

40. White hat SEO
As opposed to the black hat SEO, white hat SEO is a set of all SEO practices that search engines encourage you to use. Of course, there’s no official reference place or ranking for SEO practices, so in order to be up to date with what’s recommended and what isn’t, you have to constantly read the most popular SEO blogs, and some in-house Google blogs like these two: Official Google Blog, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog.

41. XML sitemap
It’s a file (usually sitemap.xml). Its main function is to give search engines a map of all the different URLs that your blog contains (all pages, posts, archives, etc). With such a thing they can index your blog a lot quicker.

If you’re using WordPress you don’t have to create this file on your own. There’s a plugin for that: Google XML Sitemaps. I you aren’t you can visit a site like XML-Sitemaps.com and get one built there.

Advancing New Models of Leadership in the Public Sector

Advancing New Models of Leadership in the Public Sector

Posted on by admin

“These Transformational Leadership Skills, essential in the Public Sector not only enhance management and organisational performance, but have a wider impact on the Communities they serve.”

“Our teams have made some powerful business decisions using whole brain thinking and the Darwin Matrix process.” Professor Tim Nichol, Dean of Liverpool Business School, UK.

Future Leaders need to reframe their values and behaviours as well as the tools they have at their disposal to help them to align their vision with the organisations and people they serve so that individuals working with corporate teams can facilitate positive social change.

These include, according to the World Economic Forum; emotional intelligence, values and behaviours; enhancing people management skills that sparks creativity and innovation; the new exciting and emerging technologies and social media.

A recent survey concluded that up to 70% of HR directors believe entrepreneurship, innovation and digital skills are the three areas that leaders need to work on as their operating environments change. Commercial skills (70%) and an ability to adapt to change (60%) were identified as key attributes for successful organisational performance.

We need a new type of aspirational leadership in the public sector and a new set of skills to meet the challenges and take some of the best creative and practical practices from the private sector.

We are experiencing unprecedented slashes to public funds and there is a danger that the morale in the public sector will be seriously challenged. To top it all, we are experiencing a technological revolution that will disrupt everything; the way we interact on a social level, the way we do business, the way we eat, drink and sleep. It’s an exciting time, but with evolution, as we know, there will always be winners and losers. 

How do we stay true to our values and at the same time keep a keen competitive edge?

We are entering a new phase – and these new leadership skills will be essential if we want to address and embrace new disruptive technologies. If we choose to ignore these transformational forces we do so at our peril.

Our leadership mindset needs to be transformed and we must be prepared to adapt quickly.

The World Economic Forum says that 10% of Global GDP will be transacted on the Blockchain within a few years. What people don’t know is that it is already being used in industry today, by smart people who like the idea of competitive advantage and evolving innovation. Governments around the world are eager to adopt the new technologies such as Blockchain, IoT (Internet of Things) and AI (Artificial Intelligence).

Intelligent agents and new technology applications are already being used in: Business, Financial Services, Retail, Legal, Accounts, Insurance, Supply Chains, Chambers of Commerce, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Government, Energy, Advertising, Construction, in Art, in Shipping, in Carbon offsets and in Waste Management. It might be better to ask – which industry does the Blockchain and AI not affect?

Can we afford to fall behind? after all, there is an even greater prize, if we able to adapt in time – these technological revolutions will create a fairer, more compassionate and creative society – if we are willing to open our minds.

Whether it is a combination of Reframing Leadership or embracing new technologies, all roads lead to Rome – one way. It is coming fast and it has no moral compass, and yet, it is argued, they could have profound significance for humankind and they will have a direct impact on our market economies.

The aim of this leadership course is to prepare management for a new type of leadership, that is both creative and compassionate, one that embraces AI and the new technologies with keen insights into how relationships and compassionate management play a key role in adopting these new working practices; how the technologies will affect the value of the Brand Equity in organisations and the decisions we make and how socio-economics will be more important and valued than ever. How Quantum learning can play a role in our understanding our motivations and of whole brain thinking (Quantum Leadership).

As part of the experience, we will be working on real business models and AI to see how they might be re-configured to adapt to the public sector. What effect will Blockchain have on Council’s strategy and Business Models? We will be exploring soft skills and how pre-conscious learning (in preparation for the future) can enhance relationships and how we might empower individuals to release their own inner positive creativity and create a better, more inclusive, and collective co-operative organisation, that feels liberated.

The challenges we face as a society with an older more dependant population means we will have to be more creative in our approach to solving problems and utilise other remedies than have hitherto been unrealised. Unlocking the answer means we have to reframe the questions, so that our minds are open to other possibilities.

What are we doing that will enhance the morale, health, well being and ambitions of our young people? How can we build resilience into their thinking processes, so that are less inclined to depression, self doubt and self harm?

How do we face the mental health issues that affect our workforce and the wider stake-holders? It has been estimated that one person who is struggling with a lack of emotional intelligence will have a wider economic and social impact on another 10 people and that does not even include the well being of his or her family members.

Bringing in these inspirational leadership techniques applies to people of all ages, they will not only improve morale but will enhance individual and team performance so that everyone in the organisation and society as a whole, truly benefits.

JOHN RAINFORD’S ACTIVITIES.

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts -The mission of the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) is to enrich society through ideas and action.

LUNARSOCIETY.ORG.UK John is a Fellow, trustee and executive committee member of the lunarsociety.org.uk – stimulating ideas, broadening debate, catalysing action. Darwin was one of the founders members, along with Wedgwood, Boulton, Watt and Priestley.

CCEG.org.UK John has joined CCEG – The Centre for Citizenship Enterprise and Governance as head of Blockchain and – AI to assess Brand and Operational Value. “We are a UN Think Tank focussing on the movement of Non transactional and Social Value.”

IORMA.COM John has joined the Advisory board of iorma.com – ‘our mission is to bring the benefit of AI and technology into people’s lives’.

Visiting Fellow at the University of Birmingham Business School. “I am pleased to be able to use this as an opportunity to record my thanks to John Rainford for his contribution to Birmingham Business School during my time as Director. John ran the MBA Entrepreneurship course at Birmingham Business School. The ‘Creativity for Competitive Advantage’ Course that John also ran for us was mandatory for all students on our main MBA programme. The feedback from students was consistently positive. John also got on well with the Business School faculty.” Jonathan Michie, Director at the University of Birmingham Business School.

How does Neuroscience and the Darwin Matrix works?

When we conducted innovation workshops in Houston, the key to progress was to fully engage the minds of all of the participants, so we developed an interactive course based on neurological science. It’s a balancing act that we have perfected. Neuroscience is the study of how the brain learns, in particular the impact on behaviour and cognitive learning. The dynamics in terms of team building, including personal and emotional development, cannot be ignored. When we first began this journey of un-brainwashing (taking the blocks away from creative thinking) we found that many good ideas were filed away – lost potentially forever. However, when we introduced an on-line visual digital platform system that recorded their thoughts, and they reflected on them the very next morning – we found that the brain(s) had been processing the information overnight and they collectively welcomed the re-examination. Not only were they able to reframe their deliberations, it set off an explosion of insight and strategic ideas simply because we prepared their minds to do so. These insights and procedures were carried throughout the organisation and proved to be a game changer. The Darwin Matrix is a supreme inspirational medium that all of the teams can access and it continues long after the workshops have finished, so there is continuous evolution and innovation in the organisation. All of the participants can access the information (encrypted) 24/7. (see Un-brainwashing in Houston). It is extremely useful for mentoring and monitoring individuals and teams as part of the professional development and organisational agenda. It helps to keep people on track and motivated, as they are always kept in the loop and they feel part of the decision making process.

John’s work for Shell was originally to deliver a Marketing Consultancy campaign that was so successful they used the Darwin Matrix, not just for innovative marketing, but to empower all of their executives, so they in turn could be more creative. They applied the learning to develop new projects and form new business relationships. John works with some of the worlds largest Advertising Agencies to help with creativity and campaigns using the Darwin Matrix. ‘“The answer is there to all our problems, we just need to look at them with different lenses. For me this course is the future of learning, the next Big thing in leadership.” Afzal Shah 

John mentors business leaders and teaches Innovation and Technology leadership for Business and Corporations as well as in Business Schools and Universities. He has taught ‘Leadership and Pathways to Innovation’ for Business Leaders and Technologists for many organisations, here are a few examples; Royal Dutch Shell, Research and Technology, Houston, Royal Dutch Shell, Amsterdam, Royal Dutch Shell, Kuala Lumpur, Rolls Royce UK, ABB Germany, Ryan (Air) Academy, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, The University of Hong Kong, Birmingham Business School, Birmingham City University and last but not least, Liverpool Business School. He is considered a Thought Leader on the future of Creativity, Technology, AI and Innovation and he has given talks and keynote speeches to ‘enhance social value and awareness’ on three continents.

John’s mantra is that we are only limited by our own imagination. Business success include creativity + technology = innovation. His team(s) deliver strategic consultancy, workshops and keynote talks on technology and innovation.

[email protected] Strawberry Fields, the DNA of Innovation, Transforming People and Technology – see darwinmatrix.com a revolutionary realtime collaboration software tool conceptualised by John to enhance ongoing creativity and innovation in technology and people. Linkedin profile…

https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-rainford-012753/

Darwin Matrix – Leadership + Creativity + Technology = Innovation Courses for Future Leaders? A personal Recommendation…

“I met John (Rainford) at Kellogg Business School (Northwestern University) – as we collaborated at Kellogg and subsequently on courses at the International Entrepreneurship, I was so impressed by John’s Darwin Matrix that he was leading at Shell Oil and his affiliative and coaching leadership style that I invited him to collaborate with a group of entrepreneurs in Kansas City. John’s creativity, coaching, and communications skills along with his command in business creativity and innovation set him apart. I am honored to have John as a coach and highly recommend him for organizations who are looking to develop their future leaders.”Khensa M. Bangert – Vice President, Marketing & Business Development – Driving Brand, Engagement, Experience, Direction and Growth Revenue. Paramount Work Place, United States. 

“Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.” Warren Bennis.

Check out https://app.darwinmatrix.com/dna

No alt text provided for this image