2023 trends in business – there’s more

Including ChatGPT

Last blog post we began looking at trends to watch in 2023. Unfortunately though, we didn’t have time to get to all of them for you. So today, we’re looking at two more important 2023 trends. Those that follow are ones you may (or maybe not) have heard of, but not really had the time to think about how you can best take advantage of as yet.

Trust doom loop

Again, as with ‘recessionette’ from last post, the ‘trust doom loop’ is another phrase coined by the team at McCrindle.  This one though, is about the sense of gloom that’s being felt across the globe at the moment. Yes, there’s economic concern, but this one goes much deeper than that. Many communities, here and overseas, are feeling let down by their ‘traditional leaders’ such as companies and parts of government that could always be trusted and now are suddenly no longer seeming trustworthy. From an Australian perspective, consider how people feel about advice coming from the Reserve Bank at the moment. Many folks made decisions based on what they perceived as ‘advice’ from the RBA, only to have the RBA change its direction based on a change in economic circumstances.

But it’s not just one organisation slipping up. It’s more generalised than that. It’s also the uncertainty caused by Covid, the time it’s taking for things to feel ‘normal’ again, the banks piling onto RBA rate rises, rises in the cost of living, and on it goes. 

So what does this mean for you and your business? Personally, it means to not take things that are said at ‘face value’. Do your own research – for example, many are surprised that mortgage rates have risen to what they perceive as an all time high. Certainly they’re at a level we’ve not seen in 11 years, however, they’re not anywhere near an all time high. The all time high was in the 1990’s when rates hit 17-18%. Yep, you read that correctly. In fact, the historic average for mortgage rates sits somewhere around 7%. So when you do your own stress tests as to whether you can afford future rate rises, maybe plan around going 2% even higher to 9% than that and see what that looks like for your individual circumstances.

From a business perspective, understand that both your staff and your customers are facing significant uncertainty. What you say matters – particularly if you’re perceived to be giving advice. And, what you do in business matters even more. If you can demonstrate you’re trustworthy, by doing what you say you’re going to do, you’ll ease uncertainty in the minds of those you’re dealing with. 

Another big thing is being more open to really listen to people. Sure, you’re busy, possibly busier than you’ve ever been, but being listened to is something that clients, customers and staff expect. Hence you need to live up to those expectations. And be authentic in your responses. Authenticity, a word that gets bandied around a lot, has become a critical factor for personal and organisational interactions. 

The rise of artificial intelligence. 

These days you can barely read or listen to anything without someone talking about AI. It’s everywhere and we’ll only see this continue to scale in the next five years. However, before you panic about AI taking your job or replacing your company, it’s really not there yet. At the moment, it’s a vague helper at best. Plus recent research showed that 92% of people preferred talking to a real human than a chatbot – and that’s probably not going to change any time soon.

And the technology is still finding its feet. For example after much fanfare, ChatGPT, one of the most popular AIs available to all, has been found to be lacking (and incorrect) on many occasions; certainly not anywhere near up to replacing humans in the near future. It’s best suited to helping with research, ideas and providing basic drafts for emails, maybe even some coding language for your website or app programming. It’s biggest drawback – it’s historic in nature, only having access to information prior to 2021. 

Pundits predict it will be rather a while before anything AI can take over ‘doing’ roles (teaching, nursing, caring, training or higher order roles like strategy – it’s not predictive yet). However, if you’re a knowledge worker, you might want to think about what changes AI will prompt in the next 3-5 years and begin preparing appropriately. 

You can try ChatGPT for yourself https://chat.openai.com/ 

Digital transformation on the other hand is continuing to accelerate in 2023. More and more of everything is going cloud based. If your business is still doing its bookkeeping manually, there’s definitely a better (and more cost efficient) way to go. And the government is still offering tax incentives for digital transformation activities in your business. 

Of course, if we can help you move your financials forward by helping you transition to retirement, or into your own business, or your existing business head in the direction of digital transformation via cloud accounting with Xero, we’d love to help. You can call us on 6023 1700 or connect with us via Facebook or LinkedIn.

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