The pandemic has changed everything — the way we socialize, celebrate, communicate and how we work. 

In the content and connectivity industry, the challenge was twofold: to quickly equip a remote workforce and ensure that people worldwide stayed connected. Proudly, the industry rose to the challenge, exhibiting agility and innovation in a time of crisis. But now that seas are starting to calm, what will organizations continue to do to ride the wave of change?

I talked to industry learning and development experts Diana Monk, VP of learning solutions at Charter Communications; Martha Soehren, former chief talent development officer at Comcast and current executive development adviser and coach; and Allyson Crawford, VP of talent management at WOW! Internet, Cable & Phone, so they could share their thoughts on how the pandemic has changed workplace practices, behaviors and culture. 

Spoiler alert: Even change caused by a global crisis can create opportunities for the future.

Trust, Freedom Speed Innovation  

While most organizations like to say they grant their employees the freedom to innovate, this principle wasn’t really tested until the pandemic caused a sudden and dramatic shift in the way people work. Leaders had no choice but to allow people at all levels to do what they needed to do to get their work done. 

Rather than the feared outcome of remote workers becoming disengaged and unproductive, the new flexibility increased engagement and productivity. “There were a couple of factors that felt very prominent during the pandemic, and one of those was how we built a trust factor that people would get the work done, that they would do what they needed to do,” Soehren said. “And the second of those was that we gave people the freedom to create a new way of working, a new way of being productive, a new way of interacting and I think that those capabilities will help us immensely moving forward in a more intrapreneurial world.”

The Need for Agility Activated Culture Change  

Large industry organizations tend to have bureaucratic cultures, which means big change happens slowly. At the start of the pandemic, organizations needed to adapt extremely quickly, so decision hierarchies and lengthy processes were thrown to the wind — with surprising results.

“It’s amazing to reflect on how quickly we were able to move some employees — for example, our call center agents to their homes,” Monk said. “I was talking with some members of our IT team, and they said, ‘If someone had put a project plan in front of us and said how long will it take you to move your call centers to 50% at home and 50% in the office, the answer would’ve been somewhere around nine months.’ We did it in less than two weeks because we had to. The lesson on the need for agility there is pretty strong.”  

Empowered, Engaged Employees

If employees are given the freedom to try new things without fear of reprisal, the result is greater engagement. Some organizations have realized the benefits of this shift and are planning to build greater agility into their cultural touchstones moving forward. 

“We’re making decisions more quickly,” Crawford said. “It’s exciting. We’re seeing engagement increasing. We’re empowering our employees, our leaders, to make decisions at a different level.” Added Crawford, “I think the real gift of the pandemic is we’re seeing a lot more generation of ideas by even our frontline employees because we’re asking for more opinions.” 

Cultivating leaders from within and engaging high performers are essential to holding on to top talent. Engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their organization, and this is especially important in the new competitive employment market.

The pandemic has been a crash course in the need for organizations to demonstrate agility and empower employees. Now, our job is to take what we’ve learned and use it to ride the wave of change — lest we risk going under. 

If you’re a cable subscriber, you’ve been a participant in the slow but steady transformation of a complex and multifaceted industry. While most consumers may think that turning on the television to watch CNN or stream Netflix is a simple process, making these processes work seamlessly has been years in the making.

The television was once the central component of our home entertainment experience; now, it could be a wireless phone or tablet, laptop or other screen-based device. Consumers with 4G/LTE-connected devices can get HD-quality pictures without the need for WiFi, and the wireless providers have created packages to lure them to do exactly that. Competition has cost the cable industry a large portion of younger audiences, who now use Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Roku or their wireless devices to stream online services such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon. These new options create business headaches for the cable companies, who must either coexist, cohabitate or partner with these content providers.

Related: Millennials More Likely to Stream, Less Likely to Avoid Ads

What does this mean for cable MSOs? It means a forced hand to innovate, and likely faster than they’ve been used to. Over the past five years, we have seen investments in fiber, expansion into wireless services, higher broadband speeds and a broader service portfolio. This is all happening in areas where many U.S. consumers only have a single cable provider or ISP they can subscribe to.

However, the competitive threats from outside have also been a driving factor in forcing these changes. Together, these influences have driven providers to look further than the service-centric portfolio, into operational efficiency, customer support, workforce management and in a generic sense, greater levels of automation — and all done without causing any disruption to services.

Related: Global OTT Video Viewing Doubles, Conviva Finds

The cable and broadband industry’s focus of all this innovation must been centered on one key outcome — customer retention. The reasoning is simple: Regardless of what may be a broadband monopoly in certain markets, consumers are still cutting the cord. Research firm eMarketer states that in 2017, a total of 22.2 million U.S. adults will have cut the cord on cable, satellite or telco TV services. That is up 33% from 16.7 million in 2016. Enterprise customers are a growing portion of the total base but remain a small fraction of the overall business today. These numbers paint a somewhat dire long-term picture for the industry. That makes the customer experience one of the most, if not the most critical factor that companies must embrace, and the cable industry must take note.

Investing in the Customer Experience
Cable providers should be investing in innovation around the customer experience in both tactical and strategic ways. While some of these innovations may not be customer-focused, all are business-focused, which in turn has a direct impact on customer satisfaction, retention and churn reduction. Following are some of the more effective methods that can have a positive impact on the customer relationship.

Intelligent Use of Net Promoter Scores For Both Organization and Employee: Investment in the right tools to gathering data at every step of the customer lifecycle is one of the best real-time methods to gain access to customer expectations and sentiment. Cable providers should be gathering NPS regarding home installs, follow-ups to calls or visits designed to speed problem resolutions, and all activities concerning issue resolution.

Greater Use of AI and Analytics For Network Performance Management: The use of a broad range of tools to measure network performance, node health, enhanced correlation across a broad range of end points and workforce guidance on next best action creates process efficiencies that help eliminate customer facing problems.

Increased Use of DevOps to Speed Innovation Cycles: DevOps is gaining ground across the entire communications industry as a way to accelerate product development, increase efficiency and become more responsive to changing customer and business needs. The DevOps methodology can offer the cable MSO major advantages as they take on digital transformation and address customer expectations. These include accelerated time-to-market for new services, increased flexibility and optimized cost-efficiency.

Virtualization, Starting With vCPE/vCCAP: The move to virtualization in cable is well underway. CableLabs, in a recent Open Networking assessment, said the combined technologies will lower OpEx and CapEx and increase revenues from new services provided to consumers. MSOs also have the opportunity to leverage the newfound flexibility of virtualizing service endpoints, pushing cost at the end-point level down, and moving functionality to the cloud. Going to a virtual CCAP architecture migrates the current headend from RF to digital, allowing the MSO to provide IP centric services (video and data) from the headend to the node. This in turn removes the need for a physical CCAP/CMTS, reducing costs, complexity and still allowing for easy integration into the cable provider’s existing OSS/BSS.

vCPE lets the MSO place a low cost “dumb box” in the home and have all services and operations fed directly from the cloud. This translates into reduce costs for hardware, more “plug and play” functionality, fewer truck rolls to the home to replace out-of-date CPE, and the ability to push more innovative services more quickly, keeping the customers engaged and loyal.

Winning the Retention Game
While each of these innovations is more or less invisible to most cable customers, the investment in each provides a tangible benefit to the customer journey and experience. The rising expectations of the customer will continue to drive innovation and created disruption across the IT landscape. Opportunities to serve the customer have never been more significant, and the biggest changes are yet to come. If innovation still has a predominant focus on customer outcome, then the cost of that innovation will ultimately be “priceless.” In today’s competitive market, that’s a cost worth investing in.

Americans are split over how technology is impacting society as a whole, with 49% of those surveyed saying tech makes individuals less intelligent and 46% saying technology makes people smarter. And just 51% of Americans say the benefits of technological advances outweigh the risks.

That’s according to the results of a Point Taken-Marist poll, commissioned by WGBH Boston for its late-night PBS debate series Point Taken, hosted by Carlos Watson, co-founder and CEO of OZY Media. The episode tackling the results of the poll will air June 21 at 11 p.m. ET.

Perhaps surprisingly, the younger the survey respondent, the less likely they are to give technology the benefit of the doubt: Millennials (53%) and Gen Xers (53%) were more likely than Baby Boomers (48%) and the Silent/Greatest generation (38%) to say technology makes us less intelligent.

“If you think younger people are all in for technological revolution, think again,” said Dr. Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, in a statement. “This national survey shows surprising differences among generations and their appreciation for innovation.”

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Innovation may move at the speed of light, but the agency charged with overseeing much of that innovation, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), simply does not.

That hasn’t changed since 1998 when I was chief of its Cable Services Bureau charged with drafting the first cable set-top box order. At the time, the FCC voted to “unlock the box” by requiring companies to separate the security feature that protects encrypted, copyrighted content from the box itself. The hope was that separating security and the box would spur lots of different companies to build boxes consumers could buy from Circuit City, Radio Shack or Crazy Eddie.

Here’s the problem: The FCC policy never really took with consumers.  Only a few thousand cable customers ever bought a box with the FCC's fix. Finally, in 2015, Congress got rid of the integration ban. Over the years there were various failed attempts at a better solution to making the box commercially available, but the box ceased to be a high priority on the FCC’s agenda.

Now, in an inexplicable bout of déjà vu, a lame-duck FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, is making another run at creating a market for set-top boxes through a catchy sales pitch, “Expanding Consumers’ Video, Navigation Choices—Commercial Availability of Navigation Devices.”  The cable industry and Hollywood say this FCC proceeding is a giveaway to Silicon Valley. It requires programmers to allow behemoths like Google access to their proprietary content that can be streamlined, repackaged, and wrapped around new packages of advertising.

Breaking with the tradition of not commenting on pending FCC matters, President Obama made a bold televised announcement on April 15 declaring the unlocking of the box one of his core competitive priorities. The White House boldly claims the proposal now pending before the FCC “will promote innovation and lead to positive results for consumers” such as lower costs. Unfortunately, the FCC and this administration have missed an important development: innovation has already evolved beyond anything the FCC could mandate.

I, for one, would prefer big pharma as a core competitive priority because my Advair prescription costs substantially more than a monthly set-top box fee -- and that’s not something I can cut.

Internet-edge providers such as Netflix, Hulu, Roku, Apple TV and others have become disrupters in the video marketplace. Cable subscribers are cutting or shaving the cord in droves. The set-top box is no longer the gatekeeper of video in the home. The future of TV will be tablets, smartphones, smart TVs and other devices that today are unimaginable. In fact, Comcast just announced a deal with Roku where it will offer InfinityX video streaming through Roku devices without a box.

So what does the FCC’s rulemaking actually do for consumers? In the near term; nothing-In the long term, probably nothing good. When the dust settles, the government has no ability to forcibly lower the cost of the box.

A close look at the president’s pledge reveals neither the White House nor the FCC offers any real proof that anyone other than the Googles of the world will benefit from new rules. The FCC’s rules are at risk from a lengthy court challenge, so consumers shouldn’t rush to Best Buy, HH Gregg or Target stores anytime soon to purchase streaming devices enabled by new FCC rules.

Furthermore, the box has a hidden price. The president’s intrusion into this regulatory matter threatens public confidence in the FCC, which Congress established as an independent expert regulatory agency. Clearly, just as every citizen has the right to participate in public proceedings, so, too, does the president. But he is no ordinary citizen. Highly charged public comments by him may unduly influence the FCC’s rulemaking process, thereby subjecting the agency to charges of bias. This is especially true, given this administration's close ties to the main beneficiary of the order -- Google

By highlighting this issue in an election year as a component of his core competition agenda, Obama has politicized it. Scoring political points through a pending regulatory matter weakens the FCC’s stature as an independent expert agency.  It also places FCC commissioners, who are appointed by the president, in a precarious position.

The three Democrats on the commission who hold the majority must decide whether to obey the White House or exercise their independent judgment and expertise that their oath of office requires. If their opinion is not in accord with the president’s, do they disobey him and risk jeopardizing their careers or do they obey and violate their oath? This is a quintessential Hobson’s choice that a commissioner should not have to make. The damage to the agency’s reputation and resulting loss of consumer trust is too high a price to pay for a set-top box.

Deborah Lathen, former senior executive at the FCC, is an independent telecommunications consultant, a member of the District of Columbia Board of Ethics and Government Accountability and a former non-executive director of BT (British Telecom).

Small innovations drive our economy.  Large-scale inventions – consider the car, for instance – create periodic seismic economic shifts, but it’s the subsequent and persistent flywheel of innovation orbiting these inventions that really builds industries and propels meaningful growth. 

Let’s consider the emergence of the car: Henry Ford’s Model T revolutionized American life and helped enable the suburban life enjoyed by roughly 40% of our population. However, it is the more than 100 years of subsequent innovation that serves as the growth catalyst between Ford’s first Model T and the ~$9 trillion worldwide auto sales industry that we have today: innovations like the seat belt and the airbag, which combined reduced road fatalities by 70%; like power steering and brakes, which made cars easier and more fun to drive for the masses; like varied style and design, which propel dozens of luxury brands. 

Taken together, these smaller innovations on the basic automotive platform represent the building blocks of a micro-economy. And the innovations simply continue as the next-generation lithium-ion cell batteries, so artfully leveraged by Tesla, stimulate growth in the auto industry, boosting electric car sales 6X over the past five years.

Cable is no different: It all started with the introduction of the television. Ever since the sale of the first commercial TV set in 1928, constant innovation has fueled and shaped our industry. 

From the dizzying array of constantly improving features of the TV (like the ultra-thin, 4k-capable displays that drive more than $100 billion in annual worldwide TV sales) to the features that connect to the TV (like the DVR, which sparked the timeshifted viewing that now comprises 16 hours per month for the average U.S. adult), from the stunning, immersive UIs (like the one delivered by our Contour service, which provides millions of U.S. homes with intuitive and intelligent access to an ever growing pool of content and options) to the content ecosystem that flows through the TV and shapes our culture, innovation on the TV has driven nearly every facet of the ~$150 billion video distribution industry that we operate in today. 

The introduction of the television was a seismic invention, but the cumulative subsequent innovation flywheel has produced far more economic value for both new and old video ecosystem participants.

There is little doubt that this flywheel will continue to spin, and the annual INTX show is the venue where we all get to peek around the corner at the next innovation wave. This year’s INTX show will be flush with previews of next-generation innovations that introduce new and valuable functionality to our products. 

This is precisely why I’ll be there – to collaborate with TV and media innovators, and to experience first-hand the products and services that will shape our collective future and drive cable’s next wave of growth. The beauty of INTX is in its ability to unite the full spectrum of people, ideas, technologies and strategies from across the media and communications landscape to drive new and evolving conversations. It’s the best way to get a view into what’s driving that flywheel. I hope you will join me there. 

After all, small is the new big. 

Steve Necessary is executive VP of product development and management for Cox Communications.

On March 31, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the latest in a string of proposed rulemakings, one which could have a significant impact on the business and operations of communications companies and edge players.

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal to establish privacy rules for Internet service providers followed closely on the heels of the FCC’s proposal to “unlock” the cable set-top box (see "PwC’s 3things: Unlocking the Set-Top Box"). All of this comes a year after the controversial Open Internet Order (OIO), which reclassified broadband Internet access as a “telecommunication service” under Title II of the Communications Act, allowing the FCC to impose its “Open Internet” regulations.

While neither of the FCC’s two proposed rules are finalized – and the OIO is still being challenged in court – the fact is that the tide of regulatory-driven change is rising. Understanding and managing legislative and regulatory change is now a daily part of any business and has the attention of the highest levels of nearly every organization. Firms that have the ability to effectively manage – or even embrace – the impact of regulation can gain a competitive advantage.

Lessons Learned From the Wave of Dodd-Frank Regulation

Our experience with financial services firms addressing the rise of global financial reform regulation coming out of the financial crisis (e.g. the Dodd-Frank Act in the U.S.) found that the “winners” in the new regulatory environment were those firms that evolved their approach to proactively manage the impact of regulatory change. As Dodd-Frank’s proposed rules emerged, many banks took a combative stance and adopted a “wait and see” approach to preparing for the impact of the final rules. This approach left many unprepared and in a reactive mode when the rules were finalized. There was no time to think through the strategic or operational impact as they struggled to implement the required changes within the regulatory deadlines.

As banks later accepted the inevitable of the post-crisis regulatory environment and gained experience in addressing new and evolving regulations, a new model arose. Banks continued their lobbying efforts to shape proposed rules, but they also began to game plan the scenarios that might unfold.

Applying the Strategic Approach: The FCC’s Set-Top Box Proposal

The Dodd-Frank lessons learned from the financial services industry can be applied across most other industries facing regulatory-driven change. The FCC’s recent Set-Top Box proposal is a prime example. The FCC believes that the proposed rule meets their obligation under the Communications Act of 1996 to ensure a competitive market for navigation devices for live and video programming. Those opposing the proposal argue that it is unnecessary because the market is already innovating and providing customers with sufficient choices to access their content. The official 30-day comment period for the proposed rule will close on April 22, so, while late, there is still an opportunity to apply a proactive strategic approach (see graphic representation below) to address its potential impact.

At the most basic level, there are three potential outcomes for the proposed rule:

1. The rule is passed largely as proposed, so multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) would have to make the three information flows (Service Discovery, Entitlement and Content) available to third party navigation devices according to the rule’s requirements.
2. The rule passes but gets held up in court similar to the OIO, leaving the industry in a limbo state of regulatory uncertainty.
3. The rule does not pass, so the status quo remains.

MVPDs, technology and media companies should consider conducting an impact assessment based on each outcome. Many MVPDs are already innovating the ways in which consumers access their content through apps and other IP-based approaches or are working with third-party device companies to share content. They should be evaluating how their progress on this front could help them address some or all of the proposed rule’s requirements. At a minimum, this exercise would inform their response to, and formal comment on, the proposed rule. It may also provide them with insights that would allow them to benefit from any early adopter advantages.

With a proposed compliance date of two years after the final rule is approved, firms would have time to implement the types of strategic changes that this analysis might identify. The two-year window also makes it likely that the second scenario (legal challenge) would have little impact on a business’ strategy, other than providing an extended window for the more reactive firms to further delay potential changes to their strategy or business model. If the third scenario occurs and the rule does not pass, how would that impact the response of impacted firms? Most agree that the market for accessing video content is advancing rapidly with the evolution of Over-the-Top and digital offerings. With or without a final rule, firms will have to evolve and the analysis performed in preparing for the Set-top Box rule will help them formulate their evolution strategy.

In this era where change comes from all angles (including regulation) and disruption occurs at an accelerating pace, those firms that adopt a proactive approach and embrace regulatory-driven change can create a distinct competitive advantage.

David Sapin is Technology, Information, Communications and Entertainment (TICE) Risk & Regulatory Leader at PwC. Follow him on Twitter.

WASHINGTON — Consumer Technology Association president Gary Shapiro says there are three key things he thinks the tech sector would like to hear from the President in his last State of the Union speech Tuesday (Jan. 12), including encouraging “disruptive innovation.”

In a blog post, Shapiro suggested that the federal regulatory climate is currently chilly to such innovation. He said the climate "piles one employer mandate atop another," including higher overtime pay that he says insures that startups won't be able to hire new talent.

In addition to asking President Obama to repeal those new Department of Labor pay thresholds, Shapiro called for passage of patent legislation targeting so-called "trolls" who are draining $1.5 billion a week from the economy in needless litigation or in court settlements, he said.

Shapiro also asked Obama keep pushing for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a historic Pacific Rim trade agreement with 11 other countries that CTA as well as TV and film producers have lobbied for as a way to expand trade and access to Asia-Pacific markets.

"Implementing new trade and patent reform policies while supporting new business models would help ferment President Obama’s pro-innovation legacy and would help the tech economy thrive," Shapiro said.