By WALE AKINYEMI

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My daughter is a beautician and social media influencer who reviews beauty products for companies from all over the world. She has a niche group of followers who will pay anything for the luxury beauty products.

Last week, I had dinner with her and her equally intriguing friend — a travel blogger and influencer, who is paid to visit beautiful locations around the world and highlight them to her hundreds of thousands of followers.

A decade ago, if any of them had said that what they were going to do for a living was to take pictures of beautiful faces and beautiful places and post these on a website or online platform, not many would have taken them seriously. Today, they represent millions of people worldwide doing jobs that did not exist just a few years ago.

Going with this is talent management. Big companies today no longer talk about training. They would, in a heartbeat, refer you to their talent and learning managers. But how can you manage something about which you have no clue? This represents one of the biggest gaps in the market today. It is the gap between the regulator and the regulated - between the manager and the managed.

Across the globe, governments have attempted to clamp down on cryptocurrencies and social media but fail since the technology keeps advancing at a rate they cannot match.

The Nigeria government, for example, banned twitter within their borders, but users tapped into virtual private networks (VPN) and basically operated from locations the state could not tap into.

Similarly during the End SARS Riots in Nigeria, a lot of the money that came from abroad to fund the protests did not stream in through conventional means. In fact, this opened the eyes of a lot of people to the wonders of crypto asset trading. Again, technology proved to be steps ahead of convention and tradition. Governments are forced to concede this race given that technology always wins.

The challenge with our system is that it is packed with people trained under analog conditions wanting to effectively lead and manage people operating in a digital and cloud world.

Technology cannot be fought. It has to be understood and harnessed to our advantage. In the same way, the thinking of the customer of today cannot be fought.

It has to be understood. It is a mindset that is totally different from that of yesteryear’s customer.

Today’s client demands instant gratification, failure to which they is instant retribution against the firm, product, service or manager. The consequence of this is the emergence of what is now known as the cancel culture where people gang up and promote the cancelling of people, brands and products just because someone who has a loud enough voice may have found it unsatisfactory or offensive.

In this light, we encounter Kurt Zouma, the French professional centre-back for English Premier League club West Ham United and the France national soccer team. A video of him booting his cats in his house went viral and the payback brutal. First, he was fined $338,000, then the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals confiscated the felines; sponsor Adidas dropped him as an Adidas brand ambassador and as fans — both home and the opposing team booed him when he played for his team against Watford, his manager, David Moyes is under pressure to drop him.

If this is not managed well, this might be the end of his career as a footballer. Sadly, this is the world we live in today. We cannot fight it. We need to master it or we become vulnerable to its attacks. Cancel Culture is here to stay.

Wale Akinyemi is convenor of the Street University (www.thestreetuniversity.com) and chief transformation officer, PowerTalks; [email protected]