Abhijit Bhaduri’s Blog
I write about careers, skills and the world of work. The cartoons and sketches are mine.
When do we feel threatened by machines?
When machines start doing our tasks, we hold them to standards that no human can match. We expect them to be perfect. Maybe we know that they are peering over our shoulder and learning to take over our lives. They better be perfect. That is the only way our lives will be perfect. But is it?
Artificial Intelligence – Is that a job killer?
When the AI based virtual assistant in our smart phone helps us choose a restaurant or send a text message we enjoy the moment. We don't want to turn the clock back to a time when we did not have AI based systems recommending to us what we never knew we wanted to buy. The machine is watching us and learning each move we make. Instead of augmenting brawn, machines are now augmenting our cognitive abilities. Understanding emotions of self and others will be the next frontier. When people learn to work with machines the possibilities are endless. But is there an invisible price that we forget?
Relationship Workers will replace Knowledge Workers
Computers and automation saw the rise of the “knowledge worker”. A knowledge worker was a person whose job involved handling or using information. With computers increasingly taking over such jobs, those who are skilled in working with people will become more prized. The future belongs to people who are more emotionally intelligent. This may be the era of the “relationship worker” – someone who can handle complex human relationships.
The Rise of Liberal Arts
I know parents who roll up their eyes in horror when their kid wants to pursue a Liberal Arts degree in college. Does Liberal Arts fall short of that promise or is it the hottest degree for the future? Why are some companies falling over each other to hire Liberal Arts majors? Do they know something we don't?
Can Technology Help Talent Planning
Can industry bodies like CII and NASSCOM play a different role in building a common talent pool? What if every fresh entrant into the workforce is employed not by an organization but by an industry body (eg Nasscom employs all software engineers who have base level and undifferentiated skills). The member companies can farm out the work to be done by this pool. Think of it like work being allocated to a secretarial pool. What if...?
I Have A Voice: Book Review
Leadership Development experts often talk about going through a “crucible experience”. One of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is an individual’s ability to find meaning in negative events and to learn from even the most trying circumstances. The skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders.My review of I Have A Voice by Tyler Williams
Changing Organizational Culture
Organizational culture is what we call the habits of an organization. These are ways in which people behave spontaneously especially when they are unsupervised. When everyone starts behaving in a similar manner consistently, we say that the organization has a strong culture. The new members of the organization quickly fall in line. They watch everyone around them and learn how to behave in most commonly occurring situations.
The Insane Possibilities of Virtual Reality
The biggest disruption will be in the Learning & Development space from schools to the workplace. History and Geography taught through VR will allow the student to experience what it feels like to be inside the Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and in the rainforests of Amazon in one afternoon. Imagine the transformative power of bringing this education to a child in a remote village or the slums. How dramatically it could be what education is not.In the corporate world it could be used to simulate the negotiation scenario and teach the team ahead of time what challenges to avoid. If you dread speaking in public, wear the VR headset and practice giving your speech in front of your CEO or even an auditorium full of hecklers (if you are an unpopular politician). VR could help people get over their fears by building their immunity with progressive increases in levels of difficulty.
Total Rewards
Addressing the lower rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy seems passé. Are employees willing to work in a stressful workplace if their mission seems lofty enough? Evidently yes. Recently, Tesla and SpaceX – both run by Elon Musk were in the news for being stressful places to work. Elon Musk responded by saying, “SpaceX and Tesla rated most meaningful work in high tech. Also, most stressful, but that goes with the territory.” Musk has really made engineering and manufacturing interesting again.
Why is the progress on diversity so slow
As robots take on more and more work that is rule bound the opportunities will grow for roles which need empathy, negotiation skills and collaboration, precisely the skills that women are better at because of their caregiving roles. To make that happen we need a reorganization of the workplace so that people aren’t penalized for choosing flexible schedules by being shunted into positions that are less meaningful to them or less rewarding financially. We need to speed up progress by changing the lens with which we view work. It is not about gender any more.
Digital Dreamers' Decade
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and CEO of Tesla Motors, wants to establish colonies on other planets like Mars. Back in 2012 Planetary Resources was set up by Google to develop flying robots that will dig up precious minerals from other planets and get them back. There are billionaires who are funding research in making humans immortal or making fresh water available to all. Bill Gates through his Foundation aims to by 2030 eradicated four diseases from Earth.It all starts with a dream – being able to imagine and envision something which has no precedent. The opportunities are all as big as our digital dream. The next decade will be about turning those dreams to reality.
6 HR Roles for the Future
Traditionally, organizations have worked based on one rule that every employee of the organization had to follow. Then came the era of five or six sets of rules that applied to five or six types of employment contracts that were offered by an organization. What if each individual employee had their own unique contract based on all the possible variables they could choose from. Today, several startups and digital disruptors have very few employees. For example, Uber has a policy of having only 3 employees in a city who manage the entire operation from partnering with drivers and managing them and serving clients. Xiaomi sold a million handsets in in India with only 75 employees. Will these organizations create new models of performance management and rewards? Will they grow their own talent by hacking new ways of learning at a rapid pace or will they buy out talent on a pay per use model? The possibilities are immense. Here are six roles your organization should think about.
Resolutions for 2016
Innovations that get implemented and go viral are the ones that have stories that capture our imagination. Ideas travel faster when they ride on the wings of stories. This year I want to improve my storytelling skills by doing a few things.
Wearables in the workplace
By 2018, two million employees will be required to wear health and fitness tracking devices as a condition of employmentWho owns that data? What kind of decisions can the employer make with that data? Can the employee get to opt out of this tracking? The line is getting thinner. Wearables are coming soon to a workplace near you.
