Vaporware

As services start dominating economies globally, one wonders whether human activity is creating more 'vaporware' than anything real and useful! 

High speed algorithmic trading now accounts for half the trading volumes in American stock exchanges. Some of the world's most valuable companies are those that help people share frivolous videos and pictures, those that search and find information that exists already, those that allow people to communicate in very few characters the latest gossip going around!

Once in a while, you hear of technologies that help extract gas from rocks and reduce fossil fuel consumption. But mostly it's sharing cat videos and celebrity bling.

As golf's popularity wanes, the innovation there is to kick foot balls into large holes!!! Is that real progress? Where has all the ingenuity gone? Have the minds become numb from watching silly videos and inane tweets?

Life is short, world is small

In business and competitive world, backstabbing, back biting, scheming, talking behind one 's back, politics are unfortunate realities.

But life is short and world is small. You never know when you need help from someone and how long this life lasts!

Is it worth burning bridges and holding grudges?

In the long run, you might see the current disturbances as mere blips in bigger scheme of things.

Forgive and forget - for your own mental peace at least!

Be nice to people no matter what they are or how critical they are to you right now.

Share without expecting something in return always!

Pass on your learnings to others so they start ahead and not go through the evolution!

Be a net giver rather than a taker!!!

Jumping the hoops

As MOOC (massive open online courses) get popular and world gets more integrated thanks to internet, the traditional steps of learning process get blurred.

With global best practices and learnings become available much easier than ever, opportunities to jump the hoops covering multiple steps at once become available.

If the learning includes leveraging others ' experiences instead of academic approaches alone, you can learn two or three steps at a time and move ahead.

Let's take an example : suppose you want to open restaurant. In the traditional route, you may want to work in a restaurant and experience things first hand and then decide to start small. In the connected world, what if you are able to connect with other  restaurateurs and learn from their experiences as well?

You can jump multiple steps in your evolution as a restaurateur and start much ahead. 

Can you apply this to your area of interest?

Emotions in Business life

I have heard of a story ( apparently true) that a famous builder in Mumbai India hired an American as part of procurement which all of us are sure is an extremely critical function in a real estate firm.

This American then found a supplier from Pakistan who could export cement to India at a landing price that is half of the local produce!!!!

Can you imagine an Indian doing this? What gives? Emotion taking over in business decision making.

What an Indian would consider unpatriotic an American finds a simple clear business decision.

Leaving out the countries above, the point to glean is the aspect of emotion clouding or decision making.

Some times a fresh neutral perspective is most needed!!

Future proof skilling

Some shocking revelations first.

About 47% of employment in the US is likely to become extinct due to technology replacing them in the next decade or two. 

Over the last century, mostly three items' prices went up in real terms- housing , education and health care. Pretty much everything else had its prices come down in real terms.

Implications?

Skilling for the future is significantly impacted by the above. Most or at least half of what we do today will get automated. And if your skilling is in an area of declining prices, you are bound to face the heat sooner than later.

Is your skilling relevant to the three areas of increasing prices as listed above?

How flexible are you to reskill if your current one becomes extinct?

Most importantly, can you leverage the future's new opportunities as they appear instead of clinging onto the old and dying?

How 'Big Data' person are you?

Technology tries to mimic and automate human behaviour and those who get it right, succeed!

In a sense, the key attribute of 'Big Data' is key to success for you as a leader, human being, team player...

Big Data looks at disparate , unstructured data from multiple sources to identify patterns, deductions, conclusions or insights.

If you need to be successful, you need to do the same - connect data points from multiple sources/instances/events/contexts to bring together a perspective/insight that nobody has seen before. 

The more you master this to an art form, the more successful you would be , in any endeavour - a job, a business, an initiative/program or a project.

Go ahead and acquire/sharpen your 'Big Data' skills - not the technology but the underlying concept!

Value and Risk

Is your proposition addressing value or risk or both ?

In today's world of increasing uncertainity, regulatory compliance, failed deliveries on commitments, customers are bearing you on risk first and value later. 

Who or what among my options is the least risky? Can manage my risks best? Can manage my organisational risks best? 

These are top of mind compared to value and RoI for simple reason that no one faces a regulator, auditor , scrutiny for lower value/RoI delivered.

Is your risk proposition stronger than your value proposition?