Future of Work - Coming of the fourth wave: V. Pattabhi Ram

Three inspiring and thought provoking book lets by Pattabhi Ram Sir, that I happened to read this month where: 47th of 2021

1) Future of Work - Coming of the fourth wave:

The typewriter is now dead. It’s turned up in a different form, the laptop. The landline is gone; its now available in a different form, the mobile. Telegram offices have shut shops, as SMS and WA do the same worker faster. Once an important skill, nobody learns shorthand these days.

 Beyond 2020 three megatrends will sweep the world: automation, artificial intelligence, and micro innovation. These will have a massive impact on workplaces and on how we educate and skill ourselves. 

Automation:

It will kill some jobs, leave some untouched and create new ones as well, Jobs, that are likely to go away due to automation include: call center employees, data entry operators, insurance underwriters, tax preparers, sales representatives, translators, and fast food employees.

Bots are set to replace tax preparers, Online shopping is making the sales rep extinct, Self checkout reduces the need for cashiers, Robots are replacing medical technicians, lawyers are replaced with bots, BPO can become machine driven.

Yet, no advancement can upstage psychiatrists, storytellers, world-class teachers, scientists, actors, and thought leaders because these roles need innovative and personal skills.

The World Bank estimates up to 69% of today’s job positions will become redundant. But there is no need to panic. For every job lost, new ones will come up. Look at history, for proof. The 20th century hadn’t heard anything like Chief Technology Officer, Chief Delivery Officer, Chief Belief Officer, and Chief Gardener. It is not that job opportunities are not there. It is just that skills set requirements have changed. So what is most important is to ensure that workforce is smart and adaptive and can take up newer roles.

Micro Innovation: 

Innovation does not evolve overnight. It is the outcome of years of punishing schedule followed by the fear of being so near, yet so far. Suspension bridges and skyscrapers did not happen overnight. The electric car as innovation is taking its time in coming. Two years ago IOT, machine learning, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, etc., were a vision. Now, they are work-in-progress. To succeed, you don’t have to get into big-ticket innovation. If you can copy, localize, iterate and ‘micro-innovate’ you may end up doing spectacularly well. Uber is an example. Uber connected individual drivers to needy passengers and created a revenue model out of it. Did they innovate at the leading edge? Fat chance. They used a technology that has been around for donkeys’ years, GPS. Earlier you paid to access cars, now you pay money to access transportation as a service. Beyond Uber, there are other fixers. The pricing differential that you see in Airbnb’s accommodation especially if you are looking for a stay for a couple of hours has been a game changer. Some sites help freelancers connect with business owners. Others provide spaces in cities where you can rent a desk at comfortable prices. Elsewhere women can borrow saris and kitchen appliances at moments of need. In short, it’s about quick tweaks on existing products. These companies haven’t done anything novel; they are merely using big data and algorithms. And the funny part is none of them own the assets they use! WhatsApp is another example of micro-innovation that disrupts traditional telecom messaging services. From Morse code to smartphones the travel has been incredible. In the automobile industry, the talk is about driverless cars. Our carmakers have always focused on delivering a better driving experience. Now they will have to look at providing a better passenger experience!

Artificial Intelligence 

AI an omnibus term which I use for a thinking machine. It can read and grasp reams of data; it can determine patterns and spot outliers. Unlike automation, it learns from mistakes, and like human beings, with more practice, it becomes better. AI is meant to free up time for people for but can never dispense with the need for human experience and insight. 

The new-aga accountant will have to learn to work with and through the blockchain. It is a digital leader that can be shared across a network of computers. It helps update real time information, without alteration. 

The Cloud is becoming mainstream. It enables access to networks, storage, and applications and allows users to process data on third-party servers. Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are unlikely to invest in hardware anymore. With the arrival of the cloud, technology is an operating expenditure Bots are set to replace tax preparers. Robots are replacing medical technicians. Online shopping is making the sales rep extinct. Self checkout reduces the need for cashiers. BPO can become machine driven. JP Morgan replaced 1,000 lawyers with bots.20 ICT Academy Publications and not a capital expenditure. You can rent them like you rent zoom-cars; meaning you use it and pay for it. All of this is just the beginning as we will see more of a sharing economy. Organizations of the future are going to have only one small core team, with everything else outsourced or hired. An uberization in every part of the company: sales, health marketing, HR will create many more entrepreneurs than regular jobs. The cloud will throw up new opportunities. For instance, once a patient puts his biometrics, the details can be accessed from anywhere and a professional diagnosis given.

Emerging skills for this are:

• Incremental innovation

• Out of box thinking

• Multitasking

• Understanding client needs

• Entrepreneurship

• Customization

• Collaboration

• Adaptability in VUCA environment (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity)

The millennial generation seeks instant gratification. It could be through pay hikes and thankyou notes. Don’t tell them how many hours to work and how to dress; instead give them a target    and a deadline, and they would deliver. That generation looks for career mobility with clear goals such as, one year down “I’ve to go abroad, two years down I want to work on this technology, etc.”  

Other books were: 

2) 10 Attributes of an outstanding teacher - Good to Great - Next post. 

3) Future of Higher Education - Nine Mega trends - this is covered before in:

https://arunoday.blogspot.com/search?q=Future+of+Higher+Education+-+Nine+Mega+trends