When the Olympic Games have been officially declared closed and everyone has gone home, the world begins to believe in a myth. The myth of limits. That it is not humanly possible to do it any better… ever. Somewhere, tucked away in obscurity there is someone who does not believe in any such limits. Someone is still practicing for years for a shot at being unreasonable.
For me the most valuable insights came from the chapter titled People Matter. The trigger for economic growth lies in a 2% increase in working population. In the next decade from 2020-2030 only one will grow at that rate - Nigeria.The political leaders have to create the economic conditions necessary to attract investment and generate jobs. The recent influx of refugees may actually be an answer to Germany’s depleting working-age population. But is it enough to have people without their having the necessary skills? A dropping population does not bode well for the world says Ruchir.
Will HR be replaced by chatbots and machines? The answer is nuanced. The machines are not good at understanding shades of emotions, sarcasm, humor etc. Machines are good at doing “mindless” repetitive tasks. These are the tasks that humans can do without giving it any thought. Routine, repetitive tasks that machines can be trained to do more efficiently than humans will be done by machines. But jobs that depend on social skills and involve complex human interactions will stay with humans. Those who learn to work WITH machines will thrive. HR will certainly need to learn to work with robots who will be part of every workforce. But that is not all. HR will need to be reimagined...
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 discovered poetry and music in strange places because I got lost. I love wandering about aimlessly when I am in a new city. It was during one of those meanderings after dinner one night in Madrid that I discovered that some of the streets had some words engraved on the cobbled stones. A helpful resident of the neighborhood told me that they were the lines from the Spanish poet Becquer.
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
Was Malcolm Gladwell wrong about the “10,000-Hour-Rule”. He said, it takes ten thousand hours of practice to become a master of a skill. His book Outliers told people that if they put in 10,000 hours of practice, they could master any skill. His finding was based on Anders Ericsson's research paper. Maybe practicing for 10,000 hours will NOT make you an expert. Here's why ...
The Digital Transformation Playbook talks of the five domains which need to be transformed if the organizations have to succeed in the digital world – how the businesses view customers, their competition, how they leverage data, innovate and create value for customers. 1) customers are part of a network, 2) competition comes from platforms more than products, 3) data is a strategic asset, 4) innovation is driven by small experiments and scaling, 5) value is dynamic and adaptable. That makes these 5 areas very different from what they have been traditionally. This shift is hard for leaders in the analog world to fathom.My review of The Digital Transformation Playbook by David Rogers
