Serendipity and Learning

When something happens, everyone is happy to latch onto it as a trend. The latest in this is a story about a particular quick commerce brand is doing very well. There are similar such conversations - and they mostly pertain to what is currently making 'news'.  Very often what is making news is not necessarily a trend. It is trending for a variety of reasons - but to scratch the surface and see what it is about - that is not something that the news will tell you.  When AI suddenly became big, everybody latched onto it - and continues to - but in the days leading up to it, there was notorious silence - simply because for a lot of people the news is the trend - but that is too late.  So, beware of gyaanis who come bearing news as trends - if the trend makes it to the news, it is already old news and you are late to the party. 

Its been a few months since the wordle craze took over. The beauty and the simplicity and the "limit" of the game and the sharing have all contributed to the popularity of the game. We all play it at home and share our scores - plus we share it with a few wordle friends.  And now there are clones of it - Nerdle, Stackle, Tamil Wordle, Worldle, Word master and so on and many others I dont know of. Where were these ideas till now? Probably in peoples heads - but ideas which never came out. And that is often how it is with ideas. One idea opens up the proverbial floodgates. On the other hand - in a limitless world of word games or other games that want you to do things endlessly - Wordle wants you to something in a limited way. Just one thing. Just once a day. And thats how the pendulum swings. 

If you have ever had an online chat - that starts off with an initial intro and then refers you to someone or makes you hold - you have interacted with a bot . If you have pinged for train details (for examples) and got a response online - highly likely that it is a chatbot. And this world is growing - there are bots that run on Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp and Kik (which actually has a bot shop and is fairly ahead in this game. Check this out .). There are bots that can mimic talking to your idol. There is a bot that you can chat with your bank - for instance.   Ordering food - for instance can be easily botified. But since then the world has gotten fairly more complicated - there are bots in more places than you can think. The earlier example of ANZ is just the tip of the iceberg. Banks are trying to move their transactions to bots. Indeed all of Indian Railways tickets currently manned by humans is an ideal candidate to be 'botted' up. We can think of this as suffi...

This is slightly old news, but it is news all the same. As there is talk about robots and robots replacing  humans - this is happening - and happening at a far frenetic pace than you can imagine. I learnt from a colleague that ANZ is at the forefront of RPA (Yes, Robot Process Automation) and found something on the internet (obviously). Read this : What does it mean? BPO - where processes were outsourced to India, Philippines will get hit sooner or later. They say it won't affect human jobs - but hey, it will. Like the rapid decimation of 'project managers' in IT - the bots will soon take over the BPO landscape (among other things). What other functions could be affected? Accounts payable, Mortgage administration and hold your breath - HR support. That is interesting is it not? Now think which other job roles are essentially 'rule based' or 'gatekeeper based' or 'permission based' ? Almost all of them are under the scanner... What does i...

In a world of cannons, what is the need for a sniper? Plenty. Cannons are common. Snipers are not. Cannons can hit a lot of places inaccurately, Snipers get you one target - spectacularly right. This is mostly a game analogy - I have zero military experience to comment on the reality. The example was more to derive a point that - to take advantage of the uberization of work, there might be merit for companies (big and small) to try out super specialists. For example, instead of going to an organization that will support you - but actually has the lowest common denominator preparing a rather stupid questionnaire - leading to fairly blah business results - why not engage the super specialist who will engage herself and diagnose your ailment correctly - or if she is  a real super specialist - will actually refer you to another super specialist. When I was in my corporate avatar - this happened to us - more than once. We had engaged a company for a consulting engagement - but...

So, what does uberization of work mean? As a person if you cannot afford a car (or do not want to take your car out mostly) you hire a car for that drive. Well, it is not radically different from hiring a taxi or an auto, but in the connected world, Uberization is the buzzword. It is like timesharing. With an app and algorithms running in the background. Now translate that to a work scenario. If you are a small company and yet want the scale and experience of an experienced person, you go for hiring a consultant for a specific time frame. Nothing new there, companies have been doing it for years. Using consultants as Force multipliers is fairly common. What is different is that many smaller companies are willing to experiment these days and as are large companies who want to do things with the nimbleness of start ups. On the other hand, start ups who do not have scale will be happy to get a consultant with specific expertise. Companies who want advisors or practitioners without ...

I read this with a lot of interest. It picks on the buzzword that has been floating for some time - around what is known as the 'Uberization of work'. Here it says , The future certainly looks bright in our eyes. In coming decades, vertical labor marketplaces will open up important resources for consumers, and hundreds of thousands of employment opportunities for the growing freelance community. It’s the global flywheel at the heart of our new labor economy. I am not entirely sure of the implications of this, but for sure, this is an increasing trend. If you really want to do something you are passionate about, it is a great idea to go out and do it. And it already exists in many skillsets.  Now the interesting part is that within a company - rather most companies this trend is hugely opposed. There are silos of roles, rules, departments, kingdoms, geographies and egos among other things that prevent this from happening.  Developing thought as I wrap my head a...