Abhijit Bhaduri’s Blog
I write about careers, skills and the world of work. The cartoons and sketches are mine.
The forgotten music of Rajasthan
What makes this festival magical is the way the sun and the moon are blended in with music to create magic. The Mehrangarh fort becomes like a giant movie set where the forgotten music of Rajathan is offered to a global audience. That is what the Rajasthan International Folk Fest is all about
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.
And you thought campus placements are easy?
When I was looking for campus placement as a graduating student of a B-School, it was the employers’ market. The employers were few and far between. We would all line up and listen to them tell us that they were looking for people who would stay with them for a lifetime. The pre-placement talks were a great opportunity to get noticed by the employer by asking sharp insightful questions. During one such talk, one of my classmates did the unthinkable. He asked the potential employer why the salary offered was so low. That executive adjusted his tie and threw a condescending look at us and said, “We offer careers and not jobs.” How that even qualified as an answer to my friend’s question still beats me. But that line hit home. That phrase seems to have been tattooed in the hearts of several people of my vintage. Many of them have now become employers.
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?
Why doesn’t everyone learn from failure?
The digital shifts place a premium on innovation and speed. Creating small prototypes and testing them with consumers will help organizations move faster than their competition. This needs a very fundamental change in the way we view failure and innovation. We still hide our failures and feel ashamed. The Digital Tsunami will change how we view failure.
Seven decades of dreams
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.
The Rise and Fall of Nations: Book Review
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.
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...?
Serendipity
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.
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
How To Become Better At Almost Anything
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
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
Why do we work?
Do only the poor work for money? After all, I have seen even the highest paid employees bargain with clenched teeth about an amount that would be less than a percentage of their earning. When someone says, “It is not about the money, it is the principle of the thing that I care about”. You can bet that it is indeed only about the money. Or are we missing the point?
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.