Next-Gen Entrepreneurs S1: Strategies for Tomorrow's Transformative Era Ep.1 Future of Workspaces

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to MySensei, the podcast for entrepreneurs and founder led businesses that are looking to navigate the dynamic world of business. As usual, I'm your host, Denise Creisson. And today I'm joined by my guest Ravi Ranganathan, who is joining us from Chennai. Ravi, welcome to the show. Thank you. We are going to be covering different areas that are quite key to entrepreneurs right now in the current business landscape. I'm going to go on to the automation of repetitive tasks. Probably looking at optimization using tech. So what are your thoughts on this topic? We have been automating for a long time in our history, right? We started automating that's I think about 10 to 15, 000 years ago Now we have come to a level of automation, which is incredible, but then we are not there yet. We are going to automate so much of it. There are a lot of movies which I don't know there was this movie called Bicentennial man Robin Williams. Where there was a journey of a robo which actually migrates to being a human a very nice way of science fiction rather than a very violent man machine a conflict like X Machine or something else. This was a more humble way of relating to how humans interact with machines. Automation is, it's going to take over. We as humans live beyond that. And it's understanding this space and making ourself relevant. Interestingly with technology, advent of technology and all of these things we felt that we'll have more time to do what we like to do, and we will, be more enriched with ourselves. But then the funny thing is if you ask any person who has worked in the seventies and sixties, they would say that they had more time off office hours. And today, it's very common for a young person to work in a space for 12 hours, 15 hours a day, because they're passionate about the project. They want to deliver something. But end of the day, they lose so much of their work life balance. They get into it so much. And especially I have people who are working in healthcare. Who are proud to say that I work a 100 hours a a week, 120 hours a week. And somewhere, you burn out and that burnout happens much faster nowadays. A lot of people in their thirties, late thirties, maybe early forties, they start talking about retiring from the work world, right? Simply because of the burnout factor. I feel we need to understand automation, adapt ourselves, not be worried about it and try to compete with automation. Rather than leverage automation and understand how we're gonna contribute. So yes, AI is gonna come in. RPA is already in, robotic processing automation is happening already in large organizations. Having said that, there are a ton of opportunities. It's the mindset it is to understand that how relevant and what is my real core service delivery that I'm doing. And if you can think through that, I think everybody has got a great career ahead of them. But then automation is something that is a reality. I love that you used the word, what is your core service delivery? In my opinion, I think that we need to do more in demystifying what AI actually is. And it isn't, and perhaps this is yet, but it isn't where the robots are coming and taking over. There are some areas where repetitive tasks will be taken and be done more efficiently, but there's still a lot of scope of being able to work in conjunction with AI. And if you are using AI correctly, it's a conversation. It's where, you are almost a supervisor of that AI. It's your assistant, and you still have to input data in order to get outputs out of it. So it isn't autonomous yet where it's self thinking self governing and, it's doing everything itself. I know that we have the rise of the AI agents that will be able to operate more autonomously. But at the moment, and especially with what's happening in the workplace and maybe, what is affordable to businesses, integrating AI into doing work just means that us as employees, or even if we're looking in regards to entrepreneurs, it's an opportunity to 10 X yourself, to 10 X your bandwidth, being able to do a lot more. There's a lot of our tasks that we do that are actually labor intensive, they're time intensive, and those can be replaced by AI. So like a lot of what I do is research based and I would spend weeks actually researching and looking for, the right information, the right data. I've got to make sure that I'm looking for not just data accuracy, I'm also looking for data credibility as well. But now, I can create my own custom GPT where it takes a bit of time to actually set it up in the beginning where I'm giving it the parameters to say, this is what my organization stands for, we only look at credible sources and you can put in like different parameters. And then when I ask it to do a task, when I ask it to go and do research, I can get results a lot quicker than it would have taken me if I was doing it myself. And those results are what I need. They're fundamental to what I'm actually doing. I put together courses, I'm an instructional designer. And one of the things that I want to make sure is that I'm current and that I am not, and this is one of my problems with traditional education is that, we're preparing tomorrow's leaders with yesterday's solutions. So I want to be current and making sure that the education that my business is able to give is one that is fit for purpose, it's a good fit for right now. So because of the dynamic business landscape means that I have to constantly update it. I need to be constantly checking it and making sure that it's fit for purpose. And for entrepreneurs, especially like the solopreneurs or maybe the small startups that don't have much of a cash runway and maybe can't afford to get talent that will enable their business to scale, AI provides that opportunity for them to be able to get the talent into their organization at very minimal cost, which is great because it means that it's an equalizer. They have the same opportunity as a big corporate that can spend quarter of a million on a senior talent's salary, they can be able to get that from AI. AI is the new equalizer in the world, right? Instead of running away from it if entrepreneurs are able to embrace it they're going to be very happy that they understood this concept because end of the day as you rightly pointed out they can get so many things done at scale thanks to these bots which can do so many of these things at speeds at which even humans find difficult, right? End of the day, it's important that people understand what is relevant and so I'm coming back to our discussions a little earlier, which is to have the right mindset. To have the right skill set and right tool set and AI is a tool. Understanding the tool and how to use it is a skill set and to be with it is a mindset. And I think if you can get those three things in place you are in for a lot of good fun growth Absolutely. And for any of our listeners that are struggling with issues like burnout and firefighting and you haven't actually integrated any type of automation into your business, you really should start to explore that and look for the opportunities where you can clone yourself. You can still dominate in your industry, even if you are just one person, AI makes that possible. We look forward to that. I wanna move on to the next question, which is focus on upskilling and reskilling. And this is something that is really important to me because my perception is you are either green and growing, or you are ripe and rotting. Because again, the dynamic business landscape things are continually changing and we need to adapt the mindset of one that is a growth mindset and that we are evolving with the changes so that we can be more responsive rather than reactive. So what are your thoughts on upskilling and re skilling in particular to entrepreneurs and founder led businesses as well? Founder led businesses are invariably in the continuous learning path. And successful organizations are, I'm not even saying entrepreneurs even large organizations who are able to sustain their growth. I was in a seminar in 2009 where the CEO of Nokia if you remember Nokia, it used to be the world's largest mobile manufacturer. And their India CEO was making a presentation and they had just launched Symbian as an operating system. And that was a year I think Apple was coming out with their iPhone and they were trying to get into the market where there was a palm phone with a touch sensitivity. There was already BlackBerry in the market. And Symbian Nokia was coming in and Google was working on some platform called Android. They were the largest, they had about 60, 70 percent of the market share globally. And he said specifically, which are the two companies in the world, which have been growing continuously for the last five decades, right? And everybody in the room mentioned, Ford, Toyota Motors Walmart and blah, blah, blah. One person mentioned General Electric, right? And yes, one of those organizations was General Electric. And two things about them, they were continuously learning and they were continuously expanding. So the growth was natural and they're still growing. And the second company he mentioned was Nokia. And this was the year 2009. It's sad how learning is important for an individual, for an organization, for humanity as such was something that you rightly put, if I think that I have a degree and therefore I'm going to be qualified for the next 40 years I'm so out of space, right? My degree has no meaning because my degree is itself based on the past, right? The case studies are the past, right? And what entrepreneurs are doing are the new case studies of the future, right? Instead of saying, that's what the case study says, and that's what the past organizations did, they had a different environment and they had a different outcome, right? So it's not going to be true for today's world and today's environment and today's people demographic, right? So end of the day you have to upskill, you have to reskill and you need to cross skill. You need to be conscious that learning is the only way to go forward, right? If you think that I have enough knowledge to be sustainable that's probably the, as you said ripe and rotten. Yeah. You've mentioned something to do with Nokia and I remember having to use it as a case study example when I was teaching in universities and teaching business and the Global Head of Sales for Nokia was actually in my class at Oxford and I remember asking him what happened, you dominated the market, like if anything Nokia had more capital than anyone else, I think the number two, which was Motorola had maybe 24% of the market. Yeah. Motorola, yeah. Which is unusual because where you have environments of free flow of information, the number one and number two in the market tend to only be like a couple of percentage behind each other. They are tail chasing each other the whole time. So for Nokia to dominate the way that they did, and now we know that it was due to cultural preferences and where everybody was running towards centralization for lean operating models, they were still having localized manufacturing hubs that were able to produce products to local tastes. So in their design elements, and this is why the usage and their popularity was more than others that were streamlining and centralizing everything and, they lost out on that. But this is a situation of being drunk on your own success and I think, honestly, there's a danger of if you become complacent and you start to have ossified success strategies where you think, it's always worked and we're going to do it this way and you stop exploring, you stop having even as an organization, that growth mindset. And the unfortunate thing is that we learn zero from success. All the lessons are in failure, and once in a while we need to be getting things wrong. I always say to people when was the last time you did something for the first time? If you can't even remember, that's a problem. You really need to be doing an audit of what is it that you're not exploring because you possibly experiencing only half of what there is to offer in the world. So I think for organizations, it is important for them to always be doing an audit and have that growth mindset, where they're always looking for innovation. Whenever we used to have the usual breakout rooms, I had the same question all the time for the employees that were attending the town hall and that was'what should our company be doing that it is not' because they are having audiences with different people. They are having conversations relating to the work that they're actually doing and they can bring in fresh information. For a senior leadership team in an organization the worst thing that they can be doing is just speaking to themselves the whole time because the information is stale. They probably have the same networks, they probably have the same information that's circulating. There's no innovation that's happening there. So engaging with your staff, engaging with networking is absolutely key because that's where you'll find out what can blow you up positively or negatively. That's where you'll start to hear where there's openings for your company or threats. And not becoming drunk on your own success. Actually, there are two aspects to this. One is if I do it the HR way, I create some kind of a communication platform where I try to connect the leader to the bottom of the pyramid. But if I do it the learning way, in that HR platform, what happens is there is a cognizance of I'm lower in the hierarchy and this person is a senior person. There is still a certain level of communication barriers that come into play, but in a learning environment, most barriers are broken, right? Actually there are some companies who I know of who have said that the leader comes in and sits into a classroom where a person who's a more of an individual contributor is running the show. He's teaching and the leader asks questions and says. Why not do this? Why not do that? And the individual contributor actually breaks certain concepts that the leader has, because they think this is how it can be done. And the individual contributor with their experience is able to overcome their mind blocks and say that, no boss, the reality, the person on the field, this is how we do it. And this is how we break, but we are following the process because that's what management wants. And then only here is, oh, I'm the management, I'm the guy who's pushing it, maybe I should not. There's an easier way of doing things. Learning and cross skilling is the word. It's some of the more advanced organizations get into this where a person from one domain, a leader, actually goes into another function or a domain within the organization, and actually starts to learn that from the actual individual contributor. And that's where a huge amount of learning happens and ability to empathize with the front end team also improves. What you said is so important and I feel there is a learning space to it rather than a HR face to it, right? Because the minute you say that there should be a connect immediately, we'll or a town hall and we say, okay, now the communication will happen. It will happen, but it will not be as effective as the learning space would give you. I like that. Maybe we should encourage more leaders to do one day a week in the front lines and work in different departments doing the same job as the ops level and seeing what it is that they do and the conditions they have to work. At least empathize with them. Yes. Yes definitely. Okay. So moving on to, and you touched on it earlier, the growth of the gig economy. What are your thoughts on that? See, I think it's come to stay. And gig gives you, see, the thing is, I know a lot of techies who bill at$400 an hour because, they are a cloud architect or they are working on cybersecurity and they're doing penetration testing. They do a 20, 40 hour or 30 hour assignment and later in the evening, they go to Walmart and they're bagging the bags next to the billing counter, making minimum wages of$12 an hour. There are Uber drivers who cook great cuisines as a chef and in their part time they're Uber drivers. Some of them are news journalists who also work as coding professionals when they get time. Gig gives you that flexibility, right? And people want to explore so many of their skills and their talent. There are a bunch of people in every organization and especially in IT where I've worked a lot, I see people have great talent, some of them are great singers, some of them play certain instruments very well, some of them write very well. Gig gives them that opportunity. So I think gig is going to stay and Gen Z love this idea they don't want to be bound to an organization. From an entrepreneur's perspective we need to really, again, understand the gig space and it might not work for all the companies. It might not work for all the departments as such. But there's definitely a scope for incorporating it into your business enterprise. And because it brings a huge flexibility, a tremendous amount of talent and the flexibility to expand and shrink at your will. From an entrepreneur's perspective again, I don't shy away from gig, understand it, embrace it, and incorporate in the business is my thoughts on that. Yeah, I agree with you on that. And, definitely looking at the startup environment where sometimes they may not have again, down to cash runway, the type of money that they would need to attract talent full time and maybe only be able to afford them on a part time basis. But then you can't expect talent to be loyal to just your organization on a part time salary, that's not very desirable and maybe also it might compromise their standard of living which is something they would be resistant to do. So a degree of flexibility is absolutely key and understanding the gig economy that is based now less on hours input, but more to do with output based environment where the performance measures are around the outputs that are being created and generated by the employees or freelancers. I think we need to be moving away from this hours based traditional kind of like format. This concept of non disclosure agreements bonded jobs, where you sign bond for a couple of years of work and the secrecy of code and all of that is in, in my thought it's not right and it's a waste of time. I can't stop a human being from learning and being a better human, just because I'm employing somebody. And for instance let me share a case study from my point of view. There was a gentleman who created a big solution for an enterprise, right? He had to be in the workspace. He was on the field. He understood various inventory issues, logistical issues, point of sale issues, all of these things. And he created a solution that worked for them. And then he said, I'm going to leave and join another organization. They said, you can't take any of this. They said, you leave all your laptop, you leave your data, whatever you have, yeah. Even your mobile phone because you might take the knowledge. He is still the person who learned all of this, right? He went to the organization and he created everything from his head, right? Because he's been there and he's done it for almost two and a half years. He knows the steps, he knows what it does and he was able to deliver it. And by doing this, you are taking away his goodwill, right? If you had said that, okay, all the best, but we will call you and we will try to improve whatever we're doing. You go do what you do, but then come back when we call you and make this better. That person's goodwill is still gonna be with you and you could have lost a bit of animosity that you have created in the workspace. But again, as you said it's a mindset issue. It is. And people absolutely love them. And they'll probably go and do it better at their next organization because now they got a grudge. I, that's it. Absolutely. You're right with that. If they are the goose that lays golden eggs, they'll just go and lay another egg. Even if you take the one that they created before, you can take away their whatever food, and yeah they'll still lay another egg. And I think, for businesses they really should consider that if you are so worried that an employee will go and disrupt your organization, you've got a problem. Yeah, you really need to be looking at your own organization to see why you can be so easily disrupted like that. And, fortify and build in some resilience as well. So it's an opportunity for learning, for growth and, exploring just how strong their systems are, how strong their product development is, because it can be easily imitated again, you're eroding your competitive advantage by trying to safeguard yourself by just saying, we won't let you take any of the knowledge with you. What have you actually done to make sure that you are staying competitive and remaining with an advantage'cause it seems that you just safeguarding, you are operating from a point of defensiveness rather than, and I'm on dangerous ground'cause I don't really follow sports. What's the opposite of offense? No defense. So they operating from a point of defense. Can't be saying that just protect the quarterback and we're going to win the game, right? We should be winning as a team. I like Tom Brady a lot and what he did with the Patriots and then what he did at Tampa Bay, it's about the team. Bottom line recently there was a series on that in Apple TV. And what comes out as a message is that you can't win anything as an individual. You have to work as a team. And yes, we need leaders who will drive the whole thing and make it happen. And we'll push even when the hardest of times come in, but then the team has to come together. We have to believe in each other for an organization to succeed. It's how you're going to create that team who not just believe in themselves, but they believe in each other. If we can get that going, there's no stopping of what can be achieved. Thank you, Ravi. And I think on that note, that might be a good place for us to end today's segment. And it's been a wonderful conversation that we've had today. For those listening in, please join us for more sessions. We've got a lot of topics that we want to cover over the course of the next couple of months. Just to remind you that if you looking for other resources, please do visit our website, which is www.mysenseihub.Com. And we look forward to you joining us in future segments. I'm your host, Denise Creisson, and I'm here with my, co-host Ravi Ranganathan. And we look forward to bringing you our next segment. Thank you everyone, and see you next time. Thank you.