Next-Gen Entrepreneurs S1 Strategies for Tomorrow's Transformative Era Ep.3 The Evolution of Work in the Next Three Years

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Welcome to MySensei, the podcast for entrepreneurs and founder led businesses, looking to navigate the dynamic business landscape. If you're new here, I'm your host, Denise Creisson, and I'm joined by Ravi Ranganathan from Chennai. Today we'll be exploring the topic of navigating the future, the evolution of work in the next three years. Ravi, welcome to the show. Thank you, Denise, and glad to be here and excited about the future. Absolutely. Before we get started Ravi, I wanted to jump into a quote by Nelson Mandela. There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. What can we learn from history of work regarding the rise in self employment. Before the turn of the last century, most people were self employed. They were working as farmers, as craftsmen and traders and it was only at the beginning of the last century that we started to shift towards wage earning jobs. Just looking at what the next three years has in store, what are your thoughts on this history and how the trends are suggesting that we are having like a cyclical return to more autonomous forms of working. Thank you. First foremost, the way I have been understanding history is that for a very long time, the Stone Age, right? We were hunter gatherers and it was a very matriarchal society where women held power centers because they run the entire family or the household. And men were basically people who go out and get food. Slowly this changed with more structured societies that came into play and that's where the agrarian economy came in. I guess the agrarian economy is almost 4-5,000 year old, right? Farming was predominantly what was driving things. And the trade was driven by craftsmen who had a variety of skills, whether it's clothes or jewelry or utensils or cooking or even to some extent medicine and healthcare. But then all of that changed I think in mid or late 18th century with the advent of industrialization and locomotive engines and printing presses and so on. So one thing that was the big change from the C4, 000 year role based economy was today a person who's not equipped in the craft, who's not from the family of craftsmen could come in and do a particular job. I'm a son of a carpenter, I can still make an automobile. I'm a son of a say farmer, I can still make an automobile. I have a son of a medicine man, I can still make an automobile. So my freedom to do a role based function became very high. The productivity grew tremendously and industrialized jobs. People are very happy because they were getting salaries, as you said, wages. But this was more productivity driven wages so organizations evolved and with management a lot of things changed. Then came a very interesting era called the information technology era. So that is seventies and eighties where slowly, we moved from just a productivity driven society to knowledge based society, right? So we started getting information and information was power. And in the last 30, 40 years, cycle, right, if you just look at it, it took us 70, 80,000 years for us to move from a hunter gatherer to more structured agrarian society. So maybe 6, 7,000 years down the line. It took us about 200 years in the industrial era. From 200 years it took us about 40, 50 years in the information era. And now we are moving into a new era. Interestingly, that 40 years has now been truncated to the last maybe, 10 years or 5 years. I don't know how fast that rapid progression would be where it's not even knowledge. So today knowledge is available. Information is available. Google is giving all the answers. Your Bing is competing with Google and you have so many other sources of information. So today it's how you're going to leverage this knowledge and how are you going to choose your right information and discard all the clutter that is coming into this world, right? So people who get engrossed by instagrams tick tock and snapchats. They want to lose out on this race. People who are going to be focused in what they want, they are going to be very successful in this new world. So it's a new paradigm. It's a new set of skills that are required for this new brave world. So I guess historically speaking, the time frame for each era is shrunk. And today it's not about your skill. It's not about your knowledge. It's not about your mindset. It's a mix of all these three things. It's where your wisdom mixes these three things and you have the right focus to get things done. So that's my thought if that makes sense. I don't think that many people realize that wisdom is actually a skill. It's a muscle that you have to cultivate and you've got to continually work at it to make it grow. And you've mentioned people that are being, and I can't remember the exact words that you used, but I'm going to call it distraction. They're being distracted by social media. So not all social media is a distraction. I also learned quite a bit from people and other businesses that are sharing some of their knowledge on places like Instagram. I know that for my children, they actually attending the university of TikTok because, they argue with me over everything. And I'm asking, what is your justification? Where are you getting your sources from? And they're like, oh, I saw a video on TikToK. And that has greater social proof than I do, irregardless of how many degrees that I've got and how much learning I've done in the decades of working, no, if someone's put it on TikTok, then tikTok and Insta, they rule the world today. Yes, they absolutely do. Another thing people don't know what this right process is because they assume a role is defined in the social media. So what does a CAD engineer do in development of an aeroplane? What kind of design engineers are required in making automotive solutions? What kind of chemistry is required in making a battery technology, is being discussed in YouTube and people actually start practicing some of these things, which is scary because years of experience and knowledge is required for some things to happen. The bigger worry is I see healthcare professionals they look for references in social media. Now, what kind of validation is done this is a big question that a lot of government agencies are grappling with because if you want to prescribe medicines, you want to do a surgical procedure based on, what on a YouTube video or what you heard in an Instagram reel it's going to be a big issue. Definitely. I came across some statistics and it was a study that was done looking at people's appetite with AI, which I'm always very curious about and where things are shifting to. And it was looking at situations where people were perhaps more willing to adopt AI and the different areas that they would be happy for AI to come and take their job and the first one was housework they'll be quite happy if there were robots that were invented to do housework. But number four on the list, education, a lot of people were saying that they would be happy for their children to be taught by AI rather than the traditional schooling environment that we have now. So I just found that really interesting. Maybe a topic for us to explore in more detail on another segment. Okay. I'm going to go into the next question, which is what are the major trends shaping the future of work? Having my experience in technology space there has been this particular acronym that people have been using in technology. It's called the SMIAC, right? S M I A C, right? S here stands for security. A lot of people really don't relate to this, but it's very powerful. We discussed it in the earlier question when we talked about how some of the social media could be misleading. How it could drive certain opinions in public domain, how it could drive actions where things are wrong. There have been multiple cases in India, I'm sure there are such similar cases across the world where people have been attacked, or people have been hurt, or people have been wounded due to some of the information that was shared in social media. And what is the right information is a big question today. And as we already know fake news and quite a few other things are a problem. As such, cyber security is a very vast topic. Cyber security is changing, evolving. And earlier it was server security, endpoint security device security, and today it's all about cloud security. We are also talking about Copyright management and DRM, digital rights management and NFCs and so on. And with blockchain coming in, that's another big space that is driven by security standards. Now, in SMIAC, the next word is M, M stands for mobility. Today, it's so powerful. You literally do everything on your mobile phone. Earlier we were just making telephone calls, then we started looking at time. Today nobody wants as watches, they all look time there. Then you have compasses, people have stopped using compasses. People have stopped using banking. Today so much of banking is happening on your mobile phone. People don't go visit banks, they don't even go log into online websites, they do most of the banking on their mobile phone. Education happens on mobile phones. Socializing with people, we spend more time with mobile device than we spend with our loved ones in the world. And we are so sensitive with our mobile phones, right? Literally mobile phones have become our extended human body part. If you take it away, you can literally feel your heart pump. It's like cutting a portion of your hand off, right? So it's that bad. Even people who sleep, if you take their mobile phone, they can wake up since that mobile phone is gone. So mobility is a big change in technology that's coming. The third in SMIAC is I, the Internet of Things. So today, so many of your vehicles, so many of your machines that are running, aeroplanes, your merchant Navy ships your large power manufacturing units, they're all managed by technology which is enabled by internet, right? Tesla is a great example of a consumer driven technology of internet. But today, if your car breaks down, or your vehicle is in any trouble, immediately there are people who are aware of what's wrong with your device, right? Or what's wrong with your vehicle. So this is done through Internet of Things. Internet of Things is also prevalent in what you just spoke of, which is making our household chores easier, right? So there are say washing machines that sense the quality of your cloths and they can order a soap accordingly, and soaps get delivered through drones. So a lot of these things are driven by the IOT part of the technology framework, right? Drones, RFIDs, NFC cash payments, your small household robotics, sensors, sensing lights wherever you're going, power management, smart homes. All of these things are predominantly an IOT space technology. And then comes the buzzword of the day which is S M I A and A here stands for artificial intelligence, right? Along with this S. M. I. A. Is very interestingly used in everything today, right? Whether you're going to a shop, going to a doctor, going to school, you're driving a car, planning how to cook for a large volume of people, planning to conduct a meeting, every human interaction is being empowered, enabled by artificial intelligence. These have been there for the last five, six years. ChatGPT has bought it to the public domain so people have started using the word AI, but AI has been there for a very long time. AI has been the way our search engines work, in the way music suggestions have been made, movie suggestions have been made. So it's been there with large organizations now it is coming down to the consumer level. Also with face recognition as well. Like most people don't realize that, but also, yeah, machine learning. Yeah. So actually, yeah, the AI is a very big topic. Probably we should have a separate discussion around AI. And C stands for cloud, right? Cloud interestingly, when Amazon started this concept long ago, people were wondering, we all have servers, what is this cloud? Who will buy space? What is Amazon talking about? Flexibility and so on. And slowly before everybody caught onto the board Amazon became market leaders. Google was the first to sense and they took over with Google Cloud space. Google Cloud was overshadowed in the COVID by Microsoft. Microsoft silently has taken over the world with their Azure Cloud and Azure services. Today they offer a full suite of services and they have, again, mapped it with CRMs, ERPs they have a Microsoft specific CRM, they have an ERP solution, they have a productivity tool, and Microsoft Teams has become such a powerful communication tool for all the corporates. Zoom was a leader in video calling, and earlier there was another player, Cisco based Product. So the promoter of Zoom, he left Cisco and he started Zoom in 2014 and thanks to covid Zoom became one of the most popular video conferencing tool. But Teams has overtaken them at a rapid pace. And what Teams is doing for Microsoft is unbelievable. So cloud essentially is driving so much of technology enablement and technology space whether it's uploading applications, or managing deliverables, or rapidly expanding into new markets. Cloud has given tremendous flexibility for IT operations. So with this SMIAC suit of offerings, if you mix say IO OT and artificial influences, you'll have robotics also into it. Automation if you take a cloud and artificial intelligence and maybe security to some extent you will have automation and RPA. You have a ton of things whether it is blockchain, whether it is the new face recognition technologies and big data management, and all kinds of technology driven solutions that are being coming out to consumers. If you come to look at it, it's just small SMIAC, right? So SMIAC happened between say 2012 to 2015, and we are still realizing the vast changes that this package of things is offering us. But this will mature very fast, another 5 to 10 years. This is the new era and people should understand SMIAC and embrace SMIAC. So everywhere you go you're gonna have technology enabled with security, mobility, IOT automation, artificial intelligence, and cloud, right? A, you can either put it as artificial intelligence or you can put it as automation. But either way we are looking at this kind of a technology landscape. Thank you. Ravi. You've mentioned Teams overtaking Zoom. Teams offers more collaboration tools, whereas Zoom is mainly communication, right? The reason teams is successful is because of Microsoft. Most offices are using MS Office and along with the MS Office today they are also using Azure cloud. So when I'm using those two, I can seamlessly integrate Teams into that. And there is another tool where your workspace can be shared, right? So your application development, your documentation, your reviews, your code banks. Interestingly GitHub is owned by Microsoft. So GitHub is a repository of all the codes and it's owned by Microsoft. ChatGPT, Microsoft has invested in a big way. So everything gets integrated as one package solution and companies are buying into it, right? Microsoft predominantly works with large corporates. So individuals would prefer Zoom, smaller organizations would find Zooms flexibility good, but if you go to any large corporate they'll all be driven by Microsoft and their suit of services. They have their own CRM which is very popular. They have their own BRP. Today Azure cloud has also automated. Selenium was a very powerful software testing tool, right? Today, Azure has its own inbuilt software testing tool. My company earlier used to have solutions like Jenkins for CICD pipeline. So continuous integration, continuous development solutions for software development and deployment in the cloud, which is dominantly used in Amazon. Today, Azure has its proprietary CICD pipeline solutions, right? So everything is going into one box. And with AI driven coding, today, a layman can create complex software solutions for their businesses. If they are able to understand the Microsoft landscape. So Microsoft is trying to become the one stop solution for technology. I'm not promoting Microsoft. I'm just saying that Google is trying to catch up in a big way and Amazon is really trying hard. And because Amazon were leaders for a long time, for almost a decade, Amazon were the leaders in the cloud space. And even today, Amazon is the most popular cloud solution in the market and people are used to these tools that I spoke of and they can deliver programs through that. But Microsoft is catching up very fast and Amazon is aware of it. Probably Amazon will come up with their own solutions. On top of it Amazon bought Lotus which was similar to Microsoft Office and they were trying to offer it as a productivity tool. It has not taken off very well. Google has their own Google Sheets and Google Word and Google other things. Google Gmail. Outlook is again something which is very popular with corporates. Gmail is very popular with individuals and Android space. But Google again is struggling in this space. Amazon is number one today. Microsoft, I think is number two and Google is number three and Google is really struggling to fight with these, surprisingly, because Google is such a mammoth of an organization, but still find the space difficult. So what I'm hearing from you, Ravi, is that tech and digital literacy is going to become integral in reshaping job roles and skills demands for the future. So if we are focusing on tech particularly in AI and robotics, which are expected to automate many of the routine tasks, they're always saying that it's going to create new jobs, I think the creation of new jobs predominantly going to be in the tech driven sectors. No I'd like to put in my point of view on this. The reason is today with these technologies, you don't need to be a techie. That's the best part. You like cooking tech will enable you to create lovely cuisine. A small shop where you can sell your cuisine, will get your customers will make your business prosper. You like to cycle, technology will enable your cycling, it'll tell you which cycle to buy, which tyre, how long you can cycle, which road to take. It will promote you, you can coach, you can train other cyclists. So interestingly, today, people will go back to their grassroots spaces. So if somebody wanna be a cook, they can try that. They wanna be a cobbler who can make beautiful shoes and technology will tell you where to buy what and what is the best technology to give good quality shoes and you can become great. Or you want to be a defense person or you want to be a healthcare professional technology will enable you. So instead of trying to read Java coding, Selenium or project management, I think the young people have to think about what can I do? What do I like to do? And how can technology help me do that? And they can do whatever they want. They want they want to make movies, you don't need to spend Crores I can say millions of dollars in trying to make a movie today. You're talking about how this meeting is AI enabled. So you can imagine the power technology is going to give movie makers today, with the mobile phone they can create movies and movies were made and they were great success. The Blair Witch Project is a multimillion dollar movie which was made with some meager 20,000, 40,000, a very small amount, right? So if you're creative enough, and if you understand technology, you can create wow. My piece on this is you don't need to learn technology, you need to understand what you'd like to do and see how technology can help you. That's my take. I have to agree with you on that. I was using it in the context of employees and like job creation within a big organizations, but definitely on the entrepreneurship front it really does offer the opportunity of being able to, navigate wisdom quicker than before. So wisdom is knowing something that you didn't know before in order to see something you didn't see before, in order to do something you haven't done before. And that is like how you've mentioned on creativity and having the opportunity of being able to undertake more complex, or were traditionally seen as more complex activities, and tech enables us with that. So that's really great. How do I understand what I'm passionate about? Yeah. Youngsters, they're structured in their schooling system where they've already looked at what the pre specified roles in the market. It's so difficult for them to break free from the shackles of what's out there, right? By the time a mechanical engineer finishes college that person will become irrelevant with whatever knowledge they have because technology would have moved further. Today design technology, I can do a 3D mapping of devices with a small handheld device, which can measure my entire space and give me 3D renderations. 3D printing is changing the way we are looking at production management. So with so many things coming into play still studying CAD design, still studying some basic, you need to understand basics. I don't deny that, but our education system is actually straight jacketing so much of our answers. So for, especially for this younger employees and job aspirants, I feel we need to explore what is passion for you, right? What you're passionate about and you'd be surprised how much of knowledge you can gain and how much of financial growth you can have. If you can nail down what you're passionate about. And you mentioned about making sure that you stay current and it just reminded me of a quote that I saw that said, the person that graduated yesterday and stops learning today is out of date tomorrow. It's so true. So sad that so many people who graduate with a degree, an MS in Aeronautical Engineering or M Tech in Computer T echnology. They think that they have done right, I've finished learning, but whatever they learn is already half written into the code of the workspace. One thing that you have to be open to continuous learning, you have to keep your eyes open. You have to learn every day. I think healthcare professionals know this a lot. There are doctors who are 60, 70 years old, who are going to colleges today. And they are learning new things because they know that whatever they've learned is not enough. But sadly, I think a lot of IT professionals once they get into their comfort zone, once they reach their salary levels they stopped learning. And it's also difficult for them to move around, the agility is dropped and I've heard a lot of project managers and senior IT heads talk about agility and resilience. Both of this is gone if you're not willing to learn. Absolutely. I think reskilling is, it's got to be something that we continually practice in order to gain mastery and gain excellence because it's a habit, it's not an act. It's not something that you do once and then you can let it go. Okay, thank you Ravi. I think that's a good place for us to end the podcast for today and we'll continue the conversation in future segments. For any of the listeners that are looking for other resources, please do check out www. mysenseihub. com and we would love to have you back joining us on future conversations that we are going to be having around the business landscape and also around entrepreneurship. Ravi, thank you for today until next time. Thank you.