Future of work: Challenges that business leaders need to think about.

Business has always been dynamic and will be dynamic. The rate of tech refresh and change in business models over the past few years shows that business is not only dynamic but erratic as well. With such fast-paced transitions, it is imperative for all business leaders to forecast the future, and act today to be ready for the future.  

 The major challenges a business leader need to think about are,  

• How long will my current Business vision/Tech Roadmap remain sustainable, competitive, and easily transferable, or one that can be switched to a new one to keep the TCO/Opex minimum? 
• Looking at the current workforce mindset and new normal, and using the accessibility of technology from anywhere in the world to enable minimal coordination and maximum collaboration? 
•  Envisioning the “CRUX” mantra of modern-day business and subsequent investment 

C - highly Configurable 

R – Rational (Backed by Data insights not by thoughts) 

U – Unbreakable (Secure, Seamless, Sustainable, Reliable)  

X – eXtremely Available 

Building transformative teams: Organizational structures, new skills, and competencies required for success. 

 Organizations should be structured, to change or evolved constantly not just to meet the changing dynamics of the business but to compete with the business dynamics with comfort, impact, and compact effort.  Ideally, a transformative team is one that believes in self-transformation constantly and continuously.  

 To achieve this, it is important to have a team, which is  

• Lean: No fat,  
• Mean: focused,  
• Keen: eager to learn,  
• Green: uses efficient ways of working  
• Clean: No ambiguities, only clear-cut priorities 

 Some of the questions asked by transformative teams are, 

• What would I expect if I were an end user? 
• Why do I need to do this?  
• Why can’t I do it in another way?  
• What’s next?  

 This is the mindset always a transformative team possesses. But not all transformative teams are successful 😊. A successful transformative team is one that answers all these questions and produces solutions that are practical, feasible, viable, and stimulative.  

 A few of the skills and competencies that a team needs to be transformative as well as successful include, 

• Attention to detail 
• Understanding the domain, customer, and the customer of the customer,  
• Walking hand in hand with the latest process and technology,  
• power of YES 

 Data science and AI/ML in the context of business operations 

 Most say that Opex is twice the magnitude of Capex. While Capex can be postponed, or canceled, Opex is essential, ongoing, and repetitive.  So, most of the effort, time, and expenses go into operations. Hence, this becomes an eye-popping area to further dissect, dilate & deliberate. 

 The advent of data storage and data processing capabilities has opened doors for the AI/ML professional to understand the operations for their seasonality, pattern, localization, forecasting, recommendations, and anomalies to correlate and predict the underlying reasons. From SCM to security of the network, from retail business to rocketry monitoring, and from the financial industry to farming industry, almost all the operations are an avenue for the AI/ML engineers. 

Importance of upskilling and re-skilling for transformative teams 

 If a team wants to transform a business, it must be ready to get transformed itself as and when it is needed.  If we look at the term transformation literally, it means CHANGE: losing the current attributes which are no longer needed and gaining the new attributes which are essential to survive. 

To be transformative, teams should re-skill to get transformed to a state BETTER than the current; meaning leading towards perfection on what is already known. The team should get upskilled to get transformed to a state MORE than current; meaning leading towards expanding knowledge areas that were unknown until now.  

 And most importantly, one can never be on a learning boat forever; we should stop learning at some point in time and should start applying whatever we have learned. So, it’s not just about getting skilled, it’s all about creating those thrills out of learned skills. 

 Skills and certifications to advance in the Tech space 

 Skills and Certifications have always been the outcome of the Demand & Supply equation of the business.  

 “While most choose to buy a new age car, some opt to maintain their royalty with old vintage cars, and few create attention by building their own unusual vehicles.” It’s up to the individual, whether want to take up new age certifications on Cloud, AIML, Cyber Security, Data, etc., or to stay with some legacy stuff like Unix, Java, legacy DB, servers, or focus on less/hard to explore technologies like Embedded C, Chips, Bio Neural signaling, etc.  

 But a combination of old and new-age skills is disruptive, as it helps to transform the old technology into a newer one with ease. Remember, every skill, every knowledge has applications and its own demand; one just needs to explore that area to be in demand.