Job Shifts: The Road Ahead What one can expect

In my earlier blogs (Links below) I had spoken about job losses being real but the consequences of it being a hype unless we just ignore what the response should be.   It is like saying I will go out on a rainy day without my umbrella and not get wet.  So someone has to do something about it only one can get out unscathed or untouched by the drops of water.

Automation Tiger: Hyped Or Real

Decluttering the Hype Around Job Losses

Recently the McKinsey Global Institute did a survey on this subject and came up with a paper in December 2017 titled "JOBS LOST, JOBS GAINED: WORKFORCE TRANSITIONS IN A TIME OF AUTOMATION"

I would emphasize the usage of  Workforce Transitions in the title that reflects the nature of what is to come and has already arrived.

The fact is echoed here too that shifts are happening and one should be ready.  While I won't go much into the paper as you can read it on the McKinsey site I want to emphasize some points from the article and then discuss who should try and address this shifting jobs and ensure that societal impact is reduced. 

To Quote from the article

"Automation will bring big shifts to the world of work, as AI and robotics change or replace some jobs, while others are created. Millions of people world wide may need to switch occupations and upgrade skills."

Another interesting fact therein is about 30% of  jobs within 60% of occupations leading to many job shifts needed.   The question is who will manage these and what kind of leadership will organizations and individuals need to show

a) To avoid a disruption to the economy in a rapidly changing world of shifts in skills a balanced growth should be planned (in skills,roles and competencies).  

b) Industry along with the Government and Industry Bodies have to play a key role 

c) Educational institutes,  training agencies should be roped in to take up this massive effort

d) If we don't take this up on rapid scale within the country external universities will come in and take a big pie of the opportunity

e) Large corporate houses in every industry will have to play a "Responsible Leadership" kind of  role to nurture new talent by providing a view of what they need and a slice of what should be done.  

So the coming decade will see the role of Industry Academia alliances shooting up and UGC and NAAC (Indan Context) have already seen this coming and place a heavy weight on this collaboration in their ratings of colleges and universities.

Industry bodies like NASSCOM and PHARMACEUTICAL ASSOCIATION are already doing significant work on this and every sector should have some responsible leaders within their space coming out and looking at the future and assessing the skills demands and shifts that will happen

As we all know from economics Wages and Salaries are sticky and so any decline in demand or supply reduction due to talent availability will drive down the jobs and this will have a spiral effect if the road ahead is not redone.  Its only with the help of this careful planning and management  that the road ahead on job street can be smoother in the years to come. 

Knowing-Doing Gap and the Conflicts: What can organizations Do

Bridging the Knowing-Doing Gap. This is omnipresent. In our personal lives....in our professional lives- when we work with friends, colleagues and 

Most often the stresses within is what causes most damage.  What is seen on the outside and experienced without is of far lesser consequence that what is experienced within.  And one of the classic causes is the Knowing-Doing Gap.  

Although we may know what, how and why to do something, this does not translate into action.   The conflict within arises when we are not able to translate the intent into action and therefore build up stress due to the guilt, due to the dilemmas of thought and the constant ringing that occurs within the mind.

Knowing-Doing Gap is also commonly found in competency proficiency levels.  At the simplest 

De-cluttering the Hype Around Job Losses

In my blog post earlier I had written about how the automation tiger is not really as "terrifying" as it seems.   Read it here. Let me continue the argument around this

In recent 30 to 40  years computer controlled equipment has substituted wide range of routine work including jobs of book keeping, booking clerks, telephone operators, librarians and at the same time created jobs needing cognitive skills such as computer programming, software engineering.

Generally technology alters the tasks that people do and as a result there is a shift in demand for skills performed.   When washing machines became popular in India since 1980's the jobs of washer-men was at stake.  But today the difficult job has been sculpted out and numerous laundromats and premium service home delivery laundry services abound.  The washer man's job in the earlier form still exists but the "hardship" factor goes on increasing and the "returns" one can get keep decreasing year on year. So it makes practical and economic sense to shift to something different learn a new skill and expand. 

I met some of the washer folks at DhobiGhat (Near Mahalakshmi Railway Station at Mumbai) and found that they have expanded into dyeing of textiles, subcontracting several hundreds of dyeing jobs every day to make their livelihood easier.  The art of dyeing cloth needed them to re skill themselves and take up the new work.

Thus we see that as technology can shift work from hard work (hand washing by washer-men) to something done much easier through laundromats and large scale automated washers.   This happens due to more and more people willing to pay for more expensive services as society progresses. In short it can happen as the economy grows and people become well off and improved standards of living are evident.

Take another example from IT sector.   
COBOL as a programming language has been around since the time computers evolved (1960's) and the focus was to automate business.  Over the 80's and 90's the shift was towards desktop power and Database (SQL) and Visual Basic became popular,  in the 1990's and 2000's internet became popular and shift was on internet / browser related  technologies and so languages like Java,  ASP.net became more popular... Similarly the years after 2000 saw a thrust on business agility and Service Oriented Architecture started becoming key technologies....Now since last decade we are in the world of mobility and now programming languages like Python, Ruby, Java Scripts are the in thing.  

During each shift that the IT industry experienced new technologies replaced part of the demand for older skills. As the shift occurred people had to re-skill themselves, reorient their thinking.  (E.g. Shift from procedural programming languages like C or FORTRAN to an Object Oriented Programming Language like Java needed not just a new skill to be learnt but rather a completely new way of thinking about programming) to survive in the long run. 

While a new technology continues to expand it does not mean the old simply vanishes overnight.   For e.g. COBOL which is no longer taught in colleges today still dominates the world of business computing as there are many systems which still run on COBOL.  But the growth of demand for such skills is almost down to a trickle and hence only the best will survive in this technical expertise.  This is another reason for those who wish to survive to either be the "Super Guys" or "Super Gals" in their field or shift to something different.

So what this means for those in the corporate world is to understand the evolution of skills in your domain. Look for what is changing, learn and update yourself and continue to stay relevant

I always advise business leaders to ensure that everyone in their teams stays relevant. One of the ways they can do it is to ensure that everyone on their teams has either upgraded at least one level of proficiency on their current skills every 18 to 24 months or added a new skill to their repertoire. Of course 18 to 24 months is more from the tech industry perspective and this time frame varies across industries.

If they haven't either upgraded or moved to a new skill they are likely to face a redundancy sooner or later.   So the bottom line is that "Be Relevant to Just Stay Afloat, After that invest in self progress"


Technology changes should not ruffle us but should propel us to newer pathways.

Why Change Attempts Fail

They say that "deciding to change is more difficult that the actual process of changing.  But does it mean that once you decide the change happens easily.   

Deciding to change is rather the first step to change and most potential change imperatives get thrown out of the window since they don't even cross this first barrier.   Many times action on the need to change or the "change imperative" is not even attempted leaving it as a "missed opportunity".   How may of us can forget the time when we "swore" in our minds as students saying that from next exam onward I would prepare well in time for this subject and not go thru this nocturnal grind a day before the exams.  What happened next time was anyone's guess probably.

There are two abstractions of change  one is personal change and other is change for a entity, a team, a work group. Lets focus on individual level barriers and what can be done to overcome them.

New Idea, New Approach No No:  I stick to my past...can't come away, can't think of leaving the established ways behind.  Every time you thought of making a personal change 




"Deciding to Change is more difficult that actually process of changing".  Once you decided does it happen by default.  Not really, If you go by data on change efforts.  There are many reasons why attempts to change fail.   Key among them are

a) Laissezfaire attitude


  Most of the time change attempt recede because the decision was fluid.  

Automation Tiger : Overhyped Or Real

People are said to  fear and shiver when they hear about the roaring "automation tiger".  Every journal, newspaper, television channel or blog of these times speaks about how jobs will be non existent or how people will be victims of progress and so on and so forth

Let me give you a reality check.  I will take a few examples in the next few blogs to counter that view.  Let me take you to mid 1980s.  Anyone who was familiar with the banking sector know that computerization was spreading it's wings in the banking industry

There was great resistance from the bank unions and they were raising issues about job losses, the bane on humanity due to computerization spreading its tentacles and how it was not right for machines to take over jobs of people.

Looking back and now looking at where we are in 2017 gives us the right picture.  Lets take the employment data of banks which are published on the RBI website

1995 -  Employment 9.9 Lakh
1999 -  Employment 10.17 Lakh
2005 -  Employment 8.58 Lakh
2016 -  Employment 12.6 Lakh

Now let me give a overall picture.  What is show is direct employment by banks.  In 2004-05 the banking sector saw a impact of sudden appearance of online banking and resultant drop in direct employment.   Add up the indirect employment due to spiralling number of ATM's  and the outsourced jobs due to automation and servers and systems being developed by third party vendors and the cash management juggernaut that manages ATM's and so on the employment opportunities only have increased.

Has the banking sector vanished today?  Absolutely not.  Today we have more banks, more branches and even more ATM’s than we ever thought.  Digital Banking, Net Banking and Phone Banking are prevalent like never before.   Unlike earlier days when banks hardly had products beyond savings accounts, current accounts, recurring deposits, fixed deposits and a few others… today banks are overflowing with hundreds of financial services and offerings.  

So jobs are not disappearing but shifting.As society becomes more progressive economically disposable income rises,  spending on leisure goods goes up,  alternative services come up and more jobs are created.  

So the example of banking industry shows us the fact that automation is here to stay and not here to kill jobs alone. Automation and technology shifts help progress and the progress creates alternative job opportunities than what existed.  There are few more examples that we will consider in coming posts.  We can decide for ourselves if the automation tiger is hype or reality.

Some learning from Last Week's Australian Open Finals!

Some learning's from today's Australian Open Match Roger Federer Versus Rafael Nadal (29 Jan 2017)

1. You don't have to be top seed to deliver top performance. You just have to give your best shot

2. Whatever be the position always remember the opponent has some new trick coming up. Keep your eye on the target (ball) always. The shot in the unexpected direction is when you lose the point.

3. Whatever the rivalry and intense competition a fair game with full involvement is loved by all.

4. Respect your opponent. At time of shaking hands on winning the tournament the two players displayed lots of professionalism in the manner which they shook hands and rubbed shoulders.

5. Age is no bar for performance. Even in a competitive sport like Tennis we are inclined to believe that you have to push the envelope after 28 or 29 but today the champion beat the opponent at the age of 35 to bridge this record after over 40 years.

6. Being humble makes others respect your leadership. Federer referred to the concept of draw and said that if such a thing existed in tennis he would love to share the same with Nadal. So much respect for the opponent.

And of course...as one of the anchors put it

No better Reality TV than Sports

For more blog posts and views

Even Inventing is a process.

Your attitude will get you there..

Performance Management: Misconceptions and Realities

Wishing you a very happy year 2017.  This is going to be a milestone year for HR and Performance Management in particular. Performance management is at a stress point.  Fissures have been visible over the past 2 to 3 years and the cracks are now being acknowledged by company after company that gave up their existing ways of doing things when it comes to managing performance The popular press (sic !! Experts on social media) and also the fourth estate makes it look like companies are abandoning the appraisal process.  Look at below four examples among hundreds of misleading titles and excerpts "Microsoft and Dell are ditching employee performance reviews" (Source) . "Similar to the visionary Adobe and Accenture are dumping and redesigning annual performance reviews, Deloitte long knew that their old performance management approach neither boosted employee engagement nor high performance."  (Source) Reinventing the Wheel: How companies like GE, Adobe, and Deloitte get rid of the performance review with one on ones   (Source) Starting September, multinational management consulting firm Accenture will officially get rid of its performance reviews as part of a “massive revolution” in internal operations. (Source) One would get an impression that companies are giving up the performance review process. Managers and employees are saying "Ahaa.. finally we don't have to go through the boring motions of appraisals" In fact the opposite is true. Companies are not giving up rather they are making it more focused, more relevant and more aligned to the business.  This will actually mean managers, employees and leadership will have to spend more time, undivided attention and bring in more rigor into the process The systems will have to be more agile,  fact based,  evidence driven and outcome focused.  All this will mean more work.   Remember what gets focus gets attention and what gets attention gets done. That's exactly what's happening. Lets look at what will change. 1. Goal setting and reviews will be more frequent.  Biannual,  Half yearly etc will now become monthly, quarterly and feedback will kick in more often than ever experienced except at some very agile (few that may be countable on your fingers) organizations 2. Discussions will be more focused on all round focus of development,  performance. More evidence based data driven scenarios have to come into the picture.  Focus will not only have to be on what was achieved but also why and how.  (means to the end more relevant in a performance driven organization) 3. More stakeholders will need to validate the performance outcomes and specially the focus on process (why and how) .   Peer reviews, customer feedback (internal), stakeholder surveys etc will be more commonly used in organizations. 4. With the five digital forces staring at us from all sides, a data driven analytics based approach to data will be the key way in the future.  This is so true as my favorite quote I use in my PM sessions.  "In general we can argue but with data we can dialogue".  When we have a data driven approach dissonance will be low and both outcome like engagement and productivity will see a positive shift. 5. One on one's will be key: in the days to come.  The one on one's will focus on key issues relevant to the day to day job and core need of the individual employees when it comes to his or her work. This would mean that work gets discussed in context of how it gets executed removing the uncertainties, addressing the stumbling blocks and getting things to move forward for the organization Thus we can say that performance reviews are only going to transform and not vanish.  Time will show who stands out. Organizations that understand it and take it seriously will surely stand strong vis a vis the also rans who try quick fix and patchy solutions to the key DNA of the organization (Managing Performance)