We may have to change the way we work

Global health emergencies, like Covid-19, are scary, disruptive, and confusing for everyone. could change the way we work! 

“Disruption to everyday life may be severe,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, cautioned at a news conference Tuesday. “Schools could be closed, mass public gatherings suspended, and businesses forced to have employees work remotely.”

Business travel could decrease or come to a full stop. 

You May have to work remotely - with Video conferencing being the main  means of communication

Here is the inevitable post-crisis question: 

“Why don’t we do this all the time?”

Cali Williams Yost, CEO and founder of Flex+Strategy Group/Work+Life Fit shares five steps to reconfigure your workforce 

Acknowledge the possibility that all or part of your workforce may need to work remotely.

Gather a cross-functional team that includes business-line leaders, IT, HR, communications, and facilities to start to plan for different scenarios and optimize execution, should circumstances require a rapid response.

Map out jobs and tasks that could be affected.

Note which roles and duties: 

1) Can be done, even partially, without a physical presence in the workplace, 

2) Cannot be done, even somewhat, outside of the physical office, and 

3) Not sure.

for those in the “not sure” column - experiment 

CFO, CMO , Accountant , Marketing , Salesforce - do they need to be at work? 

Make sure you have strong systems - where everything is documented and your team members can follow what is done for the client .

Audit available IT hardware and software, and close any gaps in access and adoption. 

applications, such as video conferencing and other collaboration/communication platforms need to be state of the art.

Where you find gaps, provide training and opportunities for practice before people need to use them. 

Real-time mastery is not optimal and is inefficient. 

Identify devices owned by the organization that people could use and clarify acceptable “bring your own” phone and laptop options. Determine if there are any data-security issues to consider and how best to address them beforehand.

Set up a communications protocol in advance

This communications plan needs to outline: how to reach everybody (e.g., all contact information in one place, primary communication channels clarified — email, IM, Slack, teams etc.); how employees are expected to respond to customers; and how and when teams will coordinate and meet.  

Identify ways to measure performance that could inform broader change.

Depending upon the outcomes, you may decide to continue certain aspects of the flexible response permanently. 

For example, perhaps you cut business travel by 25% and substitute video conferencing. 

You determine afterward that about 80% of those meetings were equally as effective virtually. 

Therefore, a 20% decrease in business travel will continue, but this time as part of the organization’s sustainability strategy to cut carbon emissions.

And if you plan and nothing happens? Then, at minimum, you have an organized, flexible work disaster response ready the next time there’s a challenge to operational continuity, which chances are, there will be!!

Luvin Life

Food for the soul 

How to prevent #coronavirus

Wash your hands 

A must watch 90s clip 

CDC guidance of evaluating and testing for Coronavirus

Official health update of what to do to Medical officers distributed by CDC - centres of Disease control and prevention 

Recognising the systems

1. fever/ short of breath - and sending them for testing - 
2. Someone who has been in close contact with a positively identified carrier

How to test for SARS-CoV-2. 

• collect and test upper respiratory tract specimens (nasopharyngeal AND oropharyngeal swabs).  
• test lower respiratory tract specimens, if available. 
• For patients who develop a productive cough, sputum should be collected and tested for SARS-CoV-2. The induction of sputum is not recommended. 
• For patients for whom it is clinically indicated (e.g., those receiving invasive mechanical ventilation), a lower respiratory tract aspirate or bronchoalveolar lavage sample should be collected and tested as a lower respiratory tract specimen. 
• Specimens should be collected as soon as possible once a PUI is identified, regardless of the time of symptom onset. 

How to handle specimens 

See Interim Guidelines for Collecting, Handling, and Testing Clinical Specimens from Patients Under Investigation (PUIs) for COVID-19 (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/lab/guidelines-clinical-specimens.html) and Biosafety FAQs for handling and processing specimens from suspected cases and PUIs (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/biosafety-faqs.html).

https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2020/han00428.asp

Explanation by World Health Organisation of what Coronavirus is and show it can be spread

Best Marketing Strategy Ever - Apple - think different

Unless  people buy into your values and core values .....which should not change ..... no matter how good your product is - you will be behind those that have clarity!!

Thi is Steve Jobs launch of his core value of “thinking different” 

Deep Learning and the Alpha Node - will you be the next victim of AI

No matter how experienced or qualified you are - your job will be effected by big data and the “AI machine”

Take the example of a recruiter in the IT industry 

Can your decisions and years of experience  be transformed into the "Decision Matrix” or the "alpha node"?

Thr “alpha node”  will make all the decisions and functioning in the organization on your behalf providing the requisite competitive advantage and that too with greater efficiency - based on big data and the deep neural networking learning  that will be calculated through the relevant algorithms of quantum computing. 

So let's find the ideal Post for an organisation 

The alpha node 

• will learn the skills, traits, and the intellectual map for the role.
• pool candidates that come from a certain sample space not leveraging the true pool of candidates. 
• would get access to candidates' digital profile mapping all the critical skills, along with the knowledge required. The bias of Harvard, MIT would end, as the cognitive construction that only those institutes produce top graduates invoking a bias. (Flawed?)
• The "alpha hire" would be bias-free and won't require degree and experience rather skill and that is what required by 2025 to survive for corporations.
• the vision would triumph in alpha hire rather than experience, the critical point is what can you do for an organization and how?? 
• The written or AI-based oral interviews can gauge the candidate's logical understanding, focusing on routine points of what have the candidate had done in the past; 
• post-selection may still be at your disposal? From bonuses to your efficiency - nope -  everything will be in under alpha node

The matrix is powerful and all situational based decision could be carried out by it. 

Maybe the HR data scientists will also be hired  by "alpha node" to keep innovating the model. 

So the competitive advantage of an organisation and simultaneously cost-cutting will make Corporation go for the "alpha node hire"

How can the “alpha node” respect diversity and vision before it's too late?

Is there a place for human gut feel and intuition? 

What do you think 

Innovation vs Process

We have been talking of how corporates need to innovate.... innovation comes from people who think differently - the misfits.....

Is there a place for misfits in an enterprise ?

I mean look at the stats - there are many creative “geniuses “ running around The Valley and Incubators around the world -  the reality is that 9 out of 10 start ups end bellyup...

It’s difficult to create a structure or organisation around these humans and innovators - it’s actually counterintuitive to the way they operate or want to operate.

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.  — Steve Jobs, 1997”

No matter how brilliant your product or service or innovation is - without a process to capture their genius it is just chaos.  

A culture of team and encouraging misfits, genius and brilliant jerks ….. Is their a place for both ? 

If so how do you do this ?

Also see “celebrating the misfits vs Atlassian ideal - is there place for both”

https://australianinnovation.blogspot.com/2019/08/so-do-you-celebrate-misfits-or-focus-on.html