It’s A Shit Business

I’m a music lover and (type of) musician (I also write for the Domino Rally mp3 blog). The title, “It’s A Shit Business”, was obviously extracted from BBCs great The League of Gentlemen comedy series and the pay-off collection for the character who always reminisced about the old days, playing and touring in the band Creme Brulee. As I say, most folks have now moved away or have had kids. Applying the same title to a blog which is a kind of therapy for me personally in recording my illness is, I’m afraid to state, an early on taste of the “gallows humour” that is my unfortunate stock-in-trade. It isn’t really that shit, there are folks who are a lot worse off than me – it’s simply a pain in the arse.

Machines on their own cannot do a lot – you will need humans to utilize them”. Instead of being truly a threat, AI should be seen as a liberating push, said Professor Tomo Noda of Shizenkan University, Tokyo. Perhps this involves a shift in conception for some of us. Prof Noda said that Westerners tend to be pessimistic about AI and robots, whereas in Japan, using its ageing and shrinking population, they are seen as a boon.

Just as AI may take on boring, regular duties in factories and release people to take on more rewarding careers, so that it could do the same for mangers. Managers have to comprehend, however, that the advantages of AI won’t just magically appear. It isn’t enough merely to employ people who do understand the new technologies, either. General managers shall still have to create organisations where technical savvy can flourish.

Nico Rose, vice president of company branding and talent acquisition at German media large Bertelsmann, said that they battled with this. “Whenever we found our businesses would be disrupted by Amazon etc., our first step was to hire excellent talent from those companies,” he explained. “Nothing much occurred. Mostly they left again after two or three years because they couldn’t have an impact. It wasn’t their problem;in an ecosystem that isn’t AI-data ready, data people can’t have a huge impact.

When you hire data scientists, you need several data architects, then you need an MBA to translate the total leads to top management. Even in an AI world, then, specifically human skills will be necessary still. At the newly launched Shizenkan University, the philosophy is that students should of course take courses in coding, data analysis, and analytics, but place this in a wider cultural framework also. Noda says that the new technology could transform society so basically that people need to ask what type of a world we want to live in, and what role we wish businesses to play. Traditional management education, he feels, is stuck in “20th century paradigms” which believe centralization, silo-ing and hierarchy.

The ” new world ” might not appear to be that whatsoever. Thinking about AI involves thinking about the radically new business models that technology enables. Many softer skills will also remain the domain of humans. For example, we are at understanding values better, evaluating trade-offs, and we’ll probably remain much better than machines at dealing with other people who differ in perspective and getting the support and co-operation of others. “Also, we are good at supposing responsibility, which machines can’t do.

We have empathy, and we are good at motivating and inspiring,” says Noda. One important responsibility of general managers is to ensure that the most severe predictions of an AI world do not come true. The workplace has already been a hostile environment for some employees andincreasing automation will make it worse.

“General managers must pay more focus on health and wellbeing of employees,” said IESE’s Jordi Canals. “Managers have to be responsible. Examples of technology firms which have ploughed forward with clever products without sufficient thought about the social results are no problem finding. Uber, for example, is criticised for exploiting its drivers often.

• Non-Repudiation of origin: The sender cannot repudiate later
• Handle customer’s inquiries and complaint resolution
• Are people buying the product or service online instead of shopping locally
• 81: Available in daytime near a mountain top cactus wedge
• Strategy consultant

Spotify pays performers so little that they cannot afford to keep making music. Amazon is often blamed for traveling shops to the wall. Technology makes many things possible, but are they attractive always? There is no doubt that the emerging technologies can make the global world a much better place. Perhaps the working job of the next generation of general managers is to ensure that they do.

Temperance is the thought of having reasonable anticipations and desires. Justice is thought as effort, quality products, good idea and reasonable prices. Forever 21 does not have a good process because of their factory employees, plus they overwork and underpay them. Forever 21 will not meet any of the concepts of the four business virtues, and according to the Virtue theory therefore, Forever 21 is unethical.