Rajesh Jain

Jaspreet Bindra: “As the Generative AI tidal wave sweeps across industries and offices, I believe what it will impact the most is this aspect of corporate life. We often do not consider work as an industry in itself, though it is a several trillion dollar one, and confuse work with jobs. We are rightly worried about how AI will impact jobs, but tend to neglect how it will impact work. Investigating this, I stumbled on another post, this time on LinkedIn, which had a wonderful way to deconstruct work into three kinds. The first is where you must act, which is about your role, be it as an accountant, a programmer, marketer or a journalist. The second is where you show, by means of a format, be it a slide, chart, spreadsheet, code or a summary. And the third is when you need to create, or perform a creative task, like an essay, a recipe, code or a sales pitch…we humans will have to step up and learn how to work with AI and develop an “AI aptitude” as the WorkLab report calls it. We have been good at working with revolutionary technologies. We learnt how to use tools like fire, the personal computer and internet to make our work better and create new jobs for humans. We will have to do the same with this powerful technology and use it to lift ourselves away from the mundane and the monotonous. It will not be AI which takes our jobs, but other human beings using AI could, and we need to choose which of the two we are. We need to recalibrate.”

Emily Chamlee-Wright: “The freedom to read is a remarkable technology for social learning. As we transmit wisdom across space and through time, humanity as a whole becomes smarter. The accumulated wisdom has a compounding effect. Solutions once discovered do not need to be discovered again. Yesterday’s discoveries can be tweaked, combined with new insights, and applied to solve new problems. Because we have the freedom to read, we inherit the treasure trove of knowledge all prior generations of literate forebears accumulated. Just as importantly, the freedom to read connects us to humanity, our own and others’.  As Martha Nussbaum observes in her book Cultivating Humanity, when we read the stories of people from far-off places, times, and circumstances, we develop our moral imagination. We extend our capacity for compassion beyond what our direct experience might allow.”

WSJ: “What Mr. Kissinger sees when he looks at the world today is “disorder.” Almost all “major countries,” he says, “are asking themselves about their basic orientation. Most of them have no internal orientation, and are in the process of changing or adapting to the new circumstances”—by which he means a world riven by competition between the U.S. and China. Big countries such as India, and also a lot of “subordinate” ones, “do not have a dominant view of what they want to achieve in the world.” They wonder if they should “modify” the actions of the superpowers (a word Mr. Kissinger says he hates), or strive for “a degree of autonomy.””

Jason Furman: “The equation economists use holds that inflation is a function of three things. One is sometimes called “expectations.” You should think of that just as the internal dynamics of inflation: wages lead to prices, prices lead to wages, if you think everyone else is going to raise prices, you’re going to raise your prices, et cetera—a sort of a self-fulfilling thing. The second term is how tight the economy is, how much demand there is, often simplified by how low the unemployment rate is. And the third term is what supply shocks are like.”

Thomas Sowell: ““Entitlement” is not only the opposite of achievement, it undermines incentives to do all the hard work that leads to achievement.” [via CafeHayek]

WSJ: “[Po-Shen Loh] says the key to survival is knowing how to solve problems—and knowing which problems to solve. He urges math nerds to focus on creativity, emotion and the stuff that distinguishes man from machine and won’t go obsolete. As artificial intelligence gets smarter, the premium on ingenuity will become greater. This is what he wants to drill into their impressionable young minds: Being human will only be more important as AI becomes more powerful.”

Ramesh Mangaleswaran & Rahul Ahluwalia: “Mobile phone exports from India went from about $5 billion in 2021-22 to around $10 billion last year. This growth was driven primarily by Apple, which accounted for half the mobile phone exports from India in 2022-23. Electronics exports overall rose to about $20 billion from $13 billion. As good as this news is, benchmarking against other countries shows how much further we can go. In 2022, Vietnam, a country about as big as Madhya Pradesh, exported $114 billion in electronics. China exported close to $900 billion. What can take our green shoots in electronics exports and turn them into a flourishing eco-system? The answer is deceptively simple but critically important and highly time sensitive: prioritize building one large export cluster around one big anchor investor… India can be a splendid alternative if we set ourselves the target of reaching $100 billion in exports from just one large electronics cluster, and line up all the ducks needed to deliver on it.”

strategy+business: “In Unbreakable: Building and Leading Resilient Teams, Bradley Kirkman and Adam Stoverink, business professors at North Carolina State and the University of Arkansas, respectively, tackle the problem of how to gird your team against the setbacks that disrupt operations—or worse. Teams have great potential advantages in the face of setbacks. The talent, energy, and resources of a group will always exceed those of an individual, and group members can support one another in a crisis. But the point of a team is to accomplish ends sufficiently challenging and complex that a whole bunch of people must work together. That means coordination, communication, and, potentially, friction. Teams also need some things that tend to be in tension with one another. They need leadership, for example, yet they need personal initiative to make decisions close to the action. Teams also need to strike just the right balance between planning and improvisation.”

Vasant Dhar: “Just like Internet platforms such as Google, Tiktok, Facebook and Netflix can serve up virtually any amount of supply required to meet demand. ChatGPT has similarly created an infinite supply of creative material on-demand at close to zero marginal cost. All you need is to prompt it appropriately. A very likely future is that AI will displace all but the most exceptional humans in many areas of our lives. However, those who survive will be have an amazing tool at their aid, and will combine their inherent talent with the wisdom they are able to extract from ChatGPT’s ever-expanding knowledge base. In effect, while previous technologies freed humans from grunt work, AI is becoming capable of all kinds of creative work.  For humans, this will require constant upskilling. That’s a tall order for a lot of people, for whom Universal Basic Income will be a godsend.”

Puja Mehra: “It is widely agreed that India’s economy isn’t generating the number of jobs required by millions of low-skill youngsters. Governments have been under the impression that ‘welfare’ spending can compensate for these failures. Money—even speedy, leakage-proof digital transfers—cannot substitute for quality livelihoods. Our economic model isn’t delivering for all Indians. Repairing it requires sound policy advice from economists and technocrats, which governments seem allergic to. Good bureaucrats often have reserves of bad ideas for when the political temperature heats up. Political conviction in reforms appears to be on the wane. Both the Congress and BJP seem ready to tear down the progressive economic policies of their earlier PMs. That can’t be good for the economy.”

Jonathan Martinez: “I am lucky enough to have worked for companies that ranged from corporate giants like Uber and Coinbase to smaller startups that were run out of private residences in Silicon Valley. One of the largest differentiators between these companies was their respective emphases on conversion rate optimization (CRO). The initial focus for smaller startups is typically on growth pillars, such as paid acquisition or starting up a lifecycle email program. By contrast, larger companies have dedicated teams in place for managing and implementing their CRO efforts, alongside all their other activities. Bringing paid acquisition costs down when funds are tight makes a great deal of sense. Similarly, starting email marketing campaigns to improve performance through the funnel can be equally important. However, what many startups do not realize is that CRO can help lower paid acquisition costs and push users through the funnel as much as, if not more than, the other pillars.”

Matt Levine: “There are two main ways for companies to finance themselves, debt and equity. Debt financing means that you borrow money and promise to pay it back on some set schedule with some set interest rate. Your creditors are entitled to exactly what you owe them, and if they don’t get it then they can sue you for the money, or put you into bankruptcy if you don’t have it. Equity financing means that you sell stock to investors and you never have to pay it back. Your shareholders are not entitled to anything specific; there is no particular amount of money that they have to get back or any schedule for when they get it. But they are in some loose sense part-owners of the company, they have a residual claim on its cash flows, and they vaguely hope to one day get their money back through dividends or stock buybacks or mergers. They can’t make you share the profits in any direct way, but a share of the profits is what they want. And while there is no guarantee of what they’ll get, there is also no limit to it: If they buy 1% of the stock when the company is worth $10 million, they put in $100,000; if they then sell when the company is worth $100 billion, they get back $1 billion. That’s hard to do with debt.”

Casey Rosengren: “There are five archetypal fears that I often see underlying people’s work: Unworthiness – the fear of not being good enough; Death – the fear of insignificance and disappearance; Uncertainty – the fear of not knowing who one is or where one’s life is going; Insecurity – the fear of not having enough resources; Rejection – the fear of isolation or letting people down. If you can learn to recognize and work with these fears when they arise, you’ll be able to stay connected to your dreams, even in the face of perceived threat.”

NYTimes: “The notion that art can improve mental well-being is something many people intuitively understand but can lose sight of — especially if we have become disconnected from the dancing, creative writing, drawing and singing we used to enjoy as children. But there’s a “really robust body of evidence” that suggests that creating art, as well as activities like attending a concert or visiting a museum, can benefit mental health, said Jill Sonke, research director of the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine…Start by quickly drawing yourself; don’t overthink it. The second drawing should show you with your biggest problem. The third drawing should show you after your problem has been solved.”

Abraham Thomas: “Early stage founders have to discover almost everything about their business. What is the product? Who is the customer? How do we reach them? What will they pay? How do we hire, and scale, and compete, and disrupt, and defend? It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle where you have to craft each piece from scratch and you don’t know what picture you’re assembling…Early stage founders need to hire, build, sell and grow, before they run out of cash. It’s a race against the clock, and most startups are ‘default dead’ — their runway will end before they reach profitability. This is like venturing on the Polar Plateau: you have to reach safety or perish; time is not your friend. (The jigsaw puzzle will explode if you don’t finish it in 6 months). What’s the best way to mitigate this deadly duo?…Speed.”

WSJ: “For two years debate has raged over what caused the highest inflation [in the US] since the 1980s: government stimulus or pandemic-related disruptions. Now two of the country’s top economists have an answer: It’s both. Pandemic-related supply shocks explain why inflation shot up in 2021. An economy overheated by fiscal stimulus and low interest rates explain why it has stayed high ever since. The conclusion: For inflation to fade, the economy has to cool off, which means a weaker labor market.”

Kevin Corcoran: “I found Following Their Leaders to be a solid and important work…A key point Holcombe makes throughout the book is that, to a huge degree, people do not adopt parties based on policy, but instead adopt policy based on parties. Democracy is treated as sacrosanct, and its justness is taken for granted. I suspect that most people don’t come to support democracy because they are persuaded that democratic governments are accountable to the people—instead, they accept uncritically the idea that democratic governments are accountable to the people because it supports their pre-existing belief in the justness of democracy. Refuting the idea that democratic governments are accountable to the people will therefore have little effect. I wish I could end on a less dour note, and I sincerely hope to be proven wrong! But regardless of the impact it will have, Holcombe has written a well-reasoned and important book that deserves to be widely read, and one I can easily recommend.”

WSJ: “Big moments and decisions in our lives can make our stomachs drop. Moving somewhere new, getting married, starting a family—if we’re sizing them up realistically, maybe we should be nervous. (Newborns are exhausting; being a manager is hard.) More than half of workers in a recent poll ranked starting a new job as scarier than skydiving or holding a snake. Just trust your gut, everyone implores when you’re staring down a new opportunity. It takes effort to distinguish between normal jitters and the kind of fear that’s a real warning sign, though. And it’s more work still to convince yourself to just do it, even if you’re doing it scared. First, take a breath, advises Luana Marques, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of a coming book about harnessing anxiety. Calm your nerves by meditating, taking a walk or talking to a friend. Then, with clearer eyes, ask yourself: If I said yes, would taking on the discomfort of a new thing get me closer to where I want to be in my career or relationships? Often, the fear cloaking our big decisions is “an anxiety toward your dream life,” Marques says.”

McKinsey on effective meetings: “Should this even be a meeting at all? Recurring meetings are particularly susceptible to migration from the original purpose toward something more diffuse…What is this meeting for? A meeting’s title and its purpose are not the same. When the latter isn’t clear, meetings can seem frustrating at best and futile at worst…What is everyone’s role? Even if a meeting has a clear purpose, it’s of little use if there is no one present deputized to make a decision.”

Hitendra Wadhwa on leadership: “To activate the core in themselves and others, exemplary leaders tap into five core energies: purpose (commitment to a cause); wisdom (calm, receptive to truth); growth (curious, open to growing); love (connected with their team and those they serve); and self-realisation (centred in a joyful spirit). When executives take stewardship of their inner state and help their team do the same, insecurities, habits and ego fall away and breakthrough performance can arise. They can do so with small actions to activate one of the five core energies — for example, taking people on an inspired hero’s journey; dialling down or redirecting a negative emotion; acknowledging a stumble; or apologising and adjusting. The anatomy of great leadership is not about mastering predetermined behaviours, but building resonance in a team by taking people to their inner core. The right behaviour follows, as members respond to unfolding conditions. This is a big shift for executives schooled in the old ways. But mastery of the inner state allows ordinary people untutored in the formal craft of leadership to become extraordinary.”

FT: “Phra Anil Sakya, one of Thailand’s most senior Buddhist monks, teaches mindfulness to business executives and to criminals…”Being mindful is knowing what is wrong or right for humanity, so when I speak to business executives, I teach them they have to put people before profit. Mindfulness is coming back to who you are, changing yourself first before trying to change others.” The teaching of mindfulness — paying attention to the present moment — and self-awareness is a growing trend in executive education, as schools seek to help business leaders appreciate and adopt more reflective, analytical and collaborative styles of decision-making and management. After all, the rationale goes: how can you lead others if you don’t know how to lead yourself?…Phra Anil suggests his own simple mindful habit. “Just try closing your eyes, shutting yourself down and living in the present. Bring things back to yourself and ignore the impulse to check social media and look at others’ lives. Do not forget to look at your own life.”