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Your past decisions shaped your present. Your choices today will determine your future. Growth is a matter of choice, not chance

Being Human for a Better Tomorrow in the Age of AI

  • July 26, 2024
  • 8th Edition
Your past decisions scaled

Aside from birth, the decisions you took have shaped your present. The school you attended, the exams you cleared, the college courses you chose, the companies you worked for, the people you worked with, your life partner, and significant life events have all uniquely positioned and oriented you today for the future.

Your next affirmative decisions about where you work, whom you work with, and what you do are the initial enabling conditions you need to grow and thrive in the future.

Where Do You Work and What Do You Do?

Ideally, the industry you are in is a high-growth industry, and your company is a leader gaining market share. Even if this is the case now, past success does not guarantee the future. The legendary former CEO on Intel, Andy Grove the states in his book Only the Paranoid Survive, it’s crucial to identify strategic inflection points and be healthily paranoid to disrupt your business before competitors do. He demonstrated this, as the longest serving CEO for Intel, Andy oversaw the company grow to $20B giant and 50x increase in market cap. Unfortunately Intel did not sustain this in later years and is now a very pale shadow of its former self ceding ground to likes of Nvidia, ARM.

So if you are leading and growing it is great but it is not to be taken for granted. Proactively assess risks, propose or be part of plans to convert threats into opportunities, out compete, and sustain growth.

If your industry or company is stagnating or growing timidly, collaborate to explore new opportunities (‘blue ocean’ as opposed to ‘red oceans’). W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their seminal book Blue Ocean Strategy outline key principles to find uncontested market space, focus on value innovation, reconstruct market boundaries, and align for execution.

The book has several examples including how Cirque de Sole reinvented circus , one of the oldest businesses. By astute thinking of such frameworks you reinvent markets for a competition of ‘one’.

Being healthily paranoid or looking for blue oceans in your industry and company is a great opportunity to apply your knowledge and skills and gives you the right to be at the table to lead and learn from growth efforts.

As additional context to be ready and willing to do your part, if not already take a look of the previous this newsletter editions where we explored why you work, how you work, how you learn, how you make time to develop and grow, how to build on uniqueness, and how to ask the right questions.

Whom Do You Work With?

In their book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee identify ten conditions that made life possible on Earth:
  • 1. Galactic Habitable Zone: Earth's location in a stable area of the Milky Way.
  • 2. Stable Circular Orbit: Earth's nearly circular orbit around the Sun provides consistent energy.
  • 3. Jupiter as Protector: The gas giant deflects many comets and asteroids.
  • 4. Large Moon: Stabilizes Earth's axial tilt, preventing drastic climate changes.
  • 5. Plate Tectonics: Recycles carbon and other essential elements.
  • 6. Magnetic Field: Protects from cosmic radiation.
  • 7. Right Amount of Water: Enough for life, but not so much as to submerge all land.
  • 8. Oxygen-Rich Atmosphere: Allows for complex metabolisms.
  • 9. Optimal Mass: Earth is large enough to retain an atmosphere but not so large as to become a gas giant.
  • 10. Evolutionary Kick-Starters: Events like the Cambrian explosion that spurred biodiversity.

The authors argue that while simple microbial life might be common in the universe, the combination of these factors (initial conditions) makes complex life rare.

Similarly, the following organizational variables are enablers for your growth:

  • 1. Visionary Leadership: Leaders who provide a clear, inspiring direction.
  • 2. Supportive Manager: A manager who offers consistent support and guidance.
  • 3. Psychological Safety: An environment where it's safe to take risks and share ideas without fear of ridicule or punishment.
  • 4. Diverse Team: A mix of skills, backgrounds, and perspectives that foster innovation.
  • 5. Growth Opportunities: Continuous learning and development possibilities.
  • 6. Work-Life Balance: Respect for personal time and well-being.
  • 7. Clear Communication: Open and transparent information flow that shields from misunderstandings.
  • 8. Recognition and Reward: Acknowledgment and compensation for contributions.
  • 9. Collaborative Culture: An environment that encourages teamwork and mutual support.
  • 10. Ethical Leadership: Leaders who protect the organization's integrity and values.

If you are in the early, mid, or mid-senior career stages and looking to grow, these are great initial conditions. Use your review and appraisal cycles to proactively assess them. As an individual contributor, manager or a leader, look to engage, demonstrate and show agency on them respectively.

If there are challenges, it is best to resolve them with open and trusted conversations for direction and resolution with maturity and determination. If not at some point step out and explore other options aligned to what you want to do.

Life forms didn’t wait for perfect conditions but persisted, actively adapted to and shaped their environment. Similarly, individuals can engineer their own success by strategically positioning and preparing themselves for favourable circumstances ,actively engaging in their work and staying the course with tenacity and grit.
Life is all about evolving, adapting, and growing. That is both ‘Nature’ and ‘Natural’ for you at work.

I hope these insights help.
Please subscribe, follow and share, Your comments and feedback are very welcome.

Best wishes.

Select Quotes

"Life is a sum of all your choices."
― Albert Camus, Philosopher
"Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive."
― Andy Grove
“Don't compete in red oceans. Create blue oceans.”; ”Break the value-cost trade-off.”
― Look
"Be the boss your employees would follow if they didn't need a paycheck."
― Unknown
beyond existing demand.;”Make the organization fit the strategy, not the other way around.”
― Ocean Strategy W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
"The best way to predict your future is to create it."
― Abraham Lincoln
"Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change."
― Jim Rohn, motivational speaker and author
"If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much."
― Jim Rohn, motivational speaker and author
"Every decision you make is a vote for the person you wish to become."
― James Clear, Atomic Habits
"The road to success is always under construction."
― Lily Tomlin, Comedian
"What got you here won’t get you there."
― Marshall Goldsmith, Executive Leadership Coach and Author

II. Questioning / Asking

Good conversations flow from well‑sequenced questions—topical, simple, coherent, cohesive.
LLM Conversation Example 1
Q: What are empirical judgments?

A: Empirical judgments are based on observation, experience, or experimentation.
Q: What are moral judgments?

A: Moral judgments are based on ethical principles and values.
“AI is a language. Treat it like one: practice, iterate, and mind your grammar prompts, assumptions, and verification.”
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