The Future of Work with Technologist & Author Prashant Pandey

Ryan Purvis 0:00
Hello, and welcome to the digital workspace works podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines, the problems they face and how they solve them. The years they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took, they will help you to get to grips with the digital workspace inner workings.

Welcome to the digital workspace works podcast. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Prashant Pandey 0:37
Hi, thanks again for inviting me to your amazing podcast. Prashant Pandey. Currently professionally I work as director of technology in VMware for Asia Pacific in Japan. I am author, technologist and mentor. I help customers to build future of work so that their productivity profitability and security increases. Naturally, I'm very excited about talking about the book with you.

Ryan Purvis 1:06
As you see your book is the future of work. Is this your first book?

Prashant Pandey 1:11
corporate wise? Yes, it's first of all, but before that I have written some white papers in colleges. Those don't qualify for a book. Yeah.

Ryan Purvis 1:20
Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sure. Tell me a bit about how you got into the writing the book, the sort of the history.

Prashant Pandey 1:28
Sure, for last eight years, I was talking to customers across shippers who needed the balance 58 countries on how to transform their workstyle. And unfortunately, two years back when I was talking to became very relevant, I started getting a lot of calls, I started getting into customer meetings, and I started seeing a change which we have been sharing. So I had a challenge in front of me that how do I scale myself? Shall I write code? Or shall I write book? And that dilemma led me to an answer that I should write a book so that more people can read it and get benefited from it? Because by 2050 people will not work the way they have been working for last two decades. And that's the start of the book.

Ryan Purvis 2:11
Okay, great. And you mentioned that you just say 58 countries in Asia? that, yes, 50? I don't even know they were 58 countries. I mean, that's a little unknown. What was the most common challenge that your customers asked you about?

Prashant Pandey 2:31
There are two parts. First is if you say customer, they are always concerned about cost of buying technology. Right. And that is justification mathematically. However, the more relevant question that people who were focused on people and strategy was experience, someone like you, you have been talking to customers and people, you understand that their team didn't really want to change things so that it's easy for people to work. For example, when I was working with the university, there was a very nice gentleman forward looking who said, I want to build a city where students can work from anywhere. And for me, that's of a higher order value. However, mathematically, it's always the cost which comes into conversation. But underneath both, quality is the key.

Ryan Purvis 3:19
Because when you sit experience, you do mean the actual delivery of the for the person to actually be able to do their work.

Prashant Pandey 3:28
Yeah, that's one dimension, looking at things from the corporate side, but when you look at the same question from human side, each one of us are bringing our personal consumer experience. I'll give you an example. Today, when you're in Johannesburg, and be able to change your phone, symbol, you go to shop, you give your phone, you take a new phone in Kenya, the malaria system working. However, how many organizations are able to deliver that to someone like you when you go join an organization and you ask them I want to see an experience like buying a phone from our shop. That becomes hard. And as you point out the same experience.

Ryan Purvis 4:06
You see that hesitation? Yeah, we can't do that for you so quickly, is 25 forms you have to fill in and 10 processes you got to go through and 100 100 approvals. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So So how do you how do you go in there and help with the transformation of a business from almost like what I've just explained as, as the as the chaotic bureaucracy, bureaucratic at least environment, or you're just consulting at a high level? What's your sort of role in these things?

Prashant Pandey 4:39
I would say both because it's a lot given by organization. And pretty much if you look at organizations, they are in two types of a step fewer leading and fuel lagging bit lagging because of their size and age, right? So when you go in each of these organizations, the first thing is to Understand the vision, what your vision is, which is slightly different. So I try to understand their vision, then the vision has to be realized. So as a second step, I try to give them a journey map, how they can start from somewhere and reach somewhere, and what are the milestones of the journey, how they look like. And the third step is a bit of a demonstration of technology. Sometimes you get the team along with a set of their, their dream, how it will look like, so that they can feel it. And then they start on the journey. So pretty much this is a cycle of attaching to the vision, drawing their journey map. And third is realizing their dream by really bringing technology together product.

Ryan Purvis 5:39
It's because I'm reading the sort of profile your book here, you talk a lot about feelings. Yeah, have you to sort of have you applied something like behavioral economics into your thinking, or is it more similar than that? I guess? No, you're right.

Prashant Pandey 5:54
Behavior economy. Very interesting word. I like it. And historical economy has a lot of depth on technology, to be honest. And I'll give you $1 started when we all had Blackberry, and our behavior started changing when we started seeing the red Blip. And if you go the technology side of that blip, it was driven by something like capital logy, where technology was actually changing human behaviors and design started in 1990. However, both of us as a user of the technology never realized that our behaviors are changing. And now after 40 years, is part of our life, to a point that if you talk to a kid who is nine years old, he or she feels that Wi Fi is reality, like oxygen, and the world works on iPad. And that future,

Ryan Purvis 6:46
not even not even nine years old, my my three year old. As much as me one of the benefits of being out in Joburg is that he can play outside all the time. So he does play outside of the company too. And we live in the UK. But by the end of the day, he's tired. And then he says I'm tired. I played the whole day, can I have my phone? Can I have a phone with YouTube and you're like, you're three, you shouldn't be worried about this kind of stuff. But he wants to watch his little calls that he likes on YouTube. And so anyplace he can get he's figured out that that's where you can get it. And he's now smart enough to realize that he's he's got a little bit of a logic thing where he knows that he's played outside the whole day that he can use allowability. tv. Now I think with YouTube and the TV, which he's okay with, he's happy that makes the thing. But he still likes the tactile thing about holding the phone or holding the little iPad that he can use, then press the buttons. And it's crazy,

Prashant Pandey 7:42
right? I mean, if you look at us, when we went to, we went to school for the first time, there was a pen and paper and somebody taught us how to write a B, or at least keep the book in a light sheet in order. Look at the kids. The iPad works from any dimension. Perhaps I'm not sure if we taught them ever to click, it comes automatically naturally to them. And that's the generational use some data point. For example, India right now has 750 million people who are under 30 years of age. And that gives you a sense that if you just look at extrapolation of that to whole of Asia, there are 4 billion people and the way the generation is changing, the work style will change because when our kids are coming to work, they're certainly not going to look at paper or pen or experience where somebody is teaching them they'll be intuitive, they'll be creative. And for them technology has to be enabler so that they can put their true self out and let the world enjoy that.

Ryan Purvis 8:52
And I think a part of that is and YouTube plays a big part in this if you want to learn something, the content is available to you my 70 something year old uncle and he's very young for a 17 year old says if I want to learn something, I go on YouTube. I don't I don't go to school anymore for a while. He's a mechanical guy so that he doesn't go to a mechanic to do something from you'll find the article or the sorry, the video on YouTube. He'll watch that he'll fix the thing. And then when he goes and has a conversation with a mechanic he's going in 50% more informed because he obviously knows enough now to have a conversation that mechanic so he feels more empowered. I think that's what these these youngsters are when I say youngsters your your subsidy of feeling is that they can learn anything because the content they don't have to memorize it but they're because they are it's available to them they can utilize it and the technology is helping them to do that.

Prashant Pandey 9:47
Yes and you are absolutely right around. The new generation will apply the science which is there and they can apply it because they can consume it quickly. But if you look at the consumption way how it has Change is a three step process. For example, the first way was books were written on Pay Per and leaves. And the only way you can learn was reading, then evolved a science when radio came and people could listen to the same book or same speech or same poem, and they can consume thing. And then the third step was both of them combined together with the visual, and hence came the place where YouTube is there. So the good part is each one of us, as a consumer have the freedom now whether you want to read whether or listen, you want to see, you choose the best thing like you look at this podcast, you will preferably choose the audio mod because people can comprehend quickly when they listen. However, it's certainly more valuable if you put the same thing in as subtext. Or you put the same thing in a video form also, so that your audience base becomes broader. So that's the world where technology will allow everyone to share their learning in any possible way.

Ryan Purvis 11:02
Yeah, now you've heard me dodge a question about my son, he, we never taught him how to press buttons on the screen, he figured that out. But to the point that when he started walking, he would walk up to the TV and put his finger on the TV, see if the TV would do stuff. Yeah, and I think that's the amazing thing is that is the learning through doing is so much more accelerated now. And we're also doing things with with my daughter, she's only one, if he's gonna watch TV, she's watching something in another language with captions on. He's watching cartoons. So all this stuff is visually, their collections, but a lot of time on cue, but, but if we are going to do it, then we were definitely trying to make it an educational thing. And I think through the lockdown, we wouldn't have survived if we had both kids at home locked up without without having some sort of digital medium, to entertain the kids as well as educate them because you know what else you're going to do? So I think that the future is interesting from that point of view, because the technology, so it's so valuable to us that if we had to take it away, I think we'd all be lost one of the better phrase true,

Prashant Pandey 12:13
and you're absolutely right. And you when you said language, there was a very powerful construct. Because you see, language was all the knowledge is limited by language, right, in terms of the way it was written. And in terms it was getting consumed. For example, when I go to Japan, I see amazing set of engineers, they are really ingrained into technology, they are one of the community who have built electronics from ground up. However, just because the language is not enabled by technology, where on runtime, you can translate Japanese to the other part of the world. And vice versa. It adds lag. And I feel that's the area where a lot of advancement will happen. so that people can cross collaborate, by gesture, by video, by roars across language, so that they are talking to the same purpose. Imagine both of us doing this call and I'm speaking in Hindi and you're speaking in English, but the word can understand and listen that in French English, or someone in Africa can listen to this in their native language, how powerful that will be. I think there's a way to go. Well, that was a very important construct. I like them.

Ryan Purvis 13:29
Well, what do you say that I think I think we're not far from that. I think you could get if you look at some of these services out there, what's the one that I use otter is one that I use. There's another one called despair us with dispersed or something. And they do real time transcript, transcriptions now videos, I mean, obviously, you know, teams and zoom and all these things also do real time transcriptions. We're not far away from that being able to give you a fairly accurate let's let's not let's not say perfectly accurate translation to another language. Because at this point in time, they still struggle with picking up accents versus words that sound very similar. To say your transcripts are not perfect, they're probably, you know, 60%. There, you started to go clean them up. But you know, if you're just trying to get the gist of the conversation, it's very possible right? I would say probably now to get a another language being translated as you talk now down to specific dialects. I think that's where it gets interesting. India's are many dialects. South Africa has 11 official languages, and there's probably 15 or 20 other dialects that we don't even talk about that exist. So that complexity, I can definitely see there been issues. But I mean, I remember reading something not too long ago, I think Duolingo the language app. They were talking about the index version being an app deployed into the air pods. And you could you could hear someone talking They would give you the word they would do the translation while they're talking to the airport.

Prashant Pandey 15:05
Yeah. Which? Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. So one thing I also do is pro bono consulting with the startups, many startups who are trying to do things. And you are right, that this technology has been there. However, it hasn't reached a stage where enterprises are using them and not using interpreter in a meeting. So there Yes, is it good enough, not sure. How long it's going to take, it's a factor of how quickly they can get better at taking feedback and improving their product. And that's part of getting better is getting slow by the fact that it takes a lot of resources to improvise the quality. And that's where I think the scope of something like digital train or some AI based mechanism, which can actually check the context and syntax and semantics of a language so that it can prove that was the context of the messages. 98%, right. So I have seen few apps, which actually can measure my voice, my feelings, but still, they are very nice. And I would say, and I'm very happy. If my granny greenify, both of us are talking on this call. And we can understand each other without using any interpreter in any different language. So I feel it's a long journey still. Yeah, look, I

Ryan Purvis 16:42
mean, you know, it's one of those I mean, these people are building it. Now, if these prototypes are ready, that shows that there's an appetite, so maybe it is two years away, maybe it's 10 years away, but it's still close enough that we may see it. When you look at at the startups that you speak to I mean, how do you decide if someone if there's a there's an idea with mentoring or consulting

Prashant Pandey 17:05
with? Yeah, that's a very interesting question. Because I saw three types of startups. The first startups were very sharp in terms of what they're trying to solve, and how long it's going to solve and how much money it takes to solve the problem. And those are the ones who became kind of a unicorn. The second one were the one who were more focused on giving the business pitch, but their vision was just limited for two years. Because if you ask them what after two years, they can't see, and that was a clear indicator that they're looking at a small problem, for example, the y's problem, if you talk to some startup and say what you want to translate, they're like, okay, we're gonna translate English to Japanese. That's it in two years, right? That's the limitation. And the third is data, which is, which is seen 80% of the time, is focused on technology. If it's, or if it's a mechanical engineering, they focus a lot on on on their core engineering part and history has been the history has shown us many times, right? People even who have built Tesla now have had history where they were very focused on technology side, but they didn't realize the consumer side. And that's the piece I was talking about that how empathetic you are to your customers, do you really go and listen to them carefully. And then you change your power rather than sitting in a room making your wishful thinking of creating roadmap and making. So that's what my observation of startup has been. And I'm pretty much open to all three of them. Because when I tell them, I tell them that you simply have to listen to your customer and quickly adopt that feature or solution in your offering. And then churn on it as soon as possible so that you're delivering value to customer and you're getting better every day.

Ryan Purvis 18:57
Yeah, I think there's a there's a level of that, listen to the customer being, I don't wanna say cliched, but you've got to, you've got to actually interrogate the customer a little bit. And I'm not talking about an automatic Inquisition, but the customer might tell you a lot of things but an issue actually asking them questions and trying to understand where they're coming from, you could end up with with with with nothing valuable. Sometimes it's the 20% that they say that actually important stuff. You just got to find that 20% do you do teach the sort of people how to do that? I mean, when when you get involved, I mean, how deep Are you involved in consulting for startup?

Prashant Pandey 19:38
pro bono, as I said, so I have I miss my same weekends once or twice in a month, for an hour and outside that. I am part of a community where I go and talk to them casually on what startup they're trying to Well learn how we can help them. But I'm not actively mentoring a start up front end to end because my job role right now. I have a full time job which just brings my party. We can offer that I can't commit more. So I just tried to be realistic. Yeah.

Ryan Purvis 20:20
So so so how did you find time to write a book?

Prashant Pandey 20:26
Yeah, that was an interesting thought because the nice tarted conceptualizing to me clearly came as it's an enduring thing rather than easy sprint. So I looked at the whole year, this was beginning of February 2020. And then I thought, if I look at the whole year, it becomes 54 weeks, and now almost eight weeks are gone. So I'm sitting somewhere on 50 weeks. And even if I liked one chapter per week, I will land around 50 chapters. However, I spent again, three, four more weeks to just structure the framework of the book, for example, that section on purpose, the section on strategy, the section challenges section on feelings, and that give me a shape or framework of a structure which I need to fill, and then I filled the headlines of the chapter. Now comes the interesting part. How do I write because I need to clear brain. So every Thursday morning, I used to go for a ride, bike ride, and there was two hour ride. And that was my time to think, because I had put a calendar where I said, Every Saturday morning, I will just wake up and I will fill one chapter whose structure was ready. So that became a cycle. And I started writing and eventually, somewhere around next January, I was sitting at 37 chapters. That's how the whole thing came together.

Ryan Purvis 21:58
Okay. And I mean, I haven't read the book yet, obviously. So how many chapters you end up with? 3737? Wow, yeah. Okay. And, and if someone would have to go by the book now, I mean, what would be the key thing that you're trying to get across?

Prashant Pandey 22:18
The purpose of writing the book was to help people to build their future for so that they can be productive, or they can be efficient, right. And in that context, depends who picks the book, for example, I was talking to a few students from university and they got value from this, because they got the idea for the challenges which exist in their in their community, then I was talking to a few people like you who have done transformation. And I have been advisor to people on transformations. They liked the session on feeling and execution a lot, especially on the tool side, and 30, the set of people who are who have questions, but they need consultants to get answer, for example, very senior executives who are crunching time, but they need some pointed structures to get answer for the strategy. And that's why they like the section strategy because I have talked about things like sustainability as a goal or green as a goal that contains all organization. So it depends who picks the book, but pretty much anyone who is looking at building their future of work will get benefit from this book.

Ryan Purvis 23:31
Okay. And then he took a structure where you went through the challenges and your feelings and focuses. What are you? What are you providing in the sense of strategies for people in the future of work? Is it is it down to tactical level or more holistic,

Prashant Pandey 23:49
holistic? For example, you know, the elephant, right? So the famous story that if you send five people blindfolded to to feed an elephant, and when they come back to ask them, How is elephants or somebody will tell you, elephant is a tail or elephant is a trunk, elephant is a leg, right? It's very similar stuff, where I look at future of work from all angles, and then try to cover that in book and what those five angles were, I looked at the challenges of future of work, which was one angle, the second angle was the structure of the relation of future of work, how did it all and how it's changing. The third was the tools which will be there in future of work. The fourth one was a feeling of feature of work, which doesn't get accounted and design often. And the fifth part is the strategy part of future of work, because at the end, every organization has a purpose. And that's not really defined or mentioned doesn't survive for ages. Those are the five aspects of work which are captured in the book.

Ryan Purvis 24:54
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you do work in Japan because one of the things that I've noticed about Japanese businesses They tend to plan in hundreds of years, not in quarters and years like the rest of us do. Is that something that you've come across as well or not?

Prashant Pandey 25:10
Yeah, I admire that a lot. And it took me three years to get my Japanese name Aki, some my friends in Japan Give me that men are very proud of that name. How are the learning that came to me was quality. And there is a saying that cost is long forgotten. But quality is still there when you are not there. And I think that's the word. Thank you. And that's the whole learning that I had in Japan, where he referred to build quality or to really step back, go to the whiteboard, think what you're trying to do, then do a prototype, and then scale it. And you'll be surprised that the biggest of the VDI markets are in Japan. Nobody knows that, right? The biggest of the transformations are in Japan in terms of robots. We have a hotel next to our office, which is fully robotic, you will not have a single human really servicing you Yeah, you walk in. Yeah, that will be amazing thing. You walk in the hotel there. The receptionist is a robot that he or she will help you check in and you have a seamless experience the door in the clinic when the door inside the door. The whole room has electronic buttons. There'll be a robot serving you and then you go in your washroom. The toilets are world famous. So they really take technology to give you feeling. And if you look if we just split it apart to understand how complex it is. It's not very easy. It's all electronics. It's all sensors. It's all software it all comes together for a long term growth but I think one should look from Japan and learn from them.

Ryan Purvis 26:55
Is that the Hilton Hotel in Nagasaki?

Prashant Pandey 27:00
I can't recollect the name but my hotel. My office was in Hamamatsu, which is to stop from Tokyo. And this hotel is just behind our office and how much

Ryan Purvis 27:18
it looks like there more than one hotel.

Prashant Pandey 27:21
restaurant, promote hospital Hall. And then there are games also people play a lot of games using robots. They're very famous for but that's the land of experience or Zen of experience, I would say.

Ryan Purvis 27:35
Yeah, yeah. You say you got to Japanese name. What does that actually mean? When you say you got you got your name the Jeff.

Prashant Pandey 27:44
Yeah, the name is Aki Aki Sana sussan is a suffix which is a symbol. It literally means autumn. However, the name comes from Akio Morita, who is the founder of Sony. So the story goes like I was sitting with my friends, the whole colleague from Japan, we will celebrate our success over three years and they said present the mean is good, but we want to give you a name and I select pure you should and and then there's a key choose your name because they are very humble and polite. And I said that that's a hard thing. Because before this, I got baptized my second life and it dies me. And they were like, No, you have to choose your name. So I said, Okay, I'm an electronics engineer. I read a book about Akio Morita, who founded Sony and if you're not ready, you should read the book because it's all about how display tronics radio but created a hub Sony became what it is. Place a difficulty if something related to a qm or a time, it would be an honor. And thankfully the whole team collaborated discuss them honored me with a name called Aki which I proudly own and try my best to keep myself to the name. That's the story in Pakistan.

Ryan Purvis 29:05
That's brilliant. What was the name of the book for Sony? So I'm just looking on Amazon at the moment.

Prashant Pandey 29:11
It's called Sony. Akio Morita.

Ryan Purvis 29:17
does a lot of there's a lot of books on photography. If you talk to Sony sorry, that

Prashant Pandey 29:23
Japan

Ryan Purvis 29:25
made in Japan. Yeah. Made in Japan, UK. I'll put that in the links as well. I have seen this book and read it as I read it. No, I've seen it that I buy a lot of books and I've definitely seen this one. There's one to buy. I'll put this in my notes so that it's on the list

Prashant Pandey 29:48
of how voice can be can be transmitted far using the best of technology. It starts from there and then goes into a story of how you take the technology outside to the world and make something As big as Sony, which exists for hundreds of years, I would say,

Ryan Purvis 30:04
I've lost my train of thought now, in Japan,

Prashant Pandey 30:07
and Japan.

Ryan Purvis 30:09
Yeah, well, I've been to Japan, it's, it's on my list of places to go. And obviously, with with COVID, not, you know, people aren't traveling major distances. But it's, I've heard good things about it. I mean, we based it for three years, or you just traveling from Singapore, to Japan and back.

Prashant Pandey 30:33
My parents from Singapore, Japan, our ratio is very culturally rich and interesting. So have you have you got a chance to spend some time in this part of the world?

Ryan Purvis 30:46
I have. My dad worked for an airlines. So I traveled a lot to Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok. One trip to Malaysia. So I know sort of the areas if you like, I've always had a fascination with with the area. And I would love to I love it. I would love to live there. So maybe maybe one of the future? Who knows?

Prashant Pandey 31:12
Yes. Your observation on direct versus indirect communication? Because if you see there, on a scale, there are two sides of the world, right? One is very direct, you can go and ask and get things. And the second one is indirect, where you don't understand the context or understand the whole gimmick behind what the question is. And that's what the show is all about paragraph mix of both. Did you did you feel that in your comm conversation with people or business or?

Ryan Purvis 31:43
Yeah, so I found Hong Kong very much direct place. And that was pre pre coming. And going back to the Chinese and posts going back to the Chinese. Thai, I found them to be a lot more indirect. And I guess it depends on on where you are, where you are in those places. Singapore, Andre, do you remember because that was probably the, that's probably 20 years ago, then I was in Singapore.

Prashant Pandey 32:14
Since then.

Ryan Purvis 32:14
Yeah. I mean, I was hoping to get there this year. But that hasn't happened. But But I hear what you say but but I find that's a general thing. Now, even in Europe, and in the UK. America is very direct still. So you don't see those sort of things. But But Europe, you can, you can have a very indirect conversation, you know, a lot of lobbying, a lot of networking to get something decided on. Whereas in America, father to pretty direct now in Europe, depending on where you were, you know, you would have either very direct conversations, or you'd have indirect ones. So you could actually be collaborative between the border of where you are in? Well, when I worked for, for one of the banks, we had guys in Germany, and Switzerland and France, and just between those two people, you'd have a combination of indirect and direct, which, which, which makes it interesting, that's

Prashant Pandey 33:12
what that conversation was, because I taught a lot of that topic when I was writing the book, and there's something called center of action. So historically, as you write the wall, there are places like London or Germany, where actually the decisions were taken, and people used to come to Central faction, so that they can be part of the decision and then change the world with goodness. However, over a period of time, as people started connecting, as you rightly said, places like Hong Kong, Singapore became places which were connected. And they were also the new evolving center of action. But if you just extrapolate that to the whole world, I think there is no one place now, which is central faction. And that's what I have been talking or thinking of location limit that you don't have to be at the center of action or place where you're bounded by location. And that's where the decisions are happening. You can be Johannesburg, I can be in Singapore. And we can come on a call and quickly decide that, hey, let's do a podcast. Though we haven't dealt with each other. And tomorrow we'll report this podcast on this and then people from vault can hear and listen it and experience it. So that's the agility which is the future of work and the world is moving and I think there will always be cultures where direct or indirect things will be there. However, there will be a median somewhere in the language can be transcripted across and the digital platform will let people more can decide quickly so that they can be effective and efficient. I

Ryan Purvis 34:48
think you're totally right. I mean, it's quite weird to still see some some people are being forced back into offices and, and that sort of thing. But I think that's more of a control. issue than anything else. But I think you're right. I think the amount you should be able to hire anyone across the globe now for a role not be geographically restricted, like you were before. And also it should become more results orientated. said I'll have a nine to five shiftwork, which is the old factory mentality.

Prashant Pandey 35:22
Yes. And you're absolutely right that the cause of this effect is, because the world was designed like that, when you started working, young thought that people will come to office, and then we'll feel they're working, whether you can't measure the productivity or experience. On the contrary, when you gave example of your kids, they will evolve in a world where, or looking to school, they don't go to school to just do their own work or, or maths, they are connected on iPad. They have an outcome based study course, like you can go and do higher algebra, you can listen to four poems, and you are good. So that's how I think the challenge is on the productivity side that if you can't define outcomes, you can create a small team around it. And you can give them a goal which can be translated into success, rather than just becoming the old way of doing clinical and mechanical work, which machine can do easily.

Ryan Purvis 36:30
Well, that's it and the old school system, which hasn't been changed in almost 150 years is so designing new for a factory lifestyle. And I think we have to move past it to whatever the new knowledge worker call it, whatever. And kids, the kids need to go to school for social aspects. I mean, you know, one of the biggest reasons why we're still in Joburg is my son goes to school, with a with a 50 kids not in a bubble. And they're all different ages. So he's getting exposed, and you can see how he's developing because of it. But he is learning he's learning stuff there the right kind of things, how to paint how to build things, etc. By the way, as he gets older, you know that that social element is the important piece, the actual education piece, and how to read and write was probably the next piece, the rest of it will come as he needs to learn it. You know, I think the the sort of Montessori approach where they learn something and they get and they keep developing on it, until they run out of interest on it is kind of the way we'd probably go. I mean, I don't know if it's the best thing, but it seemed like the most logical,

Prashant Pandey 37:36
right, and if you see why we need to socialize because of empathy, right? That's a piece where science hasn't focused a lot for ages. And that's the piece which we naturally learn when we're in social setup, we try to feel how others are feeling like they're definitely good, bad, sad. Each one of us are going through that emotions. However, coming back to your point of schooling system, a schooling system is always built to create people who could work, for example, an evident that in my book, you're going to spot on 100 years back, the world wanted a lot of people who could do mathematical calculation on how many cars have been shipped. And then it did a lot of workers who could go and make those cars. And if you had to give that workforce, you need a school, which teaches you math, and which teaches you a bit of science, I would say there's not a school, which the taught Everyone dance, or music or how people are feeling. And that's why we don't have many great orchestra players, or many guitar players or many piano players. But do you think that people should not have fun should certainly have. And I feel the future of work will change where I would like to go to our website costs a master class where I can go and learn how chess is played on my wife does a startup where she is making designer cakes, party cakes, she can go and share what she has learned and people who want to learn. creative art will go on a digital platform, and we'll learn that and then share that and that will be their career. So I think the world school will evolve for all 8 billion people certainly supported by this platform.

Ryan Purvis 39:28
Yeah, no, I think what are the other things you get back because you don't have to commute some way as a robot, you know, five days a week is you get your time back. And I found that being here Even I mean, I still go to meetings and workshops here. I find going into the office for those far more stimulated because it's almost like an adventure. Yeah, going into the office. I'm going to see some people we get to go do this stuff and I'm energized whereas you know if I think back to my days in the office five days a week, you know, by Thursday you're exhausted from commuting and you know being back to back calls and rest of it now you want to go do a workshop, I'm not in a good state to do a workshop, I'm thinking about the 10 things I want to get done before I go, you know, before the weekend, and I'm going to try and get me to be creative for two hours. And I'm all I'm thinking about is, I don't get the stuff done, my weekend is gonna be screwed, because I'm gonna catch up over the weekend. So I think you know, that's pretty good, too, in the sense of giving you more and more control of your time.

Prashant Pandey 40:24
Yeah, and that's higher order value work, right? Because when you do any intensive thing, for example, when you do a consulting exercise, and you have to just write the report, pretty much, sometimes it takes me seven hours in a room to just represent that in the right fashion. So it's either thinking critical thinking, on the contrary, I'm also seeing few startups or companies who are kind of creating digital avatar to transform industry. And the recent example is fashion industry where the fashion industry couldn't come to work at one place, because that's how they used to work for ages. And recently, they decided that we will have a fashion show which will be done by avatars of real models, like Tommy Hilfiger and stuff, they have technology. And imagine the people who are designing, they are doing higher order four hours or four days work. And that is getting consumed on a platform where these people necessarily not be there, but they can be their family, however it can generate a lot of revenue becomes scalable.

Ryan Purvis 41:30
Yes, that's the thing. We, if you look at the future, now we're in 2021. If you look at the next 10 years, how do you think the world's gonna go? I mean, you think we're gonna carry on the way we're going now with people being enabled to work remotely and get the job done? Or do you think we're going to go to this hybrid model, which some people talk about is kind of the best of the best of the new world was good with the anchor of the old world?

Prashant Pandey 41:57
This question needs to be underlined. The industry I would say, right. So for example, if you look at any industry, there are two types of people who are required. First is front end. And second is back end. For example, if you look at any hospitality industry, receptionist staff, or anyone who's touching customers, or front end staff. So that's the piece which is under a lot of consideration. Because that requesting Pappy, look at both of us, we machine, it can remove us even the next 10 years. Because when you go to our global shop with customer, you feel them what they're trying to do and stuff like that, that's a higher order, human effect, which will not change. Now come back to the backend stuff where people can share and support remotely. And that's the word which will become more and more remote in nature. And the good example education industry, if you look at for me, teacher is very important. But for example, I myself, I'm going to award them for next nine months. But I can't go physically Yeah, my god enroll into senior leadership program, but I'm going to do that program remotely for eight months. And then towards the end, I will go in person and I feel that's a higher order value for me and the industry and institution like Wharton because they can scale themselves, they are able to reach to more people. And those are the models in the industry where I will not sit back and but a lot of stuff can be done remotely. And it can be a mix of hybrid, as you say. So every industry will look at front end back end, they will look at hybrid and remote. And they will come up with a model, which can be defined for sure. I mean, technically, you know, we can define a model of anywhere workspace and how things should connect, because then accessing application. So that's not hard. But it's a question on every automation how they want to change.

Ryan Purvis 43:57
Yeah, and I think this, there's the Old School New School thing, as well as this as the organization is made up of the people and the people inside the organization need to be willing to change. And I think that's where, you know, personally, I've seen it with, with people I've worked with where they don't want to they don't want to change from this, you need to be in office five days a week, because that's how they're comfortable. Yeah, almost doesn't matter, the better better work is done in other ways.

Prashant Pandey 44:27
Yeah, and that is becoming hard to do, unless we are able to explain to people why they should change, and which is good in a way that not often change is good. But I'll give you example, historically, if you look at bank tellers, so they were Ledger's and bins and rulers are where people used to write, which was good in a way because we had more accountable roles. And now we started to move that with technology to a point that today you have a FinTech, we just run some crypto How are you? Both of us know that how secure and how safe and how reliable crypto can be given the fact that you're looking at changing the whole back into crypto. So the question is, do you really need to change? And that's a big question where someone has to think through in deeply the cause and effect of change, I would say.

Ryan Purvis 45:24
Yeah, look, I mean, kryptos is an interesting space on its own. I think one of the challenges with with it is, is it disrupts so many fundamental things. That's the weight of the naysayers who are impacted by that. And I'm talking about the, the daikon Morgan's UBS, as though whatever they say that it's not a good thing. It's not a good thing. Yeah. Meanwhile, in the background, they're building their own chains. And they're investing a change to this, are they ready for it? And at some point, they'll switch over? I think that's where it gets political but but it does get nuanced.

Prashant Pandey 46:00
Yeah, every every change, I read history a bit. And I felt that three things of a triangle, which were important for a change. The first was technology, the second edge of triangle was economy. And the third was governance. For example, when autonomous car came to few countries in Europe, the autonomous car could actually run at a high speed. But the government did allow by their governance law that autonomous car should run on. The fastest time is on the in the world. And what happened autonomous car went back, technically. And then the government is really looking after 10 years that hey, we should actually look at making the whole world autonomous. I think the technology economy and governance the three part of our triangle which often doesn't connect together

Ryan Purvis 46:55
it doesn't it's an ambition more than a reality sometimes. I mean, if anyone wanted to get to get in contact with you, what would be the best way to to reach you?

Prashant Pandey 47:06
Yeah, regarding the book, my publishers have hosted a website called Prashant Pandey officiel.com. website my email id My phone number is there at the same time there is a option where people can just write me a note and I'm reachable okay.

Ryan Purvis 47:25
Fantastic. And are you gonna be doing any book launches any webinars on your book that anyone should know about?

Prashant Pandey 47:33
Thanks Ron, I'm planning to launch somewhere around 23rd of November Yeah, so someone like you who who perhaps will read the book will have an opinion and option I'm invited to I'm very excited to invite them they can come share their learning and then we have celebration of that and we continue from there on so that we can share more goodness announced right third number is the date which is there in my mind and how to prepare for that.

Ryan Purvis 48:04
Fantastic. And well, thank you very much for giving up your time to be on the podcast and I wish you well with the launch your book.

Prashant Pandey 48:13
Likewise. I mean, my It was my pleasure. Talking to you. I look forward to listening to your podcast, all the best.

Ryan Purvis 48:27
Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Big Nose our producer, editor. Thank you, Heather. for your hard work for this episode. Please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes or the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the DW w podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website WWW dot digital workspace that works. Please also visit our website www dot digital workspace that works and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai