Upgrade, or…

25 Sep Upgrade, or…

A lesson will keep repeating itself until it is learned… ‘

– Oprah Winfrey

The inspiration for this piece came from a split-screen Instagram post that I saw on social media recently. The top half of the picture featured a news cameraman in a chopper, while the bottom half featured a drone-mounted camera. The caption simply read: ‘In just 10 years both the camera man and the pilot lost their jobs. Upgrade yourself.’ 

In 1900, the city of New York had an unusual problem: how to clear the streets of horse manure. At the time, over 100,000 transport horses produced over 1.13 mn kgs of manure every day, just within the city limits. The concern New Yorkers  had was that their streets would be buried under meters of manure. A 10-day international urban planning conference was scheduled in New York to help resolve the problem. However, within just 3 days, the conference was abandoned as no delegate could suggest any worthwhile solution to the issue.

A little over a decade later in 1912, strange-looking horseless carriages were seen making waves on the streets of New York. The age of the automobile had arrived. Henry Ford’s Model T took over the cityscape, totally replacing horse-drawn carriages. It all happened in under a decade. The skilled carriage makers, repair men, stable owners and those managing the transport system, were compelled to upgrade their skills. Or be sidelined by those who did.

In more recent times, the headline on the cover of the Nov 12, 2007 Forbes magazine screamed: ‘Nokia: One billion customers; can anyone catch the cellphone king?’ A decade later, Nokia had virtually disappeared and was sold to Microsoft. June of the same year also saw Steve Jobs unboxing the world’s first Apple iPhone. A decade later, Apple emerged as the world’s most valuable company. Other popular brands upending their predecessors or simply folding up are Netflix, AirBnB, Uber and so on. If you haven’t as yet seen evidence in your industry, you won’t have to wait for long.

Leaders who understand the disruptive nature of change are called upon to provide a context for those we lead and look to them for direction. Encouraging our organisations and people to upgrade, however hard it may seem, is the burning need of the hour. The fallout of the global pandemic has provided us with a rare, but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine and reset our world. 

Microsoft is already betting on the convergence of several important technology shifts – mixed reality, AI and quantum computing, merging the digital and physical worlds. This pace of change and the threat of disruption it brings, can be both frightening and exciting to individuals and organisations.

‘The past is over; the present is fleeting; we live in the future.’ 

– Ray Kurzweil, computer scientist, inventor, futurist

Whatever we spend our time on, skill upgradation is probably the most important decision we will ever make. Our personal and organisational futures depend upon it.