Rishad Tobaccowala’s Post

How to Future Proof a Career. a) Being in charge of your own career by being your own Human Resources and Learning and Development Manager b) Building a reputation for GENEROSITY internally and externally that signals expertise, depth of relevant skills and ability to work well with others and most importantly as someone who helps others get ahead versus just being focussed on oneself. c) Investing in 3 key skills that will continue to matter regardless and in spite of what the next generation of technologies or global shocks might bring. A. Being in Charge of Our Own Career. Today most people will work for 50 years while most companies last fewer than fifteen. Even if your company has been around for a hundred years the talent team in any company is focussed on serving the company you work for first versus you. They need to hire to their strategy, retain talent in some areas and exit talent in others, invest in skills the company needs now and for the future which might be not consistent with your career strategy, your continued need for income and different than the skills you need for now and the future. Too many people end up not being prepared when their company downsizes or their career stalls and they find that they do not have the skills that make them marketable and their reputation and networks are deeply limited and often over indexing in their own industry which might be in secular decline. Do not out source your future to your company. B.Build a Personal Reputation while helping others generously . a) Every individual should Google or ChatGPT themselves )and work to improve the results by developing their own web presence, by being active on social channels, and participate in industry activities b) Ask people who lost jobs what they learned and did to get their new job. You are likely to learn that : 1) being good to people who need help when we had a job will help us when we are in need 2) we should not make the mistake of conflating our company and position with our own reputation. People are genuflecting to our role not us , so we need to build our own expertise and brand in addition to the halo of our company. 3) If one focuses only on oneself without building one’s company’s brand or helping others build theirs it will backfire. We work for companies and if we do not keep them in focus they will note it. And our reputation is built on the quality of our work and relationships not just our postings. c) Begin another career while you are working on an existing career: There are many parallel careers one can run which are not in anyway conflicted with or need to be hidden from your management. These include writing, teaching, public speaking, advising non-profits or being active in industry or personal passion boards such as art, music and other civil or charitable events. C. For the 3 skills ( Communication, Making,Re-Invention) read below...

The 3 keys required for a successful company of one which requires collaboration, calmness and connectedness. These three behaviors are key to thrive in a company of tens of thousands too! Collaborative. A “Company of One” is a mindset that recognizes that every single individual succeeds only if one is highly collaborative with other people (and soon with AI). This is true in a large, midsized and small companies. Collaboration is critical for four reasons. Complimentary Skill Sets: To get any job done inside an organization or by one self it will require other people to contribute their skills, craft, knowledge and labor to help achieve a goal. Accessibility: In order to scale one’s talent one needs to plug and play into other other peoples super powers. You want a friendly API to be easy to connect to. Reputation: When one reaches out for help there is an inclination to reach out to people who are easy to work with. Less the drama and soap opera and deep sighing the more one will find there is demand for one’s skills. It is critical to avoid being labeled “difficult to work with”. People will rather work with “very good and easy to deal with” then “excellent but very difficult.” Speed: Being collaborative ensures speed. Think of how much friction there is when one is dealing with non-collaborative people. Lots of heat but little light. In the future speed will be even more key. Connected. To thrive it is critical to be connected. Connected to and aware of the latest trends in ones field. Connected to the best tools and technologies that are available. Connected to the key folks in one’s industry and craft. Connected to how one’s work drives and is linked to outcomes. Think about the people you reach out to in your firm or outside it and you will find that you want your key connections to be “connected”. And connected is a mindset that any person even if they are operating by themselves can engender. Get exposed to the key trends in one’s field and take the time and if necessary use one’s own funds to ensure that one is using the latest tools. Many of the latest tools are very cheap and so do not wait for a company to get them or give them. It is our job to be on the cutting edge so we are not left on the cutting floor. Read and listen to the the best people in one’s fields. Everyone is accessible everywhere. Connected to outcomes means focusing on the cool shit versus fixating or describing how one’s colon works. A big risk in a company is to confuse process for product or blame the lack of outcomes on some bureaucracy. Clients and the market place do not give a fig if you live in a constipated firm! Feed the firm some fiber. Calm Freedom is a calm mind." ― Shane Parrish Think about the co-workers you most cherish. They are likely to be collaborative. And they are connected. But it is also likely that many of them are calm. More.., https://lnkd.in/gwFxRr92

AI Generated Video

Today, exactly five years ago on June 30, 2019, I ended a wonderful 37 year full-time working career at a 100,000 plus person company (though I am fortunate to continue to work with it in a different way) and began a new career as a company of one. During the next few weeks I plan to share my learnings and insights because I have come to believe that even if one works at company the scale of a Walmart or Amazon it behooves everyone to have the mindset of a company of one because such a mindset will a) allow one to perform better at a large company, b) ensure a longer career at any company that one loves and admires, c) maximizes options and d) ensures that one is prepared for potential radical changes in the future of work. My learnings are informed by my own experience, speaking with and observing the experience of others, working with and visiting over 100 companies around the world in the past five years and deep research involved for my next book Rethinking Work. Why A Company of One Mindset. It is projected that in 2027, 86.5 million people will be freelancing in the United States making 50.1 percent of the population. A combination of five forces is driving this re-configuring of the workforce: Aging: In the United States 10,000 people turn 65 every day and many of this group continue to work because they need to so as to make ends meet, or want to for reasons of identity, community, purpose and/or growth but cannot or do not want to work full time for a company. New Mindsets: 76 percent of Gen-Z want to work for themselves and 66% of Gen-Z who hold a full-time job also have a side-gig or side-hustle. In addition, Covid-19 have many people re-framing the question of how life could fit into work ? with how does work fit into a life? Remote/Hybrid Work: Remote-Hybrid work provides the flexibility to work anywhere for anybody which can enhance opportunities to get work while moving to locations that cost less which allows for more career options. The Technology powered Gig-Economy: New marketplaces from Fiverr and UpWork to find talent and work, AWS and Open-AI to access technology, Etsy and Shopify to sell and connect to marketplaces, Tik-Tok and Meta to connect and brand, combined with companies need to remain agile is driving more talent and firms to a plug and play workplace. AI and Blockchain: While AI may not lead to fewer jobs it is going to change the nature of most if not all jobs and the half-life of skills are going to decay considerably faster. Blockchain while out of favor will eventually be seen to be essential to trust in an AI world and will enable more ownership and equity for individuals. Most importantly many of these technologies are now providing super-computing power to everybody who cares to learn, allowing individuals to get all the benefits of scaled companies. Read more below and subscribe free for the entire upcoming series: https://lnkd.in/gtV_GRFC

Here are a simple set of three exercises that can be done by anyone, anywhere, and at anytime but will likely leave you seeing, thinking and feeling differently. 1.Making a difference. At the end of every day we might want to ask ourselves: How are we different today then yesterday? Did we make a difference to anybody or anything? What would we have done differently? The first question is about our growth. Did we grow today so we are different than yesterday? The second question is about our impact. Did we have an effect on somebody or something today so they came away better or different? The third is about improvement. What did we learn that make us better tomorrow? If we ask these questions to ourselves every day ( or every week or every month) it allows us to re-invigorate ourselves even at the end of tough days and in some cases signal we need to change our jobs, relationships or lives if the answers constantly indicate low growth, or limited impact or little learning. 2.What made a difference. We are a sum of the decisions we made, the people we met, the things that happened to us and the chances we took. In most lives just a handful of decisions, people, events and chances have made all the difference. Understanding these are a key to a life. What 3 key decisions in your life have made all the difference? ( eg. a partner, a job, a decision to leave a place or person) What 3 people have shaped your life and/or career? What 3 events good or bad have shaped you ?( eg. health issues, financial windfall, accidents) What are the 3 biggest chances you took that have determined where you are ? Often though our lives are changed by other peoples decisions to hire us, help us, partner with us and we need to keep in mind that we have less control often then we might think. In fact the two biggest drivers of a life are two draws of the lottery which we have no control over. These are a) who we are born to and b) what country we are born in. 3. A different us. What differentiates us? One of the most interesting thing is to see people conflate themselves with their trappings. If you are a senior person in a company is it you or your role, the company reputation or the money you control that people are admiring and genuflecting too? So many people are shocked that when they leave or lose their position that they are no longer as relevant, sought after, pandered or curtsied to. There is us the person. And then there is us the objectified person empowered by another power source ( a company, a budget, a role) that we borrow from. Important to remember the differences and to realize what will remain that is us after the role or job or position end. What makes you different that is uniquely you? It is usually a combination of a special niche/skill, a voice and true stories that will alway be yours. To discover yours try this exercise…https://lnkd.in/dhJDfMUQ https://lnkd.in/gnZHCANu

Over the course of 200 Sundays in a row (nearly four years) 250,000 words of writing (the equivalent of five books) accompanied by the work of a talented painter, sculptor, photographer have been published at rishad.substack.com. The writing has attempted to be bohemian, shifting across a range of subjects in the belief that in an age of “full-stack leaders” and “vertically or horizontally integrated business models” there may be space for some full spectrum thinking and writing that combines strategy and poetry, technology and art, change and what does not change, roots and wings, business goals and personal ambition, and the many other dualities and complexities that cannot be simplified into a tweet or a silver-bullet solution. The writing has kept away from the news, politics and the memes of the moment and therefore has stayed evergreen. A piece from four years ago is probably as relevant as it is today. Finally, everything has been written by one human, remained algorithm free and completely non-monetized with no advertising sales, subscription fees, affiliate marketing or data harvesting. Regardless, every post has been written, edited and honed with great care ( 3 to 4 hours of writing each week distilling half a century of learning for a six minute piece) since it needs to reward you the reader for your most valuable asset. Time. Today nearly 30,000 people spend six minutes a week reading this thought-letter. That is 180,000 minutes or 3000 hours of time every week. For the ROI hungry…I write 3 hours a week and get 3000 hours of attention a week which is an ROI of 1000… Thank you reader. And here is another thank you: A One Page Distillation. As some of you may be aware at the request of many readers who like to revisit certain pieces to use for their work or forward to others ( bosses, colleagues, children) I have created a single page with the best pieces and have organized them into a dozen areas for easy access and reference ( much faster than any chatbot or search engine which I have tried to program). Here is where you can find the one page ( please book mark or note the address as it is a hidden page on my website): https://lnkd.in/gZ8BwEYu These 12 different subject areas include those helpful for work such as: a) Future Thinking and Strategy b) Managing Change so it Sucks Less c) Upgrading our Mental Operating System d) Building Great Cultures But also sections helpful for the individual such as: a) Enhancing Effectiveness b) Selling Better c) Managing Careers Or pieces about life, living, losing, love, literary pursuits, philosophy, poetry and joy and can be found in the following sections: a) Personal Growth b) Wisdom All the writing is not only free but it can be sampled, copied, used, fed into transformers or leveraged in anyway the reader wants without any royalty or fee or even attribution. https://lnkd.in/gQRBdhVs

How is AI going to unleash the potenial of talent everywhere in the next few months? One way is to be able to translate videos from one language to to another while not losing any of the nuance, emotion and tone allowing for a massive acceleration of learning capabilities everywhere in the world even if one's language is not English which has been the dominant language of the Web. My guest Ofir Krakowski has deep knowledge of AI and today is the CEO and Co-Founder of Deepdub that dubs videos across 70 languages for companies like Apple, Netflix and Disney( Hulu). We discuss why emotion is key in AI. The rise of video. The importance of authenticity and challenges of deepfakes and how each of us can learn so we can future proof ourselves. Our conversation incorporates culture, global shifts in power, the reality of AI so many of us miss and the importance of human connection. Its a 35 minute conversation which will open your eyes and make you prick up your ears! On all platforms but here are the Apple and Spotify links: Apple: https://lnkd.in/gdDybinC Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g-npriY6

There are some who believe I am a writer, a speaker, a podcast host, a teacher or an advisor. There are others who may recall some expertise in strategy, media, advertising, communication or transformation. But all that is a sideshow to my incredible film career. Now the truth can be revealed about my acting, my producing, my “best-boying” and my “key-gripping”. All three of my films were bought by and began streaming on HBO June 1 and you can watch the trailers by clicking the post below (for some strange reason I am not mentioned or spotlighted in these trailers…maybe they want to save the best for the subscribers!) Not a Nepo-Daddy! There is a rumor drifting around that this amazing career of mine was made possible because I am a Nepo-Daddy who was given his break because the writer, director and editor of these three films is our elder daughter. Rubbish! If that was true, would I have been promoted from best-boy to key grip? Did it not require fortitude and talent to balance heavy equipment between two seats in the front of a U-Haul careening at 3 am through the streets of Brooklyn? Who could in rapid order deploy Uber to feed a cast of many at strange times? And my scene scooping some rice into a plate may have lasted only two seconds but they are the ones that Robert De Niro and others watch again and again for the deep subtlety and nuance of acting that transformed this movie. Yes it is true that Ria always loved cameras as the photo in the post illustrates. And okay she may have some talent but it takes a special talent to see the Bollywood and Hollywood potential of a relative! In order not to hog all the glory and to prove that I am okay with sharing the spotlight, here is a little bit about Ria from her website: https://lnkd.in/g_wjXGFv Now let me share some learnings that might be useful regardless of what industry one may wish to be a star in. Read them below and you will see how applicable they are to every industry because the creative arts including film in many ways is where transformation brought about by the shifts of multi-polar globalization, demographic shifts and technology are being played out in real time. It is where the future of work is being defined. It is the landscape where the upsides and downsides of technology from streaming to AI to mobility are being played out in real time. https://lnkd.in/gDA7yHEi

One of the greatest joys of my Publicis Groupe career was working with and learning from the legendary Alex Von Plato who today is chair person of Publicis Health. Today we caught up over an Indian meal in Chicago .