MITPS Meeting 15

Agenda:
1. Robotic Process Automation, General Automation and its sweep
2. Analytics Jobs Vs the IT Project Culture, Money as motivator in IT
3. Review of course concepts (revisiting Slides to identify ‘important’)
The march of automation – pros and cons
• Robotic Process Automation
• Opportunity for Indian IT companies ?
• Always and opportunity – or not ?
• Assessment of what a Job is:
• - some may be shared with competitors via talent platforms

• Many might have noticed - but HR was 1st to burst the bubble that 'value or
return to company is proportional to job performance'
• The logic of Return on Improved Performance
• Pilot Vs Flight Attendant - who has better RoIP ?
Proficient isn’t as good as Pivotal
• Proficient Work Vs Pivotal Work
• Pilots Vs Airline Attendants
• AI (and Automation) therefore may be key to enable some tasks:
• Within a Pivotal Job
• Lucky if you’re in a sector where Pivotal Job can be entirely Automated
• AI may be key to perform Proficient Jobs
• Entirely !
• Changing left-side of learning curve for Proficient Jobs:
• 'changing’ slope of right-side of curve for pivotal jobs
The 3 ways that work can be automated
• Robotic Process Automation Vs
• Cognitive Automation
• Social Robotics
• Higher Value Added is key:
• Net of insurance costs
• Into which category do the following kinds of human-avoidance fall ?
• Drone-based coconut plucker ?
• Entirely human-operated, except for joystick and camera-relayed console
• Detecting motorbikes with 3 riders or bikers sans helmets ?
• New advances in Cognitive Automation from Hongkong
Why IT fumbles Analytics ?
• Not IT per se,
• But ‘IT Project’ culture may affect Analytics,
• And often Product Development also
• For a regular IT project:
• information requirements,
• technology specifications,
• are established up front, at the design stage,
• when processes are being reengineered.
• Dissatisfaction still comes about in the Enterprise:
• because - no insights can be derived,
• Inspite of of Efficiency, Lower Costs and Productivity.
So what to focus on ? No bigbang projects ?
• Instead of deploying technology:
• focus on the exploration of information
• Deploy analytical IT tools:
• Yet understand how they might be used e.g. via Human-Computer Behaviour
• Encourage and Anticipate contributions using these tools
• 1. Provide fund to address a problem or opportunity:
• 2. Make sure project frames questions to which data provide answers:
• Develops hypotheses – validate or rule out
• 3. then also iteratively experiment to gain knowledge, understanding
HiPPO Vs Analyst Vs Product Manager
• Cultivate people in organization:
• who aren't HiPPO,
• can package insights (vs. gut-feel)
• and prototypes
• ChemCo created Data Analyst teams:
• to assist people reaching meetings (to package their digital evidence)
• First Order Vs Second Order learning
• Encourage new ways to solve old problems:
• Sometimes not profitable since you currently have a solution (but even if so).
• A program’s trajectory would most likely be:
• Cognitive-Techno-Commercial
• Usually, well trained data-scientists avoid biases.
• Get an insight, solve a problem, think about technology later.
Types of IT and what brings about innovation
• The 3 worlds of Information Technology, by Erik Brynjolfsson (2006)
• IT is a General Purpose Technology:
• like electricity, like locomotion
• Just as GPTs in past changed work practices and business models,
• IT will, too
• Function IT
• Network IT
• Enterprise IT
• An IT infrastructure that allows: Deploy, Innovate, Propagate (DIP)
• It could be rapid rollout of your App to customers,
• It could rapid rollout of a macro internally
Rob Enderle, CIO.com: Career Satisfaction
• Managing and Motivating people is a hard job –
• Understanding the dynamics of money, productivity and happiness is key
• Hertzberg and Maslow:
• Money is a poor motivator
• But is a great demotivator
• Headhunters are trained to make you feel you’re being taken for a ride
• You’re somehow being paid less than you should be (well, at least implicitly)
• Need may have nothing to do with your own demotivation post an offer
• ‘Working for idiots is no fun’, so only then think of career advancement – and
be mindful of the tradeoffs.
• As a manager, think of non-cash incentives to motivate (cash doesn’t)
• Bottomline - Stop Chasing the Money !