The Future Ready Digest Vol. 2 No. 2 - 10th Jan 2025
Jim Hamill (Dr)
Director at The Future Ready Hub - supporting organisations in becoming future ready for an increasingly volatile, digital and AI world.
The Early Bird Discount for our next AI Strategy & Management Executive Coaching Programme, which starts in February, is ending soon.
If you are interested in joining the programme, please submit the?Registration of Interest Form using the link below. I will then arrange a quick chat.
As we restrict numbers to five, early notification of your interest would be helpful.
In this edition: Billionaires take over the world, going backwards, virtual employees this year, Microsoft spending $80bn on data centres, pivoting the business model at Real Madrid, the need to speak up, and AI Agents—the changing customer service landscape.
A Very Happy and even more Prosperous New Year to the few. Oligarchs - the people who will control our destiny in an AI world.
Well worth a watch.
A reprint of our April 2023 paper and an interesting follow-up to the above. The depressing sentiments expressed in the paper are even more relevant today as we enter the New Year. It really is time for a major rethink of where we are going in a world characterised by geo-political conflict, war, genocide, the return of far-right populism, the threat of trade wars, energy prices and inflation, food banks, declining health, mental health and education systems, toxic leadership, power shift to an elite group of tech oligarchs, the possibility of a dystopian AI future including the impact on labour markets and employment, global warming combined with a multitude of other ESG issues.
Again, a big thank you to Depeche Mode for the lyrics and video.
Altman predicts that the first artificial intelligence agents may start working for organisations this year. However, in my experience, most organisations are not ready for this in terms of data, technology, leadership, or culture.
领英推荐
Microsoft's 2025 vision for AI includes $80 billion to build AI-enabled data centres to train AI models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications worldwide. "As we look into the future, it’s clear that artificial intelligence is poised to become a world-changing GPT. AI promises to drive innovation and boost productivity in every sector of the economy."
Thoughts?
The rich and powerful even control the beautiful game.
According to this Harvard case study on Real Madrid, the idea of a European Super League has not gone away. It is also interesting to note the radical change in the club's underlying business model: "moving away from the transfer policy of the galácticos era to prioritising the signing of younger players who can be developed into superstars." This is not surprising given the enormous debt this club has carried over the years, combined with the introduction of Financial Fair Play rules.
For a related article, please see our blog post from last year - Five Disruptive Scenarios for the Beautiful Game.
No. 5 is "Talk about whatever’s undiscussable at your organization. The kind of comments that violate the deep rules operating in most organizations — the unwritten understanding of what can’t be said, even in places that have surface-level psychological safety." Given the first two posts above, I think we need to go much further than this. Challenge the status quo, the long-established assumptions underpinning our organisations, "the way we do things around here." Tinkering by "tuning-up" is no longer an option.
As argued in this CMSWire paper, AI Agents will reshape the customer service landscape. However, will they enhance the overall customer experience? Reducing customer service costs will be the primary driver of investments in this area. The customer service function will NOT transition from a cost to a value centre—hype vs. reality.
As always, comments and feedback are very welcome.