Bill Winters, the CEO of global bank Standard Chartered, explained that his organization was cutting 7,000 jobs. “It’s not cost-cutting,” he said. “It’s replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we’re putting in.” Winters suggested AI was driving some of the efficiencies he was seeking. Saying the…
AI is about to reshape the work of those who make decisions, with a big impact and the rest of the workforce that acts on those decisions. Why? Because it will generate a flood of suspect “insight” that will overwhelm decision-makers. Reports and analysis fuel decisions The fuel that drives all rational corporate decision-making is…
The Red Sox fired their manager Alex Cora and a bunch of his coaches this weekend. Cora had previously won a World Series with the Red Sox in his first year as manager, but the firings happened after the team started this year with a losing record of 11 wins and 17 losses. This is…
Imagine a company that has successfully integrated AI into its workflows. It will include these kinds of workers: The QC challenge All the other types of workers exist in today’s companies. They’ll need to learn new skills, but managers are manager, engineers are engineers, and implementors are the rank and file that get work done…
It’s land-grab time. The land in question is your digital experience — your productivity, your messages, your to-do list, your social media and of course, your identity. Every app or piece of software that you interact with is escaping its box. Every one has its own messaging system, its own hooks into your life, and…
Newsletter 142. Think paying to escape ever-shittier monopolies is the way out? You might not like where that ends up. Plus, women subverting the publishing establishment; escaping the author spending spiral, three people to follow, three books to read, and one way to jumpstart your writing career. You can’t pay to escape enshittification forever Everything…
I’m convinced that somewhere, some executive at the health insurance company Humana is on hallucinogenic drugs. That’s the only possible explanation for the absurd behavior of this company, as I’m about to describe. For reasons far too tedious to go into, I changed the pharmaceutical portion of my insurance to Humana this year, starting February…
Here’s what I learned about communicating knowledge from my work as an analyst . Your job as an analyst looks like this: Let’s talk about the last part. How to communicate insights A leader who needs to make a decision asks your opinion. (In the analyst world, this is called an “inquiry.”) Here’s what you…
I did it again. I joined a collaborative writing project in a controversial space with a bunch of volunteer collaborators who are also writers and editors. It’s sort of like having a colonoscopy with a whole bunch of other people looking on, critiquing what they see, and making “helpful” suggestions. Ew. What was I thinking?…