 So welcome everyone. We have with us Anjali who's going to be giving us a talk on careers in the age of acceleration Anjali Over to you. Go ahead. If you could go ahead and share your screen So good evening everybody and for those of you who are joining us from other parts of the world I will like where I'm at. Good morning and good afternoon. I Want to start the session with a question look at the slide and Think about which emotion best describes how you feel when you ask this proverbial Interview question. Where do you see yourself five years from now? You know ten years ago I felt my work world was changing at a pace faster than I could keep up with My emotions resembled mostly what's on the right hand side of the slide. I was anxious. I was confused I was uncertain After years of feeling confident, I wasn't feeling so sure about my work You know studies indicate that by the year 2030 half of the jobs of today will likely be automated and Half of the jobs that will exist then have not even been conceived of yet And I think that the last few months have sped that up a little bit. Don't you think? Well, we can't ignore it anymore. We are in an era of accelerated change and We have to figure out how to navigate our careers in this age of accelerations So my name is Anjali Leon as Kinsey mentioned and I am founder and principal of PPL coach It's a boutique coaching and consulting practice that offers experiential workshops innovative co-created solutions and professional coaching in the areas of product people and personal leadership and I specialize in design thinking lean and agile principles and practices and the co-active coaching model But my real joy in fulfillment comes from helping people learn to navigate an increasingly uncertain and changing world and so today I Want to share with you the story of my own career journey and how I got here How I got to be founder and principal of PPL coach and I'll share some insights about navigating a career amidst accelerating change And I hope that what I have to share will inspire your own journey to a more fulfilling career So this year is my daughter Arianna in Arianna graduated from university last year with a degree in event management and Since then she started her first real job that she absolutely loved and if I was to do the stock back in March When I was still looking forward to actually coming to India and doing the stock there that would have been where she was at in her journey But since then The status of her journey has changed She has since been furloughed and then laid off and she finds herself faced with the reality That her school advisors had prepared all of her cohort for four when she first started college Only thing that we did not expect that it would come so soon You know, I can vividly remember and recall her college orientation event that my husband and I attended the university advisors were sharing to all of us parents that We need to be very particular That we were clear That our kids would be launching their careers in a world that was very different from the one that we had experienced And that by the time that they were 10 years into their careers Half of them would be doing jobs that had not even been conceived of yet and Half of the jobs of today Won't be around So her college experience would be less about launching her into a 40-year career and rather a preparation For the critical thinking The problem-solving and lifelong learning skills that she would need to navigate her future and boy Is she putting that to use now? We as parents, you know, we were relegated to no longer being advisors Because we would not really know what the future would look like but more as coaches Helping them to uncover and tap into their full potential And I was sitting there thinking oh my god What a contrast from when I started my own career 25 years earlier You know as a young ambitious woman growing up in India I had a natural ability in math and problem-solving and I took took the engineering path That just seemed like the natural choice for somebody who was good in the sciences, you know That's what our upbringing in India taught me. I'm sure many of you can relate And I thought my path forward was clear and well-defined Of course, I would do the respectable thing like find a great company and make my way up that career lap a step-by-step focused and deliberate climb That was sure to make my family and friends proud. You know what I'm talking about. I Knew that at some point that I would come to a fork in the road And I would have to make a choice and I even knew what that choice was probably going to be You know, I would have to either choose to continue down a technical leadership path Or I would have to make a choice and pick what I wanted to be in people management And I knew the answer to that as well all the way up to CTO, baby That was my thought. I mean who wants to deal with people, right? You know how the saying goes Man plans and God laughs. Well in this case woman plans and God laughs Because you know what the next 25 years of my career looked like More like this a Jumble of twists and turns dead ends and u-turns More like the random unsteady steps of a drunkards walk Then a well-crafted career roadmap So I'm curious what would yours look like and if we were together in person I would have you capture your career journey and a piece of paper and share it with the people around you but in this virtual environment you'll have to do with Reflecting on your journey and going through this experience with me as part of your handouts, there's actually a series of sheets of paper that include a template to go through this process yourself So I hope you'll take the time to do that self-reflective journey at some point after this session But for today, just think about it. Just reflect on it. Would it look like this a Clearly defined climb up the ladder in the same company growing in pay and status over time or Would it look more like mine? several different companies Several lateral moves to a different role and some even step backs in status or salary to make a change possible You know when I sat down to draw this map, I thought I was unique I mean all the messages around me and what the experience of my parents and their generation had been it was customary To stay in the same company your entire life Sometimes even multiple generations stayed in the same company and followed the same trajectory. I Would say even 20 years ago a Resume that had too many jumps would be frowned upon. I mean I did that myself But in doing this activity with people like coach and in other conversations that I've had, you know, what I realized This is much more common than you would think There's a fundamental shift happening in our expectations and realities about our careers. I Think gone is the metaphor of the ladder So what is the new metaphor? What is the image that comes to mind as you look at your own career journey I Believe that metaphor is a lapis Not a straight path up But a series of self-selected steps going up down Sideways depending on what was happening in your life and the world around you So what is driving this change? What is going on? I believe all of this change that we are experiencing is as a result of the age of accelerations The last two decades have brought on unprecedented change Primarily driven by technology this Slide right here represents the curve of the rate of change of technology and You can see it's an exponential curve We all recognize this type of curve by now. I mean, it's similar to the COVID-19 curve and you know, not good things come from that So did you know that we experience in similar Exponential curves for the rate of change in globalization and global markets a similar exponential curve for environmental factors like climate change and resource depletion and now things like the pandemic as well and What's interesting that is all these changes are happening at a faster and faster rate And they are all happening at once so you can imagine the level of complexity that we are facing right now And I'm sure that you'll agree Accelerating change is not fun. Well If you're written in a Tesla and gone from zero to sixty in two seconds, maybe you'll think differently It might be exciting But you know, whether it's the airplane takeoff with an accelerating car or a roller coaster ride it brings about a mix of fear and anxiety even with that excitement and I don't think that any of us would say we would be comfortable with Accelerating change indefinitely I mean imagine going getting never getting to a cruising altitude or speed You know, we're not used to sustained exponential change Yeah, you know, that's where we find ourselves today in multiple facets of our lives and our businesses and organizations are Experiencing the same and they're trying to navigate this change. They're trying to respond to these changes So that they can continue to operate and stay profitable And we are seeing the results of this attempt to navigate change We're all familiar with it. Many of us work in actually making this happen. You know, we think about digital transformation journeys Automation cloud-based technology data and analytics are all in response to this accelerating change replacing manual and physical tasks with robots augmenting human capacity with artificial intelligence and machine learning and deep learning and Then tapping into a global workforce in order to be able to keep the cost down only interestingly all of these attempts at Navigating these accelerating changes are only making those curves even steeper and It's affecting the workforce us You know for decades There was an unspoken social contract between employers and employees Employers said give us your talent and your energy and we'll take care of you Well the demands of the age of acceleration such changed that relationship Between that employee and employer. It is literally reshaping the world of work impacting not only what we work on But how we work and who we work with So about 10 years ago, I started noticing the toll of these changes in The world around to me first it was in the people I was interviewing from middle-level positions Many were looking for new opportunities after long careers in a very specialized work roles in the organizations But when they came in for those interviews, you know, I noticed that they looked spent I mean their expert skills in a very narrow area did not translate to our context And they knew it. I could see the anxiety and certainty and lack of confidence in their eyes as they were trying to make this change And then guess what I Started noticing it in myself. I started noticing its impact on my own emotions and confidence So for years, you know, I was a software engineer And for years my C++ skills were in high demand And now I found my once shiny new skills becoming dated And I tried to keep up with the latest technologies and frameworks, you know, back then I was Trying to pick up C sharp and windows presentation framework and windows workflow foundation and dot net and imaging libraries and design patterns and So on and so forth and the more I learned The more there was to learn And that process was starting to get tiresome and painful And I was finding that I was no longer energized by these topics And I found myself feeling inadequate Next to the much younger software engineers to who this came so easily and for a person who At once felt at the top of her game Well, this was an unfamiliar feeling And I recall one day about a third of the way to my office I felt an anxiety growing And tears rolling down my cheeks I realized I could not go to the office that day I could not bring myself to go to the office that day. So I made a u-turn and came back home and called in a mental health day And that u-turn Was reflective of a much bigger u-turn that was to come So what I believe I was experiencing is what thomas freedman Spoke about in his book. Thank you for being late an optimist's guide to thriving in the age of accelerations And it's illustrated in this curve in this graph So this curve is showing the rate of change of technology. That's the blue line And the black line is the rate of human adaptability to change And we have clearly reached a point where the rate of technology technological change Is outpacing our natural human adaptability And so there's no wonder we would it would raise feelings of uncertainty and confusion and anxiety So what does all this mean for our careers and what does it mean for you? for me I realized that something had to change And the words of jack welsh I remember ringing in my ears Said he said control your own destiny Or someone else will well, I was not going to Allow that to happen So I paused I took a deep breath I reassessed where I was and where I was going Sure, I would have to grapple with what it would mean for the six-figure salary that I was making And the team of co-workers that I loved But what I uncovered changed the trajectory of my life And is what I want To share with you today In case you are looking to change the trajectory of your life So I have come across this concept of ikigai And if any of you have come across this concept of ikigai give me a thumbs up as a matter of fact I would love to get some response from Those who are of you who are listening that I know that you are listening Give me a thumbs up If you if something resonates with you and it'll at least give me some feedback on what's going on So based on this ikigai concept that I'm going to cover in a moment Uh, I started asked and scored my I scored myself in these four areas I scored myself in the scale of one to ten my level of satisfaction in this area and the trend That I was experiencing in that level of satisfaction So the first one that I checked in on was was my work reflecting my strengths and what I was naturally Good at And when I first started my career, I would have rated this much higher But at this point when I was assessing myself, I gave it a seven and I noticed that The way things were changing. This was trending down I also asked myself Does my work allow me to earn a decent living? And that got a nine I was making a very good salary And was appreciated at my work and I expected that trend to just go up That I would continue to be rewarded for the work that I was doing contributing And then I asked myself is my work aligned to my strongest motivators. Does it bring me energy? Well, this is what was taking the biggest toll on me At this point I rated this only a five And this was on its way down if I did do something about it And lastly, I asked myself is my work Creating a positive impact in the world And true in the small circle that I was in in my organization and people around me and our customers It was true But in terms of a larger context in the bigger world I didn't see my work making that much of an impact a positive impact in the world and I didn't see If I stayed in the status quo, it would remain somewhat The same I thought So it was clear for me that something had to change So let me give you a little bit of a background on this concept of ikigai So ikigai is a japanese term that means reason for being the reason why you get up in the morning And its origins lie in okinawa japan And this of ikigai is touted as the secret To a long and happy life that the people in okinawa enjoy Now finding your ikigai as you can see is a pretty introspective journey and it's a very personal journey And it has to be a voluntary journey that you undertake to really uncover the answers to these questions And once you do it is You can see that it probably is an authentic expression of yourself The essence of the ikigai is captured in this framework that you see on the screen It answers four questions What am I good at? What do I love to do? What can I get paid for? And what is the world need of me? And you'll see interestingly these kind of line up to our human needs Of survival stability success and significance And in the western world we might Use the term purpose instead of ikigai or bliss Now the problem with how we have traditionally looked at careers is that it just looks to answer two of these questions What am I good at and what can I get paid for and many times it is What can what am I good at that I can get paid the most for? Well in a world that's constantly changing what I can get paid to do is constantly changing Which means I need to continually find what I'm good at to align to that And if you don't like What it is that it's leading you to it can lead to a lot of anxiety and misery as you can imagine So I decided to Start with a different set of questions and this is what I would recommend Others start where I would recommend others start as well When the first question is what do I love what motivates me? What fuels my energy? And I went through an Real self-awareness and introspective journey to find this out. I Enrolled in a leadership program where they did a bunch of assessments to help us understand this And you might be familiar with some of these ways to understand, you know, what motivates you and what fuels your energy Might have done something like the disc or insights profile or the management 3.0's moving motivators to uncover this And I also dug into what I'm naturally good at. What are my strengths? What are my skills? and Here I did the strengths finders, which is a great assessment tools to uncover your strengths your top strengths and some 360 degree feedback From my colleagues from people I reported to to understand what my true skills were Interestingly I really didn't need that because there were clues Throughout my journey that were they all along and when I look back at this map that I had created and started asking myself some Questions, I noticed what these clues were So I noticed which of these roles that I played throughout my career Generated the peak experiences of my career Where I had a lot of energy from my work and my contributions to making the real impact And then I uncovered what was I doing that gave me the energy and what skills was I using While I was having those peak experiences And here's some of the things that I uncovered. What do I love to do? I realize I love inspiring and motivating people I love creating shared understanding solving problems creating connections And some of the things that I was naturally good at Was seeing trends and patterns that had let me down the engineering path before and the map Was a skill that I possessed and that let me down the engineering path before as well But I also was good at creative problem solving learning new things quickly Listening this is one of my power skills and teaching and mentoring And what I noticed the patterns that were emerging was well, there were more around people and less with technology So in your pockets in your handouts, there is this particular template and I encourage you to map it out Find the patterns Uh in your in answering these questions for yourself and then share it with a colleague or a mentor or a coach Get some feedback and insights from them And answering these two questions Of what do you love and what are you naturally good at? You uncover what your passion is And let's Confucius says do what you love and you'll never work another day in your life Meaning that if you do what you love it won't feel like work. You will be working a lot, but it won't feel like work But if you stop here, it is these are the only two questions that you ask It might lead you to be a starving artist. So I recommend that you ask a third question What can I get paid for? What can I do that others value? Now in the age of accelerations, this is the moving target But we have some clues. So let's dig into some of those clues in terms of trends that we are seeing so far and this might change But here's some of the things that I have noticed that I'd love to share with you So we're already seeing the repeatable mass market solutions and manual jobs being replaced by automation and robots And we are starting to also see that jobs based on expertise or precedent or data Anything that can be analyzed or codified Like healthcare diagnoses like criminal sentencing like analytics and forecasting Are being replaced by artificial intelligence You know when it comes to processing a lot of data Machines are just better at it. I mean For all of us our expert is Google now, right? So these will likely account for the 50% of the jobs that will disappear So what clues are there about the 50% that have not been conceived of yet? What might they look like because that's where we wanted to pay attention? So here are some trends that are emerging Technology and connectivity is resulting in us as consumers being much more informed and savvy And we are not looking for mass market solutions We want niche products Personalized to our needs our context our concerns. We want solutions that solve our problem our unique problem And we are willing to change vendors. We don't really care about brand loyalty anymore We want that thing that makes us do our job better Consumer trends are also showing a shift in spending From physical products more towards experiences and services that make our life easier So there's a real need to understand the customer and personalize those experiences for the customer And in responding to these customer needs will require capabilities that I believe are uniquely human creativity imagination curiosity social and emotional intelligence empathy And we are likely going to see a results of these shifts in the workplace as well And we're already I believe seeing some of this so for decades we were obsessed with efficiency and output And that's shifting for a lot of us our language is shifting to how can we get more effective solutions? How can we get better outcomes and the outcomes that we're talking about are what I just alluded to a better experience for our customers So in the workplace and what we as humans will do in response to that Will be things like routine tasks now Our work would shift to more creative work and less on routine tasks Value is going to be placed more on versatile lists over specialists people that are adaptable people that cross domains people that can solve more complex problems Hierarchies and centralized decision making is giving way to more networked organizations leveraging the talent of many and humans Will be seen less as a commodity resource And more as a source of creativity and innovation so Going forward the company will be less of titles of place that you felt And more of a role a role that you play in an organization. So what would those roles look like? For this I want to share with you an article from the Harvard Business Review And it talked about the three future job roles for knowledge workers And I bring this to you because I'm already noticing these trends in our work environments already particularly As we bring agile into the work world So the first role being a composer So composers are people who deeply understand aspirations and needs of the consumer And they can compose engaging and rewarding experiences for them These are people who love designing and discovering new things And people who love that feel right at home will feel right at home in this role The second role is that of creators. These are the people who can anticipate The rapidly changing needs of the customers and design and deliver Creative and tailored products. They can bring the experience that was composed. They can bring it to life And people who fit well into this role are the people who love to take an idea and make it real implementers And last but not least are the coaches and coaches are the people who help others and their customers achieve their potential And we are likely to see coaches in all forms in all different areas from wellness coaches and sports Coaches to fitness coaches career coaches gardening coaches travel coaches, etc, etc, etc And we're already seeing this trend And people who love Helping people develop and show up as their best selves. Well, they fit beautifully in this particular role So Maybe you are seeing A parallel as well to what I saw in terms of roles in the agile roles in our organizations And you can see how the product on a role fits so nicely In the role of composer team members in the role of creator and scrum master in the role of coach So which of these most resonate for you? How do you know What paid role will fulfill what you love and what you are good at? well You got to experiment and try To discover that and don't be surprised if you find the answer in the most unlikely of places You know for me and how I came into my agile Coaching role Was finding a book in the bookstore and that too in a family church camp bookstore The only agile book in that little bookstore and I was the first question I actually asked was what is an agile book doing here I was a scrum master at the time doing the scrum master role along with My my development role and I was leading the scrum adoption in my organizations I picked it up thinking that I would learn a thing or two And it did not take me past the introduction of that book Uh to realize that what I could get paid for by doing the thing that I loved and was naturally good at Things that I was already doing Willingly and I've even considered it as work I could not believe that there was actually a name for this role and so that's how I find found what it is that met Uh those questions for me. What was I good at? What do I love? What can I get paid for? And the court role might not be the one for you. You might align very nicely with the composer or the creator So when you find the intersection of what you love what you're good at and what you can pay to do Then you've found the intersection of your passion and your profession And this is an amazing place to be Inevitably you are on your path to success So you might ask, okay How do I get there from where I'm at? Well, they are agilists and we know how to do this and we start by doing something right Learn gain new knowledge. You might uncover something practice build experience Experiment try something new Do some action And then pause and assess did I love it? Am I good at it? Is it something that I can get paid to do? and based on the answer adapt You might decide that you want to gain some additional knowledge And get better at it. You might want you to practice more to get better at it Or you might try something different because this is not quite what resonates with you and the cycle will continue So what if you are here? You know What you love and what you're good at So now you're looking for opportunities to get paid to do it The best way to do this is to demonstrate your skill and passion for it But let others know What you love and how you're good at it So you might sign up to do that kind of work at your organization Or you might try a side gig Or you might start applying for a job that allows you to do What do it allows you to get paid for what you love and what you're good at? Now, what if you are here? You're good at it and you are getting paid to do it But you don't love it and some of us find ourselves in this place And what you have to do here is just try new things so consider Of filling in for somebody in your organization that's performing a different role when maybe when they're on vacation Or maybe if they've taken a day off Maybe you want to pair with them and see what their Work world looks like Perhaps you might suggest a role swap for a week or so in your organization or within your team Try something new in your volunteer organization. This is a really safe space To try different things to uncover. What are the stuff? What are the things that you love? There's great clues of what you love and just the hobbies that you do And so you might find ways to bring in Aspects of your hobby into your work And notice your energy as you're doing this that will be giving you clues on what it is that you love And what if you're here? Well You love it. You're getting paid to do it, but you're not good at it yet Well, this is the best place to be because we know how to work through this From here you can learn and practice and pursue mastery in it So if this if you leave this room Remembering only one thing. I hope it is this And it's a quote from steve jobs who was a great example of doing work That aligns with what you love what you're good at and what you can get paid for He said the only way to do great work Is to love what you do If you haven't found it yet keep looking Don't settle As with all matters of the heart You'll know when you find it And I'd like to extend that Because through my own experience, I believe That the only fulfilling way to navigate a career in this age of accelerations Is to find and do what you love Because once you find it You'll find yourself on a path that is the curious continuous learning journey That's a welcoming journey And as philosopher Joseph Campbell said Follow your bliss And doors will open where you did not know they were going to be But don't expect to stop there Just when you are skillfully navigating your career They will likely come a point When you will start asking a more profound question What does the world need of me? What do I stand for? What impact can I create in the world? And based on what's happening in the world right now That question may come sooner rather than later So I will also leave you with this inquiry What does the world need of you? What do you stand for? What impact do you want to create in the world? And you can start With what makes you come alive Because as the author Philosopher and civil rights activist Howard Thurman said What the world needs right now Is people Who have come alive? I hope you enjoyed that presentation And I hope that you have lots of takeaways To bring into your own Journey navigating Your career and I open it up for questions. So can you see is there anything? There's one question that's come up Does all these four questions come as stages of your experience in your career trajectory? Yeah, Aniruddha, so absolutely and and I actually now Ask these questions of myself on a regular basis I reassess because things are changing so fast and For me when I first started my own career journey, I let everybody else ask just the two questions What am I good at? What can I get paid for? In fact, what can I get paid the most for with what I am good at? And that was what took me down the the path of engineering and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it I loved it for many years, but it was not sustaining And when I switched To first ask what is it that I love? And what am I good at? Those are the first two questions and use that to Decide what can I get paid for and as things are changing in terms of what you can get paid for The the first two Are kind of your not star to uncover the things that you That that where you can apply what you love and what you're good at Let's give Anjali a thumbs up for all the hard work. She's done and for the wonderful session Anjali, you can see all the thumbs up coming up for you. That's beautiful. Thank you