 actually has its roots in music pretty much. We're focusing on leadership in the gig economy and the reason the gig economy is called the gig economy is because previously it was limited to musicians who got paid per gig kind of like how we get paid. Exactly, it's not all glitz and glamour. It does have the glitz and glamour but at the end of the day we need to pay our bills and with each gig that we get the more basically the more gig we have the more money we get but also means that we don't have any form of security. But today this economy is not just limited to the performing arts it's taken on a life of its own. In fact we're gonna find out just how big the gig economy is with our guest in the studio. Now Mr. Lalith is of course the chief marketing officer of iCliff. So before we go any further you tell us a little bit more what you guys do with iCliff. So iCliff is a leadership and governance center so we are fully owned and funded by Banking Arab. We are a not-for-profit organization. We focus on two things. We focus on leadership development programs for senior executives of large organizations and we do corporate governance programs for board of directors. We had our humble beginnings in 2003 focused on financial sector in Malaysia and in the last five to six years we have grown dramatically. We now have clients in 22 countries and financial sector is only about one third of our revenue. The gig economy must have changed the way you do business because it is not just limited to people like us to get paid per gig. It's now all inclusive it's Uber drivers grab grab drivers is the food delivery guys. It's also people in corporate finance it's also people in HR. So tell us about how the gig economy has changed. So the gig economy has come a long way. As you rightly said it started with musicians of performing arts and it is growing dramatically. So the term gig actually it's a slang which means job for a specified period of time. So it includes free agents free Lancers temporary contractors etc. The way it is growing is and there are a number of other connotations that come with the gig economy. So for example a grab driver as you rightly said is a gig economy worker right is a free agent. Now he drives for grab but he does not have a boss right. He does not work for grab right. He decides when and how much he wants to work. He has that freedom and flexibility and he enjoys that right. So for example if today is this grab driver's wife's birthday he may decide to take her out to lunch and have a leisurely lunch with her but he knows fully well that to make up for that time he needs to drive more later in the evening right. So nobody has to tell him that he needs to work harder or longer hours if he wants to earn more. So that kind of a flexibility and that responsibility goes together and that's the interesting part about the gig economy. Okay like we both of us are basically freelancers right in simple terms freelancers but with as much as we love having the time to set like you said with the grab driver he or she may set a few hours you know whether or not they want to work within this period of hours whether how much money they earn is based on the amount of hours they put in. So how do iCliff actually come in and help out freelancers and basically do you guys help us monitor or what's the correlation between iCliff and freelancers at this point. So we look at leadership development right and today we are all living in open source era where everything is open and transparent. If you look at the way our lives have changed dramatically just in the last five to ten years but leadership and management practices have not. So when we talk about digital transformation there are two parts to it. One is applying digitization and technology to your business models and see how it is going to change and make you more comparative but the second part is the leadership and the people part and that's the bit that we focus on. How do you lead and manage people differently? How do you create a culture of innovation which is extremely important in today's environment? How do you motivate and enable performance in today's environment? For example when we talk about the gig economy and the free agents of the free freelancers right they have a whole lot of freedom and flexibility. Now if you look at 20th century management and leadership it was all about control. More control leads to more productivity leads to more profitability. Yes boss. Absolutely and like people used to take pride in saying we are a zero tolerance organization but today that is not possible. You cannot continue to treat your employees the way you did let's say ten, twenty years ago because you have a growing gig economy where people have a whole lot of flexibility and freedom. You cannot continue to treat your employees the way you did ten, twenty years ago. You need to give them more freedom and more flexibility within the realm of whatever you're trying to do. So when we look at the size of the gig economy how big is it as we speak today? So there are a number of estimates so let me share some statistics with you. I'll share some of the conservative estimates with you. So some of the statistics say that 36% of US population is already free agents which means one in three worker in US is already a free agent or a freelancer and do you know what that number in Malaysia is? Oh yeah we're waiting for that figure. 26% so one in four people in Malaysia are free agents right. So it is no longer a Silicon Valley phenomenon. It is here and now and you see those changes happening today. So as we move forward what we see is that more and more people will be opting for more flexibility and freedom. If you look at the millennials they are for meaning more than money they want more flexibility and freedom and according to some estimates 75% of the workforce by 2025 will be millennials and you'll see where the gig economy is going. Yeah it's like I do agree to some extent because I would consider myself as part of the millennials you know still 26, still young and most of the things that my friends and I discuss are why aren't companies giving us the type of freedom because we always argue between productivity and you know spending them on eight hours in the office. If I finish my work within that five hours that three hours why don't I spend it somewhere else you know because at the end of the day if I'm a happy worker I am more inclined to be more productive for the company I'm working for. So trust me what you're expecting is going to become a norm in every industry and in every organization. So traditionally as I was saying that most of the leadership was all about control right about rules policies and procedures right. We talked to CEOs and board of directors we asked them you know what percentage of your time you spend enforcing rules versus enforcing values right and people talk about 90 to 10. 90% of their time is spent enforcing rules policies and procedures. Now in today's time if you are driven more by rules and policies pretty soon your organization is drowning in the red pool of bureaucracy right you're not giving any freedom to your employees there's no risk taking and hence there is no innovation right and you know those organizations are not going to survive. So what we propose is that the leadership now needs to be driven by enforcing values you need to enforce a values-based culture you need to create a freedom within that framework of values that you need to give to your employees so that they have a little bit of agility they're willing to take some risks and they're willing to create innovations for your company to survive in today's environment. Yeah well that's interesting trade off I think for some companies because they still have the legacy mindset of perhaps the generation before so how do you then suppose people take up leadership positions within a gig economy because 75% of the economy is the gig economy there's no succession there's no leadership there's no structure. Yeah so it is tough so I'm not saying it's going to be easy the people that we do these leadership development programs for they and when we give them all these thoughts and ideas in terms of how leadership needs to change they kind of nod like you're nodding they agree and they smile but they say but this is not for me right we are different my organization is different and then we go deeper into you know what is it that your organization can do in moving towards that continuum so the way we look at it is that on one end of the continuum is the gig workers in terms of how you treat them with freedom and flexibility and this is where the traditional organizations are what you're saying is what is the start that you can make for your organization and move on that continuum towards making the gig economy work because that is what the future of economy is. When CEOs become a part of the gig economy that would be an amazing future. I'm coming at this hour I'm leaving at this hour you know as long as I get my work done but at the end of the reason why we work is of course to earn money and in do you have a rough estimate as to a person could get per gig is that a bit too of a personal question to us. No so I mean based on the research right number of people are ending up earning lot more as gig workers compared to the full-time employment right now there are a number of thoughts that come to us you know when we talk about gig economy they say there'll be exploitation of workers or the free agents right the counter to that is that actually the permanent employees lot of them they feel that they are stuck right they feel that they are being harassed right so free agents they feel that they are a little bit more free etc the second is about the safety net right as soon as you become a free agent you lose the safety net right the counter thought to that is actually gig economy I think it offers a safety net right today if you lose your job you can go to websites like Upwork or Freelance or crowd source put your skills on there and find a job right or if you have a car you could start driving as a grab driver tomorrow and start making some money when do you think in the history did you have that outshading right so the gig economy actually offers a safety net for people rather than taking away the safety net in a minute I suppose that's one part of it right with the other part of it is the gig worker it's got to be a bit more financially literate than the generation before he's got to know how to protect himself in the case of injury loss of income and that kind of thing so besides taking up leadership positions in the gig economy per se within organizations how would you advise gig economy workers to look at the industry with not just too much enthusiasm but also a little bit of caution yeah so there's a whole lot of social security piece that needs to be taken care of if you're in a permanent job the organization takes care of your health care your social security benefits etc and I believe it's a matter of time right so if you look at Starbucks right Starbucks they provide full health care and employee benefits to their temporary workers right so Starbucks is already doing that I think more and more organization will follow suit so all those gaps which are there in the gig economy and the free agents right now I think they'll be taken care of as we move forward yeah no I was talking to a grab driver as well and this was something that was quite interesting because she talked about how even in the grab world for example there are people who do it full-time and part-time and actually certain companies they are slowly realizing that they do need the workers you know even though they're free agents freelancers they do need that and they need to provide some sort of security so I think with certain companies they do offer some part of some form of insurance you know you can take a part-time insurance or a full full insurance so that's actually very interesting I'm very excited to see you know where our economy is gonna head towards 2025 yes yes Millennials are gonna take over right people like you need to take over yeah so I gotta ask the question what would it mean for unions organizations and you know bodies that represent gig workers is there a future for something like that is there a need for something like that maybe so one of the views that we have is that in open source era everything is open and transparent right so these things they get self-regulated right there is no place to hide right if I mean we have no privacy you know and if there is a silver lining to this dark cloud of no privacy it is that being transparent will make people not more honest because everything that you say or do is gonna be out there in the media right so a lot of it is gonna be self-regulated right but that's I think being too optimistic but I think there will be some place for some regulations and some public policy like most of the things that are outcome of digital economy you know for example when Uber came out it spread like wildfire right there was a lot of public acceptance before the public policy could come in to take care of that right and I think there'll be similar case for gig economy so gig economy is gonna explode it's already exploding and I think public policy and the regulations will catch up at some point as they are today thank you very much Mr. for being here on the program it's been a pleasure speaking to you my pleasure thank you very much