Short Takes #1: Welcome to Short Takes
Drinking the AI Kool-Aid | Losing Faith | Vacancies = Follow The Money | Chatbot Addiction
I am experimenting with a new approach to workfutures.io. My goal is to change tempo slightly, so instead of two workfutures.io posts per week and an occasional column (like How To Use Time installments), I will be transitioning to this model:
One long-form workfutures.io post per week, without factoids, but with a list of supporting links on the subject being discussed. For example, I will be writing this week about the ‘Did Women Ruin The Workplace’ brouhaha, at some length. These posts will be restricted to paid subscribers.
Two (or more) Short Takes posts per week, which will each comprise, well, short takes: breaking stories, links, works in process, charts, rumors, factoids. These will be open to all.
Periodic columns, like How To Use Time, which are each a series of essays on a specific topic. Planned columns include Decision-Making, The Emergent Organization, and Paradoxes of Engagement. These columns will be restricted to paid subscribers. My goal is to collect each into an e-book, which will be free to paid subscribers, and available for purchase to others.
This is the first Short Takes. The format is simply a series of bits-and-pieces that have come my way, and which may find their way into longer workfutures.io articles or columns.
In the spirit of holiday giving, I am offering a 40% discount to workfutures.io for new annual subscriptions. Get these chestnuts while they are hot!
Drinking the AI Kool-Aid
This is going to end badly: Accenture is renaming 800,000 employees ‘reinventors’.
I think Andre Spicer is right: it’s mindless jargonizing, and will confuse Accenture employees and customers. But a corporation that lost over $100B is market cap is likely to get desperate, and this smells desperate to me.
Losing Faith
[emphasis mine]:
Workers have lost faith in their leaders, according to a Glassdoor report. Across industries, employees’ ratings of senior management have declined since 2023, and the share of reviews mentioning a disconnect between workers and management has increased. The share of Glassdoor reviews mentioning “misalignment” has increased 149% since last year, while mentions of disconnection, distrust, and miscommunication have increased by about 25% during the same period. The industries with the largest declines in senior leadership ratings are management and consulting, media and communication, and technology. Each of these sectors has experienced mass layoffs, contentious return-to-office standoffs, and widespread disruption from AI, the report’s authors note.
| Kevin J. Delaney, What women need to thrive in the workplace
The management and consulting industry — companies like Accenture — have seen a major slide in senior leadership ratings. I doubt that reinventor-wash will help. But the report suggests something is deeply wrong in the C-Suite across a range of industries.
Vacancies = Follow The Money
This chart from Blackstone tells a great deal about where money is being shunted:
US office space sits at 23% empty, the result of distributed work and companies thinning their ranks. At the other extreme, data centers have less than 2% vacancy rates.
We are making a trillion dollar bet on AI, and it shows in the numbers everywhere.
Chatbot Addiction
Among chatbot users, 3 percent say they are already addicted, and 5 percent say they worry about becoming addicted. Job loss is a concern, but Americans also feel a broader lack of control over the role of A.I. in their lives.
| David Byler, A.I. Dominates Our World. Why Don’t Democrats Have a Plan?
Just say no to chatbots.
