Steven Toft

This is very good.
And I think he might be right.

Future Organisations - PARC New Years Day 2025 marked the mid-point of the 2020s and there is every indication that the second half of the decade will be as tumultuous as the first. When we scheduled an event to look at the chal...

This event was scheduled for March 2025 about 10 months ago. We'd already identified geopolitical instability as a theme. Even so, we hadn’t quite anticipated the speed and magnitude of the events of the last two months.

www.parcentre.com/research-and...

Well, I told you so.

firebrand.org.uk/mid-point-of...

The annual @theifs.bsky.social report on education spending is out. I've always found it incredibly useful so really pleased that @nuffieldfoundation.org fund it.

Here's spending by educational stage over the last 35 years. So many policy stories in a single chart.

ifs.org.uk/publications...

True. ☑️

A chart in three parts showing data on child mortality to make the points that "The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time."

The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.

All three statements are true at the same time. Understanding this is key to solving big global problems.

We believe data & research can help us understand both the problems we face & the progress that’s possible. 🧵

a woman in a striped shirt has her eyes closed and says beyond ALT: a woman in a striped shirt has her eyes closed and says beyond

Thanks @hrhour.bsky.social for bringing back the chat !! It's wonderful to see the #HRCommunity start to rekindle, connect and reconvene. We're so much better as a profession and as individuals when we're connected. That will remain true for 25 years and beyond !! #HR #GlobalHR #HRHour

Interested in your thoughts on this @robbriner.bsky.social @robmccargow.bsky.social @mervyndinnen.bsky.social @mjcarty.bsky.social @dds180.bsky.social

We really have no idea how this technology is going to play out in organisations or in the wider society. I'm still sceptical about an AI-enabled productivity boom but I'm convinced that, as with social media and smartphones, the social impacts will be huge.

Might this also be behind some of the reluctance to return to the office. It's easier to 'cheat' by using ChatGPT when you are at home. AI makes it easier to work from home but working from home makes it easier to use AI in your own way without having to tell anybody else what you are doing.

In this sense, ChatGPT is more like social media than a traditional corporate system implementation. People have been using it at home and experimenting with it long before it moves int the workplace and the employer is left playing catch up.

This makes it more difficult to assess employee performance. How much of an employee's output is produced by ChatGPT? Do managers find themselves inadvertently measuring an employee's skill at using ChatGPT rather than what they thought they were measuring?

Over time, employees become 'intertwined. with ChatGPT to the point where it is no longer clear what aspects of their work are AI generated. It therefore becomes difficult for managers to control the quality of knowledge that circulates within the organisation and is delivered to clients.

Employees are brainstorming ideas on ChatGPT rather than with their colleagues. It is hastening a shift towards isolated work brought about by the pandemic. There is a potential for expert knowledge to become siloed.

It's a bottom up rather than top down implementation. Managers often have no idea how employees are using it and very little control over what they do with it.
This is creating some unforeseen side-effects.

Managing a ChatGPT-empowered workforce: Understanding its affordances and side effects Generative AI, particularly ChatGPT, creates new managerial concerns. This article addresses a crucial managerial challenge: While employees are inclu…

Fascinating paper on the impact of ChatGPT on organisations, by Jana Retkowsky, Ella Hafermalz, Marleen Huysman. 🧵
Unlike the classic IT implementations that most of us have been used to, ChatGPT is being implemented by employees on an ad hoc basis.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"It’s obvious once you really think it through, but both real-world + lab results show that while people who hit it big going against the grain are the ones we turn to for wisdom on future events, overall they tend to be bad at making forecasts."
-Jerker Denrell, NYU Stern

hbr.org/2013/04/expe...

Very important point.
In finance, professionally, being a mostly-wrong blowhard but nailing a big one by luck is absolutely the way to go. Being thoughtful and beating chance by a bit, which is the best even the smartest can do? Boooor-iiiiing.
(What about politics? Churchill re Hitler?)

The year ahead: tariffs, taxes and Trump Unhedged · Episode

👂👂 PODCAST TIME 👂👂
me and @robarmstrong.bsky.social on:
- investors knowing nothing
- Scooby Doo
- the 'meh' trade
- bling
- bloody air fryers

open.spotify.com/episode/1ltD...

The AI arms race costs money And rising corporate bankruptcies

Really useful short note - on.ft.com/4fYJASI via @robarmstrong.bsky.social about the large gap between capex and depreciation in the big AI spenders. Something has got to give....

Going to hell in a handcart or what? (h/t @tortoisemedia.bsky.social)

Worse, if you read further she didn’t even ask for the whip to be restored but the Tory team have decided to make a story about it to make her look bad

Thousands of civil servants to strike ‘indefinitely’ over back-to-office demand Staff at HM Land Registry will not cover for colleagues or take on extra work from Jan 21

"Nearly 4,000 staff at HM Land Registry will refuse to cover for colleagues or take on any extra work which they consider to be beyond their job description from Jan 21. The backlash is over a demand to return to the office for three days", the Telegraph reports.

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

How’s things?

How a handful of X accounts took Elon Musk ‘down the rabbit hole’ on UK politics [FREE TO READ] Tech billionaire’s posts about grooming gangs scandal have elevated issue

“Musk has seemingly become the first tech leader to fall down the rabbit hole of radicalisation by his own product”

How Elon falls for the clickbait served up by his own 'For You' algo feeds. Great piece by my colleagues, worth sticking around for the mind-boggling final line:

on.ft.com/3C0o9CA

TV history programmes have been doing this for sometime. You know the sort of thing:
"It's April 1945 and Berlin is completely surrounded. Hitler refuses to accept that Germany has lost the war."

Mid Point of the 2020s - How's it looking? - Firebrand London Midnight on 1 January 2025 marked the mid-point of the 2020s. We're half-way through what has already been a turbulent decade. In my working life, I can't

New year, new blog.

firebrand.org.uk/mid-point-of...