Think AI Podcast - Skills Are Teachable. Identity Isn't. | Ep. 18 with Abhijit Bhaduri (Abhijit Bhaduri LLC)

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

🎙️ Skills Are Teachable. Identity Isn't. | Abhijit Bhaduri (Abhijit Bhaduri LLC)The AI conversation is stuck on skills: learn AI or get replaced. Abhijit Bhaduri says that misses the real threat entirely. AI can learn any skill you bring to the table. What it cannot replicate is what you feel when you do the work, and that is where the identity gap opens up.Abhijit is CEO of Abhijit Bhaduri LLC and has led talent strategy inside some of the largest companies in the world: Wipro's first Chief Learning Officer, Global Head of Learning & Development at Microsoft, and HR leadership at PepsiCo, Colgate-Palmolive and Tata Steel. He is a LinkedIn Top Voice with over a million followers, SHRM's #1 HR influencer on social media, author of six books including Career 3.0, and his seventh, AIdentity, is coming later this year. In this conversation he and Dave land on the same conclusion from opposite ends of the room: the companies winning with AI are not the ones with the best models. They are the ones solving the people problem underneath.In this episode: 00:00 Meet Abhijit: from CLO to a million followers 02:03 The guitarist who plays every genre 04:37 The biggest myth in every company: money motivates 06:59 Dave: judge people by their opportunities, not their limitations 09:36 What the identity gap actually is 11:45 Why AI makes everything average (the Picasso test) 14:11 You bought the piano but skipped the lessons 16:45 The man training AI at the cost of his kid's job 20:12 Keystroke logging kills innovation 25:56 Why sharing knowledge is now a superpower 31:07 The new book: AIdentity 34:43 Introduce yourself without your title or employer 36:50 The 80/20 future: work like water, not ice 41:05 Tokens as currency and identity as the new talent layer 44:44 The one failure Abhijit still carriesIf this conversation changed how you think about AI, your team or your own work identity, subscribe to the Think AI Podcast, drop a like, and tell us in the comments: how would you introduce yourself without your title?🔗 Links & ResourcesAbhijit Bhaduri on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhijitbhaduri/Abhijit's website and newsletter: https://abhijitbhaduri.com #ThinkAIPodcast #AIdentity #IdentityGap #FutureOfWork #AIAdoption

AI can learn any skill that you bring to the table. But what it cannot do is to actually replace what you feel when you do the work. Welcome to the Think AI podcast. Each week we talk about the most exciting AI research, tools, case studies and more. I'm your host, Dave Goir, and I've been working behind the scene in data and AI for over 30 years, whether you are an AI expert, skeptic, or something in between, this podcast is for you. If you have spent any time on LinkedIn talking about the future of work, you already know his name, Abhijit. He built talent strategy at some of the biggest companies in the world, chief learning officer at WIPRO,

Global Head of Learning and Development at Microsoft. There is a commonality, Abhijit, there. HR leadership roles at PepsiCo, Colgate Pomerle, and Tata Steele, to name a few. He has written six books. Wow. He is the LinkedIn top voice for over a million followers.

S.H.R. ranked him the number one HR influencer on social media anywhere. It is the line that made me want this conversation. He says, AI determines what works looks like, but identity determines what work feels like. Pretty phenomenal line to see.

And he has been, warning companies about something he caused the identity gap. We're going to dig into it. When you automate a task, it becomes unbranded, anonymous, and ownership of the outcome disappears right along with it. His conclusion for 2026 is blunt. The company's winning AI are not the ones with the best models. So true.

They are the ones who figured out that there is a people problem in the technology. That's a conviction I should. share with data and delivery side of the work with him. I wanted to hear it from the talent and leadership side. Abhijit, welcome to the show. Thank you, Dave. That's such a great introduction, and I hope I live up to that expectation. Thank you. Thank you for joining. So let's dig into it. So from your role of CLO to LinkedIn Top Voice, how the talent strategy to these various enterprise organizations you have worked in the operating roles and not just advisory. And what is the throw line across all of it that eventually made you the person, a million people like to listen to you?

Well, I think, you know, one of the things that happens is, as some people will tell you, that when you look back, you connect the dots much better than what you do when you are looking ahead. That's something that is always a very sobering thought. But, you know, when I was sort of looking at different opportunities that came my way. One of the things that I always tried to do was to actually look across different sectors, different kinds of roles, different sectors. What it means is think about it like this, that when you are, let's say, someone who's a guitarist, you know, and you like to play one genre of music, you play rock or you play jazz

or whatever, you know, what happens is you can grow as a musician in one of the two ways. Either you can play the same genre across the same genre across the way. different brands. Every band has its own style, they have their own songs, so you can do that. The other is to actually play across many different genres of music. So, you know, when you play blues, it's a different style, when you play rock, when it's different style. So when you do that, you get a very different feel of music. And I think I belong to the second category. I was lucky that I got opportunities in all these wonderful companies, which I've learned so much from. And that actually lets me understand what is common to people across, you know, what are the myths about

people that so many companies have and which you see actually getting repeated in so many places. And a lot of what you think has become obsolete. When you step outside of a system, you are in a better position to appreciate that. So that's really been my rationale. That's amazing. And I'll say this, that's truck accord, pun intended. it. I myself play the guitar. I'm a big fond of music and I compose also. So that example just lend it like anything to me. And yeah, yeah. Sorry, say it again. Sorry, say it again. I said you can riff off that example altogether. You know, pun intended again. So yeah. Very true. Very true. And, you know, I can draw parallels to your storyline, you know, same throwline I have always lived into, which is right data, right person, right moment.

And it sounds like you have been solving that human version of the same problem. Your whole career, right person, right skill, right moment, isn't it? You know, yes, and what you also realize is that the human factors actually remain fairly consistent. you know, even though they are shaped by the context of culture, geography, sector and all of that. But take, for example, one of the big myths, every organization believes that, you know, money motivates people. But nobody actually thinks about how to design work so that it changes how people feel about their work, you know, and that matters more. So when you actually take a more multidisciplinary perspective about work, you begin to see work not just from the point of

of talent management, which I've been lucky to be a part of, but you also get to see it from the point of neuroscience. You begin to see, okay, how would a different discipline look at a similar problem? And there's so much of research which has been done about work, and very little of it gets used in organizations, even today. And most of what we see has been done, you know, in the industrial age, and all of that actually continues. I mean, to take one simple example, everything is designed around a conveyor belt system, you know, automation, scale up and all of that. So everybody looks the same.

Your job descriptions are given. Somebody who fits in is hired. Somebody who doesn't fit in doesn't get hired. And even when you get hired, you have to remember that there is so much of what you bring to the table gets knocked out. And you actually deny it. You don't talk about it because you say,

doesn't fit into my work so I don't talk about it. But you talked about your music. How many times when you are employed does somebody really care whether you play the guitar or not? Nobody does. So you also don't talk about it. Yet, look at this when you are in this kind of a situation, you bring in the part of the thing that really matters to you, your music, and you bring that into the work that you are doing, whether it's the podcast or the music or what you do in AI, and data and B.I. All of that. You bring all of that. That's the uniqueness. So what I think your identity is all about what makes you unique. Yet the workplace is all about what makes you fit in and deny your uniqueness. Now, that's amazing. And I'm going to jump on to identity gap in a second.

You know, the point you made really landed on me. One of the things I have always believed, I'm a disabled entrepreneur, you know, had early life where I couldn't even sit up. let alone walk or with braces now. And then I also grew up as a dyslexic kid while still keep doing the thing that I wanted to do. And I always believe this statement, which I say is that you don't judge anybody by their limitations. You judge with their opportunities to grow, survive and thrive. And, you know, entrepreneurial operating system says right, right person, right seat.

And that's perfectly correct. because you need to identify the potential in people rather than their limitation and bound them with those limitations. And I guess a lot of what you said is going in that direction and I loved it. Let me know if that's not the case. It is totally the case. You know, you talked about your uniqueness and the moment you reframe something from being a limitation to that's who I am, it neither becomes something that you flaunt, you know, with others or something and neither is it that something you deny. It's you. It's like your height and weight and, you know,

everything else. So I think that's how identity is. And imagine if we can bring that identity into the work that we do. I mean, all the masters, you know, since you are a musician yourself, every musician has a unique sonic identity. You know, the sonic groove that the person creates. True. It's very unique. I'm super sonics. Totally. Thank you. And. And that, you know, you can hear that song and you say, this has to be this person. That is identity. You know, your work reflects it.

I mean, Picasso, you can see a Picasso painting and say, good or bad, whether you like it or not is different. You can instantly spot it and say, okay, that's a Picasso. Andy Warhol. You'll say, that's an Andy Warhol style. So even if I drew exactly what Picasso has done, you will not call it mine. You will say, hey, that's a very Picasso style thing that you've done. So that's how unique we can. be and but we are. Very true. Very true. And, you know, that leads me to the next thing which we

initially talked, identity gap. In plain terms, what is it? And this is the term you coined. And how does a leader actually spot it happening inside their company, inside their own organization? Oh, terrific. So I actually started researching this whole thing. You know, at a time when I was one of the lucky people who got a very inside view of how AI is going to get rolled out and what it can do and all of that. So when I started working at Microsoft, I got that ringside view in how people learn and what are they doing about it. And the first thing I realized is that this whole conversation about identity is missing. The entire conversation about AI is that you better learn AI because you know, this is a skill if you don't have it, you will be out of a job. Or more commonly,

will tell you, AI will not replace you, somebody who knows AI will replace you. That's again, a very skill-oriented conversation. But if you see the real impact of AI is not on the skill, it's in the identity. Because, you know, whatever you can do, skill is something you can teach. I mean, you were not born knowing how to play the guitar. You learned it, you know. And tomorrow, if I tell you, I don't understand this, you can teach me, okay, here is how you play a chord. This is what a chord is like. Can you make out that this is a C? You move it one bar. it's a D, you can do that. So it's a skill that can be learned.

AI can learn any skill that you bring to the table. But what it cannot do is to actually replace what you feel when you do the work. So for example, coaching somebody who's a journalist with one of the top firms today a little while ago. And what this person was saying is that tomorrow when you take, when somebody writes something nice and brings it to him and say, this is what I want to put across on the show. The first thought that comes to my mind is, is it what you have written? This is what you've done with AI. And for somebody who is a writer, that can be a big insult.

I mean, imagine that, you know, you write something and you've done your drafts and you've done all of that. And then when you write it out, somebody says, oh, that's nice. you've used AI to do this. And you say, no, I haven't. It's mine. So your ownership, when you brand your work, when your work carries your signature, like I said, like a Picasso painting, you can replicate a million Picasso paintings with but nobody will pay the millions that you'll do for an original Picasso.

That's the difference in value. AI tends to put everything at a median level, at a very average level. Your uniqueness comes because you bring in a. different humor, you bring a different style, you're different example from your past, from your life, you know, like for example, there's a company like Tatar's is having a succession problem now. Many people will write about it. But the fact that I have been inside Tatar's at a time when I also saw the first succession battle, you know, with Rousi Modi getting replaced by Dr. J.J. Rani and how it was handled.

That whole process, that gives me a unique perspective. and then I bring in my perspective as a talent management person and I talk about it. So I think that's really the uniqueness with which you bring. Then your identity is built into the work. If you don't do that, that's the identity gap. Your work is always average and it's missing this opportunity. So your true potential is never reached. That's really the gap.

No, that's rightly said and well put in there. And I can relate to something that we have been doing. We do a lot of consulting work. And I watch companies ship a genuinely good AI co-pilot is what Microsoft calls. And then generally abundance it in six months later. And nobody complained loudly. They just stop opening it. And I always assume this was a trust problem.

Now, we are relating identity gap in the human. But it's in the overall organization DNA as well, right? What's their identity looks like? Are they being rewarded to, you know, adopt latest and greatest? Is it helping the human life? What elements they bring into the organization? So it starts from there also. What's your viewpoint on that?

Perfectly put. I think you use a really lovely turn of phrase. You know, when you think about it, let's take a, again, since both of us love music and you're probably more accomplished than I am, but let me take an example. Not so much, but I show up a lot more than others. No, no, no. I mean, you're very passionate about it, and that comes through. I'm going to give a musical example.

Imagine that you had the money to buy the most incredible piano or violin or something. You can sort of buy anything that the world is produced. You can buy the piano that Mozart used to play on. Now, you buy that. And think about that is the parallel that I would say companies have made investments of different kinds. Somebody has bought a small electronic piano. Somebody's bought a grand piano. Somebody's got the masterpiece and all of that, concert piano.

But if you don't invest in piano lessons, that's a waste. So, you know, when you build and invest in piano lessons, the whole process of learning how to use it, redesigning your work around it, making sure that people are excited about this whole technology because they think it adds something to them. So, you know, in writing, for example, I love to do my research using AI because it's so much, you know, more efficient. I can do that. I can fact-check a data point and say, okay, is this 1986 or 87? Yes, I can talk about all of that.

But the process of writing, which is the core of the work that I do in so many places, That then has to be mine. So the difference is those who have invested in building this piano lesson and making sure that the context, I know where I'm going to play, I'm preparing for something. And it's all of that. So it's everything around my role is built into that. That's the right way to do it. So you can't just invest in the piano, not in the lessons. You can't only invest in piano and the lessons without changing the culture.

So I think the human side of technology, as long as you ignore it, is never going to work. I mean, it'll work for a short while. You can always, you know, have somebody at gunpoint sit down and do five lessons, which is what a lot of people do. They'll complete the task and they'll never use the software again. So that's what companies don't understand that human beings don't work on logic. Human beings actually work on emotions. And in the business part of the world,

we have believed that, you know, logic is superior to emotion. We believe that data is superior to human behavior. And it's not, you know, evidences that in so many places you see a backlash against the usage. Because, you know, you don't want to use technology, which is really going to put the kids out of jobs. I mean, so many people struggle with that. So a lot of times, I was chatting with somebody who said, You know, when I use AI for doing the work that I'm doing, working in a very small firm somewhere, where they are training AI to do a lot of the human task.

You know, he works with a camera strapped to his head and as he's doing this. He says, you know, I'm planning to quit. And I was saying, you know, this is making you good money. Why would you want to do that? And he says, no, because I'm doing it at the cost of my kid's job. My kid is 12. he will never find a job because I'm making sure he never will find a job. And I don't want to be the person, their father, who wants to ruin the kid's chances.

This is a human story. There is no logic about it. So until we address this, I think we are never going to be able to solve this. World of work has now eliminated anything to do with emotions, saying it is bad. Humans are emotional people. So how can you deny that? That's the piece that intrigues me. Yeah, no, that's amazing.

And, you know, come to think of it, if you see the stats, and I don't have the number in front of me, I'm a number person. But a lot more, you know, mental issues you see in this era more than ever because of a few things. One being social media is hogging your brain all the time. You know, you're not reading two things I've learned in my life, despite being being. disabled, I've worked in many countries, lived in many countries, and I love traveling. And people learn by two things, by, well, meeting people obviously, but travel in books. And if you do enough, you're going to learn a whole lot. That's how I've learned. I'm sure that's how you've learned a lot of things. That is not happening because they are hung on technology or they are using

technology or they're consuming technology or they're producing technology. Everything is around technology. Being a technology is myself, I think a lot of human things needs to be addressed first and technology just like no, a calculator or when computer came in. It should merely be a tool. AI, despite being so powerful, and I've been doing AI since 1995-96, it's so powerful today. It is still a tool and you need to drive it how you won't want to drive it. And that lends me to the next question. I think one of the thing you mentioned, it's the people problem but then technology and companies winning AI in 2026 aren't the ones with the best models. That battle is going on because big companies want to show up who was the best model in the world.

And there's a lot of hormones kicking in there in a way. But the companies, the ones treating people, handling their people problem, giving them the value. You know, you mentioned about Tata and Microsoft, both they were people first companies. I don't know what's the status today. I cannot quote on that. But they were people first. And you know, both companies had their own standout scene because of people first. What do you have to say the people problem revved in technology, especially in the AI part?

You know, businesses are driven by two of the areas. One is talent and the other is technology. You know, so every company, we very often say everything is a tech company today. But everything has always been a human company first and a tech company in addition. But what happens is when you think about what it's doing is it's taking away the tech part of it and the logic part of it and the data crunching part of it. AI is going to be like a million times better than any human will be. You know, so it's going to sort of really take care of everything which is a rule-based. stuff. We can always talk about it. It can always say that if I tell you that the capital of

so-and-so country is, it can complete it because it logically follows that entire thing. But the fact that I will now go back and give an example from music is not something it can predict. So this ability to actually understand the, you know, when you look at innovation, innovation doesn't come from, you know, doing something really brilliantly well and all that. You can get some improvement in productivity. But if you look at most organizations, really they are obsessed with one aspect, which is how much of the human side can you cut off the slack and make it just, you know, the sandwich part of it, which is like you crutch everything which is human and keep everything which is only productivity and output. we are missing the point that human development, organizational development and businesses grow because somebody innovates. You create a completely different way of doing something.

That actually can never happen if I start logging every keystroke of yours. So there are companies which do that. It's tragic because nobody in the right senses who's creative will operate in a place like that. If you look at the way that you would have learned your skills, you know, in the early years, you would have been in the office, you would have met people, you've seen people, you've talked to people, you know, spoken to somebody in the hallway, somebody talks to you and asks you a question about something, you bring that idea together, you think about it. Ideas when you join what is unconventional, that's innovation for you.

But when you remove the human connections, it's sterile, it's antiseptive. take, but it's not going to be innovative. It can be slightly more efficient. So there are hundreds of examples of that. You know, you can think about it. You can either solve, you know, if you're in a doctor's waiting room, waiting for your turn. One option is to use an algorithm such that you know that I'm going to go in at 232 and

I time myself. But the other aspect is to say that can I use the time in the doctor's waiting room to make at such a memorable experience that I will look forward to going back the next time. That can only happen if there is a human element to it. So work needs to have a very strong human element. Yeah. That's a great example too because all of us, we may have a good memory of a good teacher. We don't talk about how skillful those were.

But we always talk about how good they are to you, how nice they are to you, how the human relationship mattered. Same thing with doctor. My son, he's 15 now, still goes to the same doctor, and he'll probably go until he's adult because she treats him so well that he forgets about all the pain and everything else. So he doesn't want to go anywhere. And those are the angles cannot be replaced with technology,

that human angle where that human touch could or bad, both. You remember. And rather than you remember their skill and expertise, like how good a musician is, like maybe a musician, I'm not going to name names. I worked with the music industry back in India. And some musicians were amazing, but when you talk to them in person, they were horrible person. And then you completely forgot about their skills.

That's the only thing I remember now that when you talk to them, you know, they were not warmed and welcoming. And they had their own mean personality over there. A great teacher can actually make you love a subject which you've hated with all your heart. You know, it changes the direction of your career. You know, and when I was in school, I had a, you know, and somebody who really got me fascinated towards the last couple of months of my final years in school. There was the last time I was going to study geography,

and I was like grateful that I was going to get rid of that because I had hated it all my life. Then came this teacher who was a substitute teacher who was going to be with us only for, you know, three or four months. and she actually started to change my perception about geography so much so at the end of three months my biggest regret was that there was no way I could have completed and sort of continued studying geography and you know she she would teach us geography and history my love for history continues even today I read something which I don't have to but that's really the impact of a great teacher

shapes the way you view the world you know and what a powerful way to think about it And that's really what you remember them for. You don't remember the exact lesson that when I got a three out of ten or ten out of ten. You don't remember all of that. You remember your feeling about the subject. So I think that's the identity part of it. Shapes, you know, somebody makes you feel differently about your work. That's what a great manager does.

Very true. And this also leads me to something. So, you know, learning, having and feeling and identity is one important thing. But you've also talked about sharing knowledge, which is now a superpower instead of a risk. And that runs against most professionals, how they are wired, protect what you know.

And what's the flip now in this AI era specifically? What do you think? Because everything is shared because of AI. You know, it's at your fingertips. Everything is exposed to you. It becomes a commodity. But then you don't have a way to validate it. It's good or bad.

So let's ask a actual question. Do you speak Japanese? No. Neither do I. But I could ask a question to AI and say, answer me in Japanese. And, you know, let's say translation, life translation today. We know that it's reality on your phone. You can do all of that. So this whole issue of the standard aspects of work which gave you, I mean,

imagine you are the only person in a. a company which works in Japan and you're the only one who does it, you have a tremendous clout because, you know, you are the one who's translating that world into, you know, the rest of us. Today, that differentiation is gone. It's no longer a great advantage. But the fact that when somebody says, you know what, here are the five things that we can do. These are the key words to look out for. Here is when they say that, ask this question. When they answer it, I'll, we can translate it here. But when you ask the question, it builds a deeper bond. between you and this person.

Try it out and I correct you and you sort of, you feel comfortable enough to go and use it. Imagine what it does for you. Imagine what it does for me. And imagine what it does to the equation and the effectiveness. The next time when I go there, there is no doubt that I will take you along because you taught me how to do this.

Right? The next time I want to know a little more, I say, hey, you know, I'm going to ask them about the balance sheet. I'm going to ask him about, you know, the plant, how it's working. Can you frame that for me? What is the sentence? Is this the same word as that? I'm asking you all of that.

You've actually got me hooked onto this. You're not my Japanese teacher. You are getting me to be more effective in what I do. So sharing is really your superpower because look at the Internet. Who are the biggest influencers with millions of people? Those who are teaching people something. They're telling them what, you know, they wouldn't have learned otherwise. They're simplifying something.

They're saying, don't worry about this. Here are the two important aspects that you can use. When you use it, here is how you become better. So that's the superpower that I was talking about. No, that's pretty good and amazing. You know, I'm a big fond of some life coaches like Tony Robbins, among the others. And they pooled their life experiences. they build that knowledge and then started sharing for the people who it mattered most.

And with that process, they built an empire. But that was not the end goal for them, right? The end goal was to spread that joy that they got by building something on their own. And I'm a firm believer, like, what you have with you and everybody, despite the fact they think that they have limited things as opposed to others, they always have a lot of superpowers. and those superpowers, if they share with others, the world definitely becomes a better place.

I truly believe with that. I think one point I also picked up on what you just said. So you're basically saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that teach somebody how to catch a fish rather than feed him a fish, isn't it? Absolutely. Even though you're saying it to a Bengali who, you know, I purposely said it too. My father was in fisheries.

I grew up eating a lot of this different, you know, Rohit Rohu and Katla and that kind of fish. So that's what it is. But yeah, it's, you know, there's a certain thrill and the relationship that you build with somebody you've, you know, taught or learned from. It's a very unique relationship, you know, that with so many examples we hear about when somebody said, you know, that person had taught him something in school. And then 50 years later, this is the, you know, CEO of so-and-so company or the organization or the head of a state, they'll give up the chair and walk down to, you know, greet a person who taught them. For nobody else would anybody do that. And that's the payback that somebody who teaches and shares liberally. That's the value that you

create, which is impossible for somebody else to replicate. So true. So true. And, you know, I don't want to miss the opportunity to talk about your latest book also. So I'm changing gears. bit. So correct me, if this is the right latest book, AI identity, you have written so many, so I want to be extended. A. Identity is my seventh book. This is the one which is due to come in at the end of the year. And this is really talking about how, you know, AI is changing the way we work. And how do you become irreplaceable in the new world of work? Because work has changed a lot. I mean, work is, you know, unlike the industrial economy, where we are remote. audit for looking like everybody else, you have to be interchangeable. It's driven by your degrees

and credentials. So you come from a Tier B college, then you are worse than my people will assume you're worse than somebody who's from a Tier A college. So this entire hierarchy, which is there of credentials of your, you know, being like everybody else, leads to a situation where your identity as a professional is actually dependent on your employer or somebody else. they assign it to you. I'll give you a great example. I was talking to a psychotherapist who had practiced for 20 years in California. She crosses the state border and goes to another state and they say that you can't practice here because you are not licensed to practice in this particular place. Here she is who's worked for like 20 years and can now no longer do the work because the credential

does not allow her. Doesn't matter what her expertise is. So 20 years of work gets taken away because the moment you cross the border. You again go back, it comes back to you. You again go out, it goes back. So it's not yours. Really, the entire opportunity now is, how do you bring your perspective, your judgment, your relationships, and the way that you connect the dots,

the way that you tell the story, the way that you explain things, that makes it so uniquely yours. And that really is the opportunity. So while AI is taking away a certain, kind of work is going to leave behind a massive gap for us to be ourselves. Not in terms of new jobs created. That's not the angle that I'm talking about. But it changes our way of feeling positive about the work that we do. Look at the Gallup polls. Barely 20% of the people enjoy the work they do. 80% of this working world is disengaged. How sad is that? Here is an

opportunity for people to actually change the way that they feel about the work. world. So I think it's provided, you know, organizations invest in doing something like that and how do you help people do that. And that may be very threatening in the short run to the organization. But the organizations that will win will make sure that, you know, the employees who they have will never want to leave them because the world outside doesn't allow them that freedom. So that's the biggest way in which you can think about changing the world of work. This is, this has some personal interest to me. So thank you for explaining. it. Let me talk about a little bit on what my aspirations are and I've been doing that for some time now.

So I think about this constantly with my own kids and with the people I mentor, startup owners, our own employees and whatnot. But the advice that I got starting out doesn't fully apply anymore because of the world this is shifting. And like you rightly said, it's not just about the job and job opportunities. but really a complete mind shift here. I'm genuinely curious what you would tell someone starting their career today that he would not have told them five years ago. What has changed when you advised them today? So the one aspect that maybe you and I have grown up with in a world

where our hobbies and are what was considered extracurricular. Curricular and extracurricular were two different roles. worlds. And you kind of played for a little bit of time in the evening or you drew, painted, did all of that. But when you say, what do you do? If I ask you, what do you do? And I ask you this very elementary question. You cannot use the name of the employer or the title that you do. You can't say I'm a chief marketing officer or whatever. You can't say that. Without using this, how would you introduce yourself? The moment you do that, and chances are that in the initial stage, you would struggle. And when I left almost 10 years back, when I started my own firm,

I had worked all my life before that. When I started my own firm, I was very excited about that. On day one, somebody, you know, shook hands and said, okay, so what do you do? And I was going to say the eight words that I had always used that describe everything without any reference. I'm the chief learning officer of WIPRO. I would say that. Overnight, that was no longer valid. And so now you are turning back to answer this question, what do you do? So for me to say, I work in the area of leadership, talent, and culture, this, you know, is a new language I have to get used to say introducing myself, or to say, I work as an author, I write, I draw, I do keynotes. Now, remember, there is no, my organization's name has no meaning. Nobody knows this. Neither does my

designation have any meaning? So suddenly you remove those two elements and you're really asking the question, what is my new work identity? So that is when I actually started to do the research and read about, you know, why is identity so strongly related to my work? And that, when you think about it, we will move between multiple jobs and careers seamlessly. So for somebody who's starting out, you will move between what you did. consider a hobby and a nice to do, suddenly that'll become the greatest source of what you do and something else and in and out. Because organizations are going to progressively employ fewer people. More and more of us are going to be working outside. So my own belief is, very soon we'll be in an

80-20 where 80% people will work outside organizations. You know, they won't have employers as such. But they will be self-employed. They'll be working or collaborating in small groups and doing that. most organizations will have fewer people, and the ones which retain those people will be the ones where they encourage people to actually work across different disciplines, and they bring all of that. And so work is not going to be siloed into these little cubes and boxes. It's going to be like water. It's going to be fluid. It's not going to be like a block of ice. I think that's going to be the image I would keep in mind for the future.

That's so true, and I've seen that pattern. Bill 9 businesses worked as an employee for long time, 30 years now. Five of them I'd burned through the ground literally because I had no experience. And, you know, you were chasing the cliche things instead of really identifying your own identity, like you said. And eventually I figured out I'm a problem solver. I can solve, you know, a motivation problem or a leadership problem or a technology problem for a business challenge that they're having using technology. And I did this trend test called Gallup and then identified that I'm really good on strategy, learning. I spend a lot of time learning, every time learning a new thing, and then really spreading it across to others to get the joy.

And identifying that by itself, like my son, 15 years old, right now he jumps around, but his soul has two things in it. He's pretty artistic. So either he wants to be a chef or he wants to be a dancer. And I was a musician, so I wanted him to pick up. I pick up a lot of his instrument. He didn't pick up on it, rightly so, because that was not his interest or passion. And he, fortunately, there are very few people in their life can identify who they want to be. I was one of them.

And I really hope that eventually he figured it out. We gave him a lot of freedom to figure that out, not like most of us, Indians, whether in U.S. or in India. We're always thinking of them building a career which is safe in a way and that can give them stability versus growth. And if you want to grow, you have to take risk any which way. But how do you survive? If you are, let's say, working as a chef or a musician, there are very few who goes up. How do you survive mentally is the key. If you're mentally strong, that's the right thing for you.

It's not the talent, but it's really your mindset. and a lot of things that you said connects to those dots. I want to pick up on, you know, so we are talking about now what we will advise them. In next three years, if you have to bet on one shift in how companies manage talent, you know, you mentioned there will be very few talents left over. What would be that shift on next three years

and where would they bet? And I'll add something to it. So I see technology, I've worked in technology, all my life. I see technology is not a moat anymore. You know, AI can do technology very easily. You can speak naturally to it and it's all done with best practices. That's the best side of the thing in AI which is doing it engineering. They call it agentic engineering or FTE. But you have to have other things also, not just that. What would that be? Where companies should be hiring or building talent in next three years?

element of skill is a far more superficial layer, you know, identity is really the core part of it. So really working on that is really the big shift that I would see. So think about, you know, if work gets done partly with AI, partly by the human, it means your job descriptions no longer hold true that will keep changing and expanding. But your performance management system must reflect that. Your reward system must reflect that. I mean, I just wrote a post about how token maxing is working and how do you, their organization, some of them are already using tokens as a currency to reward people, saying that this is part of your job. How do you spend the tokens?

That determines are you an innovator or not. Now, those kinds of new methods will come up. So the world of work is going to change. But if you look at skills, that is a very superficial layer. It is identity, which is the far most stable layer. and that's really where I would focus the next part of whatever talent management looks at. It should use identity as the currency. Very well said.

And if the shift starts to come, I'm sure it is already happening in larger messages, especially. And then it trickles down to the small ones they follow. That will be amazing. And, you know, this whole Gen Z millennial kids, I should say, not youngsters or kids, they figured it out, believe it or not. A lot of people don't believe it, but they have exposed to so much information. They actually attack towards identity. There is no identity crisis like us.

You know, we want to be a doctor or an engineer and that's about it. That's how the world went in 90s, early 90s. Not anymore. They may not have figured out what their identity is, but they are in constant hunt for it. And once they do, they stick to it. Obviously, everybody goes into experimentation phase in their life. What's your take on it? I mean, the young kids got it right or they need to be groomed differently today?

No, I think, you know, we are moving from a world where it was all about assigned identity. You were told you had to be a doctor or engineer and then you fit into it or whatever else, chartered accountant. So instead of moving in a world of assigned identity, that system is breaking down. And you are actually working in a scenario where you design your own identity with the different aspects of yourself, your travel, your interest, the people that you meet, your ecosystem, all of that shapes who you are. That is really the new opportunity. So I think it's a very exciting world. I would actually think that it's a really wonderful time to design your own identity.

And that is the big shift that I think every generation will discover for itself. But this generation will probably go ahead of the others who have to take off their assigned identity and then discover it. people who don't have that baggage can start designing it from day one. So it's going to be a fun place to be. Very well said. Now, before I close, I had one more question to follow through. And generally, I always challenge people on that. So I talked about five failures that I have.

And again, that's part of your identity. If you run away from it, if you always say, I was always great, that's not the case. How you look, how you behave, how you say, you need to own it all. What would be one of the examples there in these organizations, especially the large organizations, which are not, you know, as forgiving as others could be, what would be one specific decision about a person or a program that you make and it went wrong and what it taught you? You know, I think hiring people is something that I think all of us need to be much better at. I certainly have done it for throughout my career, but I still don't think I'm absolutely at the point of perfection. I've made wrong choices in my life as well. So I think those are some of the things that sometimes when you hire somebody, especially

at a senior level, when you promote the wrong person or you hire the wrong person or you don't reward the right person, all of that, type one, type two errors, all of that. Those I think my regrets and failures are all pertaining to people. Businesses have enough leeway to recover from financial setbacks and everything. People failures, I think, are much harder to bounce back from. This is perfectly put. And this is bringing me to the closure of our conversation before I close anything you want to add, or anything you want to add to your book or what you do today.

Oh, yeah, I work with organizations on helping them, you know, really think about talent in a fairly different way. And I would love to connect with people on my LinkedIn or my LinkedIn newsletter. And then, of course, I want to invite people to read my book, which is going to happen at the end of the year, A-identity, how to be replaceable in the new world of work. So I look forward to connecting and staying connected. This is great. And Abidjit, this was exactly the conversation I hope for two practitioners, you and I, who came to the same conclusion from completely two different angles and rooms. you from talent and identity, me from data and delivery, having a solution-oriented mindset, but lending on the same findings. AI winners are not the ones, which is the best models,

but they are the ones who solve the people problem underneath. My five failures, by the way, are related to people's problem, nothing else. And it's the ability to identify the right people and bringing the right people in the front was the talent I was missing. Still, I don't think, I had it completely nailed down. For everyone listening, Abhijit Hardery, CEO of Abjeejee L.C and the author of AI Identity, which is his new book, Go find him. It'll be launched on Amazon.

It's already there. Abidji? Soon start appearing on Amazon. In another couple of weeks, it should be there. So it should be there. But it'll be launched formally at the end of the year towards November, December. So it can be available for pre-order, I think, in the next. couple of weeks. I'll definitely buy one of the first ones and tag me so that I can share your book

to my subscribers. I'll find him on LinkedIn. Subscribe to his newsletter. We'll keep some links on our article on the LinkedIn and pick up the book as soon as it has launched. I'm sure it will be phenomenal. And if this conversation changed how you think about AI, your own team and identity, subscribe to the Think I podcast. Abhiji, thank you so much to be on the show. Thank you very much for having me. It was so lovely to talk to you about music and pianos and all of that and how it is related. All the best. Thank you so much for having.

Thank you, Abidjeej. You have been listening to Think Yeah, a podcast with Dave. Take one idea from this episode and turn it into action.