Alternative title: Why Mandatory Return to Office Fulltime Will Push Away Talent. The new generation doesn’t mind wearing pimple patches to work. They are a different breed. When I started work, we were trained to blend in as much as possible – we were there to learn and be trained and do what we were told. This new generation is different; they didn’t grow up being forced into the same professional norms as us. They have a different view to work and their approach i

I put my job description into AI to ask it how it can one day replace me. I did this, not defensively so that I can build an argument to justify my existence, but so I can stay ahead of AI and understand how I need to adapt to make sure I can continue to be relevant. I know a lot of people are scared that AI will make them redundant. I’m not a fortune teller, nor due I claim to be the smartest person in the room. But there is one thing I know, we can spend our time tryin

Very rarely can decisions not be undone. For this reason, I like to think of decisions as two-way doors: you walk through them, but you can always walk back if needed. Too often I see people paralyzed into inaction because they are too concerned with making the wrong decision. This inaction “trap” leads to inevitable delays and costs as they attempt to try to gather 100% of the information needed to make a “perfect” decision. This isn’t reality. No matter how much info

It’s time we all had an MRI. No, not that kind of MRI, a professional MRI, i.e., a Most Respectful Interpretation. In the interest of full disclosure, I did not make up this acronym but rather it was shared with me by a former boss who made it mandatory reading for his management team, and I’m so glad he did as it’s something I think about constantly, have shared it with many people, and have used it to defuse many a high-stakes situation. As far as I know, the original

I once worked for a large, well-established multinational Canadian bank that was older than Canada itself (by 36 years). I have also worked at a small bank that only operated in one country (by balance sheet size definition it was less than 1/30th the size of the multinational bank). While there’s so many interesting comparisons I learnt from those two very different experiences, the one I want to talk about here is “Organizational Drag”. I know what you’re thinking, ‘wha

One of the challenges with AI is that everyone wants to use it, but given it’s new technology, most don’t know how beyond treating it as an over-glorified search function. I’d like to share an example of how I used AI so that it may inspire you to consider how you could adopt it – an old boss of mine who used to love saying, “let’s work smarter, not harder” and proper adoption of AI tools will help us all work smarter (not to mention will give us competitive edge!). I prev

A lot of people are up in arms that AI is the death of creativity as it will replace artists and authors as nothing is sacred anymore if generative AI can create pictures and write stories. I don’t agree. Did the invention of auto-tune eliminate all natural singers? Andrea Bocelli would tell you no. The way I think of it, is did the introduction of the camera mean no one paints anymore? Did replicas and prints destroy the market for firsthand originals? Did the intro

I am a proponent of banks introducing the ability for customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly so that they can more easily move money internationally. A number of banks that have done that already are now thinking about what they can do next. It seems the path often leads them down the decision to build their own stable coin (since money transfers using crypto not subject to price fluctuations is more palatable for the average user). It seems like a logical s

I wrote a post about why leveraging crypto is the smartest move for individuals sending money cross border, and now I want to talk about why banks should be rushing to introduce the technology for customers to buy and sell crypto directly through their online banking platforms. The main reason is so that banks don’t continue to lose customers to fintechs. That really should be reason enough, but it isn’t the only reason. Let me explain some concepts first: A bank customer

Typically if you want to send money overseas you would do a wire payment through your bank. This requires you knowing specific details about the customer name, account number, and their bank information. It will take a few days, and if you accidentally get a detail wrong, forget about it, you wont know for a few days and you’ll have to start the process all over again. An alternative way is to leverage crypto currency. Crypto still sounds like one of those “get rich quick