What works Today will not work Tomorrow – A Business Perspective

For start, yeah, please start. We can, if she is not going to interfere with the, I think she start your tune. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I, C Paul Singh, president, NISSMAT, a very good evening, and thank you all for joining us today evening. I also extend warm and hearty welcome to our three eminent and learned speakers who are with us in this session. NISSMAT has so far conducted 132 webinars, and today's edition is 133. In these webinars we normally have two to three scholars, and these scholars present their view, and the session is then left open for discussion. Besides the webinars, we have also conducted a number of interactive sessions where only one speaker addresses the seminar, and then it is left open to the audience.

Today's webinar, the subject of today's webinar, is on What Works Today Will Not Work Tomorrow - A Business Perspective. This session shall be addressed by three eminent speakers: Colonel Sunil Sharma, retired, presently head, health, safety, security and environment at APM Terminals; Rajiv Thakker, MD of Grassik Consultants; and Mr Anil Puri, chairman and managing director of APS group of companies. The registration and the countries which are being represented shall be informed to you in due course by the moderator of this webinar.

This webinar is being conducted, as all of you know, by NISSMAT, so I must say a few words about NISSMAT. National Institute of Security, Safety, Management and Applied Technology was established in the year 1990. It started training courses in the field of private security, safety, security technology. Today NISSMAT has become a think tank organization with an association of more than 85 scholars with us who are providing inputs in the field of security, safety, topical subjects and technology. NISSMAT has established four important wings: the first, NISSMAT Forum, to organize webinars, seminars, our conferences, interaction programs and reward and award giving functions; then is NISSMAT Academy, to conduct virtual training; then is NISSMAT Enterprise, to undertake audits and studies in various sectors. NISSMAT Foundation is our last segment, which will start in due course of time to undertake welfare and social work for the society at large, with particular reference to security and safety.

After this I'd like to say a few words about the moderator of this session, chairman Premier Shield, Captain Pavan Ahluwalia. He took voluntary retirement from the Parachute Regiment of Indian Army at a very young age and started his own business career. He is a businessman unafraid of telling the truth, a thoughtful and inspiring leader. He's adept in creating alliances and has created a business group under the name of Ahluwalia Holding Private Limited, which has offices at various places in India and abroad. Also, he is the past president and former chairman of Council of International Investigators, USA, and is awarded the Malcolm Thompson award and Ahluwalia award by this. After, with these words, I'll go forward and say a few words to introduce the subject, What Works Today Will Not Work Tomorrow - A Business Perspective.

The work for tomorrow is generally veiled behind a shroud of uncertainty. We are faced with a big question: where we are heading to, and what we are required to do for adapting ourselves to the future. The workplace may considerably change in the next few years. We always think that we can fix up things as soon as a problem arises. However, it's not always so. It's not always very easy to fix up or resolve a crisis all of a sudden. A crisis can occur unexpectedly, disturbing the stability of the company.

The future directions of workplace in any organization are likely to affect the following. Number one, the role of executives that may shift to hiring to developing, instead of hiring only to developing new managers. Upskilling and digital efficiency would probably outweigh the tenure and experience of a person. The functions of smart machines shall enhance with the passage of time. The easiest way probably to identify a business problem in the changed environment would require concentration on three key elements. First, is the problem posing an immediate threat to the organization? Two, would the situation involve an element of surprise, sudden surprise? Three, what is the severity, what is the intensity of the problem?

Keeping in view these problems, we start working on the strategies for future. There shall be a need to create future work strategies by identifying future needs. After identifying the trends, action will have to be taken to craft, to design the future strategy, our strategies. Our speakers today shall perhaps discuss all about matters and more issues on this subject. With these few words, I like to pass on the session to the moderator, Mr Pavan Ahluwalia. Please.

Thank you, Mr President. Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge the participants. We have participants today from various countries who have registered with us: from UAE, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, the United States, Kenya and Sweden. We are presently live on Zoom and on YouTube. We are grateful to our sponsors for the day: Grassik Consultants, APS group, Hatfield Investigation, Premier Shield Private Limited, Premier Consulting and Investigations, and India Skills.

I'd like to say a word about the advertising opportunities that we have in NISSMAT. For every program that we do, we send out over 100,000 emails, on which the advertisement opportunity sort of rides on, and we have over 15,000 WhatsApp messages going out. Plus we have a lot of other options. Please do write to us if anyone is interested in advertising on the NISSMAT platform.

I'd like to introduce our president to you all. Mr Cal Singh is a person of multiple talents. He's a masters in English literature and a ranking police officer who had the distinction of raising the Rapid Action Force and the Internal Security Academy at Mount Abu during his service. He has been bestowed with numerous awards and commendations. Post retirement he was recognized as the security personality of the year in 2009 by the President of India. He advises several associations, including CAPSI, APDI, EPSA. Within India his face is well recognized nationwide, as many news channels seek his views almost on a daily basis.

Our subject of the day has been introduced to you by the president, and our first speaker is going to be Mr Rajiv Thakker. A word about Mr Rajiv Thakker. He's the managing director of Grassik Consultants. He founded Grassik Consultants, which is one of the finest search firms in our country today. He established this in 1993. He's amongst the pioneers of the executive search industry and is a very respected counselor, guide and mentor who has helped people transition careers successfully across industries and roles. He's an expert change and innovation driver. He has been instrumental in making Grassik the most relevant and successful search firm in the country today. He has been recognized by the Economic Times amongst the 50 most promising business leaders of Asia in 2021 for his leadership qualities. I would now request Mr Rajiv Thakker to say a few words on the subject.

Thank you, Pavan. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Our topic today, What Works Today Will Not Work Tomorrow, is a very highly relevant aspect of our life. Change has swept the world at a pace never experienced before. You know, history has shown us that for every black swan event that has ever occurred in the world, whether it was the pandemic of 1918, whether it was the Great Depression of 1929, whether the two World Wars, the 2008 global recession, or the pandemic which started in 2020, all these events brought about a change in the world post the event that had very little resemblance to the world that existed prior to it. Actually, all these events acted as a gateway between one world to the next.

Now, we all know, you know, we've been reading newspapers and we're following what is happening around the world. Today the world is going through a metamorphosis, driven by a combination of the recent COVID-19 pandemic — that's one of the incidents — we have social unrest in many parts of the world, and a resultant economic setback which is sweeping the world. The changes wrought are global, rapid, and have left no one untouched because of the heavy global connect that exists today. Like they say, you know, if one country sneezes, it's another country which has actually got the cold. People are fighting back through a sense of urgency to ideate, improvise, innovate and nurture new economic models. Fueling this transformation has been the rapid advancement in technology that has led to cross fertilization of knowledge and ideas at a pace never seen before. To survive these changes, businesses and people will need to reimagine themselves and their role.

Now I'm going to tell you some of the key changes which have encompassed the world, which are driving these changes. Let's look at the world, you know, let's look at it politically. We are aware politically new world alignments are being created all over the world. We are aware of new military, economic alignments which are being created between US, between Japan, India and other countries. So politically there is an upheaval going on. Socially, I will refer to the Gen Z, which is the new generation which is coming into the workplace, which is, you know, very self-centered, insecure and always wanting more. We have to deal with this new generation, and they want to achieve faster with less efforts. Technologically, you'll hear the words like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, blockchain, IoT, augmented reality, which are redefining an alternate physical world. Economically, the impact of trade wars, sanctions and one-upmanship between the economic powerhouses are cascading down to every nation on the planet. And environmentally, our ecosystem is deteriorating at a fast pace, and sustainability is becoming a key to running successful businesses. Let me tell you over here that sustainability does not only include environment, it also includes profit and planet — profit, planet and people. So these are the things which have been impacting the entire world today, which is how I'm going to prove to you, show to you, that what is working today will not work tomorrow.

It seems that every day we are waking up to a new normal. What was the rapidity at which our lifestyle, the way we work, the way we see entertainment, the way we travel, the way we shop, eat out or buy our daily necessities are changing — and therein lies the nub of the topic, what works today will not work tomorrow. I'm going to give you a perspective of some of these everyday changes and touch upon some key aspects to show you that the new emerging order will bear no relation to the present one. By highlighting these changes first, I will then show you how the present system of education, healthcare, thought processes, capabilities and skills of today will not be valid tomorrow.

Let me start. I'm going to run through eight or ten points that cover the business aspect of the world. I'm going to be focusing basically on the businesses, you know, that are getting impacted, and I'll show you how each and every business, in what way they are impacted, and in brief, so that you understand the impact. Let me start with businesses and the way we work. Working from office to work from home, or hybrid working — hybrid working is half work from office and half work from home — has been a huge leap towards flexible working. That's something we had never heard before, but we now are hearing about. Flexible working has created a huge HR challenge of managing a remote workforce, from hiring people to onboarding them, to monitoring their work, appraisal, and exposure to work culture.

You know, when the people are coming to office, one of the key things that we do is expose them to our culture, because culture is very important for people. How do you expose a remote workforce to your culture when they're not even coming to office, or when they are coming, they're coming only in bits and pieces and not as a whole, because the culture is the whole organization? How do you onboard people remotely? How do you interview them remotely without meeting them, and then hire them? Because it's a very difficult thing to interview them remotely, and not having met them, and then you hire them. So businesses are struggling to manage a remote workforce.

That is giving rise to issues of mental wellness, anxiety, depression and increased domestic problems. Now, that's something that you would have heard recently about — anxiety, mental health, mental wellness. These are words which never had so much of importance as they have become now, because working from home, which is a place of your leisure, you are now using that place for your work, and you are not stepping out of the house. The husband and wife are together, the children are together, and it's creating issues because they are not separating in 24 hours for even a short period of time. These are creating multiple issues of mental wellness. Some of you, if not all of you, may have heard of the great resignation that has taken place in the last one year. Massive resignations have swept the globe. That's an outshoot of this. Talent retention has become a major puzzle with no clear-cut answers. IT companies are facing a unique challenge of moonlighting by employees working from home. This is a new issue, a new terminology that we have been hearing about people. We have never heard this before. So this is as far as the business and the people working are concerned, how the whole gamut of their work environment has changed.

Going to the next point, look at communication. One of the most important aspects of running a business, of leadership, is communication. Communication today is undergoing a radical change, moving from physical to virtual. Face to face interaction has been replaced by mediums like Zoom, like what we are meeting today, Google Meet, and what is coming in tomorrow, metaverse, which is on the way. In fact, you'd be surprised — I don't know whether some of you are aware — India experienced its first metaverse wedding in February this year. A young couple, Abhijit and Sriti, became the first couple to marry on a 3D metaverse platform in India. Is this just the beginning of the end of the conventional marriage in physical space? Time will tell, but a beginning has already been made. So this is communication, which is one of the most important aspects of business.

Let me come to marketing productivity. Marketing, a basic aspect of all business, is being enhanced considerably by social media platforms and personalized messages. Technology is helping in creating analytics on consumer behavior, which helps companies create better sales strategies, change retail outlet and visual merchandising. I'll give you an example. If anybody is from Delhi, and if anybody's been to Select City mall, and if anybody has been to Zara — you know, because based on the analytics that you get, what are the type of people who are coming into your stores and what type of shopping they're doing, they have relaid the stores, fronting those clothes which are most in demand. The ones that are least in demand are kept on the side. So the complete layout of stores has been changed to highlight those products which are maximum on sale. Where the, you know, if normally Zara has 25 to 35, people who are the ones who are the biggest buyers, their clothes are kept as soon as you enter. People of our age are not regularly going to Zaras; our clothes are kept in the side. So you know, with business analytics you relay your stores, you redo your visual merchandising as per the analytics. That was not possible in a world in which you did not have digitization.

Let's look at smart devices. Smart devices with the right software will soon allow for remote management of every aspect of business, from sales enablement, content marketing, customer relations, shipping and invoices, all at the click of a button. You will have all these things at your hand. You will be delivered products, you will be delivered bill on your WhatsApp or on your mail. You do not have to go to the shop to collect your bill and your warranty cards or whatever is there. All will be available at the click of a button. Mobile devices are being used both by buyers and sellers to buy, sell, shop, find local businesses and share their retail experiences with friends, acquaintances, prospects and Instagram strangers every day. So whatever we do, we are able to share our experiences, which can push up a sale or which can push down a sale, depending on the experience that you have faced. So this is happening, and Instagram has become a platform for selling. You know, on Instagram we have a page for our own colony, where anybody who's selling anything or anybody who's looking for something puts it up, and we get responses immediately from our neighbors and from the people living there. So we are like connected to strangers through mobile devices.

Very, very critical aspect of business which is now shaping how the future of business will run is cloud computing and digital transformation. Digital transformation is already driving the rate of change faster than ever before. It is driving foundational change in how an organization operates, optimizing internal resources and delivering value to customers. Cloud technologies provide the foundation of becoming more agile, collaborative and customer focused. Cloud computing allows businesses to move some of the operations to third party servers accessible via internet connectivity, without the need to own and maintain one's own servers. Just imagine, you do not need a server today. You do not need to have a server, look after it, security, keep it on, or have a problem about data storage. These are third party servers, massive servers, where your entire data is kept secure and available to you at the click of a button. This allows for variable data packages and rapid expansion and mobility without the fear of downtime, crashes or permanent loss of data. Companies adopting the cloud are innovating quickly, scaling efficiently, and even bringing in new marketing capabilities more quickly. This allows small to medium-sized businesses access to resources that would have been cost prohibitive in the past, and evens the playing field when competing against corporations that have far more funding. So you have access to the same server that a company which is 10x bigger than you — the same server you can use and have the same benefit that that company is going to have, despite you being a company which need not spend money on big servers.

Then I come to consumer behavior. The resultant consumer behavior is undergoing a stupendous change at an extremely fast pace. We have a B2C model when we're buying essential items. This is undergoing a D2C, which is business to consumer — it is coming direct to consumer — which offers products at far more reasonable prices. It will allow consumer better choices and better buying abilities, as the product literature is displayed on D2C websites. Now, offline literature — you know, if you buy a Nykaa product on the website, every product is explained to you, what type of product a particular type of skin needs, a particular type of hair needs, or anything, and you have a choice of choosing the product rather than going and buying something off the shelf and then trying it out. Now that's a direct to consumer model. So you have Good Glamm, you have Bombay Shaving products, you have Nykaa — Nykaa also has an offline store — but these are all direct to consumer products who do not have an offline presence. With the result, the offline retailers are working hard to rework their revenue model. If some of you have gone to newer malls, you will find that malls are allocating more space to FnB, gyms, salons, children play areas to increase footfall. It is not retailers who are drawing the people; it is the food and beverage, the restaurants, the children play areas which are now attracting footfall. So that's a huge change the malls are undergoing.

Look at entertainment. It affects all of us; we are all fond of entertainment. OTT is moving people away from cinema halls. Global and regional movies and web series in multiple languages are occupying mind space. With dubbing and subtitling you can see a movie in Malayalam, you can see a movie in Chinese, you can see a movie in Spanish, French. You can see their web series; they are dubbed in English, they are subtitled in English. You can see movies dubbed in Hindi, and everything is available on demand. And what has happened, star power is giving way to content. All the movies this year which had big superstars, who used to attract people to the hall because of their name, have flopped. Today content is the king. Content is replacing star power. Everybody wants content, which has become a huge challenge for the script writers of all the shows, because if content is not good, nobody has time to see anything, because the variety and choices are so many.

Let's look at how we pay. While digital payments are on the rise, the game changer will be when RBI introduces digital currency. I don't know whether some of you are aware or not that RBI is about to introduce digital currency very soon, probably by early next year or end of this year. Unlike cryptocurrency, digital currency will be centralized, regulated and be a legal tender. You can buy anything. Cryptocurrency is only valid in two countries in the world as a legal tender — Cuba and one more place in South America — but digital currency is on the way, and you will be able to use digital currency, which will reduce the usage of cash as we know today, as it exists today in physical form, and soon we will be moving into a world where there's going to be complete cashless transactions.

Another aspect which is impacting all of us, and that's education. Much of the education system around the world is designed for a world that no longer exists. Today, access to knowledge is dependent on access to technology and internet, and many young underprivileged people end up getting left behind because they do not have access to internet.

Then I come to employment. When it comes to employment, there is no such thing as a secure job anymore. Increasingly, the idea of job and career feels like an artifact of the last century. Rather than a routine job that lasts a lifetime, job changes are looking like a series of projects. Talent is getting scarce, and desperate organizations are offering phenomenal incentives to retain talent, or using gig workers, moonlighters or graduates to fill critical roles.

Now, with some of these examples that I have shown you, it is easy to understand that the statement "what works today will not work tomorrow" refers to a continuous state of disruption. Experts of all varieties are trying to find an answer to this in their own way. The view is that people's relationship with technology will deepen as larger segments of the population come to rely more on digital connections for work, education, healthcare, daily commercial transactions and essential social interactions. It would be living in a tele-everything world.

This reminds me of a very famous quote by John Maynard, who made it in 1937: that the idea of the future being different from the present is so repugnant to our conventional modes of thought and behavior that we, most of us, offer a great resistance to acting on it in practice. This he said in 1937. This of course is a key human trait, and yet we are at a critical juncture in human history which could lead to a widely contrasting future. We need to remember that the future is not set in stone. It is malleable, the result of an interplay among megatrends, game changers and, above all, human agencies. Our effort should be to accept and adapt to the newness of things with equal rapidity, else we will end up becoming victims of change. Thank you.

Thank you, Rajiv. Thank you very much. In fact, there are so many things that are changing the world today. What Amazon delivers by people delivering, they'll be dead — I think there'll be drones taking over very soon. So the whole world is changing. Our next speaker is Colonel Sharma. I'd like to introduce him first. Colonel Sharma is a certified safety and security analyst. He specializes in strategic planning and process operations, to include safety and security. He has working experience with Reliance Retail as head of security and loss prevention, with ICICI Bank as head cash management and ATM operations, and in his present position as head of health, safety and security of APM Terminals in India. Ladies and gentlemen, Colonel Sharma.

Good evening, everyone. I'll just share my screen. And yes, are you all able to see my screen please? Yes. Yeah, can you see my screen please, the full screen? Yeah, we can. Right. So thank you very much, thank you very much for inviting me on this platform, a very prestigious platform, to speak on What Works Today Will Not Work Tomorrow. It's actually such a vast, vast subject, vast field. If I actually start talking, it's endless, but we have to restrict ourself in these limited 20 minutes given to us. And then here I start. It's a different way I would like to present. Basically I'll be concentrating on safety. Isn't it romantic, to start with? Well, good evening once again, ladies and gentlemen. Let me assure you, your heart and my heart will keep working today. They'll keep working tomorrow. They'll keep working day after, and years and years to come, inshallah.

Anyway, here I'm basically trying to show the anxiety. You can see in the picture above, you can see here that this gentleman, the safety officer in his goggles, he's very excited, his heart is beating, and the heart is beating of the man doing non-compliance. You know, he's running away from the safety officer. What's actually happening today? It's like one is trying to catch one, and other is trying to run away. Now, how safety actually works today — it's basically a safety guy does audits. I would quickly like to give a background about safety in the next five minutes, and rest 15 minutes I'll try to cover as to what we are looking forward, or what would be in the future.

In a set-up you have various controls placed. You put lockdown when you work, you put on the machines that things don't go wrong, you lock out, you ensure controls are there. You also see that there are various man machine interference. This is the biggest challenge for any safety professional, the man machine interference which is there. You also come across various inspection and checks which have to be done, also interventions. This, I think, whether the traffic police or any safety officer or any supervisor, he has to do — he has to intervene. Even in our security agency also, if you go and check and you find a guy sleeping somewhere, you have to intervene: gentleman, just get up. And of course, very dangerous tasks, what you see, like working on height, working the tasks which are very, very dangerous, and one has to perform them in the absence of various controls. Well, our safety ambition is simple: we want this world to be safe to work and live.

Now, when you hear this sound, the heart beats — can you hear the sound, the heartbeats? No? Probably. Can you hear this, the heartbeats? I'm not trying to create a mahaul where you ask for some good fried pakoras or tea, but yes, all over the globe these challenges are there. There are various challenges. But in a typical organization, what you see, there is a gentleman called the head of HSSE, the head of safety, head of security, who looks after the environment, also the health. We plan everything. Everything, it should go in a straight line. We plan things should go right. We plan, the work starts, but somehow the controls go down. The hazards of the work, they start increasing. The gaps start seducing between the reality of work and the execution. What you do, the prevention goes down, the failing safely controls are going down, and the stage comes when there is an incident, there's an event, and again the things start going to their places.

And it all works. It's not that these are not working. These controls are not working effectively today? Even today also, workers go back home safe. The safety department remains on its toes, which I think is inevitable. And I cannot predict here in future what exactly will happen, but yes, I'm very sure that there will be some kind of relief in times to come. Employees still look upon to the security guys for the guidance. Computation of incident figures still scare the management. The efficiency is still counted towards as to how these figures are, how these number of incidents have taken place. Efficiency is still counted by law enforcement agencies in terms of serious incidents, and employees still look upon for the guidance to the management for safety related issues. And in case one gets sick, there are chances people try to put these figures under the carpet. The blame game continues. It's not how, it's who. People say who has done it; nobody says how it happened.

So with this a bit small background of safety, now what exactly, safety differently, we are looking for tomorrow, the beautiful tomorrow? What will happen, how it will happen? Well, in future what we see is a real-time collision avoidance. This term, gentlemen, sounds very simple. You have seen today the cars, the driverless cars running today. When I say the real-time collision avoidance, it's nothing but it's a high performance computing of data coupled with your vision, motion and other senses — for example, preventing collision with humans and others. Trust me, like when you go to office, it is compulsory for you to carry your card with you, like in an office you carry your identity card — the times will come you may have to carry tags on yourself. There'll be equipments fitted with these sensors which would stop colliding. Today what you see, a car — there'll be heavy equipments, there'll be light equipments, there'll be various equipments, whether it's in the marine, whether it is the remotely operated vehicles, whether it is the autonomous vehicles. These all vehicles will have some kind of RFIDs attached to them. You may see a scenario tomorrow when there is no policewala to stop you or guide you. There may be no lights on the intersections. I was going through one of the videos on YouTube. They said the best way to control traffic is leave, remove all the controls. It was a foreign country. Of course, I don't know if it works in India or not, but yes, when you have all these controls, this real time collision avoidance system will avoid the incidents happening, at least the collision which happens today.

Next is your AI based behavior, AI assisted behavior analysis. Now what is this? Today you have to really push and to check the behavior of people around you. Now in this case, AI will be able to detect the unusual human motions. It will analyze human motions and behavior. The machine can be trained to inform the workers of unsafe acts, motions, conditions. What I'm trying to say is it's actually happening globally. There are devices fitted in the front of the driver, and when a driver, a truck driver, when he's driving and his eyes are drooping, there's a warning signal to that. Similarly, in your office you will have based systems: if an employee sitting is ergonomically not sitting properly, he's doing some unsafe act, if he's doing which is not acceptable, he'll be warned to correct himself, even to an extent, if the machine is not behaving, the man is not behaving properly, the machine would stop. It'll automatically stop functioning. Other day I was seeing there was a video on WhatsApp — after the time, the mouse runs away automatically. What is it? It's an artificial intelligence. When the work is closed, you try to catch hold of your mouse, the mouse runs away.

Next is your public safety in cities. What is this? We are seeing it today; it's just the starting. You are seeing cameras, you are seeing automatic challans, you're seeing — but what's actually going to happen now in future? The cities which are going to invest substantially in the safe city technologies — that is when you say the robotic guarding, the auto detection systems of wanted persons. Today you have to basically search for a person in the crowd. There'll be systems, when you have fitted those systems in the crowd and you do not want X1 to be present in that crowd, that guy will be immediately detected. You'll be warned. There are going to be unwanted objects, you know. In the future, the traditional crimes, like your burglary, extortion, kidnapping, assault, atrocious traffic jam, may continue — I won't say it'll be absolutely eliminated — but trust me, the criminal will modify his behavior to counter the effects. He would like to move from safe cities, travel to fewer safe cities, and the stage will come wherein he would like to avoid using the electronic devices on him. Today what happens, the crime — if you see the crime detections, most of the time you find the guy carrying mobile to himself. He gets caught; his location is detected. So such devices would be there to make the public places and the city safe.

Next comes is your wireless electrical power distribution systems with automated features and the smart monitoring maintenance. I think this looks like, when we were young, we used to listen to the radio, and we used to hear — when first time I saw TV, I think I took two rounds around the TV as to where the picture is coming from. Similarly, we have lot of incidents, lot of deaths because of this electrical. Stored electrical is a kind of stored energy, so we have lot of fatalities, lot of serious incidents because of this electrical. Now this mainly happens either during the installation or maintenance. In future we will have wireless electricity, thus avoiding all maintenance and installation work. Actually, in wireless technology, the transmitter converts AC into a magnetic field. Now the device picks up this field and converts it back into AC, which will be so-called a wireless electrical transmission, and this has been tried and tested, and tests are on, and we should not be surprised that this is available. Even today also you have devices like NLJD, the nonlinear junction detection devices — you might have heard of them. They are so powerful, and you can detect the electricity. Suppose there's a natural disaster, there's a flood and people getting into it — with these devices you can fairly check whether this area is electrocuted or not. Very helpful during earthquakes, very helpful during landslides, very, very helpful during these natural disasters.

So when it comes to the next very interesting thing, it is futuristic predictions to save from act of God. Nobody can fight against nature, nobody can fight against God, but yes, the man has been able to do so. You see, even today also we have pre-intimations for the cyclones. What is this? Earlier times, when there used to be cyclone, we used to say act of God. Yes, act of God, for which you and we have no control over it, but man is even trying to take nature head on. Thousands of people used to lose their lives, but well, times to come, tomorrow we will have accurate predictions and information in advance regarding earthquakes, floods, lightning, landslides, etc. Just to give an example, you may refer to an app called Damini. I don't know how many of you have heard of this app called Damini. Now this Damini app will alert you generally where are the chances of lightning, where the lightning will strike. This has started coming in. I'm not talking in air; I'm not trying to speak something which is not there. So it may not be possible to install arresters all over the Earth, but yes, we'll have, like we have on high-rise buildings — but anyway, with this advanced information, with all these advanced things which are in pipeline we have, so for a safety individual, yes, for a safety officer, or for your safety, these things are going to really help you out.

Next I come on to is intelligent machines in construction industries. You'll be surprised to know, today construction industry is one of the most neglected and unorganized industry with regard to safety. I think we all should agree to that, and I hope you agree with me. As per the latest figures, at least 108,000 workers are killed on construction sites every year. This represents almost the 30% of the occupational fatalities, and serious injuries which take place in developed countries — it is almost three to four times, and in under developed countries it's almost 3 to 6% that these fatalities take place. What's going to happen? What's the future of construction industry? Today you might have seen the prefabricated things which are coming out today, straight from the machine. You will also see, you have seen the high-rise buildings of 800 meters, 900 meters, kilometers — the competition is there to go as high as possible, as big and as massive as possible. Now in these industries, a stage will come — you might have heard of 3D printings, you might have heard of materials which are much lighter and very easy to handle. So this industry is one industry which is going to have an effect on the construction, when we'll have lot of less casualties and very, very less safety incidents.

Another important subject comes is your digital farming. Now what is digital, intelligent network in the environment and facilitating farming? This subject, if you say, it is nothing but digital farming is emerging. You'll say, what is this digital farming? Now, as a major trend in the agriculture industry, in digital farming what happens is your workers, machines and environments are connected by ICT, information and communication technology, that promotes safety as well as boosts production activities. What is going to happen, what's big in it? The better management of chemicals. Today we all feel, we all know it, that what we are eating today is contaminated. Now in this case we have a better management of chemicals used in agriculture via sensors supported by the GPS systems. Now it will help us collate maps, the moisture, the soil compression, the fertility, even to an extent of leaf temperatures. What is there — the insects, the diseases, the weed infestation which is going to happen to this — now which are all analyzed by the data management system using AI technology. Thus the ICT systems, when they say, support farmers in knowing exactly which and how many chemicals we are going to use. The precision helps to minimize — it will help us to minimize the use of chemicals for the crop production, thereby reducing the risk of chemical exposure and related diseases for people living near, in the future. This is something, you know, which is absolutely going to change the way people do farming. Today they would use lot of chemicals to increase the productivity. I don't say we have to stop that, but you'll be properly guided what to use, how much to use, where to use, under what circumstance, and thus it will be helpful.

And the last I would just say, it is conformity assessment with intelligent agents. Now humans may no longer be the only intelligent agents, ladies and gentlemen, to perform the conformity assessment. It's the checks, the audits and checks which I showed you first. Now machine readable documents may enable your conformity assessment to support a more agile assessment society, so that changes can be effected in real time as products and systems evolve. Similarly, the test methods will need to evolve along with your conformity assessment documents, perhaps in the form of downloadable machine readable procedures that control digitally enabled test environments. It shall reduce dependency on physical checks, audits, monitoring and surveillance.

Now, the list is endless. The thing is, maybe there's a time that every man is a HSSE man. There is no human interference; it's a machine world. The artificial intelligence works, and the medical, financial, agriculture, manufacturing is digitized to an extent that yes, we all are dependent on machine to quite an extent. But the question comes up — there's a safety professional who is feeling a threat. He would feel, is my job going to go? No. Are the workers going to feel that yes, we are going to be jobless? No, you are not going to be jobless, as in many of the articles I have read that the population in future is decreasing. We'll have to have more dependency on the machines. There are countries where population is going down. And in the end I will say, there is something which doesn't happen today, will not happen tomorrow also. These unsafe act conditions which you see, this doesn't work today and will not work tomorrow as well. These are neither working today; they will not work tomorrow. With that, thank you very much. I finish.

Thank you very much, Sunil. What a wonderful presentation. And I now call upon Anil Puri. Let me just introduce Anil. He's the chairman and managing director of companies. His companies today employ over 30,000 persons in 27 states of the country. In 2011 he was one of the first persons in the security industry to sell off his cash management operations to Blackstone, which is a private equity company. He's a leader in the area of security, facility and gas solutions. He is an active member of the Central Association of Private Security Industry. He's a member on its executive committee, and as the vice president he chairs the Ethics Committee of this organization. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Anil Puri.

Thank you, Pavan ji. Ladies and gentlemen, good day to you, as per the time of your part of the world, and we thank you for being with us today on this august occasion, where we've had this huge lot of discussions on various subjects. I would like to extend my thanks to Mr Pavan Ahluwalia, Mr Cal Singh, NISSMAT, and to my co-panelists, to make this discussion so beautiful and wonderful for everybody, and I hope that I will be able to add a little bit of value to this. I would like to thank Mr Rajiv, my co-panelist, who has put in the entire discussions into a good perspective and has been able to bring about a lot of relevance to the subject matter. Colonel Sharma has given a detailed insight into the safety and security, safety and processes and procedures, with a lot of insights also. I shall speak to you on the service sector, with a bit of focus on the security part of it. Since I have the last spot for the discussions, I shall try to be precise, concise in my discussions, to be able to allow for us to have a Q&A session, and in the time frame that is provided to me.

To begin, I would just have to say that I've had a small little problem with the computer, so I am having to request Miss Natasha from NISSMAT to be able to do my presentation. But that really brings about the thing that what was working earlier is not working now. It really adds into the value that that is what is our point of discussion today. So can you move to the next slide please?

So I basically try to begin my whole procedure by saying that it is small little issues which actually grow into big problems. Just a small little spark can add to a huge fire, and it is this which results in what was prevalent today, and suddenly changes because of circumstances which are not in our control. Whether we make those circumstances a part of our processes and we try and control them, like Colonel Sharma said — that is one way to be able to deal with it. But then obviously, at all given times there are issues which are always going to be there. Can we have the next slide please?

So I begin by saying that change is the only constant. I think if we all agree to this age-old saying, we can say very clearly that we have to be ready to accept the change, and change is always for the good. We've all known it, we've all accepted it. But the problem that we face is that the change is coming about in today's world with the intensity, and coupled with the ferocity of the change, which is making us relive the way that we need to think about how we are going to conduct ourselves, and for that we have to be always on our guard. So that's the next slide please.

So we basically realize, what are the kind of changes that are happening in our life? What's actually controlling our lives today? Basically we would say that technology is in every part and sphere of life today — we all agree with that — and it rules the lives in the minutest of ways. With the advancement due to technology, AI, 5G, automation, algorithms, everything is getting controlled and is being made to operate in a faster and a better environment. This has resulted in the world being connected today, because of all the new technologies that have come in. We all know of the fact that there used to be a time when letters used to be written, and we had the option of time on our hands to be able to turn around and say that we can reply to that after thinking about it. Today the new concept of emails has made us actually be immediately having to respond to a thing, and very often we end up responding without having time on our side to be able to think a thing through, to be able to bring it to its logical conclusions.

The next part of things, what is happening is that customers are changing. We never had e-commerce. We used to go and do brick and mortar shopping, but today we get everything delivered to us. We had to go to hospitals and stand in lines for that; today we get all our tests done at home. These are just some of the ways that technology and the change in the world is affecting every kind of our lives. The customers, their needs are changing. Today we are having to look at a whole lot of site and safety procedures and processes. Like Colonel Sharma said, everything has got to be monitored, everything has got to be tracked, everything has got to have a process. It's got to have a standing operating procedure, and how are we going to react to it, so that the entire processes are automated and the reactions are able to be done at the spot, at the spot of the moment, so that the customer service does not suffer. Can you have the next slide please?

Even the threat perceptions are changing. We have seen that there is terrorism, there's wars. We've had this COVID, this thing, 2019 — did we ever think that the world would be able to come to a standstill? It was unconceived, it was unthought of, and nobody would have ever believed in it. But today, when we look back at it, the world did come to a stop. Did we look at what's going to happen in the wars? Happening till end of last year, we never thought that there would be a war in Ukraine, and that it would result in the drastic political changes, into the multipolar world that we are suddenly seeing ourselves in. It was a US-led western world; it is today turning into an Eastern-led multipolar world. People are taking sides, people are beginning to understand, people are beginning to know what is happening, all because technology and information sharing and knowledge is becoming very, very fast, and we have to react to that.

So that brings me to the next point, which is the power and reach of social media. Now, social media — basically we used to read newspapers; today we get everything onto our mobile. We get everything spontaneous. Even news which used to be in full scale today comes in shorts. We get a synopsis of news. Everything is there, because the speed of dissemination of information and knowledge through media has become so fast that it actually creates a crisis within an organization, or even within the world, because of a minor misconception or a non-reaction to a thing, which can have a ruinous effect on our businesses also. Next please.

Now this basically results in an impact on the human, or the manpower, human resources, the manpower part. What I feel is that with this entire new technology, new algorithms coming in, new systems and processes coming in, the speeds changing, this is going to bring about a loss of routine jobs. The small mid-level jobs are all going to be out. That's going to create a problem, because there's going to be a lot of unemployment. But we can also look at one other advantage of all this: that technology will bring about a higher level of high wage jobs, of people who need to take better responses. People are going to lose mid-level jobs, but coming in with high-end jobs — that's going to be a major advantage of this. The other aspects of this which are going to happen is basically that the lifelong learning, which we used to do, will be a part of our lives now, and we will have to — we'll no longer be able to do frontloading of jobs. We'll have to be always on the job, always learning, and always coming up with self learning. Skill sets will require what I have termed here as STEM — science, technology, engineering and maths. Handling of technology will be the main thing. Along with that, we'll have to have interpersonal management, communication and higher level of analytical skills. These are the changes that are going to be required to deal with the changes which are happening day-to-day in our lives. Next.

Even the higher level managements will have to change the way they used to do their management part of it. Earlier on, the boss turned around and said, this is the rule. Well, yes, even today it says, but today we have to provide better leadership, which has got to be the ultimate and most essential demand of management. We have to have sharper focus on the ability to efficiently network, manage public relations, display intercultural sensitivities, marketing, and creating new revenue streams. The social and emotional management of intelligence and handling of dissent is going to be a very, very major part, because of these changes which are coming about.

Nearer home, if we look at the security industry, we used to have lot of small little issues which were there in the past. You had complaints which are made on various little things, but they were always small in nature. But today, with technology, with knowledge, with computers, with social media, nobody is going to wait to be able to make his point. The customer will not wait to make his point known to you, which is going to result that in every aspect of security we need to actually take things far more seriously. We need to plan on it, we need to have escalations availability on that, we need to have responses on that, and we need to have systems laid out which will automatically respond. So the general approach is being, you know, we would always turn and say that if the client had a problem, let's calm him down first and let's douse the fire. But everything today has brought about the change that service providers will have to take corrective measures so that their occurrence in future is minimized, intensity and severity of complaints are reduced. So correcting the problem means correcting the process. That is how we are going to have to react. That is where our changes are going to happen in our lives.

As I was talking about the social media — the social media may create a faster reaction, which has got to be done. The small things, the odd complaint, the odd comment, anything made loosely today can just be blown out of proportion, and a complaint may not come directly to a service provider but will appear on the social media. Now we, as an organization, as service industry, we need to be able to have a process in place that we can be alerted promptly about any issues which are ongoing, social issues, which we can then react to, and we can deal with them, and we can explain them to everybody, and we can come up with a reactive measure to be able to control issues. Next please.

Some crisis management tips which I basically would like to share here, which are a part of what we have learned and where we feel that we can add value here, is that we need to respond immediately. We need to be prompt. When a social media thing comes, don't try and delete it. Issue an apology, try to come up with it, nip the problem in the bud. Engage and don't argue with people. Acknowledge the concerns and frustrations, and try and create a feeling that you are accepting it and you're trying to actually find a solution for it, and then you will try and sort it out. Keep the internal communication — now, in most organizations we have a whole lot of people who are there operating. Everybody has to be on the same page. Everybody has to come up with the same answer. We've got to avoid rumors. We have to make sure that everybody knows what is the solution that we are providing, and that has got to be spread; the message has got to get spread across. Learn from experience — and that is one of the biggest advantages which the organizations can do, because experience teaches us the way to handle a problem: how we have dealt with it in the past, did we do it well, did we do it wrong, what are the learnings out of it, and can we now, having learned there, put the things in a better perspective to make sure that again there is no repetition. We also need to keep both our suppliers and our customers in the loop in this, because they need to know what is happening with you, how you're reacting, how you're doing it, so that they understand that you are playing the game above board and you are a responsive organization. Next slide please.

So this brings about to the final thing. There are some home truths which all of us know, which we need to always understand, and we always need to act on. So that comes about the fact that what is the problem which is there today is not going to be there tomorrow, because we need to be ahead of the game. We need to be able to basically come up with a game plan which is going to keep us ahead. If you're not evolving, you are dying. Everyone on board has to begin the process of embracing change in your organization. Natasha, can you change the slide please? So now the next one, yeah.

So until and unless everybody on board in the organization does not embrace the change and makes it a cultural norm, it becomes very difficult to be able to provide a front to the clients that we are an organization which is evolving. Then, execution has to be perfect. We do not have to wait on how to do it. We have to begin the process prior to any complaints happening, any thing happening, so that we are able to come up with a solution, and never be afraid of any change which is going to be there. And last but not the least is that we need to always be recruiting our next set of leaders. We need to develop the second line and the third line of command. It never means that if you as the boss have developed another line of command or another line of leaders, that you are redundant. You will never be redundant. You will be thinking of a larger picture, allowing people under you to be able to plan and do things. So that is where I would end my thing, by saying that we need to plan for what is going to happen tomorrow, because today's a done day. Tomorrow is a new day; it's going to bring in new challenges and it's going to bring in new things, and that's the way we have to look at life. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Anil. Now we open the house to question and answers. The first question — I had Sanjay Ricky ask this question. Sanjay, can you please?

Yeah, very good evening, our learned speakers. I think it was a very informative and very enriching, I think, knowledge which I could gather personally. I had a couple of points which I wanted to just really seek your expert opinions. One is on what really would be the major change the way we have been operating on environment, and what change we would like to have, to really be conscious on that. That's one. Number two is on the emotions. I think we are undergoing a lot of — I think emotions have been always common, and have they been always enduring for all of us, but I think in this changed scenario and the changes which were required by us, seeing the scenario today, what are the things which we have to take care of, managing emotions all around? These are the two basic points, and then I'll come separately to Mr Sunil on the safety part, on the security part to Mr Puri.

Yeah, I think — yeah, this environment being part of EHS. First of all, I think a very, very good question, I would say, or the anxiety, or the question he has asked — thank you very much. Needless to say, environment today — what is working today will not work tomorrow, I think we all know about it. When I say, let's talk about the fresh air which you're getting today. You might have heard about the carbon footprint, yeah, the emphasis which is going on the carbon footprint today. There, you might have heard that the time is going to come — I think COVID has taught us enough — a time is going to come you might have to buy fresh air to breathe yourself. It is maybe the fresh water. The way the water level is depleting, that water level which you have available to yourself to drink — trust me, we may not have drinking water. Today, you also might have heard that there's likely to be a World War for water. There is, in Antarctica, everybody is going over Antarctica, and they are pulling fresh water from there. The icebergs are being pulled to their countries just to get fresh water. Temperature — the way temperature is going high because of carbon footprint. Today I'm in the corporate world; the mandate given is by 2030 we have to reduce by 50%, and by 2050 we need to be 100% carbon footprint free. Land — the way land is squeezing, the way species, the animals, are disappearing. We have to import cheetahs. Maybe tomorrow we finish with all these species of animals, the rare species which are there. So environmentally, trust me, there is so much we have to control, we have to keep a check. They are with you here today; they may not be there tomorrow. I hope, Mr Sanjay, I have answered your first question.

Yeah, totally agree with you. Only thing is that what I was trying to also add on to is that, you know, how would we really be able to cope up with this, and what is the common standard which we have to really gauge this, what all we have been trying to emphasize in terms of environment particularly, since you have addressed that first?

Yeah, like I said, the carbon footprint — there's an all, not globally — Shri Modi ji had dialed, he had shared one of the international carbon footprint summits, wherein every company globally is committing that there'll be zero carbon footprint by 2050, and I think we are going much ahead of what we had planned. What we are supposed to achieve by 2030, we have started achieving in 2022 itself. That's one.

The second part of his question was on emotions. Rajiv, would you like to take this on? Yeah, okay, I'll tell you — can you repeat the question, Sanjay?

Yeah, Rajiv ji, I was just trying to mention that, you know, emotions are ever enduring, always, even though these changes which you emphasized are there, which are pertinent and very much important, for which we have to cope up with. But amongst this change which is happening, do you notice a change in the emotions of people, and how do we cope up with that?

Okay, I'll tell you. Change in the emotion is the very topic — that what works today will not work tomorrow is changing emotion, because people don't know what's going to work tomorrow. We can't predict, because we only come to know what's going to work tomorrow when the tomorrow comes. You can't predict what is going to happen tomorrow, and this is going to create a lot of emotional turmoil between people, and that is why you are having people going through anxiety, depression, and it's not recognizable, because it is impacting you in problems in your personal life, it is impacting you on your health. And that is where, you know, one needs to understand that a person is going through an emotional turmoil, and you have a large number of physiotherapists and psychiatrists who have come in and who are treating people on this. The most important thing is for the family to understand what a person is going through, and sort of being a support. That people leave — you know, you have a husband at home without a job, and while his wife is working — these are creating a lot of issues. You're sitting at home and your wife is working. Somebody has to be there to try to guide him and tell him that, you know, this is a separate thing; otherwise a man goes into an emotional downturn, or he starts going into this thing, and you need to help him understand that you need a psychiatric help. Otherwise people, they are bottling up, and they are suffering from heart attacks at the age of 40, 35, because there's so much of turmoil, because what they were doing today, it's not working tomorrow.

You know, I'll tell you one thing, Sanjay. One of the worst things today is experience, because experience is the enemy of creativity. Experience teaches you this is how it is to be done, and you cannot be creative if you know how it is to be done, because creativity needs that you don't know how it's to be done. And people, with large number of, you know, coming from B-schools and this thing, they've been taught how to do this, but tomorrow that's not going to work. So there is a huge emotional, mental turmoil which people in the office, people at home, have to contribute to a person, so that he does not go through a downturn during his stressful period. He's not understanding what is working today.

Just a major connectivity that you're talking — you raised a very, very valid point. True. What I really see is, Rajiv ji, that the emotional intelligence remains evergreen. The only thing is, the challenge would be the quantum of intelligence which will be required of each individual — that will be a big question.

Yeah, but you've got to accept, you know — first thing that you've got to accept that there's a change taking place. If you don't, then you suddenly start thinking, why am I going down? True.

A word here, please, on that — the emotional upset. Somebody very lightly remarked, emotional upset, lot of exercise, running about here and there. Somebody very interestingly pointed out that a rabbit runs most of the time, jumping here under anxiety — catch this one, run here, run there — it lives for two years. And the turtle, who remains calm and cool and sits at one place, he lives for 200 years. So the emotional upset, the emotional anxiety is the worst, and I am of the opinion that this particular jump towards, they say, ignore — I mean, do this thing, and futuristic and all — they are adding to the emotional. That's all.

Absolutely, I totally agree with you. I also see the same way, in terms of a challenge coming up in terms of managing your emotions and really being emotionally intelligent. Yeah.

Anil, there's a question out for you. In the services that you provide, what are the changes — what is working will not work tomorrow?

So basically, see, what is happening is that up till now, what was being done, as I said earlier, that you're just providing a manpower, a headcount, a warm body. Today the reaction which is required by a client is that you need to have a smart guard. He needs to be able to know technology, he needs to be able to answer to problems, he needs to be able to come up with a response, and he also needs to have understanding of the work that he's got to do, which is based with a lot of it comes upon technology there. So today what is required more is a smart guy who's going to do that work, rather than just a dumb headcount that we used to provide earlier. So that idea of basically providing one man over there is no longer the fact. What is going to be there is a man who's going to respond, who's going to reduce headcount, who's going to be able to respond properly, use technology to be able to come up with a solution, to monitor the whole issue. That's what we would need to do.

May I add one thing here? Yes sir. The organization which I had come from, we believe in one thing: there is no obstacle which can stop a person. In the changing environment which is coming up, you very aptly brought out, in terms of cyber security, in cyber threats, in threats to vulnerable areas and vulnerable points, I think there's a requirement to have one niche team to keep a tab on the changing technologies and the threats which are coming up, rather than, you know, going by old experiences in the past — if this will happen, I'll do this. I feel that there has to be a niche team which is looking into the thing in the future. Your comments on this please.

I totally agree with you, sir. The fact is that experience helps us to react, to be able to have some process in place, but as you rightly said, you need to be aware of the technology and how to utilize it well, to be able to enhance your capability and your responses. I totally agree that we need to do that. That's why I said that technology, whether it's AI or whether it's new algorithms, everything is causing a change in the entire thing. I'll give you a simple example. You know, we talked of agriculture when Colonel Sharma was saying — there is today a technology which actually a satellite, which a farmer can utilize, on to GPS mark his farm, and that technology will give him, on his phone, it'll give him the knowledge of what is the soil content, what is the water content in his land, and what is going wrong with his crops. So here is a very clear example that what we used to work with in the past is actually now changed into the fact, because of technology, that the farmer will know well in advance what's going to happen and what he needs to do to be able to come up with a good crop. So it's just options like that. But still, he needs to know the past to be able to implement the future, aided by technology. That's the point that I was trying to say. Thanks.

Suri, you can ask your question now.

Very well agree with all the three speakers. Like, excellent points have been taken out, wherein the technology is going to overtake the human aspect, and we really don't know what exactly is going to happen tomorrow. But we really don't know what is going to happen tomorrow, but I think we can be very well prepared today for tomorrow. That's the reason these kind of discussions are happening. And what Kapuri — sorry, Anil Puri — has said, that, you know, as regards to the security, because I belong to the security industry, it is changing drastically. What we're talking in India now, I've been facing the same thing in Dubai. The guard is no more a guard; it's actually been expected to do more like a manager than a guard, you know, has to manage the whole stuff, not only just emergencies. So a normal guard is expected to do a lot of other stuff on computers. He has to be that educated, you know, to take care of all those stuff. So yes, exactly, it is changing, and we have to, you know, accept it and adapt the changes. Thank you.

I totally agree with you, ma'am. You will be surprised that today a guard needs to also operate the telephone system, which is a very simple thing to do once he's taught the basic process. But what happens along with that is that when he picks up the phone, at the other end there is going to be somebody speaking who could be talking English, but with an accent. There, he's going to understand that he's got to be able to give a reply to the person. He's got to be able to understand what the person is saying, and then he's got to be able to actually provide a solution. Now these solutions are very important, because most of the time these kind of calls which he ends up taking are post working hours. How does he react, how does he understand? These are the basic things which are causing a total change in the way the security as a subject was being looked at. That's just one point of that.

Very true, very true, and especially a place like Dubai, where you have so many nationalities being here, multiple cultures. But you know, I just want to tell you over here, we speak to a lot of foreign nationalities, and we can't understand these people that speak in that language, especially Chinese. So it comes down in writing, you know — a Google Translator is there, so whatever they are speaking is being translated into English in front of you. So sometimes you don't understand the audio part, but you can see English. If you can read basic English, whatever he's speaking is also being translated into English in front of you on the computer. So we use that quite often when talking.

Rajiv ji, that's a fantastic point, and I have made a note of it, because that is something which we look at. But like they say, English spoken in our part of the world is not the English which is spoken in the UK, understand that, or in the US, for that matter. So the very simple fact that the basic English has got three different connotations for three different countries that I just mentioned. So it makes a total difference in the way it comes across, and the accent creates the bigger issue. I know, you know, at your and my level, where we understand English far more, we find it difficult. Imagine the guy down the line has to be able to understand the connotations of what is said. So that is why they say, no matter how advanced a technology, it will never replace a human being. I totally agree with you. But at the end of the day, you also pointed out that Google Translator is going to take over that part. Yeah, Google Translator helps you. See, you are traveling — if you don't understand anything, you type it out in English, it turns it around into Chinese, and you can show it to the Chinese person: this is what you want. Absolutely, travel the world. Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is how we do it. I mean, China — they don't understand. Now you can show it to him translated: this is what I said, and he'll understand. And you know, I've been there several times. I go there; the only thing that you need to do is have a cell phone with a Google Translator, and you can get across anywhere. Yeah, absolutely — for ordering food, whether it is to order food or it is to sort of ask a question, ask a direction, everything is possible now.

Let's go for the last question. For the last question, Rajesh Prat. Rajesh, do you have a question?

So my question is with Rajiv sir. As sir has said that what today is working is not going to work tomorrow, and in which Mr — I forgot sir's name — sir asked how the emotions are going to be there, because after all we all are human beings. Today, what emotions we have, that 100% we can't say that it is going to be changed tomorrow. So in that, how is it going to support us in hiring the peoples and moving ahead with the peoples? Because what tomorrow is going to take, a change part, will be not today. So in that scenario, the people who are not coping up with the tomorrow's change, what a management wants, then how are you going to abolish those old employees from the organization?

Okay, you asked me a very valid question, because I have solved that problem in the last three years. Okay. I am in the executive search business, and I never hire people from competition. Okay. I have very clearly defined six attributes that I need in people, and I hire people on attributes. Now, I'll tell you — if you hire people on attributes, and hire good people, then as a leader you've got to stop leading from the front. You've got to start leading from behind. Correct. When you lead from front, you are leading by example; then you don't need to hire people with that sort of quality that you're looking for. What I do is I lead from behind. I tell them the destination — this is the thing. I tell them that you need to reach there. I want them to reach there with their own mistakes and all, and their own fall down and get up. If I teach them, they will become as good as me, but I'm not good enough for tomorrow. After all, I'm also a human being. I'm a leader; I don't know what is happening tomorrow. So I have started leading from behind, and it works beautifully, because these youngsters come with so much of knowledge and understanding that they are able to find their destination better than you have. So in the end, you actually end up learning from youngsters than teaching them.

I agree. Otherwise, why hire people better than you? Why hire smart people? Today, you want to know anything about technology, ask your child — he will teach you. True. It's a reverse mentorship. So you first hire people who do not have a mindset about tomorrow, because otherwise, if you hire people from the background, they are going to do the same thing better. I don't want them to do better; I want them to do differently. Tomorrow is different; tomorrow is not better. I can't work better and achieve tomorrow. Tomorrow I need different things, so I need people with no experience. This is why I said experience is — and it's so difficult, Rajiv, to get people to change their way of working. You don't take people with that background. Difficult to change organizationally, change methodology — it sort of breaks your backbone trying to do it.

So this is what I have done. I've hired people who do not carry the baggage of the past. You are an army officer. You know why you were successful, why you were so successful? Because you never came from security. Otherwise you would have done exactly what 500 security companies did and failed in the first. I came from Merchant Navy, and I got into executive search. Why? Because I had no baggage of the past. We both have the same story. You were a captain; if you had started as a general, you would not have gone anywhere. And this is what is the secret behind your success. You did things the way you — you didn't know how; you did it the way your brain taught you, and that's how you shot up and beat the competition. And that's exactly what I did. I'm from the Merchant Navy, so I'm the only marine engineer in this country who is a headhunter. So there was no baggage of the path. So you do not need baggage of the past. This baggage is something that we carry, which tomorrow does not work. And honestly speaking, you know, what does not work today is talking about the past. What you have been in the past is of no concern, no concern. What you are doing today and what you will do tomorrow is the only matter of concern. Yeah. I mean, the way you were doing accounting, the way you were doing marketing — I mean, marketing, you were spending money on advertising; today you need content, and writing content sort of is not all that easy. Again, yeah, today it's all about content, you know. It's what the content carries. I think not what you do — it is how you do it, that is far more important.

We've got over the time now, and I'll just hand it back to the president to conclude the session.

Okay, thank you very much, and thank you, the learned speakers. Actually, I was just thinking a minute before, that what is not today, we have to think of tomorrow, and all the initial start was that it is going to be digitalization, it is going to be artificial intelligence, there's no doubt it is going to be cryptocurrency, it is going to be this — all transformation will be there. And I was thinking that probably in this process we are ignoring what is there — whether we have to carry it out, not a baggage, but the points which Rajiv had lately, in the later part of his exposition, said that you have to — and I am an old-timer of old school. I feel, as deep knows very well, that it's very important, of personal interaction. Only by taking artificial intelligence, there's not that personal interaction, which for any success is very — anyway, that is my point.

I'm thankful to Mr Thakker for having explained at length about coming up of this blockchain technology for cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence, and all other things which are likely to emerge. And one other point which he said, that probably every time there is some disaster, the new things come up. What I feel, that the only certainty in the world today is that it is uncertain. The only certainty is that what could work today probably could be a failure tomorrow. Continuous testing and understanding the risks which shall essentially arise in the days to come has to be understood. One has to stay, I feel, very curious — curious as well as innovative — so as to salvage the present position for future. But if you get into a process of restructuring, and in that process you get into a turmoil, the likely to create turmoil will lead to emotional tension. And as I mentioned, that is the main aspect: that human beings are after all a combination of emotion. You may like to go ahead with a lot of technology, lot of things — I definitely agree that you have to have some understanding about what a continuous testing, continuous taking of risk, continuously involving yourself with the future trend, but you have to stay curious only about the innovation to solve the present.

I think that some of the key requirements for adopting to the new structure, a new restructuring, would be probably somewhat to unlearn — not to carry baggage with you — somewhat to unlearn and then somewhat to relearn. That is, the process of unlearning and relearning has to be combined. The second, I feel that, as very nicely pointed out by Rajiv, in the talent management — that is very important. He gets his people, talent is there, and he pushes from the back, and he manages his talent for attaining new goals by the people who were recruited by then. I also feel that in any organization, the talent mobility from one role to another is very important. Here the big bosses like Anil Puri and Pavan have to consider that talent mobility from one role to another. They can consider that this particular talent can be more suited here — that mobility they have to consider — and then, of course, simultaneous adoption to the faster and better technology.

As far as the environment is concerned, the environment — I think that all the problems which are arising is because of pollution of environment by the man, as here pointed out. We are going to — how we are going to solve this thing — but all the problems are because of pollution in environment, and that pollution of environment which human beings are creating is proving an end. It may be pandemic, may be anything else.

With these words, I'd like to wind up my session, and this session in particular, with my profound thanks to all the three speakers: that is, Rajiv, for giving the holistic view; this is Sunil Sharma, delving into safety; and Anil Puri, coming to the service industry and then emphasizing on the security. I also have been dealing with the security with Anil — Anil Puri knows it — and we have had many time interactions, and then coming to some conclusion and telling people that you don't do like that. But people sometimes don't agree. Then he will say, you are big; I say, you are big. So I fan his ego, he fans my ego, but ultimately I know that there's some truth in what he is telling, and therefore let him project it and be a forthright speaker in the industry forums as such.

With these words, I'd like to thank all the delegates also who are here, and I'd like to emphasize upon the next webinar, which is due in October, again same time, 6:00 p.m. That is, Cooperation, Collaboration and Coordination in Business. This is again, Rajiv ji, we may have your inputs — not of course as a speaker, but some inputs, because you are a past master in this. So Cooperation, Collaboration and Coordination — this is my next webinar, and I request all of you to propagate this webinar to your friends, and also give us the pleasure of being with us, and questioning certain things and enlightening the people. With these words, I once again thank everyone for a very captivating session today. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Anil. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. A very good session, enjoyable. Thank you, sir.