Is our knowledge exceeding our wisdom? While the two terms are often associated, they are far from synonymous. In an age saturated with information, the ability to handle this knowledge is essential – and yet, we are at risk of a dangerous wisdom deficit.

In recent weeks, I’ve been reflecting on the degree to which my own profession and profile makes it hard to prioritize wisdom. Whether it’s speedily scanning volumes of research in preparation for a presentation, assembling bite-sized content pieces to share on social media, or crafting soundbite responses for media interviews, I too easily find myself merely trading in knowledge and information. While quality trumps quantity when it comes to thinking and ideas, I increasingly find myself consumed in the quantity game all too often.

The best way I’ve heard the role of AI in today's corporate world describes is as a multivitamin or a painkiller. As a multivitamin, it can supercharge your activities, working alongside employees to ensure that outcomes are achieved to a greater level of quality, efficiency and productivity. As a painkiller, it takes over all the tasks that are common headaches for workers, freeing them up to focus their attention on more valuable and gratifying work.

In the banking and finance sector, AI is set to enable significant productivity gains for those that integrate it. Providing automated reporting, improving risk transparency, automatically updating policies and procedures and performing compliance and risk audits are among the ways generative AI will be capable of improving efficiency. Beyond this, algorithms can analyse vast amounts of financial data to identify patterns and trends, enabling more accurate predictions and informed decision-making.[1]

Having grown up within a digital age with no memory of a pre-internet world, and reached adulthood within an era of lockdowns and global crises, Generation Z finds itself in a very unique set of circumstances that are consistently setting it apart from previous generations.

All this to say, Gen Zs are thinking about their relationship with work very differently to their predecessors!

Here are 3 ways Gen Z is approaching work:

Whatever game you are playing, generative AI is changing it. As the capabilities of the technology continue to proliferate, our societies are in the midst of fundamental change - as sizable as that generated by the advent of the printing press.

2024 is set to be another massive year for AI as we continue to see big companies integrate it into their operations, jobs evolve with the takeover, and regulations play catch up.

In the early 50s, a doomsday cult called the Oak Park Study Group thought the world was ending. Members of this particular cult had predicted that a massive flood would occur on December 21st of that year and destroy all life on Earth. Oak Park Study Group members were taught that on the eve of the cataclysm, an alien being from the planet Clarion would come to rescue the true believers from the fate that awaited humankind the next day.

At the time, Stanford University social psychologist Leon Festinger became intrigued by this group’s rise to prominence. Having infiltrated the group with a group of colleagues under the guise of being true believers, Festinger uncovered some fascinating psychological findings about the nature of cognitive dissonance.

Oxford Dictionary have announced their word of the year, and you will be forgiven if you have no idea what it means, if you have even heard it at all. The word of 2023 is, ‘Rizz.’

If you haven’t heard of it, ‘rizz’ is a slang word derived from ‘charisma’, defined by The Oxford Dictionary as, "Pertaining to someone’s ability to attract another person through style, charm, or attractiveness."

“Rizz” is one word among many proliferated primarily through Gen Z’s social media presence – Gen Z being the 2 billion people born between 1995 and 2009.[1] Other key words in the lexicon include, “slay”, “sus”, “drip”, “simp”, “stan” and “cap”, all commonly used among Gen Zs but completely opaque to the untrained ears of older generations.

Good news: human beings are better than we think. Finding ways to motivate people has bewildered leaders for centuries. While most have given up use of the 'stick' as a motivator, many continue to use the 'dangled carrot' - but findings from the last few years show that this is far more counterproductive than we think.

Contrary to what we would assume, rewards and incentives can often have the effect of demotivating others. According to researchers at the US National Institute of Health (NIH), the reason for this can be found in the part of the brain that they stimulate.

Following the recent Senate enquiry, now ex-CEO of Optus Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned with a name now tied to two of the biggest tele-communications crises of the last few years – last year’s data breach and last fortnight’s network outage.

While crises will inevitably occur, they do not need to come at the cost of credibility. However, so many leaders and companies fail to exhibit the qualities that the public expects during a crisis, and because of this they forfeit the trust that undeniably equates to currency in today’s sceptical marketplace. This most recent network outage crisis offers leaders and organisations some lessons on precisely this front.