Future Of Work

As we transition from traditional task-based automation to 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀, understanding 𝘩𝘰𝘸 an agent cognitively processes its environment is no longer optional — it's strategic. This diagram distills the mental model that underpins every intelligent agent architecture — from LangGraph and CrewAI to RAG-based systems and autonomous multi-agent orchestration. The Workflow at a Glance 1. 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 – The agent observes its environment using sensors or inputs (text, APIs, context, tools). 2. 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 (𝗥𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲) – It processes observations via a core LLM, enhanced with memory, planning, and retrieval components. 3. 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 – It executes a task, invokes a tool, or responds — influencing the environment. 4. 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 (Implicit or Explicit) – Feedback is integrated to improve future decisions.     This feedback loop mirrors principles from: • The 𝗢𝗢𝗗𝗔 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗽 (Observe–Orient–Decide–Act) • 𝗖𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 used in robotics and AI • 𝗚𝗼𝗮𝗹-𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 in agent frameworks Most AI applications today are still “reactive.” But agentic AI — autonomous systems that operate continuously and adaptively — requires: • A 𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗽 for decision-making • Persistent 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘆 and contextual awareness • Tool-use and reasoning across multiple steps • 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 for dynamic goal completion • The ability to 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 from experience and feedback    This model helps developers, researchers, and architects 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 — and where things tend to break. Whether you’re building agentic workflows, orchestrating LLM-powered systems, or designing AI-native applications — I hope this framework adds value to your thinking. Let’s elevate the conversation around how AI systems 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯. Curious to hear how you're modeling cognition in your systems.

Just out in Harvard Business Review, summary of the Hybrid Experiment results and lessons on how to make hybrid succeed. Experiment: randomize 1600 graduate employees in marketing, finance, accounting and engineering at Trip.com into 5-days a week in office, or 3-days a week in office and 2-days a week WFH. Analyzed 2 years of data. Two key results A) Hybrid and fully-in-office showed no differences in productivity, performance review grade, promotion, learning or innovation. B) Hybrid had a higher satisfaction rate, and 35% lower attrition. Quit-rate reductions were largest for female employees. Four managerial lessons 1) Hybrid needs a strong performance management system so managers don’t need to hover over employees at their desks to check their progress. Trip.com had an extensive performance review process every six months. 2) Coordinate in-office days at the team or company level. Schedule clarity prevents the frustration of coming to an empty office only to participate in Zoom calls. Trip.com coordinated WFH on Wednesday and Friday. 3) Having leadership buy-in is critical (as with most management practices). Trip.com’s CEO and C-suite all support the hybrid policy. 4) A/B test new policies (as well as products) if possible. Often new policies turn out to be unexpectedly profitable. Trip.com made millions of dollars more profits from hybrid by cutting expensive turnover.

A Return To Office mandate is a funny thing. A trade-off of lower workforce productivity, morale, retention, engagement, and trust in exchange for...managers feeling more in control. It's more a sign of insecurity and incompetence than sound decision-making. The fact that 80% of executives who have pushed for RTO mandates have later regretted their decision only makes the point further, and yet every few months more leaders line up to pad this statistic. In case your leaders have forgotten, return to office mandates are associated with: 🔻 16% lower intent to stay among the highest-performing employees (Gartner) 🔻 10% less trust, psychological safety, and relationship quality between workers and their managers (Great Place to Work) 🔻 22% of employees from marginalized groups becoming more likely to search for new jobs (Greenhouse) 🔻 No significant change in financial performance while guaranteeing damage to employee satisfaction (Ding and Ma, 2024) The thing is, we KNOW how to do hybrid work well at this point. 🎯 Allow teams to decide on in-person expectations, and hold people accountable to it—high flexibility; high accountability. 🎯 Make in-person time unique and valuable, with brainstorming, events, and culture-building activities—not video calls all day in the office. 🎯 Value outcomes, not appearances, of productivity—reward those who get their work done regardless of where they do it. 🎯 Train inclusive managers, not micromanagers—build in them the skills and confidence to lead with trust rather than fear and insecurity. Leaders that fly in the face of all this data to insist that workers return to office "OR ELSE" communicate one thing: they are the kinds of leaders that place their own egos and comfort above their shareholders and employees alike. Faced with the very real test of how to design the hybrid workforce of the future, these leaders chose to throw a tantrum in their bid to return to the past, and their organizations will suffer for it. The leaders that will thrive in this time? Those that are willing to do the work. Those that are willing to listen to their workforce, skill up to meet new needs, and claim their rewards in the form of the best talent, higher productivity, and the highest level of worker loyalty and trust. Will that be you?

GET OUT OF YOUR TEAM’S WAY Managers, it’s time to stop treating employees like they need constant supervision. They shouldn’t have to apologise for having lives outside of work either. Trust your team to deliver, and you’ll create a positive, productive environment where everyone can thrive. Hiring the right people is just the beginning. The real magic happens when you trust and empower them. Trust means allowing your team the freedom to manage their work without hovering, showing that you respect them as capable adults who can balance both their professional and personal lives. This goes beyond just being flexible with time off. It’s about building a culture where people feel trusted to do their jobs in the way that works best for them - whether they’re in the office, working remotely, or handling personal matters during the day. The focus should be on outcomes, not micromanagement. Micromanaging stifles creativity and kills motivation. Trust, however, inspires people to do their best work. When you give your team ownership and the space to succeed, you’ll see them flourish. Here’s how to build that culture:
 * Hire the Right People: Ensure they have the skills and align with your company’s values.
 * Trust Your Team: Let them take ownership of their work, and resist the urge to micromanage.
 * Give Them Freedom: Allow them to make decisions and provide the tools they need.
 * Develop Strong Leaders: Train leaders to support their teams without controlling them.
 * Keep Communication Open: Foster an environment where people feel safe sharing ideas and feedback.
 * Celebrate Wins: Recognise achievements to keep motivation high.
 * Support Work-Life Balance: Encourage a healthy balance to enhance well-being and productivity. ♻️Neha K Puri

I entered the sustainability field to build a resilient future for people and the planet - not to wrestle with manual spreadsheets. But as many of us in this space have discovered, the time-consuming logistics of reporting are often a barrier to real progress. At Google, we’ve spent the last two years using our own environmental report as a testing ground for a better way. By leveraging Google Cloud tools to automate data ingestion and claim validation, we’ve shifted from weeks of manual data cleaning to on-demand strategic insights. These technologies don’t replace our experts. Instead, they free our team to focus on strategy and execution rather than repetitive, time-consuming data collection and validation. We’re already seeing how other companies can use these tools to make similar shifts. For example, Equinix moved from manual tracking to a system that collects data from 240+ global sites automatically. Learn more about how Google Cloud is helping sustainability teams spend more time on strategy, not spreadsheets. ⤵️ https://goo.gle/4scTUfR

Vietnam's E-commerce ecosystem is growing at a staggering pace. +35% Year-on-Year growth has pushed the total GMV to $16.4 Billion in 2025. 🤓 While the top-line numbers make headlines, the real story lies in the "Shake-Out" happening to professionalize e-stores. The "Wild West" era of digital retail is effectively over, active sellers are down by 7.4%. Rising costs, fierce competition, and higher consumer expectations are weeding out small-scale and amateur vendors. 🟠⚫️The battle is a two-horse race. Shopee is still the market leader with a 56% share, but they are visibly losing ground to the TikTok Shop juggernaut, which has surged to 41%. Shoppertainment has officially moved from a "nice-to-have" to a "must-execute." 👉 Winning Categories: Beauty, Home & Lifestyle, and Women’s Fashion remain the undisputed champions of the digital basket. 👉 Industrial Provinces Surge: Binh Duong led with a 122.1% jump in sales, followed by Long An, up 63.41%, and Hung Yen, up 39.41% 👉 The "Mall" Dominance: Here’s the key - flagship, official stores account for only 2% of current stores but capture 32% of the value. 🤔 ... 📦 I find the "Fewer Items, Bigger Baskets" trend particularly telling. While transaction volume grew by 15%, total revenue surged by nearly 35%. This shift compels sellers to pivot their strategy from not just driving volumes (at overt discounts), but enhancing quality of product & marketing. That makes for a healthier value chain. Is the era of volume-driven expansion behind us? As the market matures, the winners won't be those with the most listings, but those who master product quality, brand positioning and operational efficiency. Building a sustainable, long term ecosystem for a brand starts with price structure & a willingness to invest to 'hold it'.👌 Source: Metric, YouNet ECI, The Investor, VnEconomy *While information from Asia Circles is publicly accessible and derived from third-party sources, its verification and validity are not guaranteed. #ConsumerInsight #MarketInsight #VietnamMarket #EcommerceTrends #Shoppertainment 

Thank you, Google. You just open-sourced a single CLI for all of Google Workspace and it's built for both humans and AI agents. npm install -g @googleworkspace/cli What it does: → One command-line tool for Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Sheets, Docs, and every Workspace API → Zero boilerplate. Structured JSON output. Auto-pagination. → Reads Google's Discovery Service at runtime — when Google adds a new API endpoint, the CLI picks it up automatically → Ships with 100+ Agent Skills so your LLM can manage Workspace without custom tooling → Built-in MCP server for Claude Desktop, Gemini CLI, VS Code, and any MCP-compatible client → Model Armor integration to scan responses for prompt injection before they reach your agent This is a big deal for anyone building AI agents that interact with Google Workspace (everyone?) No more writing custom API wrappers. No more maintaining brittle integrations. One tool. Every service. Structured output ready for agents. The repo is Apache-2.0 licensed and under active development.

𝗜𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘁𝘆 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗷𝗼𝗯? — 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘺 𝘴𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦. We often talk about meritocracy in hiring — but research keeps reminding us how easily optics overshadow objectivity. 📊 A 2024 study by Harvard Business Review found that 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝟱𝟬% 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. Similarly, research in the 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 confirms that 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗱 — even when their résumés are identical to less “polished” counterparts. This isn’t vanity; it’s psychology. It’s called the “𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗼 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁” — a cognitive bias where one positive trait (like appearance or confidence) spills over to how we judge unrelated qualities (like intelligence or leadership). And it’s costly. Because every time we let surface cues dictate selection, we risk 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗲𝘁 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 that doesn’t advertise itself well. The solution isn’t to ignore presentation — it’s to balance perception with structure: • 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝘀 and 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹-𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. • Involve 𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀 to reduce individual bias. • Train leaders to recognize 𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝗿𝗻 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 — before they unconsciously act on them. 💬 𝘐𝘯 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱, 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘴. #HiringBias #OrganizationalPsychology #Leadership #UnconsciousBias #DEI #FutureOfWork

In a world where attention is fleeting and virtual fatigue is real, how can you successfully host online events? Here are 9 essentials to keep in mind: 1. Start with a Compelling Opening Your opening should grab attention, set the tone, build anticipation and give people a reason to stay. 2. Make Eye Contact Look directly into the camera to create a sense of connection. If you're using a teleprompter or script, keep it at eye level to maintain that engagement. 3. Mind Your Facial Expression People are paying close attention to your face. They can see when you’re smiling, or when you appear bored, upset, or frustrated. Be conscious of your expression. 4. Manage Your Energy Your energy drives the entire experience. If you seem disengaged or flat, your audience will tune out. 5. Build Emotional Connections Use personal stories, relatable examples, and analogies. These human elements help your message resonate on a deeper level. 6. Engage the Audience Make your audience part of the experience. Use polls, Q&A, or chat prompts to keep them actively involved. 7. Be Clear and Concise Attention spans online are shorter. Get to the point quickly, and use clear language. 8. Use Visual Aids and Multimedia Use images, short videos, graphics, and animations that support your message. However, don’t overload your slides with text. 9. Check Your Tech Setup Poor lighting, audio, camera quality, or an unstable internet connection can lead to frustration and reduced participation. Test in advance. Hope this helps. I’m Temi Badru, a professional event MC for physical, virtual, and hybrid events. I also train individuals and teams in public speaking and effective communication. #temibadru #voicesandfaces #eventhost #mc #moderator #speaker #events

Frequent job switches can be great for short-term financial gains. I believed that early in my career. I switched roles frequently, chasing better compensation and new challenges. And honestly, it worked - for a while. But over time, I realized something: quick jumps don't always compound well. If your profile shows a pattern of constant movement, it can become a red flag - especially for roles that demand deep ownership or long-term bets. These days, I'm optimizing for career longevity. When you're at your peak earning potential, just a couple of extra years at that level can easily surpass the small hikes you'd gain from frequent moves. Staying relevant in the industry, growing within a role, and building leverage is something that can give me bigger opportunities, and more importantly long-term wealth - not just better paychecks. That said, this doesn't mean settling for something less. If a role stagnates or a company stops evolving, move on. Just don't let short-term gains distract you from long-term relevance. Think in decades, not quarters.