Enterprise hits and misses - Walmart raises the retail transformation stakes , CIOs set a new tech agenda, and the future of work debate heats up

Lead story - COVID-19, Millennials, Gen-Z and the future of work - a system change is needed - Derek sparked debate with his provocative series on what generation next wants from work - and where employers are falling short.

Why should we care? Well, for one, these generations will make up 50 percent of the workforce by 2025. Derek makes an effective case for a mismatch in values, autonomy, and workstyle for the younger generation - versus the half-baked, one-step-ahead-of-the-robots gigjobs employers pass off as careers these days what employers are offering up.

Derek tallies up the younger generations' criteria: they're online, they're social, and they're looking for personal development and a sense of self. Oh, and that work-from-home thing? Not so much fun when you're forced to share your home workplace in not-so-spacious surroundings. Derek is right: the younger crowd will be eager to mingle in co-working and office environments whenever it is safe to do so.

Most importantly, there is a desire for outcome-focused work, with a desire for autonomy. Derek:

Being a cog in the wheel of the big corporate machine often isn't enough for these generations. My sense is that they want to work towards outcomes that matter and be given the autonomy to figure out how to get there.

Agreed - but check the comments from Den Howlett and MVP diginomcia commenter Clive Boulton. Two points stick in my craw:

• I don't believe these work expectations are necessarily tied to age. I know plenty of folks my age who crave the same things from their work, and find it falling short. Age as a lens is a rough filter; in truth our motivations vary.
• The most talented young workers may be able to dictate the terms of engagement; the rest will get leveraged by the gig economy into more vulnerable positions.

To be fair, Derek anticipates these points. Whether it makes sense to classify generational workstyles is a fair question. But for employers in planning mode, check Derek's follow-on, Ideas to attract and retain Millennial and Gen-Z talent in the COVID-19 workplace.

Diginomica picks - my top stories on diginomica this week

• Four CIO 'hot tech' topics to contemplate, from quantum considerations to 5G's dirty little secret - Martin marinates on trends Dell says CIOs should be tracking: quantum, 5G, semi-conductor changes, and edge computing mistakes.
• Re-inventing the flywheel - how Walmart plans to transform retail as the COVID e-commerce boom slows down - E-commerce surge? Check. So what's next? Stuart breaks out the options. This Walmart CEO quote jumped out: "We have algorithms that tell us when a customer's walmart.com order includes items that are sitting in their local store. And when it makes sense, we just pick those items from the shelf and we use our 'last mile' network to drive them right to their home. Three thousand of our stores are now doing these deliveries." Also see: Stuart's Working up an omni-channel retail sweat at lululemon as the pursuit of wellbeing becomes more acute. (p.s. "Athleisure wear"?)
• Geospatial data - why we need new maps for a new world - Why should we care about geospatial data trends? Chris posits an answer.

Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here's my three top choices from our vendor coverage:

• Delivering exponential value - a conversation with Celonis co-CEO Alex Rinke - Den updates on our latest round of convos with Celonis. But can an Execution Management System (EMS) truly deliver exponential returns, optimizing sluggish/complex/legacy ERP processes, etc? Den puts on the skeptic's hat for a demo.
• Accenture - the era of the fast follower is over, perpetual change is permanent - Derek bravely slices and dices Accenture's Technology Vision 2021 report, wading through the hypey-schlock factor heady buzzwords to identify the trends we should be tracking.
• Making sense of SAP S/4HANA adoption - behind the numbers of ASUG's "Pulse of the SAP customer 2021" survey - I parsed ASUG's S/4HANA adoption numbers with CEO Geoff Scott in search of a business case, RISE insights, and more. Oh, and I blow an SAP certification gasket - a normal occurrence every two years or so from me...

A couple more vendor picks, without the quips:

• Atom Bank boosts customer satisfaction with move to Google Cloud - Derek
• CX meets e-commerce - a perfect fit for Rack Room Shoes with Dynatrace - Jess

Jon's grab bag - The externalization vs the responsibility of tech was on deck this week; Cath kicked it off with The role of digital and data in achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Chris followed on with Bitcoin volatility madness in Friday Rant - ‘Who let the Doge out?’, carping on the Diem and other cryptocurrency conundrums.

Stuart took on a social media story with broader news import in Facebook unfriends Australia - a war with a sovereign nation that might yet boomerang back on it around the world. Finally, make sure your junk food cravings are under some semblance of control before clicking on Stuart's KFC's special recipe digital vs Burger King's whopper of a transformation challenge (I'm glad my local KFC is closed right now...).

Best of the enterprise web

My top seven picks 

• The 9-to-5 job is officially dead... Work-from-Anywhere becomes our new reality - Phil Fersht and Melissa O'Brien of HfS team up for this jonerpnewsfeed favorite. WFA ("work from anywhere") for the win. But as Fersht and O'Brian remind: "Wellness’ has a deeper meaning in a remote environment... You must have a formalized proactive outreach to ensure people have are ‘OK’."
• More bosses are using software to monitor remote workers. Not everyone is happy about it - ZDNet's Owen Hughes calls out the underbelly of so-called employee engagement: spyware-for-losers employee monitoring.
• The future of work after COVID-19 - McKinsey with a meaty piece on what lies ahead - including long-term takes on labor demand.
• Microsoft Concludes Internal Investigation into Solorigate Breach - Microsoft calls it Solorigate, most of us call it Solarflare. Bottom line - it s@cked, and we have plenty to learn from it: "Microsoft advises companies to strengthen security by adopting a zero trust mindset and protecting privileged credentials."
• Autonomous ERP - What is Autonomous ERP? Well, I'd say it's more aspirational than reality. But this post from the "ERP the Right Way" blog provokes us to think about a better ERP, rather than flushing the three letter concept as legacy.
• Organizational Change Culture - On the flip side, via Third Stage Consulting we have a from-the-trenches tale of change management, and how the human side of ERP projects goes wrong.
• The AI industry is built on geographic and social inequality, research shows - no surprises here perhaps, but in a week where Google fired an AI Ethics lead, it's a timely dissection.

Whiffs

During a Zoom call, Philadelphia 76ers coach Doc Rivers wanted to know if a reporter was asking him a question from bed. He was. And if you're feeling a bit cooped-up during pandemic times, the grass isn't always greener in the great outdoors: Bear bites woman’s bare bottom from outhouse toilet in Alaska. Nudging close to the enterprise:

More AI snark, though it's really Microsoft Teams snark sneaking through:

Technical debt always catches up with you, as Josh Bernoff documents in this dual evisceration:

Finally, I turned a spammy PR breaking point into a Gmail filter victory:

Let's leave it there, I'm sure we can offend some more folks next time. See you then...

If you find an #ensw piece that qualifies for hits and misses - in a good or bad way - let me know in the comments as Clive (almost) always does. Most Enterprise hits and misses articles are selected from my curated @jonerpnewsfeed. 'myPOV' is borrowed with reluctant permission from the ubiquitous Ray Wang.