Business agility in a world of artificial intelligence
Business agility, AI and the rest of the human being
“Factory automation has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to spread this destruction to the middle classes, leaving only the most intelligent, caring, and supervisory roles.” Stephen Hawking.
You don’t have to be one of the best living astrophysicists in the world to understand that a major change is taking place not only in our workplaces, but in our society as a whole. The gap between what humans can do and what machines and computers are capable of is changing, and at a fast pace. This reality becomes really scary for those who currently make a living doing repetitive tasks or thinking in repeatable patterns; in other words, most of us.
If you can’t tell what you do from what a machine or a computer does, then how can you really call yourself much more than a human being? To remain a human being be requires more!
The difference between a make human et a human being?
Your ability to feel and relate.
In the future, this will be more evident in those roles which, as Professor Hawking reminds us, require feeling, leadership and creativity combined with intelligence. For the foreseeable future, this means that your economy will be increasingly influenced by your ability to listen, understand, empathize, create, and lead. In short, the more you cultivate your ability to consciously feel, communicate, and relate powerfully, the more likely you are to get paid. Transactions can be left to our increasingly sophisticated creations.
Even if increasing your ability to use your senses to relate comes down to the economics of being employed or not, that’s a positive start! Most of us are now forced to learn that trying to compete with computers and machines only leads to increased stress and ultimately disease.
“Life in a Spreadsheet”
A good friend, Tim Finucane, came up with this apt metaphor over ten years ago, and it rings truer today than when he first coined it. Since the advent of Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel more than 30 years ago, we’ve been able to measure work performance with greater precision and greater intrusiveness. While spreadsheets were first used to help us perform better, they have now been transformed to dictate and monitor increasingly challenging performance metrics. Is it any wonder that every little box in a spreadsheet is called a “cell”? Like the prison, these cells are getting smaller and smaller, and like government budgets, each metric tends to increase over time.
Spreadsheet technology gave way to the idea of Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. For your business, these are metrics based almost entirely on historical performance, but they are likely to increase or adjust each time they are revised. This is fine for a machine you can tweak and improve with newer technology, but when the key components are you and your coworker, constant raises can stifle your creativity and crush your attention span. The machine literally drains your humanity. and that we are human beings without it?
Powerful forces, nimble problem or opportunity?
Therefore, we have two powerful forces working against us. First, ever-increasing performance metrics continue to limit our ability to be human. Second, increasingly efficient computers and machines make many of our earning opportunities obsolete. The good news is that those who understand these powerful forces and the change they are bringing can begin directly to increase their creativity, as well as hone their ability to feel, relate, and lead.
What if this measurement trend also forces us to take more personal responsibility to relearn and improve the skills necessary for not only emotional, but social competence as well? Don’t you think this is important? One of the seminars held at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year was titled, “keeping your humanity“. Even the elites now understand this.
Competing with an increasingly sophisticated computer or machine for jobs that technology can do better is not a winning strategy! Especially if you want to stay healthy and prosperous. The only area that for the foreseeable future will remain the domain of humans is where feelings and relationships come into play. These areas include but are not limited to:
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Customer service
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Health care
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Dirty
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Leadership
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music and arts
Each of these areas of human endeavor requires feeling and sensitivity to be successful. Computers and machines can’t do that. Machines can measure and they can act without rest, but they cannot feel anything while they act or when they objectively measure and communicate results. This work is left to us to interpret and enjoy, or not.
Conclusion: Stay Human, Be Agile, or Get Swallowed by Technology
If you want to secure your ability to earn a living in the future, you must begin now to optimize your use of computer and mechanical skills, while rediscovering and mastering your capacity to be a vibrant human being. Missing out on this opportunity may not affect you tomorrow, but sooner or later the technologically weighted future we are all rushing into it will reach even you!
