If you had been following news lately particularly on social media. There is a high chance you read about AI already. So here is what you read already:
- AI will make the repetitive tasks easier
- Your ability to work with robots will enhance your job role
- It will enable employees to take up strategic roles
While all that may be true… here are some hidden facts. (In plain sight)
Businesses need infinite growth. You like it or not manpower is a constraint as there is only so many available. Top that up with productivity and “people” issues and you have hell lot of dynamics to manage.
Comes automation and AI and with it comes immense business growth. Now you can produce much more, get things done faster and consistent. Produce more for which you get paid.
If your business operates on unskilled labor and you deal with hoards of it…its time you brace up the reality.
Automation and AI will hit the unskilled labor market the hardest. Then come to the jobs that are repetitive.
The BIG problem is not that Jobs are at risk. The BIGGER problem is to actually train existing employees… Up-skill or cross-skill them to bring greater value to the table with automation.
This area is going to be the biggest challenge businesses have faced so far. We have climaxed on the wave of specialization and deskilling… (Been extremely profitable.) But now we are in a surprise as this also built silos and has made skill convergence difficult.
And now you have a disruption.
The challenge today is how to train your workforce to be STRATEGIC.
Why?
Because “being strategic” is difficult to measure, show or replicate.
Take any job role from coding, accounting, order processing to recruitment.
Ask yourself: What is that we spend most of our time doing?
Answer: Repetitive tasks!
And all that will be soon automated. Businesses are eying 15.4 Billion Market by 2020 in automation and AI. Sooner or later a “solution” will hit your workforce like a sitting duck.
This is scary. For decades our performance systems measured us on counts and quantity. Our appraisal systems are focused on end results and not on how we get there.
Job roles have been defined to suppress “entropy” and favor standardization… (Makes managing people easy.)
But not anymore.
The challenge in the coming days is measuring the performance of professionals. Professionals who have diverse skills and operate in a high degree of uncertainty.
So for today concentrate on how you can be more “Strategic” in your job. Start with mapping your job role into repetitive and nonrepetitive tasks. Then enhance your job role with a focus on nonrepetitive tasks. This will not only help leg up on being more “STRATEGIC” but also put you ahead of the aliens. (err…I mean Robots)
If you or your team needs help in looking at their job STRATEGICALLY I can help. Click the link below to book a 30 minute consult FREE or give me a shout in the comments.