We all know the world of work is changing; but how exactly and what can we really do about it?
I attended the third annual World of Work conference yesterday. Here are my notes:
- People (esp GenZ) increasingly want their work to have a positive impact (not just £££)
- At least initially, AI is being used to supplement (rather than replace) humans: ‘co-creation’:
AI-generated fortune cookie sayings are entertaining “Today is a good day to carve marble”- Banana & bacon do go surprisingly well together in cupcakes (an AI-generated flavour combo) – but, for now, we still need a human baker to tweak quantities and produce
- Therefore, the ability to work alongside the machines is key – perhaps leveraging their computational/combination power for idea generation and then filtering the results
“Remember, there’s always a human inside the machine” Be it human thinking/empathy factored into an algorithm or a real person within a company/system.
- The social impact of this tech disruption is real but often not very visible e.g. subtle/slow shifts in gender/regional balance
- Lily the selfie-taking robot doesn’t care if you are in the middle of your keynote – she will interrupt anyone – she has an important job to do – now smile for the camera 🙂
- “Alexa, ask Dominos to feed me” works! Consumer tech is super excited about voice-first (think smart speakers/siri/Alexa etc.)
- Neural networks are already producing eye-opening results. Try entering partial song lyrics into this gem and see what you get
RECURRING THEME: why hasn’t productivity increased with this amazing tech (in our pockets)? My thought – we just haven’t got the hang of it yet – e.g. simply being more deliberate with how we use our time
- Some countries are way ahead in their agile working practices e.g. Finland: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190807-why-finland-leads-the-world-in-flexible-work
- Work is generally shit. A CIPD survey of what retired folks missed most from work found “Nothing”
- Smart organisations are spending regular time preparing for the future, acknowledging:
- No-one really has a clue. Uncertainty is a new normal. We live in a VUCA world
- Business survival depends on being prepared for the future, by being able to learn and respond to change.
The best way to predict the future is to to create it ~ Drucker
- Create and share your visions. Like this video from JLL
- Workplace diversity is now starting to be driven by commercial imperative (diverse people and thoughts > better ideas > better products and services; duh)
- What if you left your workplace at the end of the day feeling better than when you arrived??
- 5G rollout looks like a critical enabler for the IoT revolution – RF engineers will certainly be in high demand
So what does it all mean?
One thing’s for sure: the people and organisations who force themselves to regularly gaze forward into the future are less likely to be asking “Who moved my cheese?” when the time comes.
