In this blog post, I elaborate on how three Ted Talk speakers give a new perspective on how disruption will change organisations internally. This post combines the insights of three experts elaboration on the role of humans in a digitally disrupted environment. In contrast to most blog posts, it does not focus on technological disruption and the strategies behind it, but it focuses on how to manage organisations differently because of it.
Tim Leberecht
Tim Leberecht, a Humanist from Silicon Valley argues that in a time of artificial intelligence, big data and the quantification of everything, we are losing sight of the importance of the emotional and social aspects of our work. As half of the human workforce is expected to be replaced by software and robots in the next 20 years, humanity faces a challenge of how to cope with this in the future. It will change how we build company cultures, the people we recruit and how we work together with the technologies. Not surprisingly, many corporate leaders embrace disruptive technologies intending to increase profits and enhance efficiency. Nevertheless, the Ted talks from Tim Leberecht, Eric Berridge and Nadja Yousif describe that we should not lose human capabilities out of sight.
Leverecht states that he wants companies to remain human as humans are the ones that can do things ‘beautifully rather than ‘efficiently’. Humans and machines will inevitably have to work side-by-side, but Leverecht proposes four principles that could make organizations more ‘beautifully’ managed for people.
Do the unnecessary: Make efforts that go beyond the merely necessary to connect with each other.
Create Intimacy: Just like in a marriage, small gestures are more important than big promises. Focus on breaking down barriers and allow any topic to be discussed.
Be ugly: Support people to be ugly and authentic. Allow people to speak the ugly truth.
Remain incomplete: Companies should keep wondering and asking questions.
Eric Berridge
Eric Berridge, another TedTalk speaker, highlights the importance of humanism in the software and other tech industries. He explains four reasons why we should not overlook the human aspect in business. Traditionally, technologists struggle to communicate with the business, whereas the business struggles to understand the customer (end-user). Therefore, businesses often struggle to articulate the customer’s needs. Sciences teach us how to build things, but human skills teach us what to build and why to build them. They are equally important, and just as hard. According to Eric: “people give context to our world.” Human skills are about thinking critically, persuading others and working in an unstructured environment. Languages allow us to convert emotions, to thoughts and actions. The future asks for a diverse workforce. Not only in gender, ethnicity and other frequently discussed topics but also background and skills.
Nadjia Yousif
Lastly, Nadjia Yousif, a BCG consultant, shares her thoughts on how people should work with technologies that are designed to support them. Years of practical research demonstrate that employees often treat information systems (IS) or other technological applications as non-functioning employees. They ignore it, try to work together as little as possible and foster frustrations that they do not act upon. Yousif describes that years of practical research also proved that employees should work with IS like they are colleagues. Plan regular reflections moments, spend time getting to know each other and include them in organisational charts.
All speakers end up highlighting the importance of recognizing and designing for humanity within organisations as this will foster a healthy culture and a good understanding of customers’ needs.
Hey Maartje! Thanks for emphasizing such an essential topic, especially when all the importance is given to technology rather than humans. To summarise the speeches, I believe the key point is that humans will “always” be better than machines in emotional intelligence. I said “always” in parenthesis, since it is not a given fact. In fact, machines are better than humans in recognizing feeling. However, machines are stuck at understanding one particular task well. To go back to your topic, I also believe that having a solid EQ in the workspace will essentially separate us from the machines and improve work as we know it.