15 Apr
14 Apr
I was watching the news recently, with a degree of empathy, of Taxi drivers protesting in Melbourne. Their livelihood and futures have been dramatically impacted by the Victorian Government’s proposals. Watching this report also made me think about the driverless Google cars rolling around California heralding a possible new world of driverless taxis as depicted in the earlier movie version of Total Recall.
It is more than likely that Taxi drivers will not exist in the not too distant future as a result of technological developments. We have already experienced a rapid change in the types of jobs available today compared to a few years ago. The Internet did not exist 20 years ago and Facebook did not exist 10 years ago. The economy associated with the internet and social media is growing at such a pace that an ever increasing part of business is dependent on competencies in this area. We see manufacturing jobs disappearing, routine jobs being outsourced to low wage countries and there seems to be a relentless focus on automating as much as we can.
You may ask why? The answer lies in our continual desire to improve and develop better ways of doing things with the resulting benefits of lower prices- which we all enjoy. Research shows that the cost of goods has decreased in real terms but wages have not decreased. This drives the producers of goods to automate more and more, at the expense of labour, as they seek increased commercial competitiveness.
This drive for more automation is enabled by the rapid growth of IT, where advances in the power of the processing chips, allows the application of more powerful software. In particular, Artificial Intelligence is being used to codify routine best practice processes into seemingly cognitive thinking robots.
In a TED lecture, Ray Kurzweil argues that the rate of technological growth will not change and that it has been following an exponential power law, probably from the start of man’s existence. What we are seeing today is the rapid change of everything we do with tremendous benefit but also risks to our livelihood and work. Ray’s story is compelling and exciting and is worth thinking about as the changes are, as he says, inevitable. We are watching, in our lifetime, a wave of change that is more powerful than the industrial revolution because it is happening, by comparison, at the speed of light.
To continue the theme, The Economist in January 2014 published an article: The future of jobs-The onrushing wave.
This article discusses the impact of technology growth particularly on work and draws parallels in history. It argues that the research presented shows that routine jobs are being codified and are disappearing to the extent that smart machines can be developed to replicate the outcome. It highlights the increasing use of machines in complex ways. Indeed, it argues that the machines are much better and more reliable than humans.
With all this growth in high tech tools and systems where are the jobs going to come from? Interestingly, it’s likely to be in the areas that are opposite of the routines and processes that can be codified. The article argues that the work will be in relationship type jobs that are difficult and messy to deal with. Work in the areas of people management, personal trainers, health services and cleaning are examples of some of the jobs of the future.
What is not obvious is the work around creating the development of business models, the systems and the strategy around the implementation of new ideas. Being part of the IT World, we see more and more jobs disappearing but new areas of interest emerging. Even in the IT world the work is moving to the more creative and innovative. An everyday example is the move to Cloud Computing decreasing number of positions in the infrastructure support area as well the type of jobs available. Current trends in Mobile Computing Communications and Security are growing and the increasing interest in the use of Business Intelligence experts to mine Big Data are just a few of the examples of growth areas.
In other areas, IT expertise is playing an increasingly important role such as Marketing. Richard Brearley, an IT Professional who runs Millan Marketing, argues that the understanding and use of technology is fundamental to Business Development and Marketing personnel today and will only increase. A focus of how companies will be able to market not towards many but to one individual at a time appears to be the goal and at very low cost. To build relationships one at a time requires both an understanding of the technology, the shaping of the tools and an understanding of human behaviour. It is likely that IT professionals need to grow their skills in some of these non-technological areas. This is an example of work that has no real specification or parallel in current frameworks but exits all the same.
Importantly, a recent Time magazine article highlighted the insecurity of work in the future.
The reporters argued that more and more jobs will be created by small entrepreneurial companies. That these jobs would be increasingly temporary and freelance in nature, it implied the notion of being paid for what you produce and that just showing up was not going to be rewarded. There are organisations now that co-ordinate stay at home workers to carry out specific tasks for large companies on an as needs basis. They are enabled by the new technological revolution and could not have existed 20 years ago. These organisations are moving more and more to performance based service providers that provide highly productive people and reduce effective labour costs. Ruth MacKay the owner of Ourtel, one such company, is currently writing a book around what the future of these services will look like for Australian competitiveness.
These are interesting insights but how should we be looking at our jobs today while understanding future trends?
It is difficult to predict the future but I would argue that providing a valuable contribution to our organisation or customers will remain important. This requires us to think about what we do, and what value is created by our work. We will be rewarded when we take the initiative to eliminate, modify or create work processes that add value. We have to align ourselves to skills that underpin value creation – creativity, innovation and flexibility of thinking. We need to demonstrate that we get things done and effectively, and not be measured by what we know, because.. “IBM’s Watson” knows more as he has all of human history available to him and is quicker at delivering the knowledge. The power of Watson will be in our hands soon. However, Watson cannot think like you nor can he synthesize like you. We need to see Watson as a tool for our value creation and this requires a different way of thinking. We need to look at our relationships and how we interact and deal with other people. We are social and emotional, which is our essence. How we get things done with and through other people cannot be replicated by machines…yet.