We are on the verge of a technology tsunami that will transform how most businesses are staffed, operated and managed. Leading the way will be smart robots, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things, distributed manufacturing, and increased global connectivity and computing power. Through low-cost SaaS services, AI will be infused into every business function. These changes will accelerate the pace of automation in businesses and materially reduce human headcount.
In the Smart Machine Age, human beings will only be needed to do the work that technology can’t do well. Generally speaking, those human jobs will involve high-level problem solving, critical thinking, innovation, creativity and high emotional engagement with other human beings. This presents a big challenge for learning and development professionals. Why? Because most people have not been taught how to do those skills or don’t excel at them even if they have received training. Those skills are hard to learn, because they require us to overcome our reflexive ways of thinking and emotionally reacting.
The science of adult learning is clear. Humans tend to be close-minded thinkers who seek confirmation of what they believe and emotionally defensive thinkers who seek ego affirmation. These tendencies inhibit our ability to perform the human skills needed for high performance in the Smart Machine Age. How do we train people to think better? To solve problems better? To iteratively learn better? To collaborate in teams better? To listen better and be more open-minded? To manage their ego, fears and emotional defensiveness—the big learning inhibitors? That will be the challenge that L&D professionals will face.
This is a big challenge because it goes against the grain of how we were educated and the Industrial Revolution models of business and leadership that still dominate many organizations. The reason is that the goal of those models has been to train people to do standardized, repetitive tasks efficiently and with zero defects, and the dominant leadership model has been “command and control and direct.” Those models will no longer work, because the tasks that humans will need to do in the Smart Machine Age are not tasks that can be standardized or made efficient or error-free. Technology will automate those types of tasks in the next five to 10 years. Moreover, you can’t effectively command and control or direct people to do the tasks humans will be required to do—to think better, innovate better, be more creative or emotionally engage at higher levels.
What L&D professionals can do is teach those skills and help people develop the underlying behaviors necessary to excel at doing them. That is: how to iteratively learn; be more open-minded and less defensive by quieting one’s ego; manage one’s thinking and emotions; reflectively listen; and connect, relate and emotionally engage with others in ways that build trust and cultivate effective collaboration and teamwork.
L&D professionals will have to play another key role. In collaboration with leadership, they will have to establish a culture that enables employees to excel at higher-level human thinking and emotional skills. That culture should be based on three psychological principles: positivity, self-determination theory and psychological safety. It must be a culture that is humanistic and people-centric. Ironically, while automation will dehumanize businesses through headcount reductions, it will also require businesses to become more humanistic and people-centric in order to enable the highest levels of human performance in the areas that technology won’t do well.
Every business will become a technology-enabled business that must continually learn and adapt to a constantly changing environment as technology advances. The quality of a business’ human development capabilities and its ability to exploit new technologies will determine its viability. In that environment, human resources must transform itself into a human development function. Every employee must be on a human development journey with a personalized development plan.
In the Smart Machine Age, strategic competitive advantage will be based in large part on the quality and speed of human learning. Operational excellence will most likely be technology-driven, and human beings will do the harder thinking, problem-solving and tasks requiring emotional intelligence. L&D professionals will need to lead this transformation.
