In 1982,\u00a0Time\u00a0<\/i>magazine declared the personal computer its \u201cMachine\u00a0of the Year.\u201d Up until then, humans usually had won a \u201cPerson of the Year\u201d distinction.<\/p>\n
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Time\u00a0<\/i>publisher John A. Meyers wrote, “Several human\u00a0candidates might have represented 1982, but none symbolized the past year more richly, or will be viewed by history as more significant, than a machine: the computer.” \u00a0<\/i>Pity those worthy humans who might have been in contention. The year 1982 was the point in history when humans became mere mortals, suffering the ignominy of garnering second place to a machine.<\/p>\n
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It hasn’t got much better. Some 33 years later, we might suggest 1982’s “Machine of the Year” has now morphed into an omnipresence of highly sophisticated technologies, outperforming and outsmarting those fallible humans.<\/p>\n
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Today\u2019s \u201cMachine of the Year\u201d is no longer solely the personal computer either. It’s everything with an IP address. It’s my fridge!<\/p>\n
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More alarmingly, perhaps\u00a0Time’s<\/i>\u00a0“Person of the Year” distinction \u2013 you know, humans \u2013 is becoming irrelevant, destined for a future of runner-up badges to the almighty machine. Wearables, Big Data, robotics, cloning, telepathy, the ‘Internet of Things’ and the pending ‘singularity’ \u2013 perhaps better stated as the rise of Artificial Intelligence \u2013 is no longer relegated to the futuristic thoughts of Orson Welles or Elon Musk. Indeed, the future is now.<\/p>\n
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There are warning signs ahead that leaders ought to pay attention to.<\/p>\n
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Firstly, we mustn’t put technology ahead of humanity. Leaders of people should be equipped to handle the continued onslaught of technology innovation but doing so such that they don\u2019t make the mistake\u00a0Time\u00a0<\/i>magazine made in 1982. We mustn’t allow the machine to replace the true purpose of an organization. We mustn’t abdicate the responsibility of leadership so advanced machinery supplants the very basis of civilization. The workplace will not survive if we put machine before man.<\/p>\n
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Just as the roads of yesterday\u00a0will not take us to the places of tomorrow, old technology hasn’t\u00a0ameliorated bad management. The typewriter coded letter turned into a Microsoft Word document which turned into a shared Google document. The face-to-face meeting turned into the conference call which turned into a webcam meeting. For many leaders, ironically, these ‘machines’ and innovative advancements have not helped them to become better leaders. If anything, it has made them worse. Distraction looms and inconsiderate use of the technology prevails. It\u2019s analogous to the Victorian era cotton mills, when people were treated as slaves to the machines, and considered dispensable.<\/p>\n
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So while we continue to develop these new forms of functionality, levels of employee disengagement and disenfranchisement remain at anemic levels. For every Enterprise Social Network we launch and implement, millions of workers remain left out. For every technological advancement invented, there are millions of employees who remain dissatisfied and unrecognized for their efforts at work. Are we trying to let the machine make up for poor leadership?<\/p>\n
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Then there is irony. A Chief Information Officer mandates a certain collaboration platform to be installed across the organization \u2013 because one of their CIO friends did the same a few months back \u2013 but doesn’t once contribute or participate. This is an individual who has misunderstood the benefit of collaborative behaviour. Open leadership? Not even close. When a CEO begins to blog on the company’s corporate website \u2013 but employees discover it\u2019s full of ghost-written entries by members of the firm’s corporate communications team \u2013 it fuels the fire of\u00a0deceitful behaviour.<\/p>\n
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If as author\u00a0Andrew Keen suggests,\u00a0The Internet Is Not the Answer<\/i>, and author\u00a0Nicholas Carr claims we are now operating our organizations in a\u00a0Glass Cage<\/i>,\u00a0what are leaders doing to ensure human behaviour continues to flow \u2013 as Plato taught us \u2013 via the three main sources of “desire, emotion and knowledge?” If the technology that we are implementing into our organizations is eliminating an employee’s desire and her emotion, while confusing the transfer of knowledge, I argue it is the antiquated behavioural models that we currently have in place in the organizations itself that are causing such dire employee disengagement aftereffects.\u00a0The technology isn\u2019t helping; indeed it\u2019s simply masking the root problem. The presumption continues that an infusion of new technologies will somehow solve the greater issue. Ultimately, the behaviour remains the same.<\/p>\n
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Socrates once stated, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new,” yet we must also remember that pre-existing behaviour tends to trump enhanced technology functionality. If there is a culture of fear at your place of work, no amount of technology is going to help.<\/p>\n
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As we continue to develop new technologies and as we seek new growth in our businesses, leaders need not worry about delivering the next new “Machine of the Year” as that will happen anyway. Society has proven over and over again we are pioneers of innovation.<\/p>\n
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But to truly prosper \u2013 to ensure society comes before machine \u2013 leaders must develop and inculcate new behaviours that are open, collaborative and inclusive across the organization in step with the technology itself. We must put humanity ahead of and before<\/i> the technology expansion.<\/p>\n
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Perhaps we humans should aim to be the next \u2018us\u2019, rather than developing intelligence machines that we plan to build to replace us.<\/p>\n
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Let \u2018us\u2019 put the machine in its place. If we want that to happen \u2013 if we want to enhance our own humanity in concert with the technology \u2013 leaders best begin the process of introducing and balancing new forms of open and collaborative behaviours with employees and peers, in parallel with the technologies we are thoughtfully, and thoughtlessly, introducing to society.<\/p>\n
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If we fail to deliver on a proper balance, expect to see plenty more \u201cMachine of the Year\u201d distinctions in the future.<\/p>\n
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And if this imbalance continues, it\u2019s our humanity that will suffer.<\/p>\n
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About the author:<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan Pontefract is the author of DUAL PURPOSE and FLAT ARMY, and is Chief Envisioner at TELUS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 1982,\u00a0Time\u00a0magazine declared the personal computer its \u201cMachine\u00a0of the Year.\u201d Up until then, humans usually had won a \u201cPerson of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[99,89],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":903,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions\/903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}