And as I continued on
in education, nothing much seemed to change.
There were no signs of computers at all throughout the whole of the rest
of my schooling. After school I took a
year out and worked for the Open University here in Manchester – there I did
get to see and even use a computer – of course the OU were and are pioneers in
the use of technology – I remember the row of terminals which we used to access
student records down the line from the main frame at the OU headquarters. At university, I was lucky to be able to type
all my assignments, unlike most of my peers who had to hand write theirs – on a
portable manual typewriter! We did get
to do some computing in one course, where we learnt to write a program to order
numbers (if I remember rightly?). So,
nothing much seemed to be changing for a very long time and the idea of talking
to someone, whilst seeing them, still seemed an impossible dream.
Working in a series
of voluntary organisations in the first part of my career, computers were
around, but few and far between. Then
suddenly we all had one, and they were networked, and overnight everything
changed. The future happened all in a
rush! Now what once seemed an impossible
dream is a daily commonplace and computers pervade every aspect of our lives,
not just work. And this technology is
changing and developing constantly.
At this week’s CIPD
Annual Conference I attended a number of sessions which explicitly focused on
work and the future – the theme of the conference. My Sketchnotes from the conference can be found in a previous post. In one of these sessions Dr Almuth McDowell and
Dr Richard Mackinnon discussed with David D’Sousa ‘Digital Work’. They began by focusing on now, rather than
the future, partly because we are so bad at predicting the future, but also
because now is just so interesting –
there is so much happening right now, that we need to get our heads
around. Though Richard Mackinnon
reminded us that all through the 60’s and 70’s people commented on the huge
pace of change and the way that technology was central to this, so this isn’t
new. So, perhaps this has always been
the case down the ages as each ‘new technology’ has been introduced – for that
generation, for that age, the change was huge.
May be these changes feel huge to us, because they are our changes – the
changes and the challenges for our generations.
This panel talked
about the way that technology was replacing some jobs and at the same time
leading to the creation of new jobs.
Whilst other jobs are transforming from one thing to something very
different eg fighter pilot to drone pilot.
These sorts of changes have many implications in terms of the cognitive
requirements of jobs, the implications for managing the ethics of this and how
to help people to learn & develop into these changing roles. The panel identified a series of skills that
will continue to be vital for the future amidst all this change such as
adaptability, resilience, problem-solving, emotional intelligence and not
information, but where & how to find it.
In a similar vein,
Daniel Susskind spoke about technology and the future of the professions. This was based upon the research that he and
his father have carried out and written up in their book ‘The Future of the
Professions’. Based on his session, I
would highly recommend reading this book.
He explored with us
why we have professions and why they are challenged by the way that technology
is developing. He identified that the
professions are facing four key challenges: cost; antiquated ways of working;
opaque ways of working and simply underperforming. It is clear that there are massive changes
afoot for a great many professions and that these changes are already here and
happening now.
Linking back to the
previous session, if we had been called on to predict which jobs would be
affected by technology, we would most likely have focused on low skills jobs
being replaced by automation. However,
Susskind, explored the ways which technology is affecting professional work, so
that high skilled roles are being replaced by lower skilled roles supported by
technology. For example, rather than a
specialist doctor needing to diagnose a condition, a nurse (so still a skilled
role, but not so specialist a role) could undertake this, when supported with
technology to aid diagnosis - with the possible additional advantage to the
patient, that the nurse has the people and empathetic skills lacking in many
doctors.
Susskind explained
that one of the reasons we have found it so hard to predict how technology can
develop, is that we have often assumed that machines will need to tackle tasks
in the way that humans do. When actually
they don’t. Once this mental hurdle had
been crossed, there have been found many ways of using technology to tackle tasks
that could previously only be done by skilled people.
Actually, it occurs
to me, that actually not only do machines not need to do things in the way we
have done them, neither do we.
Which brings me, to
the final keynote of the conference, which was delivered by Gianpiero
Petriglieri, from INSEAD on leadership.
He was exploring why leadership is about more than just competences,
particularly in what he called this ‘age of nomadic professionalism’. He discussed that way that effective leaders
make us feel and that involves ‘a cocktail of skills and passion’. He spoke about how effective leaders create
meaning for others through the way they convey and live a story which converts
anxiety to hope. He spoke of how they
are prepared to sacrifice for that story. He looked at leadership as having two aspects
of performance – achieving aims, but also embodying shared values. So he was suggesting that leadership does not
need to be done as it has been done in the past. He defined global leadership now as:
‘the courage, capacity, curiosity and commitment
to
work with, learn from and give ‘voice’ to the other’.
This was a hopeful
and inspiring note to close the conference on.
We need courage, capacity, curiosity and commitment to respond to the
changes that our world and our workplaces are facing both from technology and
the other economic and political challenges.
We will need to hear and work with other ‘voices’ to do that. This view of leadership is very different to
that which most of us have experienced in the workplace to date – and it seems
a very long way from the model being expressed in the political sphere at
present.
There are challenges
a-plenty for us all here, whether in relation to digital work, the impact of
technology on professions, including our own and the kind of leadership that is
needed. And the future is here and now!
Rachel
Burnham
15/11/16
Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D
professionals update and refresh their skills.
I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social
media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of
learning on performance.
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