The Future of Management: Managing Human Wisdom in Robotic Spaces

The Evolving Technological Environment

We are rapidly transiting into an era, of all sorts of "internets of". To put things into context and perspective, the following is a non-exhaustive list for necessary illustration:

• The Internet of Drones (IoD)
• The Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT)
• The Internet of Everything (IoE)
• The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
• The Internet of Intelligent Things (IoIT)
• The Internet of Mobile Things (IoMBT)
• The Internet of Nano Things (IoNT)
• The Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT)

The above eight examples are hardly representative quantitatively of how long an exhaustive list of distinctly different feasible "internets of" can run today, serving distinctly different, even if overlapping and complementing, tangibly practical functions of industry and enterprise, to enable previously unprecedented automation. In one way or another, they all support various types of automation that were not even possible a decade or even just half a decade ago from 2021, and that too, at very significant degrees, so much so, that some of the automation possible today was often dismissed as stuff for fantasy fiction just slightly over a decade ago. In short non-technical English, all roads, are fast leading to Mass Automation.

Mass Automation is Emerging into Reality

The concept of Mass Automation, although largely dismissed and ignored over the past two decades, is very real, and very really manifesting rapidly all around. Robots are delivering groceries to households in Singapore as of 2021. People are routinely commuting on driverless vehicles in the US, in Australia and in Germany, for real. And it is all possible, thanks to ever growing connectivity and what I call "internetization".

No, Mass Automation is not here yet. It is still something of the future, and not of the present. It is something of a very near future though. It is not decades away from now. It is not a single decade away from now. It may not become widespread within the decade ahead, but it is close enough, to manifesting into reality. Have you heard about the "cashierless" grocery stores of Amazon?

No, Mass Automation does not mean human life or human experience without work. It does not mean a jobless future. What Mass Automation does mean, (and this is where Managers or Management Professionals need to start taking serious note of things) is that work will be done very differently, because the required human labor input involved in trade, enterprise, industry, commerce, production, impacted by Mass Automation, will be wholly different by nature and necessity. It will not so much be about executing tasks beyond a near point in time, as much as it will be, about the employment and application of wisdom.

Robotization of Business Spaces

The suite of "internets of" are rendering possible connectivity, that is bringing about the practical feasibility of a wide variety of robotic technologies, that allow for unprecedented automation and "autonomization" (something I have coined), with the deployment of Artificially Intelligent robots in all shapes, sizes, forms, physical or virtual, mobile or fixed, that serve all sorts of measurable, quantifiable, repetitive, imitable and routine task functions.

Everything including floors, walls and ceilings can be rendered "connected" and "robotized". And there is no limit to where robotized objects can be deployed or introduced to for practical productive use. This means, the robotization is not confined to productions spaces, but can, and will, be deployed to sales spaces, exhibition spaces, marketing spaces and administrative spaces. There is no business space, that can be considered "immune" to robotization.

Robotized Business Spaces: Implications for "MANAGEMENT"

The spaces of and for business, are no longer going to be primarily about people at a point in time in the near foreseeable future. The spaces of and for business are going to be about robots, robotized objects, connected machines, gadgets, devices of all sorts, or tools, both virtual and physical. In short, business spaces will be about non-human cyber-physical systems. And that makes all the difference, in how the task of Management will be ahead, as compared to how it has always ever been before the 2020s.

The Broader Context

The way the whole paradigm of economics and markets will work ahead, will be in the form of transcendent and integrated, plug-and-play, hyperconnected virtual platforms. Platforms that will be there, everywhere, but without a physical, tangible, or even a visible form. This description does not really look very different to how things are as of 2021, except, the reach and encrusting of anything economic into the platform paradigm will be exponential relatively, by 2030. That is the pace at which the world is getting "connected" and at which commerce is getting "integrated" - something that has been rapidly ongoing since 2010.

How people, and cyber-physical systems, will interface and/or interact with the platforms will be in the X Reality context, which is gradually, subtly and slowly, but very steadily manifesting all around us, where the interaction will be virtually instantaneous, seamless, and transcending of the actual-virtual barrier. Besides the actual-virtual barrier, there is a whole long list of other barriers that will be transcended through the advent of X Reality into actual reality beyond hypothesis over the next decade. To specific, the barriers in question that will be transcended are those that lie between human thoughts, ideas or imagination, and conversion of them into monetarily valuable output or products.

Management Ahead: What will remain Unchanged?

All philosophies, theories and textbooks aside, more so than products or processes or assets or inventory, Management in the context of business, has predominantly been about managing people, throughout history. In the future, that is unlikely to change.

Management Ahead: What will be Different?

Yet, despite Management continuing to be about, primarily at least, managing people, it is going to be a very different subject matter from what it has always ever been nonetheless, for three combined reasons:

1. "spaces" being about cyber-physical systems rather than about people
2. the people managed, will not actually be "there in the spaces" where the Management tasks will have to be executed (because of virtualization and telexistence combined in an X Reality environment, but more on that later, further below)
3. the people will have to be managed for the application of their wisdoms, rather than their actions of executing particular delegated tasks (which will render defining what is actually done, contributed, or managed a whole new different ball game altogether) - it will not be about managing people, for Human Action, but rather for Human Wisdom.

What will Business look like?

Raw materials will be mined and collected by autonomous Artificially Intelligent Machines, and then loaded onto driverless trucks or vehicles to be transported for processing. The processing plants will be fully automated to a Lights-Out degree. After being processes, the processed material will be delivered by autonomous vehicles to production plants of goods producers, which in turn will also be fully automated. Completed goods, packed and all, will be loaded by autonomous robots onto autonomous vehicles, to be transported to retail shop floors or to the doorstep of the customer. The retail shop floors will be fully automated, where goods are stacked by robots, inventory intelligently monitored and managed by smart software and customers walk in, pick up what they want, and leave, with payments deducted automatically, and no interaction necessary, with a human employee through the whole process. The whole chain will be largely automated and humanless.

In short, business ahead, will be such, where in-person interaction of human employees, either with fellow workers or customers, will not be an ordinary routine necessity.

When the entire value chain, across industries, is at lights-out automation, that pretty much will be what we should call Mass Automation. In such an environment, it should be expected, that enterprises will have feasible avenues for the physical maintenance of hardware and facilities to be fully automated as well, through autonomous robots for those purposes. And that is the business environment, that all roads are currently fast leading us towards.

The Human Labor Ahead: Wisdom Work

If something is routine or quantitative or repetitive or measurable or definite, it can and will be automated. Just think of your Robot Vacuum Cleaner. The focus of human labor then is no longer required to be on menial or manual tasks or physical or routine tasks. It is also no longer required for routine calculative or quantitative or numerical tasks. Technology will do all of that autonomously.

Qualitative, cannot be programmed. It has been argued endlessly, but there is no tangible evidence of that. As a Professional Futurist, I have to leave that sort of nonsense with, "We will talk about it, when we can see the tangible evidence".

If something is replicable or repetitive, that is not qualitative. If something can be copied or imitated, that is not qualitative. Not in the business context, and not in the context of labor therein. Let's have that clear.

This is where you see "the rise of the wisdom". Wisdom, to render production processes cheaper, faster, smoother. Wisdom, to render products more durable, more robust, safer, of better quality overall, cheaper, more marketable, easier to distribute and more sellable on the whole. Wisdom to better under, tap on, work with and even develop consumer tastes. Wisdom, to develop new consumer experiences, both tangible and intangible.

Wisdom Work in X Reality

If you want the best preview available as of 2021 to what X Reality actually looks like for the purpose of professional or occupational work because you have absolutely no idea what X Reality is (or you'd like to think you know what X Reality is, but you are actually mixing it up with things like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality), have a look at Microsoft Mesh and consider its possibilities if it came with haptic features.

X Reality is the environment in which you will see the most significant and largest convergence of all technologies in existence ever seen, including real cool stuff like Brain Computer Interface, leading to a hyperconnected world in which telepresence will be obsolete and telexistence will be the regular daily norm.

There are 3 characteristics of X Reality which will transform white collar or intellectual work:

1. Omniscience - What you need to know, you get at your disposal through an instant global search (Many, including myself honestly, will argue that this is already a reality as of 2021 if you know how to use your smartphone right)
2. Omnipresence - You are everywhere, without actually being anywhere (When the Virtual World blends with actual world, and hardware serves as your surrogate for virtual presence that is as good as actual physical presence)
3. Omnipotence - Your articles of technology, physical or non-physical, operate as you intend to, simply with your thought, and if something is scientifically feasible, you think it, and technology will execute it, without ownership of resource being a bar, in a global sharing (shared resources without borders) environment

When you combine the above three, you get telexistence. As a business owner or manager, your interest is to tap on the wisdom of people, telexistent in the Virtual World, even if physically distributed across the globe, to acquire and utilize the best ways to compete, conceptualize products, produce the products, market your products and sell your products.

Managing Human Wisdom

The Future of Management is set to be one, where Wisdom specifically will be the prime object that is managed. And that too in a way where the wisdom is applied in non-human, primarily robotic spaces, with all routine and measurable processes automated. And that means, the subject of Management in the coming future, will be very different from the subject known as Management in past for two core reasons:

1. Compared to Knowledge, Skills and other measurable competencies, Wisdom, is something a lot deeper, profound, expansive and a lot harder to measure or gauge
2. Wisdom is hard to establish or maintain a prerogative over - so acquiring to utilize, deploy and manage Wisdom is a whole new frontier subject matter that is yet to be properly charted or explored

Then there are a good number of open questions to address moving forth:

1. Do you hire permanent staff for wisdom on a fixed salary?
2. Do you hire for wisdom on project basis or short-term contracts for up to a year?
3. Do you outsource for wisdom or engage contractors on a needs basis?
4. Do your crowdsource for wisdom?
5. Do you tap on the global traffic of data, to draw from a constant flow of wisdom everywhere through the globally connected web? - a whole new frontier for management ethics and data privacy there amongst much else
6. A mix, or various combinations of the above? - We are looking at a whole new subject-matter area within the discipline of Management, right there.
7. How do you convert or bridge the wisdom you have access to, into end results, in convergence with the autonomous technology, hardware or software, operating in your robotic spaces? - this gets interesting because you may not even own your own technology or spaces

As a Professional Futurist, I will be working very hard on trying to address the above seven questions over the next 5-7 years, as will a good number of other Professional Futurists around the world. Now that is a long term plan.

About Harish "The Singapore Futurist" Shah

Harish Shah is Singapore's first local born Professional Futurist and a Management Strategy Consultant. He runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting and Keynote Topics include EmTech, Industry 4.0, HR, Digital Transformation, Product Development, X Reality, Marketing, Strategic Foresight, Systems Thinking and Organisational Future Proofing. In an Open Letter in 2019, Harish has called on his fellow Futurists around the world to raise the emphasize upon the need for Environmental Salvation, in the course of their work. He is also currently working on a series of essays which will culminate into a free eBook titled Life in Techtopia.