future of work is a new business model

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If you believe complexity, and a complex world, is here to stay, you have to embrace emergence rather than just predictability to find success.

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If you want to embrace emergent way of thinking, you have to embrace conceptual thinking.

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If you want to think conceptually, you have to believe the art & science of business need to stand side by side as equals.

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If you want art & science to stand as equals, you have to embrace constant learning.

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If you want to embrace constant learning, you will have to embrace people who learn at different paces, people who learn just not specific skills but learn to maximize their potential and you will learn to embrace the inherent unevenness of all this learning.

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If you want to embrace maximizing people’s potential, you will need to embrace technology, specifically artificial intelligence, as a learning tool to augment people, not replace people.

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If you want to embrace technology as augmenting people, you will need to see technology as a distributor of knowledge, not just as a creator of efficiency.

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If you want to do all of this, you will find that maximizing the potential of people, improving conceptual thinking, constant learning, will embed the business itself into society; inevitably becoming a viable part of the weave of the community and society.

This is my premise behind a what I believe the business model, organization, and of the future of work looks like.

“The emerging consensus is that it <the pandemic> is speeding an existing transformation vector, but privately I'm wondering whether it will end up leading us into a very different set of circumstances, and that may end up changing what organizations look like, how they run, and how they interact with the rest of society.”

Mike Walsh, author Algorithmic Leader

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“Whether AI will foster a utopian or dystopian existence is a matter for speculation, but the window for us to have influence on the outcome is closing.”

Flynn Coleman, author The Human Algorithm

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In the mid-1910’s Louis Brandeis, commenting on Taylor’s thinking, offered us the idea of “efficiency by consent.”

“Greater productivity of labor must not only be attainable, but attainable under conditions consistent with the conservation of health, the enjoyment of work and the development of the individual. It is not sufficient to have discovered an industrial truth or even the whole truth. Such truth can rule only when accompanied by the consent of people. Industrial truths must be consistent with human truths in order to maximize productivity and potential. Is the greater productivity attained clearly consistent with the health of the body, the mind and the soul of the worker? Is it consistent with industrial freedom? Is it consistent with greater joy in work, and generally in living? These are the questions which must be answered in the affirmative, and to the satisfaction, not of a few merely, but of the majority of those to be affected.”

So, what if we gave employees the ability to consent.

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In the 1920’s Mary Parker Follett said:

“I do not think we have psychological and ethical and economic problems. We have human problems with psychological, ethical, and economic aspects.”

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“To speak of the ‘limitation of the individual’ is blasphemy and suicide. The spirit of the whole is incarnate in every part. Nothing <sic> shall be able to separate the individual from society.”

So, what if we not only sought the potential in all employees (people) we also sought to make business in and of society.

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In 1957 Bertrand DeJouvenel stressed the significance for human existence of movement, the need for change and founding, and “stationariness,” the necessity for an “outward solidity of things. Man has always been aware that fixity in environment was necessary to him; it is indeed the very condition of his efforts to change this environment. Routine in things makes possible innovation by man” <Sovereignty, Chicago, 1957>

So, what if we maximized progress over meeting some specific objective.

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In 1986 Goldratt said the attitude of business, a flawed attitude, is “if a worker doesn’t have something to do, let’s find them something to do.” His point was this attitude toward productivity, and work, actually creates inefficiency. It creates work where there is none to be done. Maybe more importantly on page 146 of The Race, Goldratt outlines the concept of "attaining individual universal ownership' – ‘commitment of the individuals there is a universal acceptance of the process.'

Since that time, we have made massive leaps with regard to technology. We have algorithms, machine learning and a variety of technology-enabling tools which we seem to apply whether the people want them, or see the value of them, toward business models.

So. What if AI directed people toward opportunities, built in buffers to busy work & busyness and crafted a network in which activity was not busyness, but always contributing to progress. Or. As Goldratt stated “a process of improvement is by its very nature a process of continual change.”?

• ** note: There is no finish line which is why progress is a more effective objective than a bunch of milestones. We know that people, left to their own devices, will resist organizational change (all the while, paradoxically, embracing continuous personal change). What happens if AI is constantly moving and shifting resources so that they are always at hand whenever an opportunity arises or need occurs? Then it is no longer change, but rather ‘using what exists’ to ‘improve what exists’. Going back to Goldratt, continuous improvement demands individual universal ownership (widespread commitment by individuals that there is a universal acceptance of the vision and process). It also demands group consensus. As Goldratt also said: “Ongoing improvement goes beyond isolated, uncoordinated efforts of individuals trying to do their best.” True then, true now, the most effective business model reflects the unified efforts of an organized group.

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In 1985 Alvin Toffler said “in the past the company that knew how to standardize better was able to beat out its competitors. In the future, the company that knows how to destandardize effectively may prove the victor.” Destandardization is not personalization, it is having the ability to adapt, and have the agility, to meet emerging opportunities.??

So, what if we embraced a business model focused on emergence and adaptability to context (or what Mary Parker Follett called “the law of the situation”).

“A system is responsible in proportion to the degree that the people who make the decisions bear the consequences.”

Charles Frankel

?Found in these words from the past are some foundational themes:

-?????????Consent (engagement)

-?????????Continuous improvement (progress)

-?????????Destandardize (adaptability/agility)

The most effective, and efficient, business model has always been identifiable and, yet, we ignored it as most of the business world embraced the worst versions of Taylorism tied to Friedman principles with a good dose of Gordon Gecko. Even now, as much of the business world has grasped the fact most business has squeezed out all the good in business in the pursuit of prosperity, the business world either offers up absurd, unpractical, “transformations” to an undeniably flawed model or tried to attach symbolic platitudes, Purpose/responsibility/etc., to a model which will never enable those platitudes to come to life.

The future demands a new business model and a new way of thinking about how business is done.

• It demands a technology infrastructure which augments the talents, skills and potential the people using the infrastructure.
• It demands a new business model which unleashes the human system, not replace humans, and humanity, with automation, AI and technology.

So how do we go about doing this?

What if we built a business model with an algorithmic based structure with the capacity to ingest unstructured data (people, institutional, competitive, general knowledge) sources and structure it into useful ‘nudges’, or informational traction points, to people within the organization.

** e.g., what if every person received a personalized “This is what your AI has been thinking about” daily updates?

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This idea is a networked community in which individual value creation, creativity/thinking/ideation, is enabled with the intent of creating common value creation. This is a networked community. The Social Semantic Web interwoven with industry & institutional knowledge and also integrating typical knowledge management with individual interests & skills. This is a networked community in which the “pushed out” knowledge to the network adapts to all inputs so the people, who pull in the information, can build relationships with the knowledge AND people interested in the same knowledge to create collective value as opportunities emerge.

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This idea is technology augmenting people to be better conceptually thinking and, inevitably, in specific doing, in other words, think conceptually, do specifically. A pragmatic working people’s version of vision & hard work and dreams & plans. The business truth, any industry & any role, is if everyone could do this well – think conceptually & do specifically – almost every role & task would be optimized if not maximized. The trick is always to see the bigger picture, the repercussions and consequences spreading from a decision and the context within that decision must be made, and yet not compromise the focus on execution; the actual doing of a specific task necessary to make things happen.

“It’s not about what technology can do, it’s about what you can do with it.”

?This idea is a business model version of Intelligence augmentation.

I would argue the future of work is not about transformation, digital or otherwise, or reskilling/upskilling people, it is found in a new business model based on a new way of thinking about how business is conducted where technology augments people to maximize their potential (thinking, decision making, doing).

“Each day people turn up at work, in sub-optimal offices and workplaces, not designed that way, but simply how they have grown to be with each iteration of the company’s progress. They work within a bureaucracy of process and procedure, designed in response to past events to ensure a brighter, safer future yet in reality limiting and constraining every individual’s capacity for creativity and humanity.”

John Atkinson

I would argue that the future of business is found by maximizing human potential, creativity/imagination/practical doing, with a combination of data science, conceptual thinking and behavioral science. and human creativity, in other words, effective conceptual thinking. I would argue that this, done well, shows possibilities against emerging opportunities it also benefits continuous improvement into the everyday operations of the business. I would argue the future of business is found by letting humans be humans to the best of their humanity and humanness (skills, thinking, engagement, community, meaning). I would argue the future of business is found not in digital transformation, but rather a transformation of how people work and a technology infrastructure which extends their potential to the benefit of skills, engagement, thinking, community and meaning – to the benefit of the individual, the business and society.

“A technology creates an environment. An environment is a process. Any extension of man changes everything, not just something.”

Marshall McLuhan

All of this leads me to “emergent.”

The emergent objective:

a continuously improving, learning, organization adaptive to emerging contextual opportunities and challenges

The power of emergent, or even 100% emergent, is, as HG Wells said: “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” Constant learning keeps the business from catastrophe. Yes. It can create issues, can create some inefficiencies (albeit I would argue it is just as likely to create efficiencies), but it increases the probability of avoiding true catastrophe. In fact.?I will say a characteristic that lifts businesses above others is their ability to collaborate/connect in any direction (horizontal, vertical, diagonal, noncontiguous) across the organization. I will note that this ability does not simply enhance innovation and taking advantage of opportunities, but it also shortens the length of problems.

This constant learning does not create inconsistency, just some unevenness from which technology sifts through to find the similarities between ranges of skills, experiences and language and permits an AI structure to find coherence. That is the objective of collaborators to be successful – coherence. Coherent structure, and structuring, permits a malleable shaping of ongoing teams and collaborators.

Yes. I assume emergent, in business, is grounded in the individual & everyone's potential. For example, let's assume everyone is born with a certain potential infiniteness - maybe 6 skills & 4 hobbies - and education, society, parenting (with good 'finite' intentions) narrow cast you to 1 skill & 1 hobby. What happens if a business taps into your original potential and opens up you to re-explore all 6 of your potential skills (of which you will inevitably proportionately prioritize as you bounce up against other's with more developed skill sets) and you are permitted to bring 'hobbies' into your work (thinking or doing)? Well. Each individual becomes emergent, therefore, all doing & thinking (innovations & also replicable systems) is emergent in totality.

I propose a business model which proactively seeks anticipatory triggers to predict emergent activity and yet keeps people’s heads on a swivel for the unseen triggers which activate ‘surprises’ or opportunities.?And that is where technology can play a role – a significant role.

Technology is a distributor of data, and knowledge (Intelligence Driven Software) and data drives strategic decisionmaking. This means Data drives potential, not just efficiency in decision-making & strategy, but effectiveness. The value of an AI infrastructure, leaning on algorithms and 2 distribution pathways – one driven to distribute knowledge to support existing more predictive thought sets & another to distribute more random, ancillary but complementary, knowledge to encourage curiosity and emergent thinking - is that it addresses the typical challenge that knowledge tends to pool rather than trickle throughout. AI (algorithms) become the irrigation system for institutional knowledge, data, individual knowledge and resources. In fact. Algorithms may actually be the order needed to provide the guardrails to an emergent organization.

John Dewey, who described human existence in similar terms, even built a metaphysics around it. Metaphysics is “the cognizance of the generic traits of existence” (Experience and Nature [New York, 1958) and it is “the intricate mixture of the stable and precarious, the fixed and the unpredictably novel, the assured and the uncertain, in existence which sets mankind upon the love of wisdom which forms philosophy” (p. 59). Also, “order cannot be admirable in a world continually threatened with disorder” (Art as Experience [New York, 1958], pp. 14–15)

?‘Order needed’. Every business needs a strong vision for a quest - let's call this a 'logical quest' or I sometimes call it 'productive vagueness' -- and with that in hand a business can craft a technological infrastructure which constantly offers contextual opportunities for people and people collect around selected opportunities to engage with and mine them – all guided and nudged through an algorithm-based infrastructure.

Let me also say this future of business thinking is not just for white collar workers or large organizations.?Janitors, plumbers and landscapers aren’t going away. They represent a significant amount of the working population and offer essential services to the overall structure of society itself. I would argue they, also, are knowledge workers. Knowledge in that the more knowledge they have, contextually, the better they also can think conceptually with regard to how their specific service contributes. A janitor who knows about the important class or how some students are struggling may pay a little more attention or spontaneously offer a detail that can make a difference. A plumber who knows about the neighborhood or what is happening may be able to offer a detail in the service call. You get it. knowledge is power and conceptual expands beyond the normal ‘in the office white collar’ definitions. Maybe we should view everyone as a ‘knowledge worker’ and not just some white men sitting in high priced chairs in front of computers.

In the end.

Ultimately, Dr. Jason Fox sent me on this quest. He wrote a book called “How to Lead a Quest” which, upon completing, made me think “what business model is required to go successfully questing?”

This is when I began to rethink the entire business model. This is where I begin today.

-?????????New business model

-?????????New way of thinking about how business is done

-?????????New way to think about how technology is used to the benefit of people (which benefits the business)

-?????????New way to think about workers (people as potential untapped)

?Ponder.