How software can re-humanise your business

There's a lot of talk about using software to automate your business. When I add to that talk, I can often tend to get really practical about the benefits when I’m listing them:

• Profitability
• Efficiency
• Doing more with fewer resources
• Less admin
• More clients
• More profitability
• Did I mention profitability yet?

Yes, of course, these are benefits of software and automating your business, and business leaders adopting technology to manage their business operations will experience these things.

But on face value this list can feel a little cold and more importantly, the true benefits run a few layers deeper, and are way more life changing, compelling, and - yes - human.

The idea of the workplace being powered by software often conjures up visions we've been fed since childhood - The tic-tac-toe-playing Nuclear AI in Wargames; The Terminator’s Skynet; the bedlam of Westworld and the faceless terror of HAL taking charge in 2001 A Space Odessey.

We know that software is getting smarter, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s smarter than us; in many ways it already is. What happens when it takes our jobs? Starts making rules? Makes us redundant?

If we can put aside our fears for a moment, let’s explore what we’re really looking at here. What we’re seeing in many automation projects is the orchestration of the robot and the human. Within that orchestration is the delegation of work to each party according to which can perform the task most effectively.

What is software great at?

• Analysing deeply complex datasets
• Generating reports and documents
• Performing repeatable tasks
• Tracking Large numbers of items and data

And humans?

• Relationships
• Motivation
• Communication
• Intuition
• Creativity
• Emoathy
• Compassion
• Purpose
• Meaning
• Love

Software can imitate these attributes; it can model what they look like and repeat it back to you in a convincing way - just look into the wonders being produced by GPT-3 if you need proof of that - but it’s modelling, it’s not actually being compassionate, creative, loving, empathetic. It’s not feeling what we as humans feel when we’re experiencing those attributes.

However convincing these models are, as they take their place alongside us in the home and the workplace, they don’t have Soul.

And so, I believe, a unique opportunity is being revealed to us. If we allow the delegation and the orchestration; we allow the software to manage, to analyse, to track and produce, that same software will in turn will free is up to do what it is to be human.

We weren’t born to perform endless, mind-numbing, meaningless tasks. We were born to experience the world; to have a Purpose; to chase our dreams and follow our mission to make a real difference - to our own lives, to that of our friends and families, and maybe, with a little help from our robotic friends... the world.

We don't really crave profit or efficiency or a perfectly repeatable day. Why do we want more profit? Why do we want more time? Why do we need to get more things done?

What we really crave is the freedom that those things hold the potential to offer us. The freedom that’s inherent in the act of delegation to software, if we can only keep a tab on ourselves to make sure that we don’t automatically fill our new granted free time with more meaningless tasks. The rabbit holes of busyness are dangerous, but they can be resisted. And when we do resist, and turn our attention to our purpose, to making our lives and the world just a little better... we can move mountains.

So despite the warnings of countless sci-fi movies, I don’t believe that software is aiming to take us over and dehumanise us; I believe the opposite - if we manage the orchestration well, it will re-humanise us.