Just redefine your roles , the future is better than your think !

Many futurists say that the ‘Future is already here; we just have not paid attention!’ There is some truth in this hyperbole. It is not as complete as we fathom but gives us more premise to be aware. While the educated are there to give their best shot at foresights, it is of high imperative that we as individuals also develop a keen sense of observation to understand and imagine things for ourselves. It will also augur well to remind ourselves that the future is often better than what we tend to give it credit for. If we even pick up some random macroeconomic indicators of progress and development, the results are much more positive than we expect.

The extend of poverty has definitely reduced in the last two centuries or the turn of the last century 1900. Economic surveys report

• 10% population living in extreme poverty compared to a 40%.
• 86 % of the population have basic education compared to 17%
• 85% are able to read in some language compared to 15%
• 44% living in a democracy compared to 1%
• 4% child mortality (with in the first seven years ) to 39%  

So , at a macroeconomic level , we need not be all that pessimistic. The cautionary aspects are that we are at the inflection point of exponential technological progress. To think about in the linear scale of yesterday is just not viable and is equally detrimental. Our mindset as consumers has also drastically changed for the better. We are now driving immediacy and enhanced connectivity in all our transactions. With technology making forays into every sector , every company today can also be classified as a technology company be it a bank , an educational institution or a public service delivery entity.

Combinatorial innovation is also the theme of the day. While we have opportunities disguised a s problems in and around us , the solutions are often the combination of technologies and though processes and not always straight forward. Data is the most fundamental unit of most of the modern economy and we have more of it than we ever had since the beginning of civilisation. As they say – Data is the new oil and intelligence is the new petrol! It is the same data which fundamentally rewritten successes. In 2006, the market capitalization report had Exxon Mobil , General Electric, Microsoft , Citigroup , BP and Roya Dutch Shell as the most valuable companies in the world. The list in 2016 , has Microsoft and Exxon Mobil but a whole set of the digital giants – Apple , Alphabet (Google) , Amazon and Facebook.

In terms of jobs, the usual procedural , repetitive jobs even in the tech industry like basic programming will vanish to the efficiency of a robotic process automation – a simple program much like the ‘Excel Macro’ of the present and the past. The basic cognitive roles will gain momentum and in the long term, economists aver that the deep learning and analysis clusters with completely be in the human domain. Of course the pace of change in certain aspects will still be different in different countries. India – largely addressed as the ‘Assisted Economy’ will continue to cater to low end opportunities of domestic help, drivers, chauffeurs – a lot longer than some of the western economies. The cultural need of this category will never go , at least in the near foreseeable future. But the driverless cars and domestic robots are also qualifying the test lab experiments sooner than expected. The technology apocalypse doomsday writers lauded and secretly celebrated the recent accident of a driverless car nudging into a bystanding cyclist. But the sheer probabilistic occurrence of an event like this is far less of a fraction than the gazillion untoward traffic incidents of the day.

After we electrified in the past , we had the tools to datafy and cognify. These capabilities are helping us adopt artificial intelligence and create cases for very intelligent and proactive assistance from our machines. Our analytics tools and data platforms help us process an unbelievable amount of data and our data visualization tools help us make sense and take decisions. But from a management standpoint where will we bring differentiation if the world can access the same tools and bring out analysis which is in the cookie cutter format?

In today’s world most things can be digitised and it will be those things which will fall out of the purview of technology that will become more valuable. Your customer is not a machine and life is not an algorithm. Becoming successful and indispensable will become the forte of those who will deliver unique experiences.

The differentiation will still be the domain of the human accessing the vast trove of information and making sense of a way forward. The entire concept of ‘convenience and ease’ will change under the onslaught of the intelligent machines and software but the base question of ‘trust’ will still remain unanswered. How do we parallely build trust and belief in the world? Technology has no ethics and will react the way it has been programmed or configured. It is the humans who will have to work on these important ant sensitivities. Trust innovation will be what the humans will have to rethink and modify his role. Modifying an old quote which compares strategy and culture – the modern aphorism sounds like – Culture, relationships and humanness will still eat technology for breakfast !