Let’s Get Real About Personal Agility: What It Means to YOU

We now begin to cover the fifth of seven skills needed for the AI Era: Personal Agility, Rapidly Learn and Unlearn.

My promise to you from the beginning was to help you be your best you in the new AI-driven era. That’s why I need to get real with you here — focusing on YOU, not just corporate agility.

One of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is: Begin with the end in mind. Let’s do that. What is the end goal of personal agility, and why is that so important to YOU?

It’s all about PERSONAL AGENCY — your ability to create and control your own destiny during volatile, uncertain, chaotic, ambiguous, disruptive times. The AI Era — where up to 80% of your skills could be landing in the Zone of Irrelevance, and where over 50% of all jobs will change significantly — certainly qualifies as all that, and more.

Now, companies say they want more agility from you, because their definition is all about them: Organizational agility is the ability of an organization to adapt quickly to market changes and evolving customer demands.

That is an important business goal! The manufacturing sector embraced agility during the 1960s-80s, with Lean approaches and Six Sigma. And the software development sector published its Agile Manifesto in 2001, which then morphed into Agile Methodology. You’d think companies would have nailed it by now — and that we should follow their lead — right?

Nope. Gallup found that just 18% of US employees say their company is currently agile. Among the top pitfalls and failures: Inability to create cultures of intrapreneurial thinking and customer-centric decision-making, and (most importantly) an inability to break down traditional hierarchies and silos necessary for agile transformations.

We’ve got to stop talking about agility as mostly an organizational thing, or a methodology thing, and start talking about it as a You, Me, and Us thing.

The Five Foundational Principles of Personal Agility

Agility as a You, Me, Us thing… Starting with the end in mind — your ability to create and control your own destiny in a highly disruptive, chaotic, uncertain world — has five guiding principles…

1. Proactively, Take Control of Disruption

You cannot control the disruptions coming at you — like what AI will do your industry or your job. But you can choose to react differently to it. You can choose to tackle it head on.

That comes down to staying aware of the major disruptions that will impact your career (for example, AI), and choosing to get ahead of those forces. Choosing to create and live a work/life strategy of disrupting yourself at the same rate, or faster, than the market does it to you.

For example… Let’s say you’re a law clerk. Pre-AI Era, your role was crucial to the legal operations of your company, judge, or law firm. You researched legal precedents, drafted legal memoranda, organized legal documents, and assisted attorneys in whatever they needed. But now, somewhere between 90% to 100% of your duties can, or soon will be, taken over by AI. So it’s not just your skills that are falling into the Zone of Irrelevance. It’s your entire job! There will be just a few low-paid clerks left to double-check that the AI assistants aren’t ‘hallucinating.’

So, moving from that example to all of us: It’s crucial that you disrupt yourself before the market does it to you. That means taking big leaps without knowing where you will land or how things will turn out. Life’s tough. Get a helmet. That’s your future! The key is choosing to proactively tackle that future, before it rolls over you.

For this principle and the others below, in coming issues we’ll cover more about how to do each of them.

2. Work and Live to Leave a Legacy Behind

When proactively disrupting yourself, you need something to pull you through… A purpose, mission, or vision, that motivates YOU and keeps you heading in the right direction for YOU, and your life. Otherwise, you’ll be easily dragged into what’s best for others (like the company, customer, etc.), but not necessarily what’s best for you.

That’s all that ‘leaving a legacy’ means: It’s your North Star… Something much bigger than you that keeps you on track when disrupting yourself gets tough. (And it will!)

For example: In leveraging your skills in service of others, how would you like to be remembered three, five, ten, or more years from now? What impact do you want your work to have? What do you want to remember as most meaningful to YOU when your future-self looks back at what you’re doing now?

Your legacy is not about you. It’s a selfless vision for the impact you will have on the world in the AI Era. Personal agility without that is just you reacting to whatever comes at you — frantic firefighting. Personal agility with that vision in place is focused change, purpose-driven change.

3. Choose to Let Go of What’s Always Worked

The title of Marshall Goldsmith’s brilliant book establishes the driving force behind this principle: What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There.

In personal agility terms, this is unlearning. It’s a set of deeply personal choices to let go of habits and behaviors that have worked for you in the past, but will no longer keep working. Embracing that can be very hard, but you must. Doing so is crucial to your path to agility.

Unlearning is less about critical thinking and more about emotional intelligence, introspection, self-awareness, seeking and valuing feedback — a willingness to face our own vulnerabilities during times of change.

Unlearning can range from…

• Transactional: Like letting go of your favorite app/program to learn AI
• To Self-Image: Willingness to re-evaluate what makes you valuable to others
• To Stubbornness: “Things should be done this way, not that way!”
• To Facing Fears: “I don’t think I can do this!”
• To Resistance: “I just don’t want to!” ... And more...

Just remember that two things matter most: This is about the choices you need to make, whether you want to or not — getting over yourself. And Speed, speed, speed: The faster you can let go of what has always worked for you, the better.?

4. Be Two Years-Old Again: This Time, Forever

When you were two, you asked one question relentlessly: “Why? ... Why? ... Why?” To the point that surely tried Mom and Dad’s patience! Why did you ask Why so much? Because everything was new, and you were endlessly curious!

You need to find that endless curiosity again. You need to live to Relearn. Constantly. That’s personal agility in a disruptive world.

Solutions to the AI Era’s most wicked problems and biggest opportunities will come from asking the questions no one else is asking. Ask na?ve, ‘stupid’ questions. (They’re not ‘stupid’ to a two-year-old!) Including questioning yourself, your motives, your assumptions. You can only ask the questions worthy of pursuing if you’re willing to also question your own deeply held assumptions.

Oh, and one other important thing that comes with being two again: Do it all with a joyful sense of humor! Don’t take yourself, and most things, too seriously. Don’t get your knickers in a wad. (Panties, tighty whities, boxers ... your choice.)?

5. None of Us Succeed Alone

Self-reliance can be a good thing. It gets you some of what you need. But in the AI disruptive world, other-reliance and being other-centered gets you a lot more of what you need.

Your power is in your network. Your network, team, or community is one of your most important creations. It is the backbone of your life, work, career, goals and dreams. Your network is the space where magic can happen. You only get as good as you give. For magic to happen, you will have to listen ... listen deeply. And give generously.

To unleash the power of your network, you need to create value for others, long before you ask for or need something in return. Understand that while technological advances mean that we can friend everyone in the universe, the true power in your network comes from paying forward to others that which has been done for you.

The most disruptive idea of all is that we are all interconnected, we are all dependent on each other. Life in the AI Era is joyously, fantastically collaborative.

And the One Thing AI Pioneers Don’t Focus On…

6. Paying for Healthcare and Achieving Financial Security ?

“Artificial intelligence, robotics and new sophisticated technologies have caused a wide chasm in wealth and income inequality. This issue will accelerate,” says Forbes magazine.?“Government, AI scientists, and Big Tech are all guilty of making decisions that favor excessive automation,” says MIT economist Daron Acemoglu.

Anybody who’s faced economic troubles like the two teachers pictured above knows that all the personal agility principles, above, go out the window when you can’t afford healthcare or your basic living expenses. So many of us are struggling just to keep up!

That’s the paradox of the AI Era: At least for now, we can’t trust government, corporations, or Big Tech to have our backs. Many of us are going to have to struggle through horrific and unfair economic inequities. And yet, we can’t give up on the core five approaches to personal agility, above. They are what will pull each of us through the unfairness, through the inequities.

• Disrupting ourselves will pull us through.
• Having a vision and purpose bigger than ourselves will pull us through.
• Letting go of what’s always worked will pull us through.
• Having endless curiosity and constantly learning will pull us through.
• Relying on our communities, our families, our networks will pull us through.

We can beat the AI Era paradox… Together. We must beat the paradox. Our future and our children’s future depends on it.

Bill Jensen is a seasoned strategy and transformation executive, advisor to C-suite execs, globally-known keynote speaker, and author of nine best-selling leadership and change books, including Simplicity, Disrupt, Future Strong, and The Day Tomorrow Said No. Reach him at [email protected].