A robot WON'T take your job...Peter will

This isn't a clickbait or play on words. It's a tongue in cheek honest statement about a problem the business world is facing, that it isn't owning up to, and it's time for us to talk about it properly.

You can't open LinkedIn, or any business media at the moment, without endless stories about "robots taking our jobs", or the occasionally over-positive story of us all having lots of "leeeeesure time".

But I want us reframe this problem, so that we can look at it properly and therefore tackle it honestly. I don't want a future where we whinge about the robots.

We need to talk about the changes in technology (AI, robotics, automation and machine learning) and who is driving these changes. Robots and Humans.

Who is Peter?

So I'm 100% confident that a robot will not be responsible for taking your job. When you look at stats in Australia from the ASX200, 32% of the most senior leaders are Peter or John.

It's these guys that will take your job. They are the ones that will be faced with the decisions, along with their leadership teams. I feel like we're de-humanised this conversation to make it easier. The fictitious robots will take a lot of negative press before they answer back.

So what do we know? 3 things!

Number 1: It's not new

What? But 2020 is this huge milestone, and every conference in the world has stories about the fourth industrial revolution. Surely this is a new phenomena?

When I look for examples, I almost prefer to go non-tech, as people expect tech from me, and therefore discount it or rationalise it. I also don't like to look at fashion trends. So lets go with a long term and topical industry, that is global in nature. Coal.*

Coal production in the US from 1870 at around 50M tons up to a peak of approx 1,200M tons in 2010.

If it was linear, it would be an increase of about 8M tons a year, consistently, for 140 years.

So let's contrast that to coal jobs. With a steady 8M ton increase in production for 140 years, Coal must have be a great employer, no?

Coal jobs in the US peaked in early early 1920's with about 860,000 people employed. In 2010 with peak production, the workforce was down to 140,000, and has since dropped below 100,000.

That's a ration in 1920 of about 700 tons per employee, which has rocketed to 8600 tons per employee in 2010.

We have data like this available now for current industries. The fact that research shows that technology has created more jobs in the last 144 years than it has taken, almost masks the mass displacement of jobs. Mining exists in regions and in specific demographics. Telling a miner who's been put out of work, that there is increased demand for "data scientists" and "user experience social media blah" isn't helpful. The displacement still hurts.

Number 2: We need to make sound decisions

We're no longer in just a complicated world. In that world, you could work harder and plan, to increase confidence, and predictability. We're in the complex world, where you don't get increased predictability. In this world, we need different ways of making decisions and building the foundations of the workforce, economy and community of the next 100 years.

Sound decisions can't be made by Peter, John, or David. Decisions of this magnitude need careful consideration, and a cognitively diverse team that collaborates and communicates effectively. If bias is built into an algorithm or machine of any kind, there is a risk that it's there to stay. Even worse, others could build on top of this bias and just re-enforce it.

And it's not about perfection. It's about accepting the complexity, using a cognitively diverse team to discuss and debate, making a decision and then tracking the impact, so you can course correct when (yes when!) you get a few wrong.

Number 3: It's not in the future. It's in the NOW

So 140 years of coal history might be too much for people. Irrelevant. Can't take action. Not real.

Some would also rather ruminate endlessly about what might be. In fact, there is a temptation to invest all of our time in discussing this. Which is a crying shame, as I think we have more information and more insights (yes, they are different) than any generation before us.

If we're going to move from debate to action, then we need to reorient around fresh insights that can lead us to create our future.

I was at a conference recently talking about autonomous vehicles and got asked by a chap in the audience "that's the work of sci-fi...you got anything more real?"

I naturally gave him the chance to re-ask his question after I'd shared the example of Rio-Tinto. The companies Pilbara mine in Western Australia has 71 Autonomous trucks, numerous autonomous drills and a stack of drones, all monitored from a control centre 1500 kms away in Perth. You could be wowed by the safety improvement, productivity gains and reduced maintenance costs, but that isn't the best part about this example.

As we redefine the relationship between person and machine, we also need to create a future workforce quite different than the one we have had previously

Andrew Harding, Rio Tinto’s Chief Executive of Iron Ore, is giving us a snap shot into the future, and I'm guessing he doesn't own a crystal ball.

Conclusion:

We've got real life examples of machine and human disruption occurring. We've got stacks of data from which to draw insights.

What I'd love to see society, business and government do in collaboration:

• stop the rhetoric around blaming the robots, and accept that this is a human discussion that we need to own and lead.
• use examples from yesteryear and more recent changes, and study these to gain insights. What will roles of the future look like, and how can we use data and insights to train people in new skills before we need them. Not just kids in schools, but other generations that might need to retrain. Respond not react.
• we all owe it to ourselves to talk about this at every level, and ensure where we can, that cognitive diversity is evident in the decision making that will impact ALL of us one day. Don't shoot Peter. Support him and share your views. He needs to hear you.

Dom Price can be contacted on LinkedIn or @domprice on Twitter. See our work in unleashing the potential of teams and building patterns for successful collaboration at https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook

* I was inspired by a segment on This Week Tonight with John Oliver. Not all my own work!

Links/References:

wiki, Rio Tinto and Peter