Transformation needs more pioneers before more tech

Article | 13 min reading time | Paul Bessems | Weconomics | 03-12-2024

Fundamental transformation is about solving societal problems with new organization models, and… ow yeah, tech can help with that. But technology should not drive strategies or policies. The real impact of new technologies sec is limited and potentially damaging if your organization doesn’t understand what AI, blockchain, smart contracts, or the digital assembly line in general really is about and how you could use it strategically.

Technology, and the mass media attention, prompt many organizations to jump in too fast for the wrong reasons. The last technology this phenomenon could be witnessed is generative AI (e.g. ChatGPT) and, before that, blockchain, and before that cloud and before that internet, and before that Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and before that…..

Organizations are wasting time and money (sometimes tax money) on tools that are not aligned with the organization's values, vision, strategy, and ambitions and the context they are in. Technology should never drive new business and operating model design, development, and adoption. It should be the opposite: problems to be solved should drive the adoption of new technologies. Technology alone doesn’t make your big data automatically rich, trusted, data for example.

Too many organizations are rich in data but poor in understanding. The question is how technology can improve the productivity of the office worker. As Peter Drucker wrote in 1999: “The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and knowledge workers. The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution (whether business or non-business) will be its knowledge workers and their productivity."

Productivity paradox

As office productivity growth goes to zero, and IT investments reach $ 4 trillion, we know we are not succeeding in this mission.

This productivity paradox can be explained by answering the question: Why do we work so hard (if it is not necessary from a technological point of view)? There are several reasons why we are hardly becoming more productive despite significant investments in IT, for example. In his book ‘Why we Work’, from 2015, Barry Schwartz shows that our belief that we have to work to live, mainly stems from the system (capitalism) that we have created ourselves. We have set up a system that creates circumstances that make the false promise - why we work - come true. As humans, we start to behave according to the system that we have created ourselves, that we actually do not want, but that we find difficult to let go of. Politics also frames the idea that work is necessary because the economy has to grow, or because otherwise we will lose the competitive battle with other countries. The assumption that more work leads to a stronger competitive position or more prosperity is incorrect. We find it difficult to let go of the dominant logic. Other reasons why we work so much unnecessarily are more regulation without proper systems to report with, which leads to complexity, bureaucracy, and data waste. Besides that, other reasons are: work addiction, habits, ‘workism’, and productivity anxiety. Workism is a kind of creed. It is the belief that work is not only necessary for economic production, but also the center of someone's identity and life purpose. Productivity anxiety is?the feeling that no matter how much you work or what you accomplish, you’re not doing enough, not efficient enough, or good enough. It can lead to feeling dissatisfied with progress, overwhelmed by a never-ending to-do list, and a fear of failing.

Capitalism got inside my head and made me think my only value is how much I produce for people to consume (Rupi Kaur)

But what will work to make us more productive? Simple: first if you understand history, you can expect the future. What made the factory worker more productive? Of course the physical assembly line. Was that technology or something else? It depends on how you define technology. For me, technology is the science of actions in which we use products from nature (matter) and from our brains (e.g. organizational models) for the benefit of (the welfare and well-being) of man. Technology is the process by which humans convert the products of nature, or the human mind, into tools for satisfying needs. But before technology (in the broad definition) could be used properly, we needed courageous pioneers like Henry Ford. He changed the perspective on organizing processes: don't let people walk to the car to do generic actions (craft), but let the car come to the person and perform specific actions (assembly line). It requires letting go of the dominant logic of how you organize something. The same now applies to the digital assembly line in offices.

Digital Assembly Line

A digital assembly line is an automated sequence of decentralized, reliable, and accessible databases and data processors within an ecosystem. It replaces (local) e-mail, chat/AI, accounting, ERP, HRM, and CRM systems. A digital assembly line determines facts (preferably with sensors), stores facts so that they cannot be changed unilaterally (shared ledger such as a blockchain), organizes access to rich data (with data-access tokens) and enriches data with (generative) AI. The digital assembly line drastically reduces complicated and bureaucratic office work as we know it today, creating surplus (time) to become more sustainable. This is especially necessary for the increasing number of SDG/ESG/CSRD reports.

But your digital radar is not adequately adjusted if you only focus on AI because you heard that ChatGPT could do amazing things. We produce at least 15MB of data per person per minute worldwide. Only 5-10% is structured and trusted. But what if we could trust the data we rely on? What if ChatGPT uses rich data?

ChatGPT doesn’t work on rich data but on open (internet) datasets without properly checking whether the facts are correct and whether it is permitted to use the data.

But there is hope: just as the physical assembly line made the manual worker more productive in factories, the digital assembly line will make the information worker more productive in offices. We don’t need more blockchain or AI sec, but data wisdom and data-driven organizing to do so. We don’t need more (big) data but more intelligent (rich) data. We need a human- and data-driven perspective instead of a company- and IT-driven one. It is not only about the amount of data. It is, above all, about the quality of data. The real value of data is in efficiency, aggregation, accessibility, sustainability, integrity, transparency, security, censorship- & tamper-proof, pragmatic, self-sovereign identity and a shared reality and meaning. Concepts like the internet of things (sensoring), and distributed ledger technologies (including blockchain) provide rich data. And ones the data is rich: AI can do its work, and server A can ask a question to server B to receive a correct answer and less human interaction is needed.

What the physical assembly line did in factories, will the digital assembly line do in offices

Organization tech for a more sustainable prosperity

We need to address societal problems. We need pioneers that design and develop fundamentally new ways of organizing that can contribute significantly to social challenges, such as the crumbling welfare state, aging population, growing inequality, fraud, tax evasion, propaganda, cybersecurity, increasing tech company power, and climate change. We need more pioneers like Henry Ford, Frederick Taylor, and Peter Drucker to improve productivity. This time not in factories, but offices with the help of a digital assembly line. Fundamental transformation will improve productivity in offices and creates a surplus. This surplus can be used to make our prosperity more sustainable.

What do most effective leaders do: they know the past, perform in the present and organize the future, all at the same time

What is a pioneer

Transformation to our next future needs a focus on perspective change, system leadership, relevant technology and transition. It needs pioneers. And a pioneer is an entrepreneur who is one of the first to enter a particular era or area and has to find a new way. Plus, a pioneer cannot use the experience of another person who has ever been there. In fact, a pioneer can no longer use yesterday's dominant logic to solve tomorrow's problems. Along the way, there are no tools to be found, this must be considered before the pioneer starts the expedition. A pioneer has a vision, whereby an effective vision is a sustainable imagination that has the power to become a reality.

Characteristics of pioneering are the setbacks one experiences, the hardships one undergoes, the delayed desire, the success one must deny oneself, and the tremendous effort one must make because all kinds of facilities are still missing. Many failures often accompany the work of a pioneer, but the pioneer learns from that. A pioneer does not have methods that have been proven in practice. A pioneer must have the courage and be prepared to make a journey nobody else has made. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the notion that something else is more important in your life than yourself. Or as the American writer Meg Cabot wrote:?

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. From now on you'll be traveling the road between who you think you are and who you can be. The key is to allow yourself to make the journey.

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A pioneer knows that many people are afraid, not knowing where society will go. But this vacuum gives energy and space for hope. It provides space for letting go of the old and a time for new thinking and doing. The work of a pioneer is essential so that others can build on it. A pioneer looks at a problem so that the solution to the problem is evident to others.?

In this dynamic and hectic time, pioneering has the character of admitting color: showing who you are and what you stand for. A pioneer shows and experiences inspiration in work performed and how it is done. A pioneer can give substance to necessary developments in the current world. A pioneer dares to let go of old securities to create space to look from a new perspective. In doing so, rely on abundance, despite those who regard scarcity as a fact. A pioneer dares to rely on imagination despite those who feel captured by existing conditioning.

A pioneer is able to let go of comfortable ideas because these do not challenge the way of thinking. Being able to offer genuine value by serving the best to the next development stage in humanity is characteristic of a pioneer. The road to more maturity is cleared. A road more and more people are ready and longing for. A pioneer is deeply convinced that humans are capable of much more than we now deliver. A pioneer knows that not experiencing the results of his effort is no reason not to make an effort.

Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act (Rebecca Solnit)

Is it time for a new Enlightenment?

A philosophical question could be: will or prosperity and democracy ‘survive or die’? Will our society based on infinite growth come to end by design or by disaster? Will our society survive if tech companies can strengthen their power? Will democracy survive if the difference between fact and fiction is not important anymore? Will our prosperity sustain in a rapidly globalizing and digitizing society full of inequality, mistrust, polarization and anger. Will we survive when we continue to use old centralized hierarchical organization models to organize supply and demand of data or are decentralized forms better and why?

I believe it is time for a new form of Enlightenment with which we can separate ourselves, as human beings, from existing conditions, institutions, and management paradigms. For example, in the past, we have separated ourselves from dogmas of ‘the church', the State and other self-evident things like the exclusion of women and minorities.

Now it is time that we separate ourselves from unsustainable, physical and centralized organization paradigms and tools which are more and more of a burden to us than a blessing. I mean tools and technologies that we use, but that are not transparent, sustainable, democratic and decentral. Tools we cannot control and for which there are no alternatives as many think. Tools that, step by step, without being aware of it (and perhaps not so intended), take away our human freedom and keep us more trapped. One of the best-known Enlighteners is Immanuel Kant, who offers the following insight:

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another

His insight is still relevant. Immanuel Kant bases himself on the autonomous person, who will not be led by others. ‘Dare to think' he says. With this, he responds to people who state: ‘I cannot help it because I was born this way’. According to Kant, this means that you do not even accept your dignity. Many people cover themselves in advance, also with regard to using traditional management concepts like: ‘It is never my problem, but always the problem of the other person’. Or with new technologies like blockchain, they will say: ‘This is too complicated for me. Digital transformation for instance is something for IT. For me, it is not important enough to spend thoughts, time or money on it’.

?By saying this, people make themselves incapable of action and thus inferior, not compared to other people, but more and more often compared to the tools they use. Besides ‘the other person’, the circumstances are usually blamed. Never myself. But circumstances and tools cannot choose, only people can choose. You cannot blame the actual circumstances or tools that you cannot live in the world you want to live in. Only ten percent of your life depends on what happens, ninety on how you react on that. You cannot blame the rain that you have forgotten your umbrella.?

People that are longing for change without changing themselves, or as I read it on a bus shelter:

To hope for change without doing something yourself is as waiting for a boat at the train station

Technology and free will

The right to individual self-preservation and development can only be exercised by people who also have access to their personal data and can decide on who can use it or not. I mean ‘data self-determination’ and ‘data self-sovereignty’. ‘Be a person’, says Kant and carry your responsibility. The situation that we as humans can think, be aware and relate ourselves to what affects us, makes us human and distinguishes us from other animal species and (AI) tools.

We will desperately need this feature with all technological developments that emerge and will affect us. Examples of emerging? technologies are known: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Analytics, Robotics, Web3 and Internet of Things. A democracy can only survive, if the decisions that we take as a person, are based on rich data that people can also acquire and share in freedom and is not pre-sorted by a tool. Rich quality data can separate facts and fiction and can be facilitated by Distributed Ledger Technologies such as blockchain technology. If you align blockchain technology with a fundamentally new way of organizing, new ways of dealing with the challenges that face us, will emerge.

When we cannot choose freedom, it undermines our constitution, our community, and our fundamental human rights. We are clearly at a crossroad in our existence. If we make the wrong decision now, it can have serious consequences for the future of our children. Anyway, real transformation offers a way for people to ‘regain control' of their data and the tools that they use to transfer data from supply to demand.

Conclusion

Real transformation needs more pioneers before more tech. Fundamental transformation is not about big data, IoT, blockchain or AI but about finding a new balance between now and later, here and there, decentral and central, between people and tools. We can follow the same pattern as history shows us: use technology to become more productive, create surplus (time) to do other things as a human (I hope useful for people and society). So we need more pioneers and more time and attention for real transformation or as Gandalf would put it:

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us

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In the heart of Brainport Eindhoven, Weconomics connects the nextgen innovators, builders, and leaders. In the same region where ASML makes the most complicated machine in the world, Weconomics organizes the complex transformation into a durable, digital, decentral future and more humane future. The Digital Assembly Line from Weconomics, just like an ASML machine, consists of many high-tech components that are brought together in a smart way. The way of organizing ASML and Weconomics is comparable: smart collaboration in ecosystems and bringing together various innovations for relevant social applications.

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More practically, we help develop visions, strategies and ecosystems and implement new business and operating models. This is necessary for smart SDG/ESG/CSRD reporting in value chains, or AI strategy development for example. We use data technologies such as IoT, blockchain, smart contracts, data logistics and generative AI (such as ChatGPT), together also known as the digital assembly line.

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