Our working system is mostly based on hierarchies. The origins were adopted from the military, to structurize complex industrialization processes in an efficient way.
That was long ago.
Some companies even pushed it to perfection (and its limits) and created pure delegation structures, which are often overwhelmed because they are caught between budget / controlling, defect management and target fulfillment.
KPI, ROI, OKR and the rest of the alphabet BS, fragmented the workplaces more and more and lead to unhealthy competition, instead of collaboration and cooperation.
So many are stuck in their 9to5 and are only concerned with safeguarding their superfluous process existence.
Building a nest and don’t let anyone participate, leads to information hiding. Some companies even go as far as internalizing the „need to know principle“ … As if they were a secret service and guarded paranoidly over every snippet of information.
Many employees are scared of emerging technologies, being replaced with smth cheaper. Smth soulless.
It’s all very crippling and demotivating. Burnout and boreout have been growing for years while satisfaction levels have decreased.
There are always brave HR colleagues or transformation masterminds who want to implement new concepts.
Agile and unbossing are definitely the right direction.
But what if … What if we would rethink work itself?
New categories, not just boss and underling.
Let me try something:
We could define three primary categories:
– ROBOTIC work includes everything that is repetitive, exhausting or dangerous.
– LOGIC work includes everything that can be mapped with decision trees like processes, decisions, number crunching. Smth like endless search for patterns, reports and similar tasks.
– HUMAN work is what defines people. Creativity and / or Social. The thought leaps, distraction. Culture and art.
Of course there would be overlaps.
– ROBOTIC + LOGIC combined stands for unsupervised robots like COBOTS, autonomous units, individualized mass production.
– LOGIC + HUMAN are smart assistants, augmented learning, cognitive computing.
– HUMAN + ROBOTIC is supervised and remote robotics, telepresence, systems for remote operations, human augmentation, wearable robotics.
The inner al-inclusive part could be an amalgamation. A hybrid way.
One good thing about pandemic: it has shown how quickly we can adapt to new circumstances. Before Covid, home office was an ugh word that made the control freaks shudder for decades, and keep us locked in our system.
But we’ve experienced the freedom, that remote can bring us. And how productive we can be.
The controllers and accountants in companies have recognized how much money they can save.
Now „remote“ is a prerequisite or normal thing for a majority of employees.
So instead of being afraid of automation and new technologies, we should focus on their strengths, embrace these possibilities and use it for us.
What do you think?
