The human fight against being human.
The future is here. However, there is still resistance. It seems humans don't want to be more human. The technology could take over mundane tasks, yet people resist, the change takes time. Change management aside; I think we've got to overcome the human element and what's getting in our way.
As a boy, 2020 sounded so far in the future. Images of flying around in spaceships came to mind. While we don't have spaceships the technology we do have is unbelievable.
My daughter for her 18th birthday this year visited New York with her mum. Her birthday is on New Year's Eve. The technology we have in our hands is so powerful and unimaginable to my younger self. I was out cycling in the Howardian Hills, north of York, England, and I was able to FaceTime her live.
Imagine telling someone 30 years ago that in 2020 you can use a handheld device and speak to someone across the world and see their face and where they are in real-time! It would have been discounted as a pipe-dream. The future is here! Technology such as FaceTime allowed me to speak with my daughter on New Year's Eve as she celebrated her 18th birthday in New York, US while I resided in the Old York, England.
During the lockdown, we are experiencing the power of technology through zoom calls, teams and slack. We've got apps like Trello, Evernote managing our work. Technology is here to help.
This thought of technology today was triggered by an interesting conversation with the head of technology for a major global bank. We were discussing the challenge of a functional finance team to use automation to build their regulatory reports. Despite considerable efforts to develop reports through automation, this functional team still hadn't signed off these reports ready for production.
These reports would free up more bandwidth for the team so that they could scrutinise the outputs of the reports, so they could check for accuracy and see how improvements could be made. The automation of these reports would put the human back in the workplace doing fantastic "Human" tasks like complex problem solving and creative thinking. However, this functional team didn't want that. They preferred to do more mundane tasks.
Reasons we prefer to do more basic tasks:
Being comfortable - basics tasks don't challenge us; it's comfortable. We avoid potential failure or highlighting our capabilities. (or lack of).
Being in control - we feel we have control. Nothing is going to surprise us. Basic tasks are routine and repetitive. There are lots of knowns. If there is a difficulty, it's often a known unknown. There's nothing complex ( unknown unknowns)
A socialised mind - Basic tasks help us to fit into the norms of the group. We get told how to complete the task, and we do that task. We don't have to exercise any leadership and be in vulnerable positions. There's no-one to challenge us or for us to challenge others. It's safe; we do what we are told. There's a stoical nature to this.
Competition - We get a dose of dopamine when we complete these tasks or even just the thought of achieving them. We love the wins, and we can be competitive about it. You can't compete when conditions are different. Basic tasks open up the competition we can compare apples with apples, and that's exciting and encouraging to someone geared for competition.
Confidence (Lack of) - More human tasks require us to be more human. This requires confidence in our abilities. Lack of confidence keeps us safe; we don't want to step up; we fear our capabilities will be questioned. We are have attached confidence to the mundane tasks; if we stop doing these tasks, we then question ourselves.
Trust (Lack of) - dealing with human problems often involves dealing with complexities that are only solved by collaboration with others. Collaboration requires high levels of trust and psychological safety. We tend to stick to the routine, as we don't want to collaborate because we have a breakdown in trust.
How to be more human:
Step up or go home
Have the courage to get out of your comfort zone. Courage is a scale. You may be at 1, and you want to get to a 10. Your first step is 2. What can you do today, right now that will push you out of your comfort zone? Do it.
Give up control
The beauty of life and being human is the fact that it is unpredictable. Live in the moment, roll with it. Have the courage to live! Everyone can die; only a few are brave enough to live. Face the unknowns you may find you enjoy it. Today, look at a problem you've had for a while but ignored. You may not be able to solve it straight away. What you can do is an experiment to find out more about the problem or ways to overcome it. Enjoy the process, learn about the process itself, forget the outcomes. Once you get used to the method of experimenting, you can go out and solve lots of problems and seize those significant opportunities. You will find you'll have more control.
Think Big
Think beyond yourself and your needs. Be selfless. Think about what is the best thing to do for the family, community or organisation, not what is right for yourself. Today go out and do something for the good of others. Build momentum in this way of thinking. You'll find others will help you too.
Play the bigger game
You can keep playing Level 1, or you can go to level 20 and fight the bossman (not literally). Use your competitive nature and gamify the outputs you want to achieve not the tasks of your to-do lists. Pick a behaviour that will drive those outputs and measure how well you are keeping to it. Try the behaviour for an hour today. Then tomorrow 1hr10, add 10 minutes every day. It will soon become a habit, and you will be unstoppable.
Be a Titan
Walk tall like a giant with purpose. Inflate your chest, shoulders back, raise your chin, smile. You are human. You may not be able to do everything, and that's ok, its not ok not to try. Be more you, tackle those things you feared. Start small today, pick a task you usually dread doing and smash it out of the park.
Be Vulnerable
It's human! You want to trust, you want to feel safe in a group so you can collaborate effectively, well it starts with you. Open up, share your thoughts, feelings, your weaknesses. Be vulnerable; you'll be surprised by the response you receive. It will be reciprocated, and by that, you'll have built the environment to collaborate well. It won't be loves and hugs; however, you'll be able to build on each other's ideas together to find the right idea for the problems your facing.
Leadership is a choice. We may all feel we want to make that choice. We are motivated to lead. However, motivation doesn't create change. Action does. So pick actions/behaviours that will help you be more human and tackle the real work. Start small go nano at first then build from there. Change behaviour and take action, don't rely on motivation; you'll be kidding yourself.
Be human.
Aaron
Image: Photo by Artem Beliaikin
