Modern Business Demands Modern Ways of Working

Everything Must Change. Including YOU!

I’ve spent much of my career—which has included five different C-level roles encompassing six different business models—leading and advising businesses on designing new operating systems and engagement models to drive transformation and achieve enterprise Agility. I’ve done this through the adoption of fundamentally different ways of working, thinking, and being.

Throughout my career, every industry I’ve worked in has faced—and continues to face—technological advances that drive disruption. The pace of change was accelerating, and continues to accelerate. EVERYWHERE.

Let’s pause to think about this. These were the technology innovations of the 1980s.

When Covid hit in March 2020, this further accelerated the evolution of digital business models and the digital transformation of work. Post-pandemic, leadership teams of companies throughout the world began transforming their companies more and faster than ever before!

Today, advances in language-based AI—the underlying technology that powers applications like ChatGPT—are ushering in a new era of disruption at an incomprehensible pace!

Bill Gates had this to say about AI on March 23, 2023. “The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone. It will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other. Entire industries will reorient around it. Businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it.”

The history of AI began long before the technology innovations of the 1980s. Over the course of human history, we’ve been trying to animate objects and give them human-like qualities. But the first person who really pushed the needle was Alan Turing. Turing’s research in the early 1950s laid the foundation for modern computer science. AI was still a thing out of fiction novels at that time, but it was enough to get more brilliant minds on board. In fact, the term, ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was coined in 1956 by John McCarthy, a collaborator of Turing’s.

It’s now June 2024. According to the 7th edition of the AI Index Report, published by Stanford University Human Centered Artificial Intelligence, recognized globally as one of the most credible and authoritative sources for data and insights on artificial intelligence, “AI faces two interrelated futures. First, technology continues to improve and is increasingly used, having major consequences for productivity and employment. It can be put to both good and bad uses. In the second future, the adoption of AI is constrained by the limitations of the technology. Regardless of which future unfolds, governments are increasingly concerned. They are stepping in to encourage the upside, such as funding university R&D and incentivizing private investment. Governments are also aiming to manage the potential downsides, such as impacts on employment, privacy concerns, misinformation, and intellectual property rights.”

The report continues, “Although global private investment in AI decreased for the second consecutive year, investment in generative AI skyrocketed. More Fortune 500 earnings calls mentioned AI than ever before, and new studies show that AI tangibly boosts worker productivity. On the policymaking front, global mentions of AI in legislative proceedings have never been higher. U.S. regulators passed more AI-related regulations in 2023 than ever before. Still, many expressed concerns about AI’s ability to generate deepfakes and impact elections. The public became more aware of AI, and studies suggest that they responded with nervousness.”

The age of AI has begun. Everything from science to business to society itself will be transformed. The positive impact on human creativity and productivity will be massive. As I noted in my TedTalk in 2016, Everything must change. Including YOU!

Today, we live in a world of constant change and no more so than in technology. Accelerated and accelerating rates of technology innovation continue—driving both customers and employees— to continually interact with organizations in new and unique ways.

Companies will need a strong digital core and investments in people to reap the value of technology innovations such as AI in a responsible way. They will also need to radically rethink how work gets done. The focus must be on evolving operations and operating models and training people as much as possible on AI technology.