Written by: Marguerite Thibodeaux, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Automation will happen one way or another. The future of work will see the most successful employees help automate their own jobs.
One of the most excruciating conversations a leader has to handle is lay-offs. One way you can avoid those conversations is by getting out ahead of the curve: proactively help your team get involved in automating their own jobs. By being involved in the process, you are helping keep yourself and your team relevant even as technology evolves. The world changes quickly. So quickly now that most people have accepted that they will not be able to make a career out of doing that same thing for 30 or 40 years (and if you haven’t accepted this, I predict a very hard career transition in your future). Data storage and processing are cheap and only getting cheaper. The physical limitations of server farms no longer apply the same way now that the cloud can scale almost instantaneously with demand. Instant access to all this new data storage and processing power is only meaningful if firms use it to create a strategic advantage, like automating previously repetitive tasks that were too expensive to do with technology before. The firms that unleash the most value will be the ones that use this technology to free up employee time and talent to add uniquely human value to the end-to-end process, unlocking creativity and ingenuity. Not the firms that simply use this as carte blanche to reduce headcount. The employees that refuse to help with the automation will simply be at the mercy of others for what their job responsibilities are and when they change. For some, that’s all they expect anyway. For others, this will garner learned helplessness, and they will suffer for it. You can choose something else for yourself and your team. Proactively participating in the automation of your own team can empower you to make the change gradual, starting with the most repetitive tasks. Automating repetitive tasks can free up you and your team for uniquely human work that requires deep thought and creativity. I have vivid memories of staying late in the office, taking over conference rooms to use wall-to-wall whiteboards for deep work, generating ideas, and organizing them in ways we still do not have economical, scalable technology to replicate. This type of work requires chunks of uninterrupted time to enter and stay in the flow, a luxury often stolen by the little, repetitive tasks we are asked to complete throughout a workday, myself included. That’s why a couple of precious, uninterrupted evening hours in those conference rooms were often more productive than an entire eight-hour workday.
What possibilities would unfold if your team could access that deep flow during the workday instead?
Automation is not likely to slow down any time soon. These days, if something can be automated, it will be. Encouraging your team to work with automation instead of working against it means keeping you and your teammates relevant in the future of work.
If you want to dig deeper into your role as a leader, you can book a complimentary consultation. I’d be happy to help you understand what this means for your unique team.
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Want one-on-one adapting these strategies to your team? Book a complimentary call with Marguerite. Every leader deserves support
Marguerite Thibodeaux, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Marguerite Thibodeaux, a leadership coach, and talent management consultant, helps leaders and organizations bring the best out of people with courage, compassion, and clarity. After building development programs and leading a talent transformation at a Fortune 100, she became increasingly aware that not all leaders had access to a Fortune 100 Learning & Development team. To do something about that, she started Magnanimous Leadership, a leadership coaching and consulting firm that's on a mission to make resources and support available to every leader.
