Digital disruption is here...now what?

“The imminent arrival in Australia of about 2000 robots following Coles Group’s deal with British online food firm Ocado is a neat demonstration of how the long but curiously slow rise of the robot is finally gathering pace, powered not by artificial intelligence (AI) but by relatively simple technology”,

proclaims an article in the AFR from last week. 

Digital disruption is here. Now what? 

According to Deloitte’s just-released Global Human Capital Trends Report (a great read if you haven’t yet downloaded it),

“to be able to take full advantage of technology, organizations must redesign jobs to focus on finding the human dimension of work. This will create new roles that we call “superjobs”: jobs that combine parts of different traditional jobs into integrated roles that leverage the significant productivity and efficiency gains that can arise when people work with technology”.

This means a more sophisticated form of workforce planning…a big ask, especially since most companies don’t do any form of workforce planning. 

Experts like Rainer Strack (a German MD for Boston Consulting Group) will tell you that in the next decade workforce planning will become even more important than financial planning for businesses. Check out his excellent TEDx talk.

It also means hiring humans for uniquely human traits - traits that cannot be performed by AI or robots. 

Traits like empathy, creativity, strategic awareness…

I hope that this will finally force organizations to stop hiring for skills and experience and begin hiring for competencies or strengths…

I say this because hiring for strengths and culture fit has always been a better way to hire. And I base this on my experience building 5 very successful recruiting businesses over a 15 year time period (prior to starting Ignite Global).

I’m trying to make this easier for my clients using the SPOT ON™ Job Description methodology. A SPOT ON™ does not include any duties and responsibilities, skills or experience. 

It is a:

• Strengths based
• Purpose filled
• Organizationally aligned
• Target rich 

role profile. 

I’m in the process of developing an automated tool to help managers create these more easily. If you’re interested in being a beta tester I’d love to hear from you. It will require 20 minutes of your time up front and then using the tool to create 1-2 job descriptions and providing feedback on the tool. 

Regardless of whether you’re interested in testing this tool I highly encourage you to do several things:

• If you haven’t already, begin to plan for how digital disruption will affect you. 
• Do a workforce plan for the next 3 years - regardless of the above - the skills shortage is enough reason to do this. (I have a brilliant consultant whom I can refer if you need help with this).
• Determine what human traits you will need to achieve your goals and ride the wave of disruption (using the SPOT ON™ or another tool).
• Determine whom of your existing staff have these traits. They may need to be upskilled so plan for that.
• Look at your hiring processes to make sure you’re able to test for these human traits. Train your hiring managers so they don't fall back on relying on skills and experience. 
• Upskill your leaders to help the staff weather these changes.

I know this is a big ask for a lot of organizations. The pace of change has been slow, but as the Coles example above demonstrates it's rapidly picking up speed.

Remember, the journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step.

Questions? I welcome them. Put them in the comments or PM me. I'm happy to answer anything.