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“When you reach your limit, stop, reflect and find another way. The challenge is to know when your limit has been reached.”

“Sit down and be quiet.”

The words of my childhood years at school. I was told what to do, how to do it, and I was expected to follow the instructions. I was rewarded when I did and reprimanded when I fell short. Things were fairly black and white. Pretty certain. The world looks very different today.

Now you are competing against technology for your job. You’re not a robot, but you often feel like one.

You are expected to be creative and innovative, but must not fail or make mistakes. You are encouraged to be empowered and take responsibility, but there are five levels of signoff to buy printer paper. You are told what to do and how to do it, but criticised for not being agile and decisive. You have to meet tight deadlines and stretch targets, but there are insufficient people to do the work.

As a result, you’ve been given enough workload for three people but are not considered resilient enough when you get stressed.

The hierarchy is flattening, so you now have more than one boss, and they have different ideas about your priorities and objectives.

I hope you are superhuman.

Rapid pace of change

Have you ever wished there were more hours in the day? Do you find yourself permanently rushing from one place to another? Do you get to the end of the day only to discover you haven’t achieved the things you planned to do?

We live in extraordinary times. Life and work are changing at an alarming pace in ways we cannot predict, and at times it leaves people feeling exposed, uneasy and uncomfortable. People are increasingly connected to technology and disconnected at an emotional and physical level. It’s not unusual to see a family of four at a restaurant all on their mobile phones, physically present but with their attention elsewhere.

Technology processes high volumes of data, and the human brain is unable to match the computer in processing power. As such, our view of the pace and volume of data that we can process is skewed. The rapid advancement of technology has fuelled a high pace of change and has led to constant bombardment of information or “noise”, making it harder for people to switch off.

Fast-paced change and increasing amounts of information in organisations create overwhelm, a jumbled mind and “head spin”, where people grasp for the answers and information amongst a plethora of data. Some cope with this by tuning out external distractions, focusing on their own needs and disconnecting from those around them. Others engage and vie for attention and their opinion to be accepted as the “right answer”. The perceived connection is not real but self-driven from the ego.

Who are you disconnected from?

We are not machines and the ever-increasing pace is not sustainable for human beings. We are bombarded by information, but we cannot process it at the same pace as a computer does. As computer processing power increases in speed, our view of what is possible becomes further skewed, and people put themselves under increased pressure to try to keep up. The uncertainty of operating in an environment like this is immense, and the continuous uncertainty and pressure can lead to overwhelm and overload. There is no headspace for reflection, and people find themselves caught up in the swell.

Organisations measure numerical results and financial targets rather than relationships, collaboration and innovation, leading to further disconnection as people work towards competing objectives. The volume of information available exacerbates the desire to achieve aggressive targets and drives a high-performance culture. While organisations continue to make financial targets more important than engagement and human connection, leaders will continually strive for individual rather than collective success.

Working in this way can lead to burnout and mental health issues. When the pressure is on to deliver, human connection is one of the first things to suffer. We have to find another way to use technology instead of being used by it. Business results are now generated by a combination of people and technology. We provide the right environment for technology to work. We need to afford people the environment where they can thrive, too. That is human connection.

Human beings vs supercomputers

Human beings process information in a contextual way, which includes the environment, emotions and systems around us. We get distracted by information because we emotionally engage with it, whereas computers do not.

If we establish that we are not superhuman and not machines, who are we? What is the core of humanity?

If we use computers and robots to do the work that we can’t do, we can focus on the core of what makes us human, which is creativity and thought leadership, embracing the skills of nurturing, community and connection. We can do that without burning out and having a nervous breakdown. Computers, by contrast, can process high volumes of data, sort it logically and provide output that enables us to make decisions effectively.

We compete with computers for speed and volume. It’s a competition we cannot win. Computers don’t have a finite capacity because we upgrade them and expand their capacity whereas the human capacity for processing is finite. If your phone fills up with photos, you either delete information or upgrade the phone to hold more. You cannot currently upgrade your brain to process information faster. I hope you never will. As human beings, we have expanded our capabilities for decades in parallel to the processing power of computers. We need to recognise that we have our limits when it comes to processing information and that we need to operate within them. We must ensure we retain the core of our humanity and work alongside technology without needing to become it.

We need to consider the capabilities of humanity. It’s not processing 500 emails a day with 50 WhatsApp messages and all the social media platforms spewing out misinformation. We can’t physically, mentally and emotionally process everything, and we should not try to do so.

We have trained our brains to operate at high speed and don’t know how to switch off. We are more overstimulated than ever before, and our brains are constantly whirring, leading to stress and overwhelm. As technology evolves, we are unconsciously making the assumption that we can evolve at the same pace of processing. All of this exacerbates the uncertainty.

Where are you running at full speed and need to slow down?

Gio and Mr Blue chase each other in the snow

In the Industrial Age, we created machines that were operated by us to speed up our ability to do our work. Now our work is determined by technology. Technology drives the pace of work and change, and we cannot control the quality and volume of information that exists in the world today. Either we respond to technological advances, or we become obsolete in the market place. Technology-based businesses such as Amazon, Uber and Airbnb disrupt the way we live and work, and that creates uncertainty for legacy businesses which need to adapt quickly to survive. Those who lack the agility to adapt quickly and to be flexible could lose their jobs or their businesses. Uncertainty and the rapidly changing world work for those who are early adopters and fast to respond. If you are in this camp, it’s easier, but for many of your team, it may be much harder to embrace change. We need to help people adapt to this new way of behaving.

Data and information drive our behaviour. Smartphones, tablets and nanotechnology tell us what to eat, when to move, how to meditate and so on. We can’t go back to how things were, but we can choose how we use technology and how it drives our decisions now and in the future. Most importantly, we can choose how it affects humanity. But will we?

The ethics of technology

Technology raises questions of ethics to consider and address. The rise of artificial intelligence has major implications for the future of work, business, employees, society and the human race.

While technology has enabled substantial progress through research and faster processing, it affects our security, privacy and society. It becomes increasingly difficult to opt out of technological advances that erode privacy, like the apps that tell you where the airport check-in desk is because it knows you’ve arrived and also knows which airline you are travelling on. It is likely that future generations will not have a concept of privacy in the way we do today. Is that a good or a bad thing? However you view it, the consequences of how we choose to use technology influence our everyday behaviour, and this increases the uncertainty with which we live and work.

The Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report 2017¹ indicates that the pace of change of technology is growing exponentially, followed by people, business and lastly public bodies. Government organisations and public bodies are slow to respond to the impact of technological change. When new technology is released, nobody can be sure what will be widely adopted and how it might influence how we live and work. If technology businesses are influencing our future, and if government organisations and public bodies are not providing the guidelines, who will?

We have the opportunity to assess the impact of what we are doing with technology before it is too late. But will we? And are we moving fast enough?

The vast changes in business and society create uncertainty for all of us in both our working and personal lives. It is possible to use technology as a force for good, to create opportunities and enhance society, but it relies on the few who make those decisions to consider the impact from all angles. Given that people are incentivised by targets and not by the impact on humanity, there is no guarantee that all decisions will be ethical and life-enhancing for all. We can change that. It is the responsibility of every leader to ensure that the decisions we make are enhancing and do benefit society in the longer term. It’s not acceptable for leaders to line their own pockets with bonuses and pay rises without considering the enormous impact we have as leaders, and the responsibility we take on for shaping the future of our world.

Our decisions create an impact, consciously or unconsciously. It is the responsibility of all business leaders to act wisely and consciously to create a sustainable future that is life-enhancing for all.

What decisions are you making today that will affect the future for generations to come?

Artificial intelligence is growing in sophistication, and the current expectation is that 30% of all jobs will be performed by artificial intelligence by 2030. Whether this becomes a reality or not, the role of the employee will continue to change as information and data processing will be performed by computers far faster and more efficiently than humans ever could manage it. This raises an interesting question over what we value in business and how we reward people. How do we reconcile the fact that care workers, nurses and social workers, whose work cannot be automated, are paid so little compared with lawyers and accountants whose work could be automated in the future?

How do we redress the balance of pay so that we reward emotional intelligence, social responsibility, compassion and caring for the community as well as intellect?

How do we create a world where humanity is as important as information and knowledge when the latter can be mechanised and the former cannot?

The uncertainty of our time is being driven by the increased adoption of technology and has wide-reaching implications for all of us. This is not new, of course. In the Industrial Age, human action was replaced by machines, but the pace of change is accelerating, and therefore the uncertainty is increasing, and that has an emotional impact. We can use technology to improve the way we live and work if we make decisions consciously, but the ethical debate around technology needs to be considered by all of us.

How can you use technology more consciously and recognise the impact it has on your daily life?

Connection or disconnection?

People use technology as a way of disconnecting from things that feel uncomfortable, such as standing in a queue in a coffee shop, or waiting for a train, bus or taxi. Even in meetings, when things get uncomfortable people distract themselves from the moment by using technology to disconnect from the emotion as well as from those around them.

We use technology to disconnect when the connection or the learning is uncomfortable. It acts as a comfort blanket, something we can rely on to make us feel better in uncomfortable situations.

You hear stories of people being fired by text message. How cruel is that? The person sending the text avoids seeing and feeling the emotional pain of the person on the receiving end. How sad that we feel the need to disconnect emotionally from one another and cannot be with each other’s pain. It’s essential for leaders to develop their emotional capacity to feel their own feelings and lead through and with them, as well as empathising with others and supporting them through their process.

As a species, we are more connected and also more disconnected than ever before. Families are widely dispersed globally. As children growing up, we were in and out of each other’s homes, sharing the laughter, the joy, the pain and sadness, too. Emotion was a fundamental part of our lives. Connection was obvious and effortless, and our sphere of connection and community was local.

In the backdrop of human to human disconnection, the desire for connection has not gone away as it is a fundamental part of being human. Instead, people seek connection via social media, finding people they agree with, who share their ideas and opinions, shutting down from anyone who may be different. As the world of business seeks to embrace more diverse opinions, the way we use technology creates the opposite approach. Online search engines have been programmed to decide what you see on your news feed, based on past searches and what you have liked. Technology influences what you do and don’t see, and that impacts your opinions and beliefs.

Although people bare their soul on social media, there is a sense of disconnection from the heart, from community and from family. We have an opportunity to use technology to connect rather than disconnect, and we need the emotional resilience to allow us to be with the differences that world views bring.

Collaboration not competition

There is a need to work in collaboration with technology rather than competing with it on pace and output. We are no longer bound by our immediate local community in life and work. Technology can expand your horizons and that increases the uncertainty. The limitless opportunities for connection and collaboration can be overwhelming, so the tendency can be to shut it down. In addition, the facelessness of technology can lead to disconnection. We cannot see someone’s emotional response when we send an email, text or WhatsApp message. While emoticons give you some idea of the sender’s emotion, using technology has become a way of avoiding the emotional impact of empathy. Instead of giving bad news face to face, people have taken the cowardly way out of communicating via technology. Technology used in this way creates emotional disconnection, which has a major impact on our society.

We need a more conscious awareness of how we use technology going forward to ensure we develop it and use it to enhance business and society.

Technology has had a hugely positive impact on how we live and work, advancing solutions in healthcare, renewable energy and business in general. It enables us to collaborate globally on projects that we previously could not, expanding the realms of what is possible and embracing different cultures and ways of working.

While research can be performed faster with technology, there is a genuine concern about the quality of the data on the internet. The rise of social media has brought about popular commentary where anyone can share their opinion as if it were a fact, and much of it is very convincing. Where previously people referred to specific journalists for facts and information, the internet is now awash with supposed scientific reports that contradict each other. We no longer know what to believe and this can cause people to be misguided or, worse, disengaged through overwhelm. Leaders need to focus and gain clarity on what to pay attention to and what to ignore. The ability to sift out important information is critical to how decisions are made.

Successful leaders in the future will integrate technological advances with their innate wisdom and emotions to ensure we create a future of connection rather than disconnection.

MASTERING UNCERTAINTY

Notice where technology skews your thinking on what is humanly possible.

Be aware that you and your team cannot match technology in the speed and volume of data processing.

Consider the ethics of how you use technology and the impact it has on individuals, business and society.

Use technology to create connection across borders and cultures.

Pay attention to where technology creates disconnection, both emotionally and physically.

Use technology responsibly and ethically to enhance human experience in society.

Before you move on to the next chapter, spend 10 minutes reflecting on how technology affects your behaviour.

Download the Leading Through Uncertainty workbook from www.judejennison.com/uncertainty and record your reflections.

PROVOKING PERSONAL INSIGHT

Who are you disconnected from?

Where are you running at full speed and need to slow down?

What decisions are you making today that will affect the future for generations to come?

How can you use technology more consciously and recognise the impact it has on your daily life?