So much to be done! How can we reconnect for greater effectiveness?

Zombie facsimiles are no long-term replacement for real humans.

May 10, 2024

“You gotta do it, guys. You gotta have an agile, responsive organization. Innovate, or die. You gotta have a growth mindset … embrace collaboration … build a great culture. It’s gotta come from, and link to, an amazing Purpose. That capital P’s a must - it’s P for Power, P for Passion, P for Planet. And the Purpose must transcend the mundane and represent a North Star all your people can relate with and aspire to.”

How many times have you heard this kind of thing? There’s so much stuff out there about change - how inevitable it is. And change management - how vital it is. And how urgent the whole situation is … how full of profitable promise … if only you get it right.

But then, it seems to me, when the solutions are offered up, they all too often go against what they preach. How? By offering prescriptions that try to override the way people actually think and behave. In other words, by being inhuman.

I blame it all on the tech. Allow me to explain.

Okay, let’s start from basics.

The way to know what happens next is to be one of those who makes it happen.

There are fewer and fewer constraints on your actions, these days. Technology has now reached a point that is mind-boggling. Don’t ask if something can be done. Of course it can be done. The trick is to know what should be done in the best interests of your enterprise. Technical means exist or can be found to support any end for which you see a purpose.

Doctor Scholasticus’s philosophical question is now answered. Billions of angels can dance on the head of a pin. And a virtual Busby Berkeley can be brought in to do the choreography. (Sorry, showing my age there.)

Not that I understand the ins and outs of a lot of the tech but just to state that, as of June 2023, the highest transistor count in a consumer microprocessor (Apple’s ARM-based dual-die M2 Ultra system on a chip, since you ask) was 134 billion, seems to me to make the point that the angels-on-pinheads scale is heading off in the general direction of infinity.

Another staggering statistic comes from an October 2023 report that around 4.3 billion people now have a smartphone. That’s 54 per cent of the entire human population. More than half of us. And that’s just the little machines in our pockets and purses.

All of which is to say that the amount and scope of the tech that we now have is both absolutely wonderful and a bloody problem (metaphorically and, if we’re not extremely careful, literally).

Whenever technological innovation occurs the changes are always greater than anyone thinks because the tech enables hitherto unknown possibilities.

Think back a bit: when steampower and abundant iron coincided to put the world on rails, and internal combustion and the aerofoil mated to put it on wings, each development released massive and irreversible forces of social and commercial change. But those changes were fewer and on a far smaller scale than those enabled by digital tech, because its applications are ubiquitous.

However, one thing doesn’t change anything like as dramatically. The human. You. Me. Us.

Sure, the human brain is a phenomenal piece of tech but it cannot just be rebuilt or repurposed.1 Rather, it changes slowly through the accretion and accumulation of evolution. Which is why, for example, each of us relies upon the combination of our reptile (autonomic) brain, our mammalian (limbic) brain, and our cerebral (cognitive) cortex.

We humans are suffering as a consequence of our brains’ inability to remould themselves on demand or manage large-scale change. This is particularly, if unsurprisingly, evidenced by the response of immature brains.

Here’s Jonathan Haidt just introducing the subject:

Imagine you fell into a deep sleep on June 28, 2007 - the day before the iPhone was released. Like Rip Van Winkle, the protagonist in an 1819 story by Washington Irving, you wake up 10 years later and look around. The physical world looks largely the same to you, but people are behaving strangely. Nearly all of them are clutching a small glass and metal rectangle, and anytime they stop moving, they assume a hunched position and stare at it. They do this the moment they sit down on a train, or enter an elevator, or stand in line. There is an eerie quiet in public places - even babies are silent, mesmerized by these rectangles. When you do hear people talking, they usually seem to be talking to themselves while wearing white earplugs.
I borrowed this thought experiment from my collaborator Tobias Rose-Stockwell and his wonderful book, Outrage Machine. Tobias uses this scenario to comnvey the transformation of the adult world. But the thought experiment applies even more powerfully to the world of late childhood and adolescence.2

So, now, think about the workplace.

For a start, it may not even be where it was five years ago. In fact, it may not even exist. I mean, the term ‘High Street Bank’ has an antique resonance! Gone are so many of the bustling offices of old and, even where they do survive, they are populated by people behaving exactly as in Rose-Stockwell’s thought experiment.

And sitting on the sofa in the living room, or in the spare bedroom, does not provide the same human diversity and interaction of a few years ago. The tech has meant that we trade up close and personal genuine connections for facsimile connections with the world.

Further, the tech often imposes routines that are simply inhuman.

The tech is supposed to be perfect: its protocols and processes must be adhered to because the tech supposedly represents the best of human thinking and innovation. So how could it ever be queried? It just is not possible.

As a consequence we really do seem to have come to that point where the human is, all too often, ‘the cog in the machine’ and that, we would surely all agree, is a wholly dispiriting condition.

Is it any wonder, then, that, in a recent Deloitte U.S. study, 77 per cent of professionals said that they have experienced burnout at their current job?3

The survey found that 91 per cent of professionals say having an unmanageable amount of stress or frustration can negatively impact the quality of their work.

83 per cent of professionals say burnout from work can negatively impact their personal relationships.

And 66 per cent of professionals say they frequently skip at least one meal a day because they are too busy or stressed about work.

Hardly nirvana, huh?

Not much point talking about ‘bringing one’s whole self to work’ if it’s just a zombie facsimile.

Let’s do this better. Next time I’ll start talking about how that might happen.

Aargh! by David Pinder

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