Much of what we read about artificial intelligence, deep learning and robots can present fear of a new paradigm that our jobs are simply going, or vanish fairly soon, so we should find ways to release our human ingenuity.

Technology, machines and information solutions will take over in this new world of accelerating technology with the concern of “so then, what do we do?

Well, I believe we have a real chance to, at last, celebrate. Yes celebrate, we can finally be liberated! Ever since the industrial revolution, we have been caught up in the productivity and efficiency trap, in the monotony of repeating work.

Today we are on the cusp of changing that.  Can you imagine all those boring, repetitive jobs we are faced with today can be simply handed over to machine intelligence, just happy to do the task at hand?

Surely, if we manage this correctly it can release us up, it can enable our ingenuity to thrive and the answer lies in the work to be done

Scary, yes, if you fear using your creative mind and actually enjoy repetitive work, where you switch off and become the robot equivalent, leaving decisions to others, just getting on with the work in hand. The productivity perspective of having robots and artificial intelligence constantly repeating, improving and doing the work to be done is liberating, isn’t it surely if we manage it properly?

Back in 1776 Adam Smith wrote a famous book “the Wealth of the Nations” and discussed the “work to be done“. This caught my interest, we all get so caught up in the repeating stuff we find little time for the “work to be done“. It is this that generates the new, pushes the boundaries beyond the existing, it gives us the chance to explore new possibilities. It allows us to apply our human brains to more creative work.

Let us designate the constant repeating “work done” to our new friends the robots and machines. Let’s find the time to learn new things, develop a new level of dexterity, adaptiveness and ‘hone’ our senses to actively go out and seek.

I made this “work to be done” shift as part of my advisory business some years back and it is even more relevant today, more than ever, focus forward not constantly tracking back.

“Work to be done” is searching for our future growth through human ingenuity. It is working through the data, collected intelligence can provide to connect the dots, see different possibilities, use our creativity, our originality, our inventiveness, our adaptable skills to do new work.

That is the power of “work to be done“, the place we humans do need to find as much time as we can to explore the needs to be resolved, unraveled and find solutions to increasingly complex challenges to be worked upon and eventually resolved.

As we are fed increasing knowledge at a faster rate, we need to learn to absorb more. The more active we become engaged in knowledge sharing, in building outcomes from the networking between machines and humans, the more potential we can to release new insights, if, again if, we are released from the constant work done world.

The more we shift from physical ‘work done’ to more intellectual ‘work to be done‘ we can grow our future in the best ways, the future does come into our hands. It is searching for the necessary ‘work to be done‘ that is so important for innovation insights, and today much of that remains hidden, waiting to be discovered. Yet we so often never find the time as we are so caught up in the repeat in our lives of the ‘work done’, that constant drumbeat of repeating tasks as part of our job. What if we designed our future that released the human from this repetitive work?

Can you imagine secretaries, administration assistants, operations, many managers positions, first-line supervisors, cashiers, industrial engineers, customer service representatives, lawyers, helpers, laborers and material movers, positions that can can all be automated and then “released” to become far more wealth creating, not value defending, as their new role?

As we gain more understanding of what automation and information technology can give us we can channel that “data-driven innovation” (DDI) in different, new ways. If we spend time on innovation that creates real new business value by structuring different technologies to “define and capture” to a more specific context we can accelerate outputs and outcomes. We can enhance research and development, focus on searching for products that meet “need” better than existing ones.

We can find more time to optimize processes and our production processes, from what WE learn from placing our robots and intelligence gathering at Our disposal, by using what they gain in intelligence and work productivity to put to our good use to constantly innovate.

We might be in the position of putting the human race into being finally released for real economic and social growth as their job, the “work to be done“. We form around new rules and work and we actually expect from our new assistants our measurement of technologies, social and economic success, for us to make new advances we know we all need in this world.

For instance, the OECD highlights the value of data is needing to be context dependent. Read my view of Innovation discovery as context dependent.

The OECD suggests there are seven dimensions of data quality, well how about these become “OUR” demands or output expectancies from our new robot friends on all that “raw” intelligence, as a new world order of what we expect from “them”. Let me put my expected rules I want from becoming more data-dependent based on the OECD seven they suggest.

• Relevance of the data provided to address a purpose that allows me to advance my “work to be done“
• Accuracy to describe the characteristics we require to advance on what we have
• Credibility to give us confidence that what we are getting to know, is really going to help us in what we do need to know not what is simply data, for data sake.
• Timeliness not based on the availability of the data (today’s fixation) but permits the information to be of value and can be acted upon when it works for us. It does not necessarily have to be ‘real-time’ but timely to our need for the “work to be done“
• Accessibility by knowing where to look so it can be accessed when we need it, not ‘pushed at us (today) but ‘pulled out’ when we need it
• Interpretability is the ease of our understanding this gets replaced by us exploring its value in the context of what we have set up to build our understanding of the “work to be done” by spending more time in testing, validating, experimenting and seeing the connections to turn it (all) into new value
• Coherence is the logical path and where we want ‘work done’ to be consistent to our needs so we can spot variance, seek out new logic and make it reconcilable to what we are wanting to do.

I wrote an article “Work to be done is innovation’s invisible hand” back in 2013. It is an earlier “take” on the value of “work to be done”.

Let’s build from this, can you imagine our new extra pair of hands, unbelievable computing intelligence and technology potential all focusing on what needs to be done and feeding us what we require, to build something different, to advance on what we have, to crack more complex problems.

If we can now harness much of the data and repetitive work to release us from that world of “productivity and effectiveness” into one of “creativity and ingenuity” it might be a more stimulating and satisfying world where our contributions are actually making a difference.

The choice is ours on how we deploy what is around us.

The end outcome should be one where we all can be redeployed into the “work to be done” where new growth can be explored with a freer mind and an array of new assistants releasing us to undertake this new work. Now that is a revolution I feel is worth wanting.

The only fear you might have is knowing you are going to spend more time on exploring the unknowns and leave the knowns to others to deal with, as long as we still have human oversight managing this.

Let’s look to “work to be done” as a wonderful chance of finally being liberated, to be more innovative and creative, adaptive and something we are actually designed to do. Remember intuition and foresight, our ability to connect random thinking should play to our strengths lead to ingenuity.

The post A new paradigm of focusing on ingenuity lies in work to be done first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Actually it is heard a fair amount if you ask about risk and innovation. This is often never stated in earshot of others within the same organization, it comes in a sudden burst of honesty, perhaps over drinks, and always outside their ‘normal’ working environment.

Sometimes you have a rare exception, especially if you have been called in to help, when someone has just been appointed into the position to simply “do something about innovation, we are dying as an organization”

We all need a meaning but we don’t like the risks associated with it

I was reading an excellent article by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer on “How leaders kill meaning at work” and they offer the insight about the lack of recognition that everyone within any organization requires as the single most important need,that is the feeling they are making progress in meaningful work.

Managers often undermine the meaningfulness of work to us as individuals; it is too often dismissed or not thought as relevant to the work at hand.

In the article they suggest four traps to avoid and one of them ‘Mediocrity signals’ triggered this blog.

The organization they used as the example within this trap drove new-product innovation into the ground as the top management was so focused on cost savings they no longer were a leader in innovation, they simply became followers.

One comment made by an employee was “mediocre work for a mediocre company”, yet it was not previously like that.

Risk aversion had become dominating and the organizations leadership was signalling “they were really more comfortable being ordinary”.

How do we arrive at this point of being just ordinary?

Human being have always been risk takers, otherwise we would not be where we are today. As a species we survived because we took risks, but was this because we were threatened?

There is a strong argument that we really only innovate when we are in crisis, being threatened, either with our jobs, within our organizations when we feel under attack.

So do we only feel we can take risks to survive? It is often amazing how the barriers are unlocked to innovation, within those deadlock meetings when someone signals “we can break the rules, we can go beyond our normal comfort barriers, into uncharted waters, it is acceptable, it will be supported”. We can change in seconds; it becomes liberating, exciting and risky.

The argument goes that risk-taking enables growth.

We have all heard the mantra “without risk, there is no reward”. Yet the very opposite occurs more often than not. Those that do take a risk, often find their ‘reward’ is in being fired, demoted or being warned “this behavior is not something we encourage in our organization”

So if you want to be an average manager or an average employee, then you need to find the average organization were little risk-taking is required. Does that fill our lives with meaningful work? I think there are better ways to go through life than hating the very thought of getting up and going into work.

If we lack fulfillment, and being in an environment where work begins to have, each day, less meaningful purpose then we have taken out one of the major factors of life surely? If risk is being progressively taken out of the equation I think innovation suffers, let alone us as human beings having to live with this feeling of working in such a mind-numbing environment.

How often do we hear managers quantifying more on all the downsides of risk, looking at the possibilities of loss and less at the probabilities of success?

Risk-taking becomes threatening to them, their tenure, so they work the downsides wherever they can, rework the product so it can still be innovative but is simply ordinary as against the original idea where it was potentially extraordinary. Risk aversion took hold and we are left with this “no appetite” and being ordinary.

We need a shift in risk thinking to help innovation.
Organizations need to work at ways to reduce fear, discomfort and resistance. To allow for opposing views, seeking out a diversity of opinion and establishing that one thing we all would love to be part of, this is an authentic culture that matches the promise with the reality .

One that shifts away from conventional thinking to embrace risk and not try to always control but to seek actively experimentation. It is through experimentation we gain our best learning.

Equally, experimentation should be at the core of every organizations drive to innovate, we accelerate our knowledge the more we attempt something different, proving or disproving is exciting work.

Shaping ideas, taking risks, allowing experimentation, providing tolerance, exploring the unknowns all should be an integral part of innovation. Innovation is risk-taking.

Kouzes and Posner back in 1987 suggested that individual’s be encouraged to keep trying despite failures, and focus more on on the learning from this than just simply from the outcome alone.

They suggested three points as a way forward to improve risk tolerance:

1. Choose tasks that are challenging but within the person’s skill level to build a sense of control
2. Encourage people to see change as full of possibilities and to build an attitude of change
3. Offer more rewards than punishments.

Over time this increases our risk tolerances, we become progressively more creative in this risk-taking orientation to seek out and push for more innovation.

We allow in a greater desire for the capacity to be innovating and how we want things we are working on to improve, to give us a greater meaning within our lives. More purpose, more satisfaction, greater identification.

Equally allow those who are willing to take risk, as their more natural position, the head room to explore, to push boundaries. Outline the guidelines, expect them to be broken on a few occasions but work with them, talk with them and talk about what they are doing where ever you can.

Work towards expecting more positive surprises through your engagement than fire fighting the negative ones because you were unaware.  Do also make sure others above you or alongside you are party to the risks.

There is a certain thrill in any ride if it has a little edge to it but equally it is in a successful finish. Risks always need active but positive managing, keeping them within a certain tolerance.

Building environments that encourage risk-taking should be sought.

If we can provide environments that encourage risk-taking and they are consistent in what is expected this becomes a big step to change our present thinking about innovation.

If the leaders within organizations lay out what they want to achieve, breakthrough innovation for example ,and this is clearly articulate and laid out in the governance, the culture and in the environment and linked to the purpose of the organizations goals, then risk becomes better managed and valued.

Risk-taking can come through experimentation, through more open learning and discussing, through testing and pushing for greater innovation alters the tolerance levels. These tolerances change over time as more confidence seeps into the way we evaluate and make the betting on the outcome more risk-rewarding. We begin to move back into truly innovating.

As I suggested earlier: “innovation is about risk-taking”.

We look for a meaningful contribution as Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer suggest. It boosts the “inner work life” and as they equally suggest “inner work life affects the bottom line” if employees are allowed to be engaged, part of something that allows them to be more creative, productive, committed and collegial in their jobs.

I would add fostering risk tolerance can push innovation beyond the ordinary back into the extraordinary.

Nothing is better than being associated with extraordinary moments, we all need them, and they give us real meaning and purpose, just make sure you add a certain spice of risk into the mix.

If you can’t live with risk, risk may come and live with you.

The post Risk aversion is just making us all feel ordinary first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.