Just in time for Christmas 1913, Henry Ford bolted his first production line together: and in the bump of a belt chain, cars were rolling off every thirty minutes, rather than one every twelve hours. Productivity increased by an astonishing 1,100%, car ownership became a practical reality for millions ($385 for a Model A), and the world opened up for communities previously cloistered thirty miles from home, with only a horse to take them there….California there they went. That’s the power of automation, and it’s getting more powerful every day: nowadays a car comes off the production floor of any average plant every 45 seconds, and in the future more and more of them will be electric…which will move the tectonic plates yet again at the start of our new century, opening up further and ever more radical change.
So how do we feel about that?
Who will now weep for the blacksmith, and all those unemployed horses? Who any longer stands shoulder to shoulder with those Cowley shop stewards who embraced automation at Britain’s biggest car maker (Austin Morris), but only if redundant workers could stand idly by “supervising” the production line, fourteen for every worker who actually did any work? Even the very name, Austin Morris…it sounds like what it is, a museum piece, washed up on the shore of technological change. At the leading edge of modern automation, the world has no choice but to change…and we’re all changing with it, faster and more profoundly every day.
Intelligence goes Artificial
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies have already given us virtual personal assistants and chatbots, and according to the leading research agency, Garvan (www.garvan.org), 69% of the average manager’s workload will go virtual within the next two years. It’s just as big a leap forward as Henry Ford managed to marshal in his barn more than a hundred years ago.
And it means less time filling out endless forms, less time bringing customer information up to date, and less time managing all those complex workflows: because all of it can now be managed faster (and better) using AI technologies, leaving more time over to concentrate on the things that really matter for any modern manager, things like performance management and, yes, on planning for the future…so who will weep for the clerks and counters of words, any more than they did for Cowley shop stewards: they’re set free to pursue brighter horizons, just like those antediluvian owners of a Model A Ford. And the great liberator, the single greatest agent of change, is, of course, emerging technology.
Workplace Diversity
Workplace diversity is on the up too: faced with what have become increasingly critical staff shortages over recent years, new technologies are currently enabling the previously disabled, an untapped pool of skilled talent, by making office life more accessible for all. And that really matters when it comes to the bottom line: Garvin has projected that these greater thresholds of enablement, made possible by use of emerging technologies, will increase retention rates by 89%, productivity by 72% and profitability by 29%.
So who, after all, will weep for the horses? It’s time to embrace emerging technologies to the full.
Executive Overview
Change matters, and right now it couldn’t matter more: automation changed everything in the old century, and at the dawn of the new, emerging technologies are digging deep into the way we shape our world. That means higher levels of productivity, better social engagement and increased diversity…and that means everything.
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