What Makes Humans Successful?
Our species owes its triumph to one secret weapon: the mistake. Glitches in the systems of our DNA create diversity among our species. This in-built inefficiency machine is the injection of randomness that allows things to change, not in a thought-out way but through often brutal trial and error. It holds within it a hidden adaptability that doesn’t become obvious until the changing environment demands it. This, in some sense, is redundancy or slack. For long periods, there is no immediate benefit. Yet, it keeps us in the game when the rules of the game shift without warning.
The same can be said for the DNA of organisations. Successful organisations have slack. They have error. Apparent inefficiencies – underperforming staff, slack on the team due to automation – could be the very reason an organisation grows. Variety is the antidote to uncertainty. It gives you options. It’s a competitive advantage.
How do you know your organisation has hidden adaptability in it? You don’t, because you can’t measure it. However, if your workforce is varied, including when it comes to productive output, you’ll have the best chance of being future-proof. Embracing variability and not over-optimising for efficiency can foster an environment ripe for innovation.
People Don’t Need to be Productive
An employee’s productivity is not an accurate measure of their contribution. One innovative suggestion or creative idea can be the catalyst for immense productivity on the level of the whole company, even if that individual contributes little more than that.
Productivity is about doing things the right way. But it says nothing about what the right thing to do actually is. For that, you need trial and error, and for error, you need humans.
It’s a well-trodden notion that one learns more from their mistakes than their successes. An often overlooked part of this is that sometimes what seems like a mistake on the surface is actually a stumbled-upon innovation or paradigm shift. This is the essence of human creativity – a delicate dance between error and elegance.
Humans don’t need to be productive. They need to be human.
More Than a Bag of Skills
Experts thought that AI would replace the more simple jobs first. There is something intuitive about that assumption. But it now seems wrong. Some remarkable feats of the mind are among the easiest for AI to replicate and improve upon. Yet, the things we take for granted, the effortless tasks, are still out of reach for AI. By extension, some jobs that were or are sought after might be pointless soon.
Moravec's paradox is a phenomenon observed by robotics researcher Hans Moravec, in which tasks that are easy for humans to perform (e.g. motor or social skills) are difficult for machines to replicate, whereas tasks that are difficult for humans (e.g. performing mathematical calculations or large-scale data analysis) are relatively easy for machines to accomplish.
A person might spend most of their life mastering a skill. They dedicate themselves to it. Sacrifice in the name of it. It’s complex and tough to do for a human. It’s natural to do this because it feels good. Being able to do something special, unusual, or rare enough to distinguish yourself among our immediate circle is appealing. But as we enter an era in which so many skills are carried out and mastered by AI, we have to ask ourselves: what are humans without this?
For a long time, we, as a species, have attached ourselves to notions of skill acquisition and productivity. Maybe that misses the point. It is us trying to emulate what a machine or AI should be doing. The things that distinguish humans from AI might be the basics. Simple things – easily overlooked and often taken for granted.