https://www.channelfutures.com/wp-content/themes/channelfutures_child/assets/images/logo/footer-new-logo.png
  • Home
  • Technologies
    • Back
    • SDN/SD-WAN
    • Cloud
    • RMM/PSA
    • Security
    • Telephony/UC/Collaboration
    • Cable
    • Mobility & Wireless
    • Fiber/Ethernet
    • Data Centers
    • Backup & Disaster Recovery
    • IoT
    • Desktop
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Analytics
  • Strategy
    • Back
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Channel Research
    • Business Models
    • Distribution
    • Technology Solutions Brokerages
    • Sales & Marketing
    • Best Practices
    • Vertical Markets
    • Regulation & Compliance
  • MSP 501
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501 Rankings
    • 2022 NextGen 101 Rankings
  • Intelligence
    • Back
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • From the Industry
    • Reports/Digital Issues
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • Channel Futures TV
  • EMEA
  • Channel Chatter
    • Back
    • People on the Move
    • New/Changing Channel Programs
    • New Products & Services
    • Industry Honors
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Advisory Boards
    • Industry Organizations
    • Our Sponsors
    • Advertise
    • 2022 Editorial Calendar
  • Awards
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501
    • Channel Influencers
    • Circle of Excellence
    • DE&I 101
    • Channel Partners 101 (CP 101)
  • Events
    • Back
    • CP Conference & Expo
    • MSP Summit
    • Channel Partners Europe
    • Channel Partners Event Coverage
    • Webinars
    • Industry Events
  • About Us
  • DE&I
Channel Futures
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • Technologies
    • Back
    • SDN/SD-WAN
    • Cloud
    • RMM/PSA
    • Security
    • Telephony/UC/Collaboration
    • Cable
    • Mobility & Wireless
    • Fiber/Ethernet
    • Data Centers
    • Backup & Disaster Recovery
    • IoT
    • Desktop
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Analytics
  • Strategy
    • Back
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Channel Research
    • Business Models
    • Distribution
    • Technology Solutions Brokerages
    • Sales & Marketing
    • Best Practices
    • Vertical Markets
    • Regulation & Compliance
  • MSP 501
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501 Rankings
    • 2022 NextGen 101 Rankings
  • Intelligence
    • Back
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • From the Industry
    • Reports/Digital Issues
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • Channel Futures TV
  • EMEA
  • Channel Chatter
    • Back
    • People on the Move
    • New/Changing Channel Programs
    • New Products & Services
    • Industry Honors
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Advisory Boards
    • Industry Organizations
    • Our Sponsors
    • Advertise
    • 2022 Editorial Calendar
  • Awards
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501
    • Channel Influencers
    • Circle of Excellence
    • DE&I 101
    • Channel Partners 101 (CP 101)
  • Events
    • Back
    • CP Conference & Expo
    • MSP Summit
    • Channel Partners Europe
    • Channel Partners Event Coverage
    • Webinars
    • Industry Events
  • About Us
  • DE&I
    • Newsletter
  • REGISTER
  • MSPs
  • VARs / SIs
  • Agents
  • Cloud Service Providers
  • Channel Partners Events
 Channel Futures

Digital Transformation


Shutterstock

Robot Worker Army

If a Machine Can Do Your Job, It Will

  • Written by Tom Kaneshige
  • May 22, 2018
A Deloitte principal consultant looks at the future of work and asks the question: Do you have what it takes to adapt?

Just about every worker dreads, at least a little, the coming of artificial intelligence, or AI. We’ve seen the sci-fi movies, heard the scary stories. Earlier this month, Google shocked the tech community with a demo of Google AI Assistant making a haircut appointment for someone over the telephone — and fooling the receptionist into believing she was talking to a real person.

Late last year, McKinsey Global Institute released results of a study predicting some 800 million jobs could be lost to AI and automation by 2030. Even though McKinsey says new jobs will offset these loses, one thing is certain: Swaths of employees will need to adapt dramatically over the next decade.

“We have to take lifelong reinvention seriously as individuals, as business leaders, and from a government and education institution perspective,” says Jeff Schwartz, principal at Deloitte and leader of the future of work practice in the United States. “It is one of the really integrative challenges, as we think about the future of work and how to navigate it together in a positive way.”

Schwartz’s group recently produced a video on what it believes are the seven new realities of work. The research predicts great changes underway, yet maintains a sense of optimism in the unique qualities of human beings, especially their ability to relearn and reinvent themselves.

Jeff Schwartz

Not everyone is going to make it, of course. It will test your mettle. The better prepared you are, the greater your chances of success. To this end, Channel Futures sat down with Schwartz to learn more about the new realities for the future of work.

Channel Futures: What do you mean by the realities for the future of work?

Jeff Schwartz: Given what’s going on in automation and technology, given what’s happening around different talent models and options – sometimes called the “open talent economy” for everything from full-time employees to freelancers to gig and crowd workers – we should expect in the next five to seven years that we’re going to redesign pretty much everyone’s job in the world. We’re going to be working with technologies and colleagues that we’re not working with today.

It’s a major concern in the business and popular press. Are we heading toward a robot apocalypse? Or are we heading toward the unleashed, untethered workforce in the age of the imagination economy? As in the case of most truths, the future is some version of the unleashed workforce and the imagination economy, and some version of a lot of us [having] to change our jobs because of technology and new talent models.

We have this unique opportunity in the next decade to retrain and develop pretty much everybody who’s working anywhere in the world.

CF: Can you summarize the seven realities in your research?

JS: One is simply the intersection of technology, talent and transformation. The incredibly rapid, exponential growth of automation, cognitive and communication technologies and sensors is changing the way all of us are going to be working.

The second is the rise of the exponential organization, which is much more productive, and in many ways built around data not as a byproduct, but as a way to organize work and produce results. Organizations are really based on platforms and data and create different efficiencies in terms of the way we operate.

The third reality is the unleashed workforce. What we mean by this is people working with machines every day. It’s less about this being the AI economy or robotics economy, and more about this being a people-and-machines economy.

The fourth is something we call lifelong reinvention. The average time on a job is shortening maybe three or four years, and the half-life of a learning domain skill – for example, the value of a computer language or understanding how to repair a thermostat – is getting shorter, from a decade or two to a couple of years. It’s the notion that lifelong reinvention, constant learning and re-learning, creating and adapting to new skills, becomes part of the way we need to be thinking about 21st century careers.

The fifth reality is some combination of ethics of work and society. A big challenge here is recognizing that the impacts of the transitions that we’re seeing around the future of work for individuals are going to be pretty significant, and we probably need transition programs and social programs to reflect that.

The sixth is something we call the nimble enterprise. Really what we’re talking about is that the enterprise operates as much as an ecosystem as an enterprise, meaning we should expect that the biggest growth in employment will be in the ecosystem layer. How we work and manage people who are both freelance workers and full-time workers is center stage.

The last piece is something we noticed in the last year, which is living in a world of regulated innovation. Look at what’s happened to the ride-share drivers at Uber and Lyft and some of the regulatory challenges. Cities and states, even more federal and national entities, are beginning to regulate innovation around new ways of working.

CF: As an older worker, I’m interested in your idea about lifelong reinvention. Is it realistic to expect everyone to reinvent themselves every few years with different skill sets?

JS: As individuals, this is the question that’s grabbing our attention probably more than any other. What does it mean for us to live in a world where technology is changing the nature of work and careers as quickly as we think it might? What advice would you give somebody [who is] 15 or 25 or 55 who’s trying to find a new job?

Part of this goes back to a discussion we had with Tom Friedman last July. Tom reminds us that we all started as lifelong learners. We actually unlearned how to become lifelong learners somewhere along the line. We learned that the once-and-done learning model was sufficient.

There are at least two sides of this learning reinvention question. The first is, what are the skills and attributes we need to be lifelong learners and lifelong workers? Most of those skills are actually not technical or industry-specific skills.

We know that the ability to ask questions, to empathize with different kinds of people, to tell a clear narrative (written or verbal), to solve problems in a structured and deliberate way, are incredibly valuable lifelong skills.

My personal view: In many ways, education has gone off the rails. We’ve substituted the essential skills that we need to be successful learners and workers by trying to very quickly identify a domain of expertise that itself will be enduring. But learning skills are more enduring than knowledge skills.

The toughest situation in the next few years will be people who basically don’t have very good learning skills. It’s an easier discussion for a 5- or 15- or 25-year-old, but it’s a tougher one for a 55-year-old. I’m 59. Can you get into a mode where you can be a learner, be adaptive and pick up new skills?

CF: The elephant in the room is AI taking away jobs. In many cases, AI has the potential to take over entire professions, leaving few or no adjacencies to relearn. Where do you stand on this?

JS: It is one of a few elephants in the room. What happens to our jobs and our livelihood as AI does more and more? Other elephants in the room: Will any of our children work for a company again? Will we all be a global network of freelancers?

Coming back to AI, we’ve been through very significant technology transitions before. One of the reasons this one is different — the speed and scale at which it’s happening is very dramatic. The idea that we need to re-skill the global workforce over the next 10 years is a pretty daunting task. Most companies are trying to figure out how to get started.

I think back to some of the great technology revolutions over the last hundred years. One of them is the Green Revolution in Asia that led to unbelievably large improvements in agricultural productivity. One of the major byproducts of increased productivity was basically starvation went down – we’ve created a global surplus of food – but the number of farmers in every population, including developing countries, plummeted.

As we talk about AI, it’s sort of looking at the Green Revolution from the perspective of all the farmers who were thrown out of work. The challenge in front of us is, as machines can do things people used to do, what are the kinds of things people can uniquely do?

I’ll end with the observation that Tom Friedman put in front of us. He said, if a machine can do it, a machine will do it. As individuals, business leaders and societal leaders, we have to understand the things that people can do and help build the skills and careers in order to do that.

It’s a grand challenge, how we reinvent and develop skills — not on soft skills but enduring, essential skills that people can uniquely do. Things like imagination, composition, experiences are human things. That’s where I think we’re going to expect to see the growth.

Tags: Agents Cloud Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Channel Research Digital Transformation Strategy

Most Recent


  • cybersecurity digital transformation
    Is it Twilight or a New Day for the Technology Advisory Channel?
    "We get to a certain point where we're like, 'How do we get bigger?'" Bret Hickenlooper said.
  • Phishing
    Twilio Customers' Data Stolen in Phishing Attacks that Trick Employees
    The hackers impersonated Twilio's IT department.
  • Beyond Pride
    'Beyond Pride,' a Free DE&I Webinar on Workplace Culture for LGBTQ+
    Allies and awareness are key to helping LGBTQ+ employees feel safe.
  • Navigate business
    How Partners Can Navigate Economic Uncertainty, Possible Recession Ahead
    The biggest mistake is companies waiting too long to reduce costs.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

-or-

Log in with your Channel Futures account

Alternatively, post a comment by completing the form below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Content

  • Conflict Boxing Gloves
    Channel Conflict, Controversy: SolarWinds Hack, Racism, Layoffs, Zoom-RingCentral
  • Paying ransomware
    Sophos: Avaddon Ransomware Becoming More Prominent, Aggressive
  • kicking down obstacles
    IBM, Microsoft ‘Helping Eliminate Obstacles’ for Developers
  • Data management platform
    IBM Acquires Catalogic Software's Copy Data Management Business

Upcoming Events

View all

MSP Summit

September 13, 2022 - September 16, 2022

Channel Partners Conference & Expo

May 1, 2023 - May 4, 2023

Galleries

View all

Images: Telarus Hosts Partner Summit, Gives Partner, Supplier Awards

August 5, 2022

7 Channel People Making Waves This Week at Kaseya, AT&T, Cohesity, More

August 5, 2022

The Gately Report: Zscaler Tracks New, Increasingly Dangerous Ransomware Group, Most Targeted Types of People

August 5, 2022

Industry Perspectives

View all

Seize the Application Modernization Opportunity

August 2, 2022

A Growth Mindset: Your Organization’s Strategic Differentiator

August 1, 2022

Timely Tips for Non-Negotiable Patch Updates

July 29, 2022

Webinars

View all

Outsmarting RaaS: Implementation Strategies To Help Your Clients Before, During, and After a Ransomware Attack

August 23, 2022

Why it is Important to Upgrade Aging Servers and How to use Live Optics to Upgrade Efficiently

August 25, 2022

Executives at Home are Not Alright: An Intro to Digital Executive Protection

September 8, 2022

White Papers

View all

Work Goes Remote – (and Other Top ITOps Trends)

May 25, 2022

The New Bottom Line: How MSPs Can Meet the Healthcare Crisis While Evolving Their Businesses

April 19, 2022

How to build a Security Operations Center (on a budget)

April 4, 2022

Channel Futures TV

View all

Vonage a ‘Single Communications Stack Provider’ for Partners, Customers

IBM, Partners and the $1 Trillion Hybrid Cloud Opportunity

June 26, 2022

Agents Share ‘Secrets,’ Industry Opportunity

May 11, 2022

AT&T, Microsoft, Cisco, ThreatLocker on Unlocking Partner Potential

May 6, 2022

Twitter

ChannelFutures

Bret Hickenlooper of @sumocom is more excited than ever to be in the channel. dlvr.it/SWHhP1 https://t.co/S0YfM2Vpiw

August 8, 2022
ChannelFutures

.@Vista_Equity acquiring @avalara in $8.4 billion deal. #automation dlvr.it/SWHd98 https://t.co/klle3bZMMp

August 8, 2022
ChannelFutures

Hackers access @twilio customer data via #phishing attacks. dlvr.it/SWHWXn https://t.co/dV9bal0vGS

August 8, 2022
ChannelFutures

[email protected] produced a 50-minute webinar on creating a work culture in which LGBTQ+ employees feel safe. You can… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

August 8, 2022
ChannelFutures

#MSPSummit preview: Surviving, thriving during economic rough seas with @SL-Index's Peter Kujawa.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

August 8, 2022
ChannelFutures

.@ConnectWise says use #cyberinsurance policies to protect from worst of cyberattack repercussions, but first beef… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

August 8, 2022
ChannelFutures

Check out our pictures from the #TelarusPartnerSummit that @telarus hosted in Salt Lake City.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

August 5, 2022
ChannelFutures

Channel People Making Waves This Week Include: @spoonen, @RoyArsan, @TheAnneChow, @AnuragTechaisle… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

August 5, 2022

MSP 501

The industry's largest and most comprehensive partner awards program.

Newsletters and Updates

Sign up for The Channel Report, Channel Futures Update, MSP 501 Newsletter and more.

Live Channel Events

Get the latest information on the next industry-leading Channel Partners event.

Galleries

Educational slide shows and images from live events.

Media Kit And Advertising

Want to reach our audience? Access our media kit.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • Channel Partners Events
  • Telecoms.com
  • MSP 501
  • Black Hat
  • IoT World Today
  • Omdia

WORKING WITH US

  • Contact
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter

FOLLOW Channel Futures ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2022 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.
This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.
X