Five Steps To Remain Relevant And Employed

By George Lorenzo

We are in a world where machines are taking the place of employees because they are complacent. These steps should guide you and help you avoid loosing your job to a robot.
The information below will help spur you up for greater achievements at the work place. It will keep you relevant and indispensable wherever you find yourself working at.

Individuals who take on these strategies must be willing "to burn the midnight oil to improve their own skills, and either make friends with smart machines or find a way to do things they cannot do. Complacency is not an option. But despondency isn’t required either."

1. Stepping up

People who step up make high-level decisions. They are senior executives who decide where cognitive technologies need to be utilized, and how new systems fit into the business organization overall. They are the few at the top of the augmentation pyramid, the authors write. "They are deciding what smart people do, what smart machines do, and how they work together."

2. Stepping aside

Those who step aside understand how to let machines do the work that machines are best at, such as computational tasks, while "simultaneously choosing to base your own livelihood on forms of value that machines just cannot deliver." Stepping aside means focusing on how to enhance our so-called "multiple intelligences." This is the space where "logical computation cannot provide optimized answers," such as practicing emotional intelligence or even utilizing our ability to solve problems through irrational means.

3. Stepping in

Stepping in means knowing how to make machines productive. These are the people who know how to connect technical and business environments. "Their role involves both identifying situations for which the machine isn’t well suited, and helping it to deliver even greater productivity advances over time," the authors note.

4. Stepping narrowly

Those who step narrowly are the ones who "hyperspecialize." They take the time to follow their passions into work that cannot be automated. They have a clear sense of direction and take the necessary steps to become experts in their field. It means "pushing ever deeper into a subject, with all the force of past achievement helping you, and learning the next thing about it through the kind of focused consideration and experimentation that machines can’t manage," Davenport and Kirby explain.

5. Stepping forward

People who step forward are technically proficient and entrepreneurial individuals who actually build the smart machines. People who step forward may have the brightest future in the age of automation. They are programmers, data scientists, researchers, product managers, marketers, consultants, and more. They are "particularly adept at learning new skills and updating their resumes to reflect their new skills," Davenport and Kirby suggest. "Their reward will be a valuable one: Working in an exciting industry, and drawing a good paycheck from it over many years."

Credit:  fastcompany.com