It seems that is what we hear when in interviews with training managers we discuss the changes that are coming. We all talk about change management, but most of us think of small advances that require us to anticipate the market. The truth is that the one that is coming goes far beyond that a product is something more novel. We are talking about a restructuring of the labor model, of the professions and of the service, difficult to manage. Something for which we are not prepared and that will generate a lot of stress for all of us due to the exponential speed of its implementation.
In a recent conference with neurologist Ignacio Hernández, speaking about Singularity University, the Kodak photo reel metaphor and technology, which enabled an incredible number of pixels, fell short. Soon an app will be able to give probabilities of diagnosing diseases and treatments better than a doctor, knowing our genome will cost less than 60 euros, we can eat hamburgers created by 3D printers at a cost, today, less than six euros, the packages will be distributed by drones, and even finding a partner that does not end in divorce will be a matter of algorithms. A phone will have more neurons than our brains and any operation will be performed by a better and faster robot than us. O yes, sure ... There will be taxi companies without taxis (Uber), hotels without rooms (Airbnb) O yes, sure ...
What the machines will not be able to do is tell us who will be president or who will be the next CEO of the company. Because humans are unpredictable. It will be enough for someone to plug in a friend as a commercial director so that the odds of anyone occupying a position in the company change. Machines can never know everything.
What is clear is that we must train employees and managers capable of accepting rapid and unpredictable changes. Reinventing yourself will be more than a response to a financial crisis. It will be something annual, monthly, almost daily, group, business and individual. Only one thing will remain unchanged. Our values and perhaps our mission. Values and our resilience and capacity for empathy and communication turn out to be the tools that we all must count on in these times. Or if. This time, sure.