Want to adopt AI? Start with human performance

In the course of work and business, we pay a great deal of attention to business outcomes such as customer satisfaction, NPS, scores, growth, profitability, or speed to market. But what about human outcomes? 

Individual, team and business performance is driven by human outcomes just as much as by business outcomes; this was a central point of contention raised by futurist Nicole Scoble-Williams at the Industrial Transformation Forum in mid-October.

Scoble-Williams, the global future of work leader at Deloitte, pointed out in her keynote that our ability to inspire and realize the new value and competitive advantage that AI can create, hinges on us prioritising the Human Agenda and embracing new math for Human Performance that looks beyond traditional productivity metrics.

"The combination of business outcomes and human outcomes having a multiplier effect on each other in a mutually reinforcing cycle is how we unleash human performance," she said. "We create human outcomes when we prioritise human sustainability, which is all about leaving our workers better off as human beings, with human outcomes such as improved wellbeing, stronger skills and employability, opportunities for advancement, better jobs, progress towards equity, heightened connection to purpose and belonging."

"How many of you today have metrics that focus on human outcomes, that you are looking at and monitoring when you're trying to solve business challenges like optimising productivity? Where are the human outcomes on your scorecards and KPIs?"

What's going on in the world of work?

Before we embrace the new math for human performance in an AI powered world, we must first understand what really matters and why, what we're trying to solve for in the world of work, Scoble-Williams said - highlighting some alarming data points that underscore the reality of the challenge, and opportunity, ahead of us:

50 percent of workers are planning to leave their jobs this year.

62 percent of workers are not motivated, engaged or productive at work.

23 percent of jobs are projected to significantly transform over the next three years requiring more than 60 percent of workers to be upskilled - but 70 percent of employers are unable to access the skills they need to get today's work done, let alone get future ready for these jobs.

Most alarmingly, Scoble-Williams highlighted the silent ‘Imagination Deficit’ that is emerging. 

"Only 10% of our workers today have the imagination and the curiosity, the human capabilities that we need to inspire and realise the new value and competitive advantage that AI can unlock," Scoble-Williams said. To highlight the reality of this Imagination Deficit, she shared the example of an AI startup founder whose team of AI experts were constantly asking him for direction; what was holding them back, she said, was the lack of human capabilities such as imagination, empathy, and analytical thinking.

"He thought that they needed more AI skills, more digital skills," she recounted. "He hadn't recognised that what they need are the human capabilities to prompt the AI with the right questions; use the results in innovative, creative ways; recognise when the AI may be hallucinating and need to be challenged."

But how do we get human capabilities up to scratch?

To understand how we tackle the Imagination Deficit emergency, we have to look all the way back to early education, said Scoble-Williams. Speaking exclusively to People Matters on the sidelines of the forum, she pinpointed early childhood as the place to start.

"Think about school. We focus on ABCs, 1-2-3s, reading, writing, maths. How many people are really good at creative writing? How many people are excellent at debating, but put them in a situation where they need to tell a story to an audience with impact and they may not be as comfortable? I feel that we need to completely reconfigure what we're prioritising way back in the early years of childhood. How do we look at the process of play as being a really important, powerful piece of preparing our children, our students, our workers for the future?"

"Because essentially, it is that ability to imagine, to bring a curious mind and ask the smart questions, to come up with the big new ideas, that are the powerful currency for today, tomorrow and beyond."

And as we relook at those early years, we also have to address the challenges faced by the current workforce: specifically the emergency around mental health and wellbeing, she said.

"I've had many conversations where executives have said to me, I think every CEO should be worrying about wellbeing, and probably is. And my response is: I challenge that; every CEO should be thinking about it and worrying about it, but I'm not sure they are," Scoble-Williams recounted.

However, she suggested that every CEO is thinking about and worrying about productivity, without necessarily making the connection between mental health and its impact on productivity. A lack of motivation, disengagement and poor wellbeing – all of those human outcomes impacting the workforce - are holding organisations back from being able to optimise operations, reduce cost, drive productivity, or unlock new innovation and growth. 

"We can't do any of that if our workers are not well and healthy, mentally, financially, and physically in their work environments – we are right back at the human performance equation with the human and business outcomes impacting each other in a mutually reinforcing cycle," she pointed out.

Most importantly, no organisation can do it alone.

"This is all about collective action, and we really need business, government and civil society to come together collectively," Scoble-Williams said.

During her keynote address, she had highlighted an example of two large Japanese multinationals, competitors, that set up a job swap program allowing their people to spend time working in each other's organisation in order to help their workers access work opportunities and immersive experiences that they are unable to access in their current role, to enable and accelerate their transition to an AI powered world; the fact that even competitors can recognise the need for such collaboration to solve for the complexity of the issues impacting the world of work, she said, shows how important it is to think outside of the box in an age of burgeoning AI. She urged the audience to embrace Albert Einstein’s wise words, “you can’t use an old map to explore a new world”, urging the audience of the generational moment we are in:

“The rapid advancements in AI and tech innovation have created a generational moment where we are navigating a completely new and different world of work to what we have ever before  known or experienced and we need to be creating the new maps and the new mental models – like the job swap programs – to unleash the boundless potential of the new opportunities and aspirations in front of us.”

"Let's engage in the ecosystems and communities that we are operating within, and together, look at how to ready our people and our organisations for this AI-powered world, using the Human Agenda as our compass to make work better for humans and humans better at work, paving the path for a more sustainable, equitable and inclusive future for all."