No matter your role or profession, it’s hard to escape the technological changes happening around you.
The Microsoft 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report reported that 66% of leaders wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills, and 71% would rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them.
The findings are a stark reminder that the skills you need to thrive now and into the future continue to evolve.
Career success requires being adaptive and strategic, to take control of how you spend your time and attention, and not wait for your employer to upskill you. For leaders, progress at work requires you to lead the way and make technology adaptation accessible and acceptable. Significantly, having a positive work environment aids that approach.
So, where do you start?
As with most things in life, you want to start by focusing internally.
Forge Your Adaptive Mindset
Your beliefs about your ability to adapt and respond to technological change impact your mindset and, consequently, your approach and willingness to swiftly adopt new tools.
When you tell yourself, ‘I’m not the tech person’ or ‘I find change hard,’ you create mental roadblocks that make it much harder to change.
Flip your perspective and start building your adaptive mindset. With an adaptive mindset, you consider the benefits that arise from adopting new technologies and specify ‘Why this matters.’
As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, research reveals that the employees most impacted by AI are those currently better at their jobs.
A joint study by Kellogg Northwestern and MIT Sloan School of Management examined how new technology impacts workers and their earnings. The researchers found the effect varied based on whether the technology could perform a task ‘in place of a worker’ or ‘complementing workers performing a task’. The latter created more variability, such that “the most experienced and highly paid workers suffer, while new hires appear to benefit.”
They concluded that AI could level the playing field within an occupation and that the people who will be most impacted are employees who are currently better at their jobs.
You want to find ways to leverage technology to think, create, and execute your work more efficiently and effectively so you can expand your sphere of influence.
Understand the Limitations
Every week, there are new reports and findings on what emerging and existing technologies can do.
For example, a new study led by University College London and published in Nature Human Behaviour found the large language models (LLMs) can forecast scientific outcomes with superhuman accuracy. In fact, more accurately than human experts.
Just as there are benefits, new technologies introduce risks and challenges.
Brian Patrick Green, the Director of Technology Ethics at the Markkula Centre for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, has identified 16 central issues. These issues include concerns around transparency of AI use and safeguarding user privacy; bias in data sources, which can lead to discriminatory outcomes; being clear on where the responsibility lies and ensuring ethical guidelines for AI deployment; and impacts on jobs.
For leaders to successfully navigate such changes, they need to ensure they are fully informed so they can make deliberate decisions. This requires more than assembling a list of pros and cons. It requires deep reflective thought, clear decision criteria and the right people to challenge, debate and decide.
As part of this process, tapping into the wisdom of experts in this field is helpful.
Timnit Gebru is the co-founder of Distributed AI Research and the former co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team. Their work focuses on highlighting the risks of AI, with the perspective that “AI is not inevitable, its harms are preventable, and when its production and deployment include diverse perspectives and deliberate processes, it can be beneficial”.
If you want more, it’s worth reading this article in Technology Review.
Similarly, Emily Bender, Adjunct Professor at the University of Washington reminds us that it is wise to be cautious. She states, “The result is systems that can produce text that is very compelling when we as humans make sense of it. But the systems do not have any understanding of what they are producing, any communicative intent, any model of the world, or any ability to be accountable for the truth of what they are saying”.
You want to check, reflect, verify, challenge and validate.
Assess Your Tech Literacy
You can be alert to the risks while being future-focused.
Adaptation requires assessing where you are and where you want to get to.
Firstly, identify your level of proficiency, considering skills, competencies, and knowledge related to workplace technologies relevant to your role, profession, and industry.
As you do this, remember that while much of the present emphasis is on LLMs, they are not the only tech that’s impacting workplaces. For example, there are augmented and virtual reality, blockchain, quantum computing, collaborative technologies, and biometric technologies (e.g., facial recognition and iris scanners).
Then, once again, in the context of your industry, profession and role, consider what level of proficiency you need to attain by assessing the gap between your current state and your desired future state.
Embrace Playfulness
One of the best features of LLMs such as ChatGPT, Claude, Falcon and Gemini is that you can’t break them.
Therefore, the best approach is to play with them so you can figure out which tool best suits your purpose. Different models are built on different databases, so they offer different advantages.
There are many articles assessing these tools, so do your research and due diligence to figure out what works for you.
As part of this, know who you can turn to for advice as you play. One of my go-to people is Ethan Mollick. He suggests, “You can’t go wrong with any of them, pick a favorite and use it (Claude 3 is likely to freak you out most in conversation with its insights, GPT-4 is pleasantly neutral and has the most complete feature set, and Gemini often gives the most accessible answer)”.
Find Your Learning Curve
Be patient with your learning curve. As you develop and elevate your capabilities, you’ll likely experience frustration or setbacks. Give yourself time to learn and celebrate your progress.
As well, don’t try to master everything at once. Begin by learning the core features you need for your day-to-day work. As you become more comfortable, expand to more advanced capabilities.
Develop a list of activities to close the gap and prioritise your learning.
For some workplace technologies, upskilling may involve reading books, enrolling in courses, subscribing to journals, discovering new people to meet, and perfecting new practices. You could explore new features and functionalities through online tutorials, complete or self-guided exercises, or use free trials and sandbox environments to play with the technology.
Build Relationships with Tech-savvy Colleagues
Learning together makes the experience fun and is a great way to connect with colleagues.
So, seek out your tech-savvy colleagues. They likely love discussing technology and the latest gadgets, tools and techniques. If that’s the case, they will happily share their insights.
With their deep understanding of what’s happening now and in the future, their insights can help you be better prepared. They may also be willing to help guide you through changes.
You can also form informal user groups with colleagues to share tips and troubleshoot issues. Once you become more proficient, you can even mentor others who are struggling to adapt because teaching is a fabulous way to reinforce your learning.
Become an Early Adopter
Once you’ve elevated your proficiency and knowledge of workplace technologies, consider becoming an early adopter.
Being among the first to adopt new technologies is an opportunity to stand out and build your competitive advantage by getting ahead of the change curve. Early access allows you to experiment with tools that streamline workflows and increase productivity and other benefits. It also gives you more time to adjust.
As part of this, consider volunteering to lead user groups or getting involved with technology pilot projects, so you stay aware of upcoming changes.
If you’re in a leadership position, role model the benefits and share what you’ve learned. Make it safe for your team to experiment and try and test ideas. Often, the best ideas arise when team members experiment, stretch their minds, and explore new ways of doing things.
Go Human Centric
Lastly, it would be remiss of me to not mention an element very dear to my heart. While we focus so much on tech, remember the future is human.
Technology, in all its guises, cannot replace the human-to-human connection. While the routine and process elements of roles will be automated, the relational, emotional, and leadership skills won’t be.
You want to simultaneously embrace change while never stepping away from your values, ethics and humanity and ensure technology serves your goals rather than dictates your habits. This is a core part of you leading with emotional intelligence at work.