<\/p>\n
The new \u201crules\u201d of the workplace are being defined as computers are frantically being programmed to take the lead in the workplace, when it comes to judgment and intuition. We humans need to be the idea generators, the motivators, the negotiators, and the trouble-shooters to fix computer errors, if we want to govern our emerging digital environments. In short, we need to get closer<\/em> to our firms, be more tightly integrated and intimate with work performance than ever before\u2026 which means the role and tenure of the much-derided middle-manager in the Dilbert Cartoons could be taking on a whole new potential twist – and a whole new (potential) level of relevance<\/em>.<\/p>\n I would go as far as declaring 2018 as a new beginning of the value of the full-time employee<\/em> \u2013 where alignment with the mission, spirit, culture, energy and context of an organization has never been so important.\u00a0 We are seeing the value of contract work diminish as so much \u201coutsource-able\u201d work is so much easier to automate and global labor drives down the cost of getting things done quickly and easily.\u00a0 Business success is more about investing in the core than ever – and that core includes the people who are the true pieces of human middleware to hold everything together.<\/p>\n The onus is circling back to the value of being a full-time employee, who needs to value the fruits of having a predictable income and adapt to the changing balance of how humans need to work with computers.<\/p>\n Remember when the rise of the gig worker was supposed to revamp how so many of us worked, as we escaped the shackles of the \u201cevil employer\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n Almost two decades ago, the internet was creating the independent worker, as exemplified in Dan Pink\u2019s timeless book<\/a> \u201cFree Agent Nation: How America\u2019s New Independent Workers are Transforming the Way We Live<\/em>\u201d became the seminal guide for what is now known as the \u201cgig worker\u201d.<\/p>\n Furthermore, unless recent research<\/a> from McKinsey of 8000 workers can now be categorized as fake news, 162 million people in Europe and the United States\u2014or 20 to 30 percent of the working-age population\u2014engage in some form of independent work today. And a recent study<\/a> from freelance site Upwork (which undoubtedly wants to hype the impact of gig world) cranks up the numbers even further, claiming that a staggering 50% of US millennials<\/em> are already freelancing, before declaring the freelance sector will comprise the majority of the US workforce<\/em> within a decade.\u00a0 Wow.<\/p>\n So are the days of being gainfully employed really disintegrating before our very eyes?\u00a0 Or is the gig hype beginning to atrophy for many people?<\/strong><\/p>\n The gig economy is becoming a tough place to craft a living<\/a> if many of the new reports<\/a> are to be believed.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not just about driving Ubers, delivering food orders and contracting for logistics firms \u2013 i.e., working for businesses that exploit the gig economy to drive down labor costs and improve services.\u00a0 It\u2019s the freelance gig economy where people forge a living writing code, supporting content development, delivering consulting work on-demand etc.\u00a0 Even that lovely Upwork research admits: \u201cWhile finances are a challenge for all, freelancers experience a unique concern \u2014 income predictability<\/em>. The study found that, with the ebbs and flows of freelancing, full-time freelancers dip into savings more often (63 percent at least once per month versus 20 percent of full-time non-freelancers)\u201d.\u00a0 So even if the most biased of sources admits most gig workers can\u2019t cover their living costs, we can conclude that those \u201cFree Agents\u201d, which McKinsey describes as the gig worker sector using gig work as its primary income, are not in a sustainable earning situation.<\/p>\n Today, it\u2019s a buyer\u2019s market for gig work<\/strong><\/p>\n You only need to spend a little time on LinkedIn to observe just how many people are now marketing their wares as solo free agents, or as part of a company bearing their name.\u00a0 It\u2019s abundantly clear that so many people have decided to set themselves up as independents, that the market for gig talent is saturated and it\u2019s become a \u201cbuyers\u2019 market\u201d for gig work.\u00a0 Whether I want to commission a crack consultant to validate some RPA software, hire an analyst to endorse my product, commission a writer to produce a white-label assessment of an emerging market, produce a go-to-market strategy for my business, redesign my website, my logo, or just have someone support my business on a part-time basis\u2026 today, I am spoiled for choice.\u00a0 I barely need to hire fulltime employees these days, unless they are truly core<\/em> to keeping my business ticking along \u2013 and I can create real competition to get the work done for much lower costs than a few short years ago.<\/p>\n On top of the risks of commoditizing gig work, we have to contend with the impact of automation and Machine Learning to stay relevant and worthy of earning a paycheck<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019re not in a world rejecting human work, but a world where work is rapidly changing<\/em> \u2013 and the skills of the dynamic middle manager has never been so important. In short, the increasing availability of computing power to crunch massive amounts of data, coupled with advancing tools to tag and label data and workflow clusters with breakthrough programming in languages such as Python for syntax and R for data visualization, are the game-changers that will increasingly impact how we get work done, as we develop continually smarter algorithms to keep teaching computers to do the work of the human brain.<\/p>\n What’s more, the rapid development of Machine Learning (ML) environments such as Google’s\u00a0TensorFlow, the Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning Workbench, Amazon’s\u00a0Sagemaker, Caffe and Alibaba\u2019s Aliyun are becoming the new environments driving armies of coders and developers to align themselves with ML value – desperate to stay relevant (and well paid) against the headwinds of commoditization of legacy coding and app development.<\/p>\n As ML takes over judgment and (eventually) intuition, the human-value onus moves to interaction, agenda-setting, problem defining and idea generation<\/strong><\/p>\n In short, the disruptive ML techniques are teaching computers to do what comes naturally to humans: to learn by example<\/em>. Today\u2019s emerging ML tools use massive amounts of data and computing power to simulate neural networks that imitate the human brain\u2019s connectivity<\/em>, classifying data sets and finding patterns and correlations between them.<\/p>\n Net-net, pattern-matching jobs are increasingly being affected by ML \u2013 vocations such as radiologists, pathologists, financial advisors, lawyers, procurement executives, accountants etc. are all being challenged as judgment work is (gradually) being replaced by smart algorithms.\u00a0 However, as elements of these types of jobs are being affected, other job elements become even more important, namely interacting <\/em>with other humans, creating, setting the agenda, defining and finding the problems to go after.\u00a0 They motivate, they persuade, they negotiate, they coordinate. They are the dynamic conduits of driving information and ideas in an organization and will be increasingly in the driving seat as Machine Learning advancements increasingly take hold.\u00a0 The digital middle manager<\/em> who can bring a team together and lead people in the right direction does not exist and likely never will\u2026. I\u2019d be amazed if we saw one emerge soon.<\/p>\n Fulltime employment is now becoming a premium situation<\/strong><\/p>\n Having predictability of income, healthcare costs covered, guaranteed paid vacation time – and a constant supply of work to do – is fast becoming the dream scenario for the disgruntled gig worker.\u00a0 So here\u2019s a thought \u2013 go get a JOB.\u00a0 Or if you\u2019re in a job and wanted to try the gig work thing\u2026 spare a thought for what your ideal situation looks like, because last time I looked, most firms are doing everything they can to avoid hiring well-paid staff\u2026 especially if they can get the work done much cheaper from desperate gig workers.<\/p>\n The Bottom-Line: Five steps to keeping your job:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n i) Become the conduit of ideas and information that is irreplaceable right across your organization. <\/strong>So we\u2019ve now come full circle, where the value of having people really close to the business is becoming more important than ever, as computers perform more and more of the routine and judgement based tasks. To the point, the value of the full-time employee goes both ways: companies need people who really understand their institutional processes, their quirks and ways of getting things done\u2026 who are onhand to troubleshoot mistakes, but also there to keep the ideas flowing to keep the business ahead of its competition and close to its customers.\u00a0 \u201cHuman middleware\u201d is becomimg the real OneOffice glue to break down those siloes and help govern a slick business operation from front to back office.<\/p>\n ii) Develop a positive attitude by finding aspects of your job you do like.<\/strong> \u00a0Your full time job is likely the best gig-work you will probably ever get, so even if you hate your boss and most of your colleagues, ask yourself if you\u2019d prefer scrapping around for the boring work other companies prefer to outsource.\u00a0 Focus on the interesting stuff you can<\/em> do and keep reminding yourself that the grass is rarely greener elsewhere.\u00a0 Unless you are a whizz at Python development, the chances are your job-hopping days are numbered and you need to figure out how to stay put and make it better for yourself.<\/p>\n iii) Motivate yourself and become a real motivator. \u00a0<\/strong>Being motivated – and helping to motivate others – is probably the least computerizable trait of all.\u00a0 If you aren\u2019t motivated, you are placing yourself at risk when your leadership assess which of their team then want to take them forward into the future.\u00a0 If you really can\u2019t get yourself excited about what you do, or your company just demotivates you in such a way you can\u2019t dig yourself out of your rut, then you may need to take that Python course and brush up your resume\u2026<\/p>\n iv) Let the computers take the lead and become the controller to fix mistakes double checking, intervening when the computers do something dumb.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Humans and computers make different kinds of mistakes, so we really need to bring humans and computers together intelligently to cancel out each other\u2019s mistakes. Fighting automation and ML is a lost cause, especially when your firm is completely bought in to the concept and it rolling out bots and working on developing smart algorithms.\u00a0 Just let these things take the lead and them figure out how to make them functional and monitor their errors, ad computers will always keep making them.\u00a0 You can\u2019t fight innovation, but you can nurture it, manage it and troubleshoot it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n v) Find your pareto balance and stop whining.<\/strong> Nothing in life including your current or prospective employer will be perfect. Focus on the 80% that is right, versus making yourself (and others around you) miserable by the other 20%. There is rarely a perfect fit where workers only get to focus 100% on all the things they love to do\u2026 there has to be this 80\/20 compromise, or you will be forever hopping around trying to find a workplace nirvana that doesn\u2019t exist.\u00a0 And it today\u2019s social world your reputation follows you around like never before\u2026 and employers are steering clear of the whiners at all costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The new \u201crules\u201d of the workplace are being defined as computers are frantically being programmed to take the lead in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[862,56,57,80,833,90],"tags":[303],"ppma_author":[19],"yoast_head":"\n