Fear of AI? Lean into the Human Side
We’ve been imagining both idyllic futures and dystopian science fictions for hundreds of years based on glimpses of new technologies. And the future gets closer and closer every day.
I remember how frantic it felt being in San Francisco at the birth of the Web 2.0 movement. There was palpable energy in the air. Every coffee shop had MacBooks open, developers everywhere maybe working on the next buzz worthy social media experiment. There was also fear in the air, a fear of missing the boat and being left behind.
It was the same frankly in the mid-90s, at the beginning of the Internet era. Every TV commercial would end with “…to learn more, open a web browser and type H-T-T-P-Colon-ForwardSlash-ForwardSlash-DoubleU-DoubleU-DoubleU…” and you knew that company was on it. They had a bulletin board on the internet superhighway already! People scrambled to build vegas lights dancing around HTML titles with hyperlinks to who knows where. eCommerce was a rocket ship about to take off. And billions of dollars were given to young promising companies poised to take advantage of the next big thing.
And there was also fear. Fear of losing jobs. Fear of automation. Fear of rapidly disintegrating skillsets that would no longer be needed in the future world unfolding.
AI is a whole new era for sure. And with it we have similar fears and similar promises of the next big things that will change the world. You can feel it because it’s already changing big things. I was inspired this morning by Bob Galen’s post The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching. In it, he cites claims that AI, for example, will destroy agile product management in 5 years. His article is excellent and it’s short (go read it). It made me think about a few different things. First, the parallels to the prior big shifts like cell phones, the Internet, and social media as I’ve mentioned. These of course are today’s big shifts, but this has all happened before even earlier going back 100 years with the changes to manufacturing, automobiles, and air travel. In Bob’s post, he reminds us of something very simple but very profound:
Lean into the human aspects
Whether you are a coach or have any role on a team, there is probably some level of fear that this new era of AI will eliminate or replace part of what you do. And, well, it might. Just like my iPhone has replaced 7 other devices and technologies I no longer need to buy or carry. It has evolved; the world has adapted. However, email, IP packets, the music industry, and phone calls still exist. The foundation survives and adapts.
No matter what you do, there is some aspect of being human required to do your job. There are very important subtleties in the ways humans interact in teams. And we will always need to rely on human to human conversation to get some things done. Not everything. The mundane things will get easier or be automated. But even some of the automated things will still be done better by humans, I bet.
And yet for agile teams, I am certain that our ability to think and work with each other will still be necessary. Just as the Agile Mindset is the core of the modern ways of working. It’s common sense. It’s a basal foundation upon which all of the other innovation happens. These human parts of what you do and the mindset components of how we think in teams are the foundation that will survive.
I look forward to greeting our new AI overlords. I will still be wearing an Agile Coaching hat and talking about the Agile Mindset to help the new new product game continue into the future.
In the meantime, if you wonder how well your team utilizes the Agile Mindset and want to measure your progress over time, let me know. Or go to MeasureTheMindset.com to sign up.
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Hi, I’m Brian Link, an Enterprise Agile Coach who loves his job helping people. I call myself and my company the “Practical Agilist” because I pride myself on helping others distill down the practices and frameworks of the agile universe into easy to understand and simple common sense. I offer fractional agile coaching services to help teams improve affordably. See more at FractionalAgileCoach.com
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