Futureproof — A Top of the Page Review

December 2022

The robots are here according to Futureproof. AI generated engines like the one responsible for this image threaten to upend numerous careers and business models.¹

What attracted me to Futureproof is its subtitle: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation. Because my business involves process improvement, many of my conversations involve automation — whether I like it or not. I’ve always viewed automating business processes as both good and bad. Good when it makes work easier and serves the people involved. Bad when it’s used as a panacea for poorly understood or undefined operational issues.

There is no doubt that the future of business will be more automated with AI and “bots” taking on heavier work loads. As with process automation, this is both good and bad. Yes, it will make us more productive. But it will also upend our work. Today, every leader needs to understand how current and emerging technology impacts business. Technological change presents both opportunities and threats to every business model, every business segment, and every way of working that exists today.

Roose, Kevin. 2021. Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation. New York: Random House.

Quick Summary

Futureproof takes a surprisingly long view of technology putting today’s technological disruptions firmly beside the greatest technological pivots in human history — mass manufacturing, the printing press, even rubbing sticks together to make fire. He argues that the machines are not coming. They are already here.

The author, a technology journalist, considers himself a suboptimist — a word he invents to “convey my belief that while our worst fears about AI and automation may not play out, there are real, urgent threats that require our attention.” He takes issue with the idealists who naively believe in a harmonious future with all of mankind’s problems solved by automation, as well pessimists who paint a dystopic fantasy in which the machines destroy all that we love. His perspective on technology fits my own very well. Technology always inherits injustice from its creators or its exploiters; but it has never led to the acute, never-ending catastrophe predicted by its rabid opponents. We need to be real about the pain and the promise technology holds whenever we make decisions about it.

The bulk of the book provides actionable advice on how to minimize the disruptive pain of this age of automation for individuals. His thoughts on how to be a happy human as AI and robots (software or hardware) increasingly dominate the choices that we have available to us are provocative and insightful.

The Rules

1. Be surprising, social, and scarce
2. Resist machine drift
3. Demote your devices
4. Leave handprints
5. Don’t be an endpoint
6. Treat AI like a chimp army
7. Build big nets and small webs
8. Learn machine-age humanities
9. Arm the rebels

The rules in Futureproof are directed at individuals, but I have extrapolated from them for takeaways that leaders might find helpful in their businesses.

Key Takeaways

Business Development

In my opinion, the key takeaway for business leaders looking at strategic development is to Work More Human©️. Work More Human©️ is a term I coined for my company, Blue House Solutions. It’s our guiding principle. A reminder to our team to keep our attention fixed on the purpose of our work: making work better for people.

As you think about developing opportunities for growth, find the uniquely human aspect of your business and do more of that. Use technology to enable you to do more of it for more people in more ways that they care about. If you are investing in (or worrying about the impact of) technology on your business, but you are not innovating on how you do business, how you relate to your customers, or how you manage your people; you are already dying.

At this moment, too many established organizations are clinging to the old ways. They’re trying to make what has always worked continue to work. But the old ways do not support Work More Human️©️.

A painful example of clinging to the old model is the seemingly unending debate between the Work from Home crowd and the Back to Office crowd. The false dichotomy between remote versus in-person misses the point. If you can’t make remote work well for your business, but you can send people into offices where you work effectively behind closed doors, you have an innovation problem. If the only way you can measure productivity is by seeing who is at their desk, you have an innovation problem. If you can only serve customers who disrupt their day to see your people in your offices, you have an innovation problem.

From a business development perspective, our thinking around innovation can not be limited to technology. Technology is just a tool. Those leaders who invest in their people by developing new ways to mentor for skill growth and new career paths will be the innovators of the future. We are starting to see rumblings of this emerging trend already. There is increasing pressure (and rightly so) on business leaders to treat their employees not just more humanely — but more human.

The businesses of the future will be the ones:

1. Giving people more agency and autonomy.
2. Structuring the business to work for everyone, not just the C-suite or shareholders.
3. Collaborating and contributing to community.
4. Articulating and/or revealing the creative work behind their products or services.
5. Going an extra mile to maintain their humanity.

Work More Human©️ is the true secret to being futureproofed. Business development that connects to and works for the people it serves can not be replaced by machines.

Process Design

“First do no harm”

When it comes to process design, it might be wise to proceed with the Hippocratic Oath in mind. We must acknowledge the real power of automation to do real harm, especially to vulnerable or already marginalized communities, when we no longer have visibility into how decisions are made. The harm happens when we turn over our agency — our ability to make decisions for ourselves and to act in our interests.

To prevent the harm that comes with automation, we must dedicate ourselves to making informed, weighted decisions. Automation should always come at the end, never the beginning, of process design or improvement initiatives. A pillar of decision making for the future should be: Automate only what does not decrease the value of human interaction.

Moving beyond merely “do no harm,” good process design for the future will support people in transferring information from one situation to other seemingly unrelated situations. In other words, good process design will break down silos, not facilitate them. One of the author’s insightful points is that computers are not great at bridging the gap between things that are significantly different, a characteristic that humans frequently excel at. Business success in the future may very well be determined by those leaders who build the systems that let their people be boldly creative in their daily work.

People Management

Leverage technology to be human first. Know what makes people valuable. It’s all the stuff you can’t automate.

• Creativity
• Serendipity
• Empathy
• Wonder
• Curiosity.

Build your business around these ingredients and use technology to enable these ingredients for your people.

The most important lesson I learned from running a remote first team long before the pandemic was “all business is no business.” Effective remote teams have pioneered the power of intentional relationship building and carving time out to be social. They leverage technology to be human first! This is a perfect template for how to design people management regardless of your way of working.

Today, the world desperately needs innovation in people management. And it will require an entirely new reframe around how we think of work and how people do it. Here are some insights that we need to bring to our people management as we move into the Age of Automation.

1. Build in and diligently protect downtime for your team to rest and recharge.
2. Structure schedules and workloads to provide time for deep thinking to support creativity and curiosity.
3. Craft learning cultures that promote meaningful tinkering — learning by doing where “failures” lead to insight and improvement.
4. Learn the signs of burnout and intervene as part of a maintenance plan for your most important asset— your people.

Structuring people management to be more human puts technology firmly where it belongs — as a tool in our toolbox that we can use as appropriate to accomplish our goals.

Memorable Quotes

1️⃣

“[If] you could write a user’s manual for your job, give it to someone else, and that person could learn to do your job as well as you in a month or less, you’re probably going to be replaced by a machine.”

2️⃣

“If you’re a leader deciding whether or not to use AI and automation in your organization...[then] ensure that your algorithms are not going to introduce errors or perpetuate bias because of a flawed design or a biased training data set…Tread carefully with third-party vendors and be skeptical of slick sales pitches. Involve workers in the process whenever possible.”

3️⃣

“In the old economy, when our value was mostly predicated on our physical labor, midday rest was often seen as an indulgent luxury. But in the new economy, when more creative and human skills are what will differentiate us from machines, we should reframe our attitude toward rest, viewing it as a critical survival skill.”

4️⃣

“Given the trouble that boring bots can create, both for the systems and programs that people depend on for basic services and for the overall labor market, it’s time for us to update our mental image of AI danger. For now, as strange as it sounds, we may want to stop worrying about killer droids and kamikaze drones, and start worrying about the mundane, mediocre apps and services that allow companies to process payroll 20 percent more efficiently, or determine benefits eligibility with fewer human caseworkers.”

Final Thoughts

I love that this book makes an effort to center technological changes where they belong— as products of humans designing how we work (or don’t work) within the world. Business leaders would be well advised to adopt the same mentality. In understanding technology, we are really understanding the people that built it, the people that use it, and the people who are hurt by it. Automation should never be used to ignore the central reality that business is human driven, human centered, and human focused. Being a people-centered leader means taking an unflinching look at the opportunities and threats AI presents to the business and the business’ people. I believe that decisions about automation should always be rooted in doing what is best for humans.

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Thanks for reading! I am a self professed nerd who loves reading and learning. To me every book is a conversation. By the end of the conversation, I always have new ideas that I want to try. What are you reading?

Work More Human©️ by Blue House Solutions LLC. All rights reserved.

¹ Image generated by Stable Diffusion 1.5 using text prompt:
“robot monkey in army, graffiti on brick wall, vibrant colors, outdoor lighting, noon, distressed brick with white paint”