The evolution of work
A journey shaped by technology
This story is about looking at a humanity that has evolved hand in hand with technology and how what we experience today is simply a reaction to this technological evolution.
In order to tell this story, we must first have in our heads what technology means:
Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible form. Technology also corresponds to the tools resulting from such efforts, including both tangible tools such as utensils or machines, as well as intangible tools such as software.
The beginnings of technology
Since the dawn of humanity, we have applied knowledge and developed tools to become more effective and achieve prosperity.
This beginning is triggered in prehistoric times, and when we began to “sit down” to create technology through the transformation of natural materials, such as the invention of the wheel (4000 BC). We started to develop tools made with our hands, in other words we started to develop craftsmanship. Craftsmanship took us to the next stage, where the concept of economy is established in society.
In times before the first industrial revolution, products were made in small cottage industries. People worked close to home, customers were local and both producer and consumer knew each other well. Mastery of one’s chosen profession was paramount and valued.
The start of the technological revolution
Crafts begin to evolve, thanks to the construction of knowledge. In 1784, the first technology to produce a product on a larger scale was invented: the loom. This milestone marks the beginning of a journey of no return: the first industrial revolution, where technology begins to be used as a means of developing economies.
Science accelerated exponentially the development of technology. By the second industrial revolution (1900) mass production was already a reality.
We were perfecting what we now call the waterfall model; a series of activities carried out in a linear fashion to make a product. We were on top of a train going 200 km/hr.
Impact on the workforce
These changes began to have a sustained impact on one variable: the workforce. From artisans, we were transformed into mass production labour, machines of flesh and blood. Profound changes began to take place in the skills and categories of labour required.
Social classes began to deepen, and the leaders that emerged began to disengage from their workforce through hierarchical structures, with the aim of making their workers the best automatons in the production of goods.
What was happening was a result of the gap at the time between technological advances and demand. We abandoned the importance of the most intrinsic skills that make us unique as a species — the soft skills. We immersed ourselves in linear, hierarchical processes of production.
But it was only a matter of time. There was no technology yet that could absorb this “human automation”, but the third industrial revolution would come to shake everything up, and to a large extent our already established conceptions of work.
The age of digital technology
Thanks to the invention of the point contact transistor (1947) and later integrated circuits (1957), we were able to have many repetitive tasks performed by robots controlled by microprocessors.
Production lines began to be a mixture of robots and humans. The most delicate jobs started to be done by humans, and the most repetitive and dangerous ones by machines.
We were observing that with each technological breakthrough, a wave of new roles was emerging. The rate of job creation in jobs related to knowledge creation was progressively accelerating at the same time as important technological and industrial milestones were happening.
The beginnings of agility
Until the second industrial revolution, the management of production processes was linear. One of the drawbacks of this way of working was the inability to deliver variety. If a specific product was being produced, it was not possible to generate another on the same production line.
An example of this was the production of the Ford-T (1913). There was only one type, of one colour and with certain technical characteristics.
In 1930, Toyota created the “Toyota Production System”. The system was designed based on the belief that production should be carried out without unnecessary stress and with minimum waste of resources, time, space, people, logistics and errors. In other words, to achieve the maximum possible profit through process optimisation.
This milestone is considered the beginning of the use of “agile project management methodologies” or “agile methodologies”, where Toyota demonstrates that its system allowed to focus on the customer (giving variety) and allowed to flexibly optimise processes, unlike the traditional waterfall model used by Ford.
The Agile Manifesto
It was not until the explosion of the internet in the late 1990s (the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution) that agile methodologies became popular.
In the early stages of the internet, the demand for software developers skyrocketed and the first startups began to appear on the technology scene.
These organisations started to suffer trying to run their processes with waterfall models. They were small, less structured organisations with a primary focus: their customers. More dynamism in project management methodologies was needed for these new organisations to be able to respond to the demands of the environment.
In 2001, a group of experienced software developers realised that they were collectively practising software development differently from the classical waterfall model.
This is how the Agile Manifesto was born, where they set out their shared beliefs on how a modern software development process should work.
As can be seen from the Agile Manifesto, skills such as teamwork, critical thinking, communication, adaptation, among others, are valued in these new frameworks.
Today, organisations such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Airbnb, Etsy, Lyft, Samsung, Spotify, Tesla and Uber use agile methodologies for the development of their products and services. Scrum [1] being one of the most widely used methodologies.
One of the key reasons why these methodologies have worked so well is that they have made these organisations more adaptable. Agile methodologies allow working in environments with high Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. These are called VUCA environments.
Part of the recipe for their success is that agility allows them to deliver value in shorter work cycles (sprints), in an incremental and customer-centric way.
Beyond the age of Artificial Intelligence
As we navigate the era of Artificial Intelligence (5th Industrial Revolution — 2020), we must be aware that as humanity we continue to evolve hand in hand with the technological landscape, and that if we do not want to be left behind we must develop and strengthen a skill set that is different from what we were taught at university or school.
The skills gap is a reality today, as well described in the World Economic Forum’s “Future of Jobs” reports. Its latest report last year [2] identifies a number of cognitive, social, self-efficacy, and technological skills that will be the most in demand in the labour market by 2027, according to its projections.
We need to know about AI and technology, but we also need to learn to be better humans, i.e. to be excellent at our core skills, such as creative thinking, curiosity, empathy, social influence, continuous learning and self-awareness.
Conclusions and lessons learned
Having a historical perspective of how humanity has been shaped by technology gives us a systemic view of the evolution of work, and patterns that may emerge in the future.
From this story we can draw several lessons and questions to reflect on:
- Today’s professionals must navigate a constantly changing environment. Roles and skills required are increasingly fluid, changing in attractiveness and demand with the pace of technological advancement.
- It is possible to shape our future, and for that we need to adapt with agility and innovation, acquiring a commitment to continuous learning.
- Agile methodologies were born out of an industry that needed dynamism and agility to cope in a changing environment, so why not include the principles of these methodologies in other sectors that have been affected by the same technological evolution?
- The development of cognitive, social and self-efficacy skills are key to face the jobs of the future. How do we strengthen these skills in current and future generations, and could agility again be an answer?
Want to read about the evolution of education?
Visit the blog entry The Epic of Education, on VUCA lab.
[1] The scrum guide. 2011. Schwaber, K., & Sutherland, J.
[2] The future of jobs. 2023. World Economic Forum
