Everyone I know wants to do good work with fair compensation. Often, that work gives them purpose and fulfills their need to do something that matters.
However, everything is changing. Managers feel pressure, and that pressure flows down to the people they are supposed to lead and serve. Then, there’s AI, in the form of LLMs. The AI vendors keep promising that the LLMs will take the place of humans. So far, I’m not buying it. (In a recent Pragmatic Manager newsletter, I said that the LLMs can access relatively clean data and generate insights from that. That can look like innovation with deep data sets. But they are useless for helping us do the kind of new thinking and innovation that we need right now.)
Given all the chaos, pressure, and AI implications on the kinds of jobs we have now, it’s time to think about how we reinvent ourselves so we can continue to work on what matters.
That requires questions—and I specialize in questions.
Reinvention requires at least three sets of questions:
- Which of your qualities, attributes, and skills make sense for the future? (What is your current state?)
- How do you acquire new qualities, attributes, and skills to reinvent yourself? (What do you need for the future?)
- How can you use everything you have now and what you need for the future to create meaning in your work and life?
Start with some self-assessment.
Assess Your Current State
Many of my technical colleagues still pride themselves on their technical skills. But technical skills rarely make people successful. Instead, it’s all the other qualities they have that allow them to use their technical skills.
In Successful Independent Consulting, I offered a way to think about your skills. Here’s how I recommend people inventory their skills:
Here’s the big question: How do you excel at work in ways that are different from an LLM?
I suspect your communications and relationship-building skills are much better than an LLM’s. In addition, your critical thinking skills are much better than an LLM’s. That includes knowing how to ask the right questions, and learning how to show people the consequences of their actions. Those questions and explaining consequences have to be empathetic, because no one likes to hear they are wrong.
Now, what are you missing for the future?
Reinvention Requires Future-State Thinking
I don’t know how to imagine where we will be in five years—that’s way too long. However, I do think I have an idea of where we might be in a year. Here are my predictions:
- Managers will still want to see people in the office most of the week. (It does not matter if I think that’s nuts, that’s where I think we are headed.)
- We will use LLMs to access the hidden information in our data.
- Relationships between team members and across the organization will matter more. Why? Because right now, information is siloed, not just humans.
That means we need to build and reinforce our small-world networks. In addition, we need to reinforce our communication skills: writing, speaking, active listening, and more.
If we want to use LLMs to learn from our data, we need to learn to ask good questions and learn how to create relatively clean data. (In my experience, all data is dirty until proven otherwise. Just think: How often have you tried to change your data in someplace where it really mattered? And how often did you succeed the first time?)
What skills will you need to succeed in a future state?
While I’m not willing to ask an LLM to assess my current skills and suggest new skills, you might want to do that. (I don’t trust a chatbot to give me reasonable information.)
Humans can never “compete” with an LLM on tools and technology. But we can use an LLM (carefully) to support our tools and technology as we reinforce our humanity. The more human we are, the more likely we are to succeed in the future.
Part of our new thinking is to assess what matters to us, what gives our lives meaning.
What Matters to You?
Our lives and careers transition all the time. Up until now, we could go with the flow, and barely notice that the world changed.
Now? Our transition is abrupt. That’s why only you can decide what matters to you.
I really want to make product development organizations more effective. And to write more, both nonfiction and fiction. That’s what matters to me. I have changed how I consult due to my various handicaps. But the writing? I have a lot to say.
With abrupt transitions, I always recommend you start with “Why” questions. What matters to you? Why do you work and live? How can you continue to find meaning in your life even with these transitions?
When change is abrupt, we all need much more adaptability. We often feel as if we don’t have enough time to think before we experiment.
Instead, we all must experiment as we reinvent ourselves. Yes, that’s the idea of changing the wheels on the bus as we drive.
Experiment and Iterate to Reinvent
Experiments and reinvention are rarely “one and done.” (I’ve never seen that, but maybe you have.)
Instead, let’s embrace the unknown. What experiments can you run, and how quickly, so you know what matters to you? How can you assess your skills and learn to build new skills? How can you enlist more humans in your network so you all succeed?
We will succeed with more human-focused expertise. Reinforce that humanness to reinvent ourselves and do what matters. I wish all of us luck and good reinvention.