Hyper-Humanism and Ultra-Digitalism: 3 Ways to Master the Balancing Act

Knowing Self-Aware Leadership

I’ve talked to a lot of people about the future of work and the more people I talk to, the clearer it's becoming: as we move to greater digital reliance, the more important it is to humanise the workplace.

Then

In the Industrial Era, the thinkers were separated from the doers by an invisible line of them and us. You had the workers and the bosses. L David Marquett in his book, ‘Leadership is Language’, calls out this difference and terms it blue work and red work. Blue work is thinking work and red work is doing work. Red work was done by the factory floor workers and blue work was done by the managers. The people on the factory floor were not invited to think and the thinkers rarely got their hands dirty. It was all about efficiencies on the shop floor, replication of practice and uniformity of output. The two things were proactively separated to maintain the power differential and develop those income-maximising efficiencies on the red work line.

Now

In the knowledge and digital era that we’re now moving deeper into, the separation of red and blue work into concurrent and separated processes is no longer helpful. Organisations can’t afford to keep these functions apart. Red and blue work need to be facilitated to happen consecutively so that the doing informs the thinking and the thinking informs the doing.

With this shift in role and duality of knowledge-worker function, our needs as employees have, and continue to change too. We want to contribute to the thinking and be included in problem finding and problem solving. And enlightened organisations really do want our insights and input. We want to be engaged in meaningful work that allows us to live our values and show up as our authentic selves every day. We want to see, hear, feel, taste and smell inclusion in our work. We want greater humanism in our work places and organisations.

Next

The ability and utility of artificial intelligence is merely burgeoning. The digital explosion that happened during Covid has gained a foothold and technological advancements continue at pace. We are slowly getting to grips with AI as our note-taker, using ChatGPT as our search engine and Dall-E as our artist in residence.

Sean Williams from AutogenAI says if you compare the developmental trajectory of AI and the internet, we're at about 1998. The internet is but a toddler and dial up modems are whirring and pinging in neoprene jackets on our desk. Just imagine where we'll be in 2050!

As we pass deeper into the knowledge age and leave the industrial age behind, I have this hunch that our need for humanism will increase in tandem with our growing demand for augmented intelligence. As our technology becomes more complex and capable of doing human-like tasks we will move from simple digitalism and humanism to ultra-digitalism and hyper-humanism. And the more we move towards ultra-digitalism the more we will need to move towards hyper-humanism, as a way of maintaining that balance between human and machine.

Maintaining the balance between humanism and digitalism will be an ongoing challenge for organisations, large and small. The more weight that’s placed on one side of the scales, the more weight will need to be placed on the other, to ensure an equilibrium. As organisation turn their focus to digitalism, they’ll need to have an eye on the humanistic, people-centred practices essential to implement, cultivate and protect, to ensure they’re able to balance out the technological shift. If ultra-digitalism is what we’ll do, then hyper-humanism is how we’ll do it. A bulk on one side without a mass on the other will create inequalities of inclusion, accessibility and ethical practice.

Think of it as a seesaw framework for effectiveness as well as a strategy for people management.

For organisations that fail to keep an eye on both sides of the scales or both ends of the see-saw there's a danger of hitting rock bottom at one end or being bounced into oblivion off the other.

Beyond

The thoughts I've had on how we might ensure a focus on humanism, as we hurtle towards ultra-digitalism, are only just forming. So far, I have 3 ways to master the balancing act of huper-humanism and ultra-digitalism….

1. Organisational structures: We need to ensure that we have expert eyes concentrating on both elements. Organisations need to ensure someone always has sight of the extreme ends of the see-saw and can adapt to progress and influence change. Maybe this is no different to where we are now, in terms of balancing the human relationships and skills needed for technical, product and knowledge outputs. Maybe we’re already wise to this idea, we just may not have the technical knowhow yet.

2. Elevated Learning: When AI is able to do a human job, there will be different things for Human Resources and the Organisational Development teams to think about. We’ll need to elevate human cognition and we’ll need to cultivate next-level thinking. If machines are going to be doing what we used to do, then we’ll need to move on to the next thing that the machines as yet, can’t. We’ll no longer just be taking simple sets of data and information and combining them. We’ll be taking combined AI generated answers and integrating them to solve problems we didn’t know we had!

3. Setting Principles: Maybe it's about socialising the principle of no digitalism without humanism. Should organisations shake up their strategies now, before the move in earnest towards digitalism? The problem with a ‘wait and see’ approach usually finds us half way into the middle of the quagmire before we’ve realised we’re in the thick of it. Act now and take a pre-emptive strike! Future proof organisations for the exponential growth and prime the company for the impending expansion.

Maybe all of these things need to be considered in unison, to create an organisational culture that's ready to adapt and respond to the movement of work to ultra-digitalism.

The Last Word

Digitalism must be balanced with humanism.

Ultra-digitalism must be balanced with hyper-humanism. Wherever you are on the spectrum between digitalism and ultra digitalism, you have to find the equivalent point between humanism and hyper humanism to survive, succeed and thrive.

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