I didn’t realize I could cook for my daughter today. Cooking is not my cup of tea as I never liked cooking but today, I felt I needed to cook as my girl started getting bored eating school-catered food. Well, I guess the mother’s love superseded whatever challenges we had. Everyone in my circle knows I don’t cook, and I have always portrayed myself as a person who can’t cook. Yes, I can’t cook but, amazingly, she enjoys the food I cook today. Furthermore, I couldn’t believe that I knew what to prepare, and what ingredients I needed to buy to complete the cooking process. Now what I need to do is to improvise it with more recipes.
As I reflect on myself, it all started with my beloved mum when I was young. She taught me the fundamentals of why I need to learn cooking, thereafter, what to prepare before we cook, and how to start and complete the cooking process. The fundamental techniques have been instilled in me since I was young. However, I never practiced it over the years. Today as I started to cook more, it became easier. Moreover, having devices at our fingertips, we can browse new recipes, and watch YouTube to enhance our cooking techniques.
How is this relevant to today’s digital era? Why is it that many people kept advocating that we need to change, to have a growth and digital mindset, and why we are still harping at it?
We need change
Well, recently, we were presenting to a customer about using digital platforms and gig workers to overcome their operational challenges. They were having continuous and never-ending operational and resource issues and striving to stay competitive. Today challenges have become more prominent as their typical recruitment practices and processes are getting longer than usual. Quiet quitting and resignations are on the rise. HR is spending more time and money to rehire and come up with activities so that employees will stay engaged.
We understand their pain, hence we delivered our pitch differently. The HR was impressed and supportive of our ideas and recognized our value proposition. However, our proposal was not selected as the decision maker decided to continue the legacy way of working.
We thought many people would now accept the idea of digital transformation since we are in a radically changing world today. We were so wrong. The legacy and fixed mindset remain.
Are we missing the fundamentals?
The fundamentals is technologies have been around over the years, and they have evolved from the inception of the first Industrial Revolution that led to the displacement of many manual tasks to machines. Since then, newer technologies onboard and they have become disruptive. Companies are now acquiring more robotics and AI to resolve many repetitive tasks.
Because of these changes, everyone including companies is impacted by the shift hence, we need to prepare for this wave. This shift is not about losing jobs, it is about the displacement of certain jobs that can be automated and digitalized. In fact, this digitalization may create more pieces of work. Some may be familiar with the work or unfamiliar with it. Perhaps, some work may not even require full-time workers to perform the job.
This is why, SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) frequently addresses the topics about the future of work. This future of work encompasses the work, the workplace, and the workers. The future of work will shift organizations to the new way of work, when and where the work is done, how the work is done, and who can do the work.
I am sure, we are aware of the newer generations and their mindset. They think differently, they don’t believe in a 9 to 5 job, attending regular or weekly meetings, or even sacrificing their personal life to work.
This is a new behavior due to technological advancement. So, are you prepared for the change? If yes, think about how to move to the new way of work. Fundamentally, Digital Transformation starts with one’s mindset.
