Job Requirement: 100% Human

It was amazing to offer the closing keynote speech at the IABC Minnesota Convergence Summit last month. So, I wanted to share some of the ideas I discussed in a series of blog posts. Here’s the first! Hope you find them helpful.

Every company battles the talent war to hire employees who are smart, innovative, strategic, driven, curious, creative, resourceful, and build context quickly.
​
And so, I’m left wondering why so often in corporate America, we then go on to treat those employees like robots?

Companies act is if these people don’t have personal lives, hobbies, babies, dreams of their own, or parents who need care. It's as though employees aren't supposed to have fears and vulnerabilities, friendships and relationships, bodies that get sick or need exercise, trauma and grief, or brains that just need to unplug and recharge for a while.

These are well, just really human experiences; the cost of doing business while inhabiting a human form. And yet, we act as though they have nothing to do with business.

However, one day, in the not too distant future, any job that can be done better, faster, cheaper by a robot/machine/algorithm will be. And then what will we need all these pesky humans for?

As it turns out, some pretty cool stuff.

Plenty has been written on the subject, and a recent Forbes article outlines some of the very human qualities that will be most in demand in the workplace of the future, including:

• Communication
• Empathy
• Creativity
• Strategic thinking
• Questioning, and
• Dreaming
  
  

The author goes on, “Collectively, we often refer to these qualities as “soft skills,” but don’t let the name fool you; these soft skills are going to be hard currency in the job market.”

And since we’ve got some pretty big opportunities and challenges ahead of us in the business world of planet Earth,  it looks like we’ll be needing all those smart, driven, curious, resourceful, passionate, creative, strategic and critical thinking, innovative knowledge workers to be firing on all cylinders.

The jobs we’ll need humans to do will require employees who are 100% Human. We will need to draw on the very best within our people in order to grow our businesses. That means that our workplaces will also have to, not just adapt, but transform into human-friendly ecosystems.

We won’t be working harder or smarter, we’ll be working in a way that enables humans to thrive, and do their very best work.

Communications professionals have a critical role to play in this transformation.

• We are natural boundary spanners.
• We are critical thinkers (ahem, those liberal arts degrees people told us would be useless? Hmmm...)
• We are influencers – our executives listen to us, and our colleagues trust us.
• We see siloes, and we knock them down
• We already default to putting the audience (a human) at the center of everything we do
• We create context and narrative for breakfast.
  
  

We are natural human communicators. This talent is no joke! Our ability to be both strategic and empathetic can help companies truly connect with, and inspire their people.
We can be the change we want to see in business.
What change do you want to see?

---