The last time I put my thoughts out in the world was almost a a year and a half ago. I’m happy to have made that podcast — who knows someday I’ll pick it up again. I found it very hard to realize that the whole process of making a podcast that simple was such an incredible amount of effort. While the overall direction I had for the show was solid, it was somewhat tough to come up with ideas that would be relevant enough for the workplace. If that wasn’t challenging enough, the whole writing process took quite some time at first. The ideas were there, and turning them into a coherent sequence of thoughts would demand a lot of time. I wanted to put my best out there so I took whatever time I had into writing a good script.

Back in May last year I decided to put a hold on the podcast, hoping new ideas would come up, either from my work experience or from my personal life. I suppose 17 months was just enough time for me to understand that there is a lot to expound on. Now that AI is here to stay, it becomes increasingly fitting to uphold what might just be the most important aspect of work: humanity itself. Mind you, not just the people that compose humanity but the very sense of it, the set of traits that make us… human.

The interest in humanity

I’ve worked on many different projects over the last 10 years, and there was always one theme that would most likely dictate their outcome. At one point a tradeoff would have to be made between two opposites: explore a reasonable outcome or blindly chase an output; produce one good thing or deliver three half things instead; admit mistakes safely or forcibly keep them because “it was in the contract”. The results were surprisingly consistent as most endeavors that adopted the sensible first choices ended up succeeding, and most endeavors that chose the latter ones ended up failing. In fact, they showed a remarkable pattern that has accompanied me ever since: teams that possess, develop, and maintain a higher level of human competency succeed far more than those who neglect it. Personally, I cannot ignore this.

The importance of human competency takes a whole new level when it is challenged by its artificial substitutes. The very traits that make us human are being put to the side for the sake of efficiency, so much so that people who were once considered valuable and essential to a business are being replaced with AI. The same way the industrial revolution shook the entire socioeconomic fabric by obsoleting otherwise critical jobs such as manual agriculture and manufacturing, so is AI today.

Where do we draw the line between what is good to use AI on and what humans must keep on doing? How can we still differentiate in the workplace? How can we leverage technology and AI rather than being replaced by them? I propose that we uphold, develop, and maintain what makes us human: the ability to think, learn, teach, create, critique, reason, experience, inquire, share, express, lead, follow, feel, support, forgive, mourn, and celebrate.

While the workforce strongly benefits from these abilities, there is a further added risk to future generations: the more machines do, the less children do. Any other concern is less of a threat than human atrophy, particularly in their early stages of growth. Someone once said: “when people stop thinking and talking, violence begins” — I could not agree more.

There is an opportunity to requalify what is expected of the workforce. It is my belief that many have been improperly valued solely by their technical skills while potentially ignoring their fit in a team, their ability to communicate ideas effectively, or even to lead change with resolve and compassion. What was tolerable 10 to 15 years ago clearly isn’t today. Humans must be even more human today than they were before. I want to help with that.

What I will be writing about

The main topics I am particularly passionate about might be as boring as anyone might think they are, and yet disregarded as much. They are:

• The essentials of communication: what makes communication effective and leads to meaningful progress. The ability to speak and write is the very foundation for anything to happen.
• Simple leadership: executives are not the only ones who lead, if they lead at all. Anyone can lead, and it can be learned.
• Thinking and learning: sure, everyone can think. There are, however, methods to think better, which increase the odds of learning more effectively.
• Iterative strategies and tactics: I’m actively resisting labelling this concept as “Agile” because it is clear the knowledge industry has made it an entirely different thing than what was originally intended.
• Who knows what else…