How to train for the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

Cristina Fonseca

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In 2012, 80% of Apple's profits came from products with less than five years of manufacturing. What does this mean? The world is changing fast and the best companies have the ability to adapt. In business terms, its ROI (Return on Investment) is also related to the adaptability index. The ability to adapt is something that we should contemplate in the short term for our companies and as a personal metric. What are the bases that must be established so that we can adapt to this transition that is taking place?

While people talk about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, most businesses and individuals strive to adapt to new technological changes and acquire the skills needed to cope with changes. But we know that change is inevitable. As we travel through economic cycles, investing in what has always worked will not increase production, as history has shown, and that is why adaptability is so important.

Let's go back in time to analyze past transitions. In the agricultural era, the pope and the kings had power because the land, the scarce resource at that time, was distributed among them. After the First Industrial Revolution there was a shift from land to capital in terms of scarcity, and banks became the dominant operator. At that time, the banks had access to this strange resource and imposed conditions on the kings. Subsequently, knowledge became the restrictive factor and corporations became powerful because they controlled it.

In this Fourth Industrial Revolution complex skills are requested in chaotic environments. What is the scarce resource today and who has the power? The answer is entrepreneurs and people who can solve complex problems, in addition to creating and inventing systems and processes.
While the answer may not be surprising, unfortunately our minds are a constraining factor. Let us look at how the world has changed in the last 10 years or how these changes have been so different from what happened in the previous decade. Everything is connected and has been digitized as much as possible, if it is not in the process of being digitized. As a result, good and bad knowledge spreads instantly, which implies a shift of power from seller to buyer. We know the products, technology base, access to other customers and an always available megaphone called social media. We have heard of autonomous cars, artificial intelligence, robots and automation, and we still try to visualize how things will be. We think in linear terms.

Let's take a simple example to explain how we are programmed to think linearly. From the moment a Thanksgiving turkey is born, everything about your life indicates that things will only get better: born in a safe environment, cared for and fed every day. The same pattern repeats itself every day and by the time the turkey has the most historical data to prove that its life can continue to improve, things change. Thanksgiving comes and suddenly being a turkey is not so nice anymore.

Enterprises, political systems, education; These are just some examples of systems that are hugely obsolete. We all fail to convey the right message to those who strive to keep their jobs and reduce volatility in their lives. By preventing technological and innovation changes to slowly integrate into our societies, we are only delaying the impact they will have. Fighting them can save some jobs today, but it will do more harm in the future. Moderate volatility values are good, but large volumes will devastate us. If we continue to behave as if the world today were the same as a decade ago, the result will not be promising.

Although responsible leadership implies knowing the transition we face, decision-makers are still unable to incorporate volatility and implement changes in current organizations and society in general.

While the average length of a career is about five years, we are still debating how to save our jobs instead of re-training people. We can not defend models where people organize themselves into sections and functional silos, each in their own interest, protecting their ideas or solving their own problems. In some cases, it takes a company much longer to bring together decision-makers in a room than to prepare to ship a product. Ideas can come and come from all sides, and management is developed through communication, with authority and permissions as the key to dominate others. We must also take into account the experts, who will say what can not be done, instead of providing the most innovative ideas. Leaders must remove obstacles to entrepreneurship and stigma related to failure. Collaboration, collective learning and experimentation should be encouraged at all levels.

The longer we spend in our careers or companies without variation or randomness, the greater the underlying risk we have. Unfortunately, this is roughly the way we approach this transition between economic cycles, trying to reduce volatility and change in our lives to the greatest extent possible.

Entrepreneurs lead this acceleration of technology-driven change, and one of its main characteristics is adaptability. Again, what worked in the past will no longer work after this transition period. As a society, we must be able to teach and learn how to adapt. This should be one of the most important metrics for business and people, as the Fourth Industrial Revolution unfolds.