The human skills we need in an unpredictable world

Recently, the leadership team
of an American supermarket chain

decided that their business
needed to get a lot more efficient,

so they embraced their digital
transformation with zeal.

Out went the teams
supervising meat, veg, bakery,

and in came an algorithmic task allocator.

Now, instead of people working together,

each employee went, clocked in,
got assigned a task, did it,

came back for more.

This was scientific
management on steroids,

standardizing and allocating work.

It was super-efficient.

Well, not quite,

because the task allocator
didn't know when a customer

was going to drop a box of eggs,

couldn't predict when some crazy kid
was going to knock over a display,

or when the local high school decided

that everybody needed
to bring in coconuts the next day.

Efficiency works really well
when you can predict

exactly what you're going to need,

but when the anomalous
or unexpected comes along --

kids, customers, coconuts --

well then efficiency
is no longer your friend.

This has become a really crucial issue,

its ability to deal with the unexpected,

because the unexpected

is becoming the norm.

It's why experts and forecasters
are reluctant to predict anything

more than 400 days out.

Why?

Because over the last 20 or 30 years,

much of the world has gone
from being complicated

to being complex,

which means that yes there are patterns,

but they don't repeat
themselves regularly.

It means that very small changes
can make a disproportionate impact.

And it means that expertise
won't always suffice,

because the system
just keeps changing too fast.