Job Titles of the Future #10 - Robot Counselor

There is a very cool and interesting list of some potential 'Job Titles of the Future' over at The Canadian Scholarship Trust site that you should definitely take a few minutes and check out. They took a time horizon looking out to 2030, (which seems like a really long time from now but is only about 15 years), and came up with some fascinating titles like Nostalgist, Rewilder, and Garbage Designer among others.

But the one (naturally), that caught my eye and I wanted to highlight here was Robot Counselor. What, exactly, is a Robot Counselor? Will flash forward to 2030 - a time when robots are in more and more homes, performing assorted domestic tasks, including helping to care for elderly, sick, or even acting as children's caregivers.

By the year 2030, having a full-time robot domestic assistant will be pretty common, and it will be important for people and families to choose the 'right' robot for their needs and personalities. That is where the Robot Counselor comes in. The Robot Counselor will firstly be a knowledgable resource and purchase advisor to help families pick the right robot. The counselor will observe how family dynamics and relationships work to help identify their needs and lifestyle so that they can make the best decision about the type of robot would suit their specific needs. Finally, if the robot isn’t fitting in in the home, or if family conflicts arise due to the new house robot, the robot counselor can then recommend alternate options and provide ongoing service and support to the family.

What skills or backgrounds would the Robot Counselor need?

Certainly a deep understanding of currently available and future trends in robot technology, particularly robots being designed for and deployed in domestic settings. The Robot Counselor will also need some psychology and sociology knowledge to better assess and interpret the signs and signals from a family's relationships with each other (and their robots). Finally, the Robot Counselor will have to be able to think quickly, make recommendations about technology, and be comfortable serving as a kind of trusted family advisor.

It kind of sounds like a cool job, and as such, Robot Counselor officially joins the list of SFB-approved Job Titles of the Future.

"I'd rather be a cow manager than a people manager"

I want, sometimes, to stop reading, writing, and thinking about robots, automation, and how technologies are changing the nature of work, workplaces, and people. I'd rather focus on the NBA.

But every time I think I will take a break from the robots something too interesting pops up, and I have to share. From the New York Times this week, check out the piece titled, With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When It's Milking Time,   (a short excerpt of which is below):

Something strange is happening at farms in upstate New York. The cows are milking themselves.

Desperate for reliable labor and buoyed by soaring prices, dairy operations across the state are charging into a brave new world of udder care: robotic milkers, which feed and milk cow after cow without the help of a single farmhand.

Scores of the machines have popped up across New York’s dairy belt and in other states in recent years, changing age-old patterns of daily farm life and reinvigorating the allure of agriculture for a younger, tech-savvy — and manure-averse — generation.

“We’re used to computers and stuff, and it’s more in line with that,” said Mike Borden, 29, a seventh-generation dairyman, whose farm upgraded to robots, as others did, when disco-era milking parlors — the big, mechanized turntables that farmers use to milk many cows at once — started showing their age.

“And,” Mr. Borden added, “it’s a lot more fun than doing manual labor.”

Robotic milkers. Awesome. And in that one specific example of robot application we see borne out several of the most common drivers that are spearheading all kinds of automation efforts in all manner of settings and industries.

Apply technology to improve a repetitive and manual task? Check.

Make up for a labor shortage that makes the traditional approach to this work no longer possible? Check.

Appeal to the next generation of workers and leaders that are familiar with and expecting technology to play a role in their workplaces? Check.

Finally, and most importantly perhaps for readers in HR/Talent jobs - Technology and automation as a liberator - freeing up managers to focus on more important tasks and less on low-value, less appealing tasks? Check.

In fact, the money quote in the Times piece underscores this last point completely:

The Bordens say the machines allow them to do more of what they love: caring for animals.

“I’d rather be a cow manager,” Tom Borden said, “than a people manager.”

That quote from the dairy farmer is priceless and kind of telling as well. The cows might be hard to manage at times, but they are much easier than trying to manage people.

And with the robots, Mr. Borden can focus on what really matters to his business - the cows.

Happy Friday, Sad Robot

I'm on vacation today, (don't hate), so submitted for your brief amusement and reflection is the coolest thing I saw all week - an animated short call Bibo, about a lonely robot that sells ice cream.

Take seven minutes this weekend and give it a watch. (Email and RSS subscribers will have to click through).

Have a great and long weekend all.

I hope you find all the eggs, or whatever it is you are looking for.

Stealing jobs back from the machines

We've been hearing the alarm bells, (heck many of us, well mostly me) have been ringing those bells, the ones that are tolling for the eventual and perhaps even imminent demise of the American worker, destined to be replaced by a robot or an algorithm.

Automation is continuing apace and advances in computing power, combined with development of more sophisticated robotics and smart machines that create and communicate massive amounts of data are causing a perfect storm of sorts. Routine work is likely to be automated out of human hands, lower-complexity service jobs are under threat, and even many types of 'knowledge work' are becoming targets of the relentless pace and unwavering progress of automation and technology.

It is a story that keeps getting repeated so often lately that it is simultaneously getting tired and self-fulfilling.

That's why this piece, 'Gods' Make Comeback at Toyota as Humans Steal Jobs from Robots , from Bloomberg about what a possible brighter future of work and human worker's co-existence with the robots might look like was both surprising and instructive.  The piece is about how at Toyota, long a leader in applying advanced theories, processes, and technologies to the manufacturing environment, was actually introducing (or re-introducing, I suppose), more human-powered and manual labor-based processes into many of its plants. 

Why put slower, more expensive, more likely to mess up, and definitely more likely to need a rest after 8 hours or so humans back into the manufactring flow? 

From the Bloomberg piece:

Inside Toyota Motor Corp.’s oldest plant, there’s a corner where humans have taken over from robots in thwacking glowing lumps of metal into crankshafts. This is Mitsuru Kawai’s vision of the future.

“We need to become more solid and get back to basics, to sharpen our manual skills and further develop them,” said Kawai, a half century-long company veteran tapped by President Akio Toyoda to promote craftsmanship at Toyota’s plants. “When I was a novice, experienced masters used to be called gods, and they could make anything.”

These gods, or Kami-sama in Japanese, are making a comeback at Toyota, the company that long set the pace for manufacturing prowess in the auto industry and beyond. Toyota’s next step forward is counter-intuitive in an age of automation: Humans are taking the place of machines in plants across Japan so workers can develop new skills and figure out ways to improve production lines and the car-building process.

Learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn’t get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. At about 100 manual-intensive workspaces introduced over the last three years across Toyota’s factories in Japan, these lessons can then be applied to reprogram machines to cut down on waste and improve processes, Kawai said.

In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota’s Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line 96 percent from its length three years ago. Toyota has eliminated about 10 percent of material-related waste from building crankshafts at Honsha. Kawai said the aim is to apply those savings to the next-generation Prius hybrid.

Really interesting and perhaps this story foretells one likely scenario for the future of work - a kind of hybrid and peaceful co-existence and co-operation between human and machine. One where each actor can supply and focus on what they do best. The machines are precise, indefatigable, obedient, unerring. The people focusing on creativity, adaptability, recalling institutional memory and lessons. Then the combination of the two leading to the best outcomes for both (and the organization). The humans 'learn' then teach the machines to carry out these learnings. 

Which is kind of the way it has always been until recently, when it seems like we have allowed the advances in automation to allow us to forget that we humans still have much to offer and much to teach the machines.

CHART OF THE DAY: Better hope you're not a telemarketer

I'm about to speak a little later this afternoon at the Achievers Aspire event in San Francisco on the topic of Robots in the Workplace (I know, shocking that this was the topic I pitched when the folks at Achievers asked me if I would be interested in participating in the event), and in doing a final review of the slides I am planning on presenting I figured I should share one of the most interesting charts from the deck - so here goes:

(Source: Business Insider)

It is probably not a shock to you or anyone that jobs like telemarketing, typists, and retail salespersons are coming under increasing threat from the rise of robots and automation, but take a look at some of the other, more surprising types of jobs that have a high likelihood of being automated away in the next two decades.

Accountants, technical writers, even commercial pilots - these are not the kinds of jobs we initially think about when we consider the potential impact of robots and automation in workforces.

I have a feeling my talk this afternoon might be a tough one - I am not at all sure that the HR leaders in this room that are not working at 'obvious' ripe for automation types of industries like manufacturing or call centers are really thinking all that much about robots and automation. But I think, or at least I am going to try and argue, that automation in its many forms, (robots, intelligent software algorithms, wearable devices, machine to machine interaction), are going to be in the forefront of the HR/Talent agenda for just about every organization of any size in any industry.

It should be a fun talk. I will let you know how it turns out.