The Robots Are Here
Written by: Chuck Bean, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Robots are not going to be serving us, and we are going to be serving the robots. As robots enter our lives, there will be a short novelty period, perhaps human-looking devices, but soon they will revert to less aesthetically pleasing machines with incredibly fast reaction times. Our roles will change and be focused on keeping them moving in a fine fashion.
Specific to business the addition of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data-based decisions, we should expect to see the end of middle management as we know it.
Artificial intelligence is nothing new. Consider the elevator operator, the only job listed as having been replaced fully by automation. Elevator operators were eliminated through the mechanization of lifts. Had this not happened, there would be 3 million operator roles in the USA today, but as we all know, this career is gone… zip.
Having access to data is nothing new either. For many decades’ office printers consumed miles and miles of computer paper to print documents so that a manager could locate one small piece of data to assist in decision making. Middle managers would stay up all night combing through reams of paper, finding data points, and entering them into spreadsheets. The manager would then use the data to develop an opinion and use that opinion to determine future moves.
What has changed now is the combination of data abundance, accessibility, and the speed at which the AI and further ML works to instantly provide well-calculated decisions. Faster than people, without needless opinion. Bye-bye manager.
We are already in the middle of it. One of the hottest jobs on the planet is that of AI/ML developer, a career that is squarely in the middle of transitioning tactical decision-makers out of a job.
It is not that this is a bad thing. It is just evolution, and it causes me to predict that organizations that have middle managers and those managers themselves will need to rethink their future roles in the company.
Chuck Bean, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Chuck (Charlie) Bean started his business career at age 6, collecting golf balls at the local driving range for pennies. “I would spend every Saturday and Sunday making enough money to buy a bottle of pop or a candy bar in the concession”, tells Chuck. Soon after he was selling golf balls to players on the local course, and even beer!
Fast forward and Chuck was an award-winning sales professional. Management followed. Moving into the paper industry, Chuck carried on with regional and then national turnarounds, eventually being named VP Sales and Service overseeing a team of 180 inside and outside salespeople, managers and directors.
Following his dream, he opened a consulting and training advisory. Chuck will tell you he has had a great ride. Besides having worked with over 400 companies and over 18,000 individuals, Chuck has consulted and guided some of Canada's biggest stars including working as COO for what was one of the largest specialty energy service companies in the world.
Today Chuck specializes in developing strategies and delivering training and coaching in leadership, sales, communication, business value building and teamwork. He is no-nonsense and pragmatic and has helped people and corporations succeed for over 40 years. He will call a spade a spade and work quickly to understand, address and help fix problems, identify opportunities and identify challenges.
He has developed business strategies for almost every geo-market and has worked extensively in oil and gas, general industry, IT, electronics, dental, paper, chemical, wood products and consumer packaged goods. He specializes in B2B and channel type organizations.
He has authored/contributed to books with Dr. Stephen Covey, Dr. Deepak Chopra and Dr. Ken Blanchard. Chuck also owns 6 tech start-ups currently in different levels of commercialization.
