Human Investment
Over the length of my career, I have been fortunate to work among brilliant minds — some unambiguously geniuses. It has been my experience that such individuals, whether causal or not, seem to exhibit characteristics we would associate with social anxiety, attention deficit, obsessive-compulsion and autism spectrum “disorders” than observed in the general population. An October 2017 study (Karpinski, 2017) supports this conjecture.
I regularly witness first-hand the awkward formation of tenuous connections as well as the profound deepening of respect and collaborative interdependence consequent to successful social interplay surviving a minefield of hazards. These connections have required overcoming anxiety and expending time to discover and build. Surely informal networks, impossible to capture on an org-chart, can play a hidden hand in corporate success — a component of the notion Ryan Avent calls “social capital” (Avent, 2016), a dark matter-like (unobservable) asset in the company’s valuation. These may be as simple as an otherwise un-notable administrative assistant holding a popular monthly baking event at which frequent serendipitous connections are formed and communications possible.
Further, these hidden connections may manifest in behaviors counter to company policy, procedure and stated metrics of performance (such as zero unplanned downtime or minimizing waste) when people employ informed judgment over uniform compliance. Objectively, such actions appear irrational, subversive, reckless or misguided, but only because their holistic effect is inscrutable. Examples might be intentionally-created “growth experiences” for employees to learn from failures (within acceptable margins of temporary setbacks) or workers taking extraordinary initiative or making personal sacrifice inspired by a uniquely respected leader.
Dialogues on the so-called “Future of Work” consider the impact on jobs as businesses mature their ability to apply process automation through technologies such as machine learning. Machines and software can improve consistency and productivity, reduce error and bias or simply eliminate reliance on or risk to the humans in certain tasks. Social capital and automation will likely be at odds — either these behaviors will elude capture into the system by their very nature, or if successfully captured into digitized tasks may defy logic when applied absent of humans. Alternately, human-centered automation may offer a flexible approach to these benefits while preserving strengths of employees (Limoncelli, 2016). Present-day forces such as demands from corporate shareholders and technology as an alternative to labor will redefine employer-employee relationships. Mere managers will prioritize satisfying short-term objectives, while true leaders in business and politics will exhibit foresight to assess broader impact on the vitality of firms, their workforce and the overall population of workers.
Weathering the voluntary (and otherwise) exit of talented individuals from the research staff over the past couple years brought me to observe and reflect upon its impact — perhaps in areas verging on organizational trauma due to network effects of this distributed investment among professional scientists and engineers. Beyond the amputation of portions of a “distributed mind”, I believe social disconnections in workplaces relying upon brilliance aggravate negative organizational behaviors such as change-avoidance, distrust and demotivation to which this group may be disproportionately sensitive. Perhaps studies might consider examining the extent to which this fragility impacts long-term strength of companies, compared to the short-term value of the underlying financial or structural benefits of workforce reduction.
In our personal lives, the very nature of love surrenders a part of ourselves to another despite the risk of loss — that loss being exactly the minimum price paid at its eventual end and for which we must cherish, not squander, the moments shared beforehand. Similarly, Humanism places emphasis on being responsible, accountable and celebrating life in its fleeting moments before death. To fully detach from others would eliminate an essential element of being human, of course — it is our privilege to have a life of opportunity and our fortune to be part of something greater than ourselves.
“Everything comes to an end” of course — or in the saying’s wonderful Middle English origin:
“But at the laste, as every thing hath ende,
She took hir leve, and nedes wolde wende.”
Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (1374)
But let us not recklessly impoverish personal and organizational riches we can derive from cherishing the human capacity for mutual investment in others.
Works Cited
Avent, R. (2016). The Wealth of Humans. St. Martin’s Press. Ryan Avent
Karpinski, R. I. (2017). High intelligence: A risk factor for psychological and physiological overexcitabilities. Intelligence. Advance online publication.
Limoncelli, T. (2016). Automation should be like Iron Man, not Ultron. Communications of the ACM 59, 3 (February 2016), 58–61. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2844546 Tom Limoncelli
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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on February 5, 2018.
