We spend a lifetime getting better at managing our own unpredictability. And yet, even the most self-aware adult will have a bout of rage or defensiveness. Or conversely, awe and exhilaration.
Organizations are collections of highly emotionally volatile beings. Some are spending real energy staying calm. Others are running on adrenaline and enthusiasm to power their best work, or holding grief at bay. Where models have, on average, predictable responses, humans have, on average, unpredictable responses.
You can learn to predict a specific person's behavior, but that takes years of effort and attention, and more often than not, the resulting insights are nontransferable. So when more of our predictable daily tasks are automated, the unpredictable work remains, and acutely for leaders:
Modeling and mediating human development. This includes managing your own emotional response to an idea, person, or behavior; managing conflict across different personalities, styles, and cultures; helping people metabolize change when it feels destabilizing; and keeping teams focused on the big picture and out of the politics.
Architecting a shared reality. The emotional fabric of an organization—group and systems-level dynamics—is driven by a collective narrative that is being constantly co-created by the business's emotional landscape. You're either designing and shaping it, or it's shaping you.
Investing in the analog. Genuine connection is the foundation of trust, and trust is the foundation of good work. We should use automation to spend less time in front of screens and more time in front of each other. If more automation simply translates to more time managing automation, then we have failed. What we need is more time for what people actually crave: challenge, connection, joy, and shared achievement.
After automation, the leaders who thrive won't be the ones who prompt best. They'll be the ones who can sit in a room with a group of people in the midst of their own uniquely unpredictable responses and, in spite of (and perhaps because of) that inherent complexity, generate something unprecedented.
