One of the features of the future is that we are really bad at predicting it, So much so that we react late and often have problems catching up with the present. This translates into the essential behaviour of a Digital Enterprise of adaptivity. Since a Digital as Usual business needs to constantly innovate to stay ahead of the competition and innovation itself is fraught with missteps and corrections, resulting in the need for agility, design thinking and the need to know when to "pivot in the market".
At the same time Millennials apparently want to design work life around themselves, desiring to work flexibly, perhaps on several different jobs at once, whilst industry analysts who should know better are forecasting the end of jobs as AI robots automate everyone out of a job.
Anyone who has ever worked with a robot, knows that they need a lot of input to become effective and their flexibility is limited. AI bots are just as bad. They need a lot of teaching, can be fooled and have problems adapting quickly.
As I have argued in previous posts, AI and Machine learning fills a gap in process automation to help people become more productive and focus on higher quality work. so the nature of jobs may change, and some new types of jobs may be introduced, but in the end there will still be jobs.
So it was interesting to see this opinion confirmed by a recent survey by Willis Towers Watson which reinforced this opinion. What was most telling is the opinion that less than 5% of businesses believe that their HR functions are ready for this challenge. The have not anticipated the future and are having problems catching up with the present. At the same time, these businesses believe that they will be shifting more and more to contingent working with flexible contractors performing an increasingly important role in their work-forces. So perhaps the Millennial Dream will come to pass, but probably not in the way that we anticipate now.
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