EQ @ WORK: The Humanity of Tech
reboot the heartbeat of the organization
#HumanityofTech is a call to arms - perhaps even a global imperative - for tech & marketing organizations:
Become human-centered powerhouses for positive economic
impact by embracing & expanding your humanity within.
Our humanity is screwed
By and large, we’ve systematically restricted our humanity - the emotional framework of the shared human experience - by compartmentalizing where it is appropriately expressed: Sport. Arts & Entertainment. Religion. Community.
But where do we spend the majority of our shared time? Work.
Business and industry and bureaucracy drive social change at scale. They are also designed to AVOID or otherwise diminish our humanity. Commerce & continuity over connection. This inherent tension adds a grave tone to Antonio Damasio’s prescient perspective,
“We are not thinking machines who feel. We are feeling machines who think.”
It stands to reason that handing over our critical thinking ability and capacity to advanced technologies - over time - will WIDEN the gap between humans and technology, eventually leaving humans ALL FEELING and NO THINKING.
Is this far-fetched? Possibly. But consider this: In our lifetime, we will see the end of penmanship as we know it - a functional skill for more than 4,000 years that is considered foundational to early childhood development and education. In the very near future, we will bear the children who will never write outside a digital environment. And the inciting change event happened in the time Baby X’ers and Elder Millennials have been in our careers.
Take the staggering impact of this change event in a condensed amount of time and exponentially multiply it over the next few (not many) generations. It would be wildly irresponsible of us to dismiss the possibility that our cognitive function and its burden would not be similarly impacted by advanced technologies. (Or highjacked, if you’re feeling dramatic.)
How modern business is most vulnerable
Our modern marketing world (especially but not exclusively within the tech industry) has reduced we, the people to email and IP addresses - ones and zeroes in The Matrix - and atonal survey respondents weighing brand affinity because the marketer is conditioned to care more about job security than our experience with their brand.
This mentality places its people as far from the stakeholder’s need - and their decision point - as possible, eventually leaving marketers confounded when asked to consider the decision maker over the desired action.
The upside? Efficient operations for revenue growth. The downside is two-fold:
This disconnected mindset often extends far beyond the marketing function into the organization, leading to apps and capabilities that drive commerce at the cost of stripping important human connection points of personhood.
Disconnection is a harbinger of doom.
We buy and use what we trust and avoid what we don’t.
The less human-centered and connected the stakeholder or customer experience, the greater stakeholder distrust. Humanizing technology by embracing and showcasing the humanity of marketers & tech pros will radically stimulate our trust, and by extension, your bottom line and the global economy.
🐰 an MEB Rabbit Hole 🧐
Rebuilding Trust in Tech (MEB for Fast Company)
The Most Important Reason to Foster Your EQ (MEB for Inc. Magazine)
How to embolden our future humanity
If you will contribute to shifting the future balance of power between human thinking and feeling, you have a moral and practical responsibility to do everything & then some to embolden the people who feel rather than the tech that thinks.
We’ve already proven how bad we are at understanding, embracing and otherwise fostering our emotional nature in general much less at work. What makes us believe we’d be at all competent as a species, or enduring, if we are only left to FEEL?
Now is the time to DOUBLE DOWN on our humanity at work - especially the innovative disruptors creating & marketing technology that will displace human intelligence.
Onboard advanced EQ throughout your organization
Invest in MEB’s leadership and professional development tailored to your #HumanityofTech objectives