Not everything that counts, can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts – Einstein

This statement is not a play of words but a realisation that impacts the human factor at work. With the advent of technology and the Big Data looming on our heads with loads of information the next big struggle of our times is going to be able to make sense of this data. Yes, artificial intelligence could come to our aid here but sadly this intelligence will remain artificial! We will still need to set criteria and show trends that will aid artificial intelligence to throw up analytics which will either aid us in decision making or maybe even do decision making.

So how will the Human factor play up in all this conversation of Big data – a simple example that some days my thermometer tells me I have slight temperature and I call in sick at work but another day the same temperature I may choose to go to work cause I don’t want to be home alone. However, data driven by criteria will only allow one kind of response. Even if it looked at patterns the decision making is kind of linear if we remove the human element from the equation.

Even today we worry about employee engagement, and most often this is due to disconnect on expectations. We measure KPIs that do not incentivise the behaviour we require from the role and then we struggle with alignment and engagement.

This is like quadrant 2 activity Not Urgent but Important (Steven Covey’s 4 quadrants). We need to invest in identifying what counts and also how it impacts stuff that can’t be counted.

There are some models out there that can support on this thinking – for e.g. – impact and effort matrix. Do we know what is that we need to do which with minimum effort that can create maximum impact? A lot of our measure are based on activity. How many transactions did you do? How many meetings did you have? How many proposals did you submit? Instead should we look at – how much time did you spend in preparing for a meeting? Did you achieve the desired outcome at the end of the meeting?

A Leader’s dilemma today is to identify what counts and differentiate it from freak incidents. Do we have a capability to deliver the same result consistently or were we just lucky one time?

Technology allows us to slice and dice data and this requires a different level of human intelligence now to know where to slice and how to dice. Without this ability we will set ourselves up for failures and decisions with low impact.

With all the investment in Artificial intelligence what are doing to elevate the Human intelligence with the ability to use tools and platforms to our advantage. Remember we are the force behind the AI platforms and we need to develop our capability to identify the Metrics that Matter.

What are you doing today to elevate the Human intelligence of your organization.?

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” ― C.G. Jung