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Glow without substance

As virtualization progresses, the qualities of things, facts and, above all, people become more and more important. The selection of new employees, whether executing or executive, is becoming increasingly difficult. In advance it is only possible to assess to a limited extent whether the respective person fits into the company, the team or a task. If then the first selection is made by an area that has little knowledge of the daily task, decisions are made based on formal criteria that have little to do with the actual business. In the long term, it is more effective to leave the choice to the departments, which have the experience, know the different contexts and, above all, should get their personal impressions of the possible new employee. Who still believes in the copied CVs based on pertinent cook books, which consist of quickly made degrees plus many years of practical and international experience plus pronounced social commitment? This self-staging creates a glow without substance.

This substance less glamour does not have to artificially grind away corners and edges. Sometimes it is better to show profile, to have soiled oneself at work in order to come across more credibly on the basis of the scars of one’s own actions.

  • Personal glow
    With the introduction of the school and university system, the traditional learning styles, the long-standing apprenticeship as trainee and journeyman, were expanded with scientific study and research. The real goals of these learning systems were to transfer and anchor knowledge. The most important aim was to actively get to the bottom of the topics. Due to the increasing importance of a factual assessment, the focus of the evaluation has been shifted. A high score suggests appropriate skills. A clever strategy and a little luck in the tests is enough to pass. And this, although practical knowledge would be better in everyday situations.
    The personal appearance is better polished up by failures and realistic responsibilities without a gigantic budget, than by pretentious presence.
  • Entrepreneurial glow
    Other areas of the business also have certifications to prove their capabilities. With the appropriate certificates, customers are supposed to gain confidence in order to decide in favor of the according offer. Today, these proofs range from customer ratings, the so-called likes, to official certifications and frameworks such as ISO 9000 for quality management, ISO 27001 for information security or COBIT for IT governance. While these certifications were originally intended to reflect a company’s current status, people affected have learned to prepare for these exams to be able to pass. The real purpose of a neutral assessment of the real abilities gets lost.
    It becomes more important to prove with real-life examples that you can practically master your business, and not just to shine with a certificate that everyone has.
  • Borrowed glow
    If direct evidence of the reputation is missing, then only indirect signs remain, which are generated above all by ambiguous statements. The protagonists achieve this the easiest by mentioning and citing competent sources. For this reason, people and companies like to adorn themselves by quoting prominent thought leaders. In doing so, they implicate an appropriate mindset that makes inattentive target groups believe that the values described are important to them. This can be boosted by personally integrating or at least meeting the mentioned celebrities in an image-effective way. Within the target group the assumption gets triggered that you need to have special skills. On closer inspection, this type of indirect use of external appearance happens on a daily base in publications without the target group noticing the manipulation. This adornment with borrowed plumes needs nothing more than a large enough budget.
    If you want to take advantage of the experiences of others, you should seriously integrate them into everyday life and implement their ideas consistently and not just shaking hands media-effectively.

Regardless of the way reputation is built, it remains nothing more than an indicator. The actual efficiency only becomes apparent in day-to-day practice. Since it is not possible to see it in advance, on the one hand, the observers must be always aware of the risk of possibly being only attracted by a glow. On the other hand, individuals and companies must not rest on their laurels, but have to reprove it every day. Who is in competition is like someone who rows against the current. As soon as you stop rowing, you fall back. Reputation must be renewed without ceasing.

Bottom line: It is becoming more and more important to find new approaches in order to be able to recognize performance and its development potential in advance. Direct certification is only partially suitable for this, since the candidates prepare opportunistically in advance for passing an exam – not for acquiring knowledge. Although the indirect indicators generate evidence, they do not allow any real insights about the know-how and behavioral repertoire of those affected. The information society needs a new approach, in order to be able to recognize the glow without substance.

When the old is gone and the new emerges

The old has always been the continuation of something familiar with comprehensible technical innovations. The aforementioned cab driver switched from the horse to the engine. The journalist no longer researches his information on the spot, but on the Internet and takes over to personally typeset, correct and publish his articles. Warehouse clerks exchange the pumper for a computer that controls the stock movements and shifts the packages driverless to the desired stations. The physical activities are eliminated and replaced by „willing“ machines. In this environment, new tasks arise in the monitoring, control and maintenance of the assets – and of course in their development. In these times, new skills are needed.

Perspectives are missing. One of the few, who ponders concretely, is Thomas Frey, who has compiled the requisite know-how and many new professions of the future (see here). This time we’ll look at some of the future talents.

  • Bendscouting
    In the past scouts were used to spy out a path in front of them so that dangerous passages could be avoided on a large scale. To achieve this, traces had to be correctly interpreted, dangerous spots evaluated and the new routes safeguarded. In principle, tomorrow’s Bendscouts have similar skills. The difference results from their more vucane work space, i.e. more Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. The required farsightedness results from the intuitive processing of the flood of data that cannot be left in the foreseeable future to any computer.
  • Bridging
    In many cases it will not be possible to bypass the danger spot. For this reason, to this day, armies have pioneers, who build bridges in the threatening places that take the troops safely from one side to the other. In the future, the ability to enable the transition at any point will become crucial, as more and more mental bridges have to be built that reliably bring those involved from the old into the new. Since every situation is different, the experience of proficient Bridgers, who can recognize and master even the most subtle peculiarities, is indispensable.
  • Lastmiling
    The global networking creates with RFID chips the Internet of Things. Networked computers move things virtually automatically around the world. The chip can be received anywhere and enables, with very little manual interference by people, automatic booking of cargo space as well as timely tracking of where the goods are at any given time. The same applies to data itself that is searching its way through the World Wide Web. The problems arise in the last mile – from the last node, whether it is a distribution warehouse or a junction box. The many Lastmilers are already available as parcel distributors and bicycle messengers. For the way from the hub to the actual addressee, it requires the hard to program intelligence of the Lastmiler.
  • Dismantling
    New things are being created ever faster. The introduction of business ideas, IT systems or industrial facilities increases the performance of companies incessantly. Over time, however, the old systems get in the way. Dismantling will be difficult as long as they continue to fulfil their purpose – albeit not quite as effectively as the new ones. In this environment, the complementary talent of an inventor is needed. Dismantlers will be responsible for removing and dismantling old systems out of running operations without collateral damage for the ongoing business. This surgical skill is so filigree that no computer can take over this task in the foreseeable future.
  • Bequeathing
    Even if a plant is dismantled, an approach is replaced or a business becomes history, it does not mean that the gained experiences are also obsolete. Many of these insights can continue to have an effect sustainably. After all, these are long-term routines that have been improved over time. Reuse is usually hindered by profane reasons – the protagonists are no longer there or no sufficient documentation exists. Ensuring the sustainable availability of experience is the task of the Bequeathers. The challenge is to muck out the insignificant, to select the most interesting and to prepare the most valuable building blocks. The necessary intuition to recognize the relevant aspects will be a problem for computers for a long time.

Bottom line: The continuous digitization takes over simple routine work. The machines execute unattractive tasks and solve them even more reliably than workers. This will trigger that the fields of activity shift again. It is not possible to automate the skills of bendscouting, bridging, lastmiling, dismantling and bequeathing as long as the comprehension, intuition, creativity and other typically human characteristics cannot be transferred into appropriate algorithms. Artificial intelligence may be a step in the right direction, but the modest hopes of the eighties of the last millennium have not yet been fulfilled after almost forty years – even, if we are impressed by robots that do the amazing things – but not more. The old is gone and the new is emerging. What will happen? As the French say – He, who lives, will see.