How Cognitive Automation Helps Humans Find the Purpose of Their Work

‍Cognitive automation promises to make transformational changes to the enterprise. By digitizing, augmenting, and automating decision making, it promises to close the decision capacity gap that continues to grow as organizations try to respond to an ever-changing environment.

But more than closing that decision capacity gap, cognitive automation also helps companies make better decisions as organizations evolve to adapt to a resource-constrained, hybrid world where your best people want to define how and where they want to work.

Technology has long helped people get work done. Companies already deliver packages quickly, manage orders in fulfillment centers more efficiently, and support employees in their tasks continually. However, it’s people still doing the work, supported by machines.

Want to know more about how cognitive automation helps acclerate decision-making across the enterprise? Start here.

The promise of automation seems to be focused on making processes touchless — devoid of human interaction and input. That’s an illusion.

Cognitive automation is about transforming, not eliminating, the relationship between technology and people. It’s about a future where machines do the work, guided by people.

We're Changing Jobs More Often

An organization’s greatest asset has been and continues to be its people. Experts, working in companies for decades, possessed “tribal knowledge,” or an in-depth understanding of how the business works empowered by the vast experience of working in one place.

Employees have spent years doing things manually and making dozens of mistakes to learn how to “feel out” the organization, overcome barriers, and get things done. It wasn’t magic but hard work combined with a huge collection of life and work lessons.

However, people aren’t working as long for the same company as they used to. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that people are now changing jobs on an average of 11 times over their career. They simply have no time to develop in-depth expertise within an organization.

Also, tribal knowledge built on tenured experience isn’t always helpful as organizations experience numerous unforeseen shocks, including pandemics, market fluctuations, and other “black swan” events. The world has become more dynamic, and the pace of change has accelerated.

Reacting to events can no longer be left only to experienced internal experts. Today, companies need access to numerous sources as making assumptions is based on zettabytes of raw data.

How We Work Is Evolving—Fast

Technology has been changing the clock speed of the enterprise and continues to challenge the human’s capacity to deal with information. People are facing an increasing torrent of terabytes of data, and the pace is accelerating.

There have been numerous tools and solutions that have been built to handle much of the information processing tasks. As they learn to trust these tools, they are now about to focus on seeing differences, adopting creativity, and understanding what makes sense in the ocean of data.

We see a future where we won’t have to spend countless hours in front of Excel. Technology will be able to prepare all these reports automatically, so we can concentrate on the next steps. We will be able to deploy our attention to other strategic initiatives that were impossible to consider earlier.

Cognitive automation accelerates the decision-making process and makes automation applicable to wider enterprise processes, beyond simply planning and negotiating. Humans can rely on unbiased and objective data and dedicate attention to building connections, which is more creative and strategic work.

The Future of Work Is Freedom And Creativity

Augmented automation is not the end of the story. Eventually, automation of these decisions, established by cognitive automation adoption, will bring revolutionary changes in the way people work.

Imagine you no longer need to collect information, sift through data, and worry that the changes will actually happen. What happens next? Freedom to focus on projects. Freedom to address those problems that have been bothering you. Freedom to enjoy your work again.

Consider the context. Clarify the course and the destination to where you’re heading, and make real change in the real world.

You get the chance to reveal the depth of your potential and your true purpose of work, without jumping between tiny routine tasks that distract your attention day by day. Now, when the most complex organizational decision-making processes run like clockwork, you can concentrate on building your own vision and shaping the future of your organization.

What exactly will it be? We don’t know yet. Because it depends on the purpose of work you’re about to find at the end of your cognitive automation journey.