Leading for Industry 4.0 (the fourth industrial revolution) and beyond

Over the past few years much has been written about the coming of industry/globalisation 4.0 (the fourth industrial revolution) – new technologies that are connecting our physical, digital and biological worlds and their potential impacts on people, business, government and society¹.

As is the norm for any new trend, change in mindset or challenge to the status quo, a quick search of the internet will result in pages of links and information on studies, forums and research initiatives. These not only discuss and hypothesise on what the fourth industrial revolution is, its potential impacts and anticipated high level of disruption, but also how leadership will need to be redefined in order to be effective in this new era (at least until the next revolution). 

What we need however is a way of being (and leading) that copes with whatever this world may throw at us.

Introduction

For those new to the terminology let me start by reminding how industry 4.0 is being defined. The graphic below from Christophe Roser’s article² showing the 4 industrial revolutions provides a useful summary.

According to Klaus Schwab³, Industry 4.0 is “characterised by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres” and “will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before”.

As for the prior revolutions, the changes being brought about by Industry 4.0 will be inevitable, not optional. Whilst how things will develop may not be clear, with billions of people and countless numbers of machines connected to each other, some of the potential changes being suggested include:

• Increased standards of living, a more stable future with less inequality.
• Enhanced safety and security including the development of greater precision in targeting.
• Business having more influence than government.
• Increased human capacity – achieving more by removing repetitive tasks.
• Breakthroughs in healthcare.
• Customised offerings for individuals and business – customers having more knowledge, more data and more choice.
• Improved operating performance, production quality and productivity.
• Cheaper and easier-to-use robots.
• An opportunity for greater cross-cultural understanding and cohesion.
• Greater opportunities for, and new forms of collaboration, internally and externally.
• Automation of human decision making.
• Greater inequality as labour markets are disrupted and consequent regulation to protect human labour.
• An increasingly segregated job market into low-skill/low-pay and high-skill/high-pay segments with a hollowing out in the middle.
• More opportunities for extreme ideas and ideologies to spread.
• Individuals and small groups increasingly joining nation states in being capable of causing mass harm.
• Diminishing compassion and cooperation.
• Higher risk of cyber-attacks as systems become more networked.
• Greater free flow of data impacting the protection of a business’s intellectual property and an individual’s personal information.
• Ineffective governance protocols, policies, standards and laws due to an inability of government and regulators to keep pace with emerging technology.

Ultimately a list such as this and the opportunities, risks and challenges it conveys is incomplete and limited only by the imagination of what it could be and a current understanding of what the future may hold. It is also understandably contradictory and cannot represent the complexity across areas such as: geography, gender, age, race and social standing.

The continuum of decision making

The changes being postulated by Industry 4.0 may sound pretty exciting, scary (or both) depending on your situation and how you identify with that situation e.g.: how old you are, what work you do, where you live. Whichever changes come to pass, the impact on society will be transformative. It is a choice for each of us whether this transformation is toward a more compassionate, caring world or not.

Organisations and governments are made up of, run and elected by individuals. As individuals we have anxieties and fears, beliefs, values, paradigms and worldviews that consciously or unconsciously influence our behaviours and actions, and collectively the cultures of our teams and organisations.

Our view is that we make decisions from a level of consciousness determined by how we:

1. Engage with the world.
2. Perceive the world.

How we engage with the world is a continuum from negative (fear based) to positive (love based) emotions. The starting point in any situation can be head dominated (dualistic, rational, deductive, tactical and linear), or heart dominated (grounded in holism, compassion, humility and kindness).

How we perceive the world is a continuum from individual (egocentric) to collective (holistic). This means understanding whether the majority of our focus is centred on the interests of me and mine (family, team, organisation, club, professional class, political party etc) or extends to those of the whole (community, nation, region, the world).

Where on the fear – love and the individual – collective continuums we sit determines our level of consciousness and how we interact with the world around us. Our anxieties and fears, beliefs, ego-based reactions and dualistic ways of thinking all hold us to lower levels of consciousness and sub-optimal actions (outcomes). In an other article (A Case for Change – Why as Leaders We Need to BE Different to DO Different) – I talk about fear, anxiety and dualistic ways of thinking/behaving and the impacts that these can have on collaboration and finding workable solutions.

Our challenge is two fold:

1. Rebalancing the connection between our head and heart – allowing heart-based feelings, intuitions, empathic concerns and discernments to inspire and guide and using the minds logic and deductive reasoning to design, test, organise and implement.
2. Expanding our breadth and depth of outlook -discerning and understanding the whole, the parts and their interacting complexities (systems within systems). This leads to a more integrated picture of any situation and enables us to understand rather than judge others’ differences, reactive emotions and dualistic actions. We can then rise above reactive tit for tat behaviour and instead seek ways to bridge divides and bring people together.

This journey lifts consciousness, brings greater wisdom and changes the way we think and feel, the intentions we set and the actions we take.

For Industry 4.0 to realise its potential to create a more compassionate, caring world, a move from mind dominated to heart dominated discernment and an ability to value the needs and interests of the whole as one values one’s own needs and interests is required.

“The longest journey you will make in your life is from your head to your heart.” – Sioux Legend

The first step on this journey is to look at the list of potential changes in our world identified at the beginning of this article and, considering what you have read, heard, or thought regarding what the future could hold; become aware of your feelings. For instance:

• Are you excited?
• Are you anxious?
• Do you worry about what it might mean for you/your family/your job?
• Do you find yourself slipping into dualistic ways of thinking: for example labelling things as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or not fair etc?

The next step is to understand what it is about you (your beliefs, values, paradigms, fears, and worldviews) that is driving these feelings in order to become more aware of how this is impacting your behaviours towards others, the decisions you are making and the actions you are taking. Armed with this awareness, it is helpful to remember that everyone you encounter is also behaving, making decisions and taking actions under the influences that are specific to them – of which they may or may not be aware.

Think of the journey like two figure 8’s.

As we increase awareness and move along the continuum from fear to love, we move from doing to being – from what am I going to ‘do about’ to how am I going to ‘be’ in this situation. We move from ego and fear dominated to:

• Emotions becoming more positive then;
• Logic and reason prevailing over emotion and finally;
• Love and intuition guiding our thinking.

As we increase our awareness and valuing of the needs of the collective along with our own, we move from the focus being on me and how I get my needs met to:

• What enables my “tribe” (family, team, organisation) to survive and thrive then;
• How do I bring people together to solve common challenges and finally;
• An understanding that we are all one tribe, stewarding our journey together.

Leading for industry 4.0 and beyond

The potential impacts of the technological revolution that is Industry 4.0 will change the way that work is done, by whom (what), where and when. The speed at which this will happen will redefine the role of individuals, businesses, governments and regulatory authorities. This change can be for greater good or greater worse outcomes. For example, Industry 4.0 will provide opportunities for:

• Those who seek to contribute by tackling the world’s greatest problems, such as: hunger, poverty, climate change and disease.
• Those who seek to do harm to others through: cyber attacks, cyber terrorism and autonomous warfare.
• Those who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of others by further increasing the gap between rich and poor, privileged and underprivileged.

What is clear is that the changes occurring and yet to come compel us as individuals to reflect on how we want to be and how we want to lead. This is because through our organisations and governments we are the stewards responsible for guiding the evolution of Industry 4.0.

It is incumbent on us to become aware of our anxieties, fears, beliefs, values, paradigms, worldviews and dualistic ways of thinking/reacting, and how this is influencing our behaviours, the intentions we are setting, the actions we are taking and the cultures we are instilling in our teams and organisations. This leads to us becoming more conscious of whether our decisions are being made from a place of fear or love.

For instance, when defining how far the changes go in areas such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence, we need to become conscious of our moral and ethical boundaries. Humans program robots and how they are programmed will reflect where their programmers sit on the fear-love and individual-collective continuums. Eventually, through deep learning, robots will program other robots and the cycle will continue. It will be our choice whether the autonomous workforce of the future will work for us, with us or against us.

For Industry 4.0 to realise its potential to create a more compassionate, caring world we need to make conscious choices that bring people together, recognise the uniqueness of the individual and create the conditions for everyone to contribute their unique part and fulfill their potential. This means recognising and rejecting choices that stem from dualistic, ego and fear-based thinking. As Richard Baldwin says, this revolution will give “more head to people who have heart but not more heart to people who have head”⁴.

I suggest we start by always speaking in a way that brings people together and by practicing kindness, compassion and humility in decision making whenever possible – and it’s always possible.

Why

So why do it? What benefits does it bring, how is behaving in the way outlined going to support me/my business in an Industry 4.0 world?

If collaborating more deeply is the key to adding value to business, preventing crises and making the world more resilient for current and future generations⁵, then Industry 4.0 will connect the world and create the opportunity to work across cultural and geographic boundaries like never before.

Fear-based leaders stifle collaboration, which requires an environment of psychological safety where people feel they can be vulnerable, empathetic and authentic (themselves)⁵. So, in a world where fear and anxiety dominate and leaders do not have the self-awareness and courage to recognise, admit to and understand its source; conflict and an inability to find a sustainable way forward will prevail at all levels – between individuals, teams, states and nations.

Exercising dualistic ways of thinking (good/bad, right/wrong, win/lose) and framing responses to others from this level of consciousness results in an inability to collaborate and the potential to become part of the problem rather than the solution. Always being open to being different – that is, taking your values and beliefs, world views and paradigms, holding them and then rising above them to transcend duality – is courageous and powerful.

Collaborating happens less at the top of organisations than at the bottom because people in power don’t want to give up that power⁵. Collaborating by utilising technology also comes more intuitively to millennials and generation Z who have grown up in a world where pastimes such as online gameplay create the need to work together and be creative to succeed.

The challenges across demographics are therefore different. Those of the older generation offer a degree of wisdom and power borne of their experience. Not all, but much of this is relevant to effectively charting Industry 4.0. However, they can lack the intuitive agilities required to master many of the new technologies. Those of younger generations, while often having a more contemporary technologically based skill set, lack extensive experience and therefore the depth of wisdom and power that is needed. The challenge for the former is to give up some of their power and for the latter to step up and take responsibility. In each case, to be stewards for the future, we need to move past anxieties, fears, cynicism, restrictive paradigms, ego and duality-based thinking to form healthy relationships that harness our wisdom, power and experience for greater good outcomes.

The ego will say, unless it is something I need to deal with every day, why should I spend time worrying about what industry 4.0, climate change, environmental degradation, increasing social and political unrest and the many other challenges currently identified may or may not become. When I’m trying to survive and am involved in conflicts with others, why do I care about these ‘distant’ threats that may not even impact in my lifetime? It’s hard for me to grasp.

Industry 4.0 is upon us. To harness it wisely and use it to support outcomes that add value and increase abundance for all will require a different way of being and doing.

References

1. Navigating the Fourth Industrial Revolution. World Economic Forum 13 August 2017. www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/08/fourth-industrial-revolution-990fcaa6-9298-471d-a45e-e6ed9238dde9/
2. Roser, C. 2015. A critical look at Industry 4.0. www.allaboutlean.com/industry-4-0/
3. Schwab, K. 2016. The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond. www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/
4. Trinca, H. 2019. Position vacant: human. The Australian 8 January 2019. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/position-vacant-human/news-story/90fc30cddbd7d936c918f74bd34e8b04
5. How Collaboration Wins. Leadership. Benefits and Best Practices. Harvard Business Review Analytic Services Pulse Survey. Harvard Business School Publishing 2017. https://hbr.org/sponsored/2018/01/how-collaboration-wins