5 Metaskills That Will Help You Transition to the Robotic Age!

February 16, 2011, may very well be a day that lives in infamy in American game show history. Seven million homes watched intently as host Alex Trebek read the clue, “It’s a poor workman who blames these.”  It was the final round in a 3-day Jeopardy marathon which pitted Ken Jennings, the biggest money winner of all time against Brad Rutter, who had the longest winning streak ever on the show. Oh, yeah – there was a non-human contestant as well, IBM’s “Watson” computer. For those unfamiliar with Jeopardy, to score points the winner must hit the buzzer with the correct answer, or more precisely, the correct question since the answer has already been given.

To say it wasn’t a fair fight would be an understatement. With its ability to complete 33 billion operations per second, Watson can search 500 gigabytes of data which is equivalent to 1 million books in the blink of an eye. Not only that, it can hit the buzzer in less than 8 milliseconds which is way faster than his human opponents. All this meant that Watson had a distinct advantage over Jennings and Rutter.

After doing all of its calculations using multiple algorithms that returned hundreds of hypothetical answers, Watson hit the buzzer, “What are tools?” it answered in a cheery computer voice. “You are right for $2,000,” replied Alex.

Watson went on to surpass Jennings’ $19,200 total and Rutter’s $21,600 total to earn the victory with $41,413 and thus become the first ever non-human Jeopardy champion.

Underneath his final answer, Jennings added a little footnote: “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.”

It’s almost like Watson was saying “Welcome to the robot age!”

Times They are a Changin’…

…and according to Marty Neumeier in his fascinating and thought-provoking book Metaskills: Five Talents for the Robotic Age, we humans need to change in these times of radical change:

 “Unfortunately, our educational system has all but ruled out genius. Instead of teaching us to create, it’s taught us to copy, memorize, obey, and keep score. Pretty much the same qualities we look for in machines. And now the machines are taking our jobs…The only way out is forward. Our best hope is that we see the shape of our situation, we can turn our united attention to reshaping it. It won’t require a top-down strategy or an international fiat to get the transformation going. Just a relative handful of people—maybe people like you—with talent, vision, and a few modest tools.” ¹

Those ‘modest’ tools are what he calls metaskills that will help us deal with the massive amounts of obsolescence and opportunity that we will face in the years to come.

Before we get to the 5 metaskills that he describes, we must first discuss a concept called the ‘Robot Curve’.

The Robot Curve

Neumeier describes the Robot Curve as follows:

…because business is competitive, creative processes tend to become routinized, moving step by step from original work down to skilled work, from skilled work down to rote work, and from rote work down to robotic work. At each step along the way, the value and the price decrease, with the value staying higher than the price.” ¹

In other words, due to automation, at some point, creative work becomes skilled work, which becomes rote work, which eventually turns into robotic work. At each step along the way, value is unlocked for the people closest to the top of the curve. Those nearer the bottom lose their jobs because their skills are “stiff” and not transferrable.

So, while automation will put people out of work, it will also create opportunities at the top of the curve for those professionals who can create and manage these systems.

What this means is that employers in the robot age won’t need people who do what robots do, they have robots for that. Instead what they need are people who can think for themselves, work in teams, be adaptable to change, and be able to use their imagination while also communicating well.

The 5 Metaskills

To be able to adapt to this paradigm shift we are going to need a new set of skills that go beyond what was required in the last century and skills that we are not taught in schools.

These metaskills as Neumeier says “act more like guiding principles than specific steps, so they can be transferred from one situation to another without losing their effectiveness. Metaskills determine the how to, not the what to. They form the basis of what Americans call know-how, and what the French call savoir-faire, “to know how to do”. They’re adaptable, not brittle.” ¹

Let’s now take a quick look at the 5 metaskills that Neumeier suggests will help us as we transition to the robotic age:

(1)  Feeling

What makes us different from machines is not so much our rational brain as it is our emotional brain. It is what allows us to ‘feel through’ those situations which are too complicated to think through. It includes such skills as empathy, intuition, and social intelligence.

Empathy is being able to interpret the thoughts and feelings of others which helps us to achieve results together that we couldn’t achieve separately.

Intuition comes from our deep experience in whatever activity, profession or domain we find ourselves. It’s the doctor whose patient presents with certain symptoms, but something just doesn’t ‘feel’ right. As he says ‘It’s the eyes in the back of your head, the extra sense that defies rational explanation.’

Social intelligence is really another name for emotional intelligence which is our ability to recognize and understand emotions in ourselves and others, and our ability to use this awareness to manage our behavior and relationships. It includes 4 areas which we discussed in a previous series of posts: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

(2)  Seeing

The second metaskill Neumeier discusses is called seeing which involves understanding systems thinking.

As he says: “Integrative thinkers don’t break a problem into separate pieces and work on them one by one. Instead, they see the entire architecture of the problem—how the various parts fit together, and how one decision fits another.” ¹ The idea is to see the world as an interconnected system of systems rather than individual parts.

As my co-blogger Howie said in a previous post on systems thinking: “To use systems thinking in your life you have to consider all of the components when making decisions, not just one, for example, it’s not all about you.”

(3)  Dreaming

The third metaskill that Neumeier discusses is called dreaming which is being able to use your imagination. It involves what he calls the “uncomfortable tension between what is and what could be which creates a mental spark gap—a space between two poles that can only be bridged by a leap of imagination.” ¹

While facts are great, our competitors have access to those facts as well, so to out-innovate them we need some insight, spark or leap of imagination.

A couple of ways to do this to move from the known to the unknown are:

(1)  Asking deeper questions to help us get past the obvious. One method is to use Socratic questioning, which we discussed in a previous post.

(2)  Utilize lateral thinking which is a process which involves using a set of techniques that can move us away from being concerned with “what is” (vertical thinking) to “what can be” (horizontal or lateral thinking) which results in creativity. You can read more about lateral thinking here.

(4)  Making

The fourth metaskill is one that he calls ‘making’ which involves action and getting your hands dirty to ensure that your imagination doesn’t remain unrealized and uninformed.

The most important advice he gives for making or creating is “the no-process process”. Instead of using fixed process methodologies such as: discover, definition, design, development, and deployment when innovating or creating he prefers an approach that understands the chaotic nature of creativity.

As he says:

“In the no-process model, you start with a general understanding of the problem, the goals, the areas of concern, the milestones, and the criteria for success. But the steps for addressing these areas should grow from the particular nature of the challenge, the circumstances in which the work will be done, the skills and workstyles of the team members, and the insights revealed as the project unfolds. It shouldn’t be forced to fit a diagram.” ¹

(5)  Learning

The final of the 5 metaskills he presents is learning which is all about self-directed learning or autodidacticism. This is the ability to build skills on the platforms of previous skills by moving laterally from one skill to another and being able to apply deeply understood principles to neighboring disciplines.

As Alvin Toffler said in Rethinking the Future: “The illiterate of the 21^st century will not be those who cannot read and write…but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” ¹

For serious students, the idea is to take conventional courses to be introduced to what’s broadly known and then leverage other platforms to explore what isn’t broadly known. Some of these platforms may be workshops, online courses, podcasts, non-credit courses or self-prescribed reading.

While it would be great if we could all become proficient at all 5 of these metaskills, Neumeier suggests that by becoming proficient in just a couple of them we will be able to survive and thrive in the coming robotic age.

As Jennings Said Following His Jeopardy Experience…

“Just as factory jobs were eliminated in the 20^th century by new assembly-line robots, Brad and I were the first knowledge-industry workers put out of work by the new generation of ‘thinking’ machines. ‘Quiz-show contestant’ may be the first job made redundant by Watson, but I’m sure it won’t be the last.”

And on that note, let’s end this blog post with a little Jeopardy question of our own:

“They are 5 skills that will help us transition from the industrial age to the robotic age and deal with the massive amounts of obsolescence and opportunity that we will face in the years to come.”

If you said: ” What are Metaskills?” – you win today’s Prime Your Pump Jeopardy!

Until next time, start learning those metaskills and as always…PYMFP!
–Rick

P.S. Wanna know more? Check out the entire book.

Use it Or Lose It

The 5 metaskills Neumeier believes will be important as we enter the robotic age are:

(1)  Feeling
(2)  Seeing
(3)  Dreaming
(4)  Making
(5)  Learning

When to Use It

As we enter the robotic age it is important for all of us to acquire at least a couple of these metaskills.

What Do You Think?

What do you think of the 5 metaskills Neumeier has proposed? Do you have any other metaskills that you believe are important? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

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References

1  Metaskills: Five Talents for the Robotic Age by Marty Neumeier