Leadership

Changing Ahead of Change


It may not be long before machines could do what you do — faster and more accurately. Now is the time to identify the strategic value you add to your organization.

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According to McKinsey & Company, 20 percent of a CEO’s working time could be automated using current technologies. More troubling, a recent Harvard Business Review article revealed many executives would not know what to do with their time if they were freed of routine tasks.

Futurist and co-founder of Leading Thought Dr. Liz Alexander spoke with members of the Financial Executives International New York City Chapter this month on why changing ahead of change is the smartest (and maybe only) strategy for executives.

“In many boards and executive offices around the world and in every industry there’s a notion that the inhabitants of the C-suite are not only highly skilled but also cognitively superior and, because of that, you would assume that you would be safe from automation,” Alexander said. “I’m here to tell you why you’d be wrong to believe that.”

 

Organizations have already merged executive roles to save costs and eliminate inefficiency. In more instances, CFOs are moving into co-CEO roles, as has happened at Oracle and Whole Foods. PwC has suggested CFOs get more involved in human resources to create a chief growth or chief performance officer. Some companies are even managing without anyone in the CFO role.

 

Alexander explained the key for organizations and the C-suite will be adaptation and flexibility. Many types of activities in industry sectors have the technical potential to be automated, but that potential varies significantly across activities.

McKinsey’s 2015 ‘Four Fundamentals of Workplace Automation’ report explored the implications of artificial intelligence for jobs, organizations and the future of work. The report determined it wasn’t jobs or entire jobs that are likely to be automated, but rather certain tasks and activities.

Alexander raised the question, however, “If most of your data-focused activities as CFOs can be handled by machines that cut down on your percentage of work by 50 percent, isn’t it likely there will come a time when your board asks ‘do we need all these chiefs?’”

The panelists, Sas Mukherjee, EVP, CFO and Chief Strategy Officer at York Risk Services Group, Wayne Spivak, CFO at Hardesty, LLC, and Peter Carlson, Chief Accounting Officer at Met Life, weren’t as convinced.

“I’d be surprised if, in my career let alone in my lifetime, we got to c-suite automation,” Carlson said.

Spivak agreed: “As far as the CFO suite goes, there’s intellect that determines what information we’re going to look at to help us guide the ship to that strategic goal.”

 

Mukherjee elaborated on his fellow panelists’ points, “I see automation as a means to an end. Doing things faster, cheaper, better. There are things that a C-suite does that are more than the mundane, the predictive. A true C-suite role is looking forward, interpreting huge quantities of external inputs, innovating, customer relationship management. A huge part of what I do is talent management. Those things are difficult to automate. I feel safe for now.”

 

When it came to the panelists’ thoughts on eliminating the human element of a leadership position, Spivak insisted, “Somebody has to be there to be a coach. Somebody, somehow, somewhere, every single unit has a leader.”

Mukherjee remained hopeful, “I actually think we need to grow the opposite way. I feel we need business leaders that are more authentic, more compassionate, respectable, and adaptive. Someone who is intrinsically very human. A good leader isn’t one who is like a machine, who doesn’t have any flaws. Our employees look up to a leader who understands and overcomes their flaws.”