Latest / The Rosanne Callens Podcast / E27: How To Stay Valuable When Technology & AI Changes Your Job
Transcript
- Rosanne Callens: You can't future proof a job, but what you can do is future-proof your ability to continue to create value. Hi friends, LinkedIn estimates that by the year 2030, 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change. 70% is a pretty significant number when you think about it. Especially if your current career strategy is trying to figure out exactly what your job is going to look like. Five years from now, and then trying to prepare perfectly for it. The problem is nobody really knows. We can make educated guesses and we can watch where technology is going, and we absolutely should pay attention to what is happening in our industries. But anyone who tells you that they know exactly what work is going to look like in 2030 should probably be asked for this week's winning lottery numbers. There's so much conversation right now about whether AI is going to take our jobs, which skills are going to disappear, what tools should we even be learning, and which careers are going to be safe. And those are reasonable questions, everyone. They're starting in the wrong place. Instead of asking, will AI take my job? I want you to start asking, what am I becoming better at that will still create value when my job changes? Because even if you stay in the exact same organization with the exact same title, the way that you do your work is going to change. We have this whole idea of future-proofing backwards. You can't future proof a job, but what you can do is future-proof your ability to continue to create value. Let me give you an example. Picture someone named Susan. Susan is the spreadsheet person, and I feel fairly confident that. Every organization has a Susan. She's been creating the monthly report for years. She knows where every number comes from, which department is always late turning in its information, and exactly which cell should make everybody slightly nervous when it changes. There are probably 47 tabs in this spreadsheet, and nobody is completely sure of what all of them do. And the color coding system. Has never been documented because it exists entirely in Susan's brain. And for years, knowing how to produce that report has been part of what makes Susan valuable. Well, then her organization introduces a new platform or it starts using AI. And suddenly that report that was Susan's pride and joy that took her, you know, six hours, can now be produced in less than 20 minutes. And that creates a real moment for Susan because something that she spent years becoming a subject matter expert at is suddenly much easier to do. And so many people are experiencing versions of this right now. They're watching technology accomplish in seconds and in minutes something that took them years to learn how to do well. And it's completely understandable that the first reaction might be, well. Whew, what does that mean for me? Here's what I would tell the Susans. Your value was never really the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was just one place where your value showed up. But you also understand why those numbers matter. And you remember what happened the last time one of them suddenly changed. You know enough about the business to recognize when something looks wrong and you have the experience to say, hey, before we make that decision, There's something else that we must consider. So the technology may be able to produce the report, but Susan can help the organization understand what that report means and what it should do next. That's a completely different level of value. And this is one of the opportunities I see in the age of AI. So if technology can do in less than 20 minutes what used to take six hours, then r then Instead of spending all of our time mourning losing that six-hour task, we should be asking ourselves, what can we do with the other five hours and 40 minutes? Maybe this is now a gift where you finally get additional space to look at a bigger problem instead of spending the entire day producing information. Maybe you can have a conversation with another department and discover something that never would have surfaced with. Everyone just always buried in execution. Perhaps now you finally have time to investigate that issue that everybody knows exists, but nobody has the capacity to address. So once again, the value was never in the task and how long it took. The value is in what you're capable of doing with what that task produces. When I created electric leadership. I was thinking about what leadership requires when everything around us is accelerating. We have more technology, more information, and increasing pressure to move faster. And electric leadership isn't about trying to outrun technology because we are not going to win a speed competition with AI. And personally, I have no desire to spend the next decade attempting that. It's about strengthening what you bring to work as the technology around you is getting better. Think about what happens when there's no obvious answer. So the data may point into two different directions, or a decision that looks great financially could create a serious problem for the people that are responsible for implementing it. There could be several priorities competing for attention, and someone has to determine which one actually matters the most. Those are the moments where judgment, strategic thinking, Communication, trust, and the ability to understand the people around you become more valuable, not less. So that's part of your professional voltage. And unlike a particular piece of software or a job description, that voltage travels with you. I've seen this happen with people who have spent a long time inside one organization. Imagine someone who's worked for the same company for 15 plus years. They know exactly how the place operates. They know who to call when someone gets stuck, which process technically exists even though nobody follows it, and which person you need to catch early in the morning because after 10 o'clock you never hear from them again. They're an incredible value there. But then when they begin to think about leaving, suddenly they're terrified because they're thinking, what if everything I know? Is only valuable here. So that fear right there keeps so many talented people stuck because after enough years inside of one organization, it really becomes hard to separate your knowledge of the company from the capabilities that you developed while working there. So I would ask them why everybody comes to them in the first place. Is it really because they memorize the process or is it because they know how to navigate a complicated system? Maybe they've learned how to work with difficult personalities without making every disagreement worse. When something goes sideways, they can figure out what happened and find a way forward. All those capabilities don't belong to the company. That belongs to you. And you get to take that with you. I can't stress enough how important this is. And that's the distinction I want you making in your own career. Your current title belongs to your employer. And your job description belongs to your employer. And the software that you use, you know, that that may very well get replaced by another system that of course everyone's gonna complain about for the first six months. But what you are becoming while you are doing that work, that belongs to you. And that's the part worth investing in right now. If AI is changing your field, learn how to use AI. If a platform is becoming standard in your profession, learn the platform. If your industry requires new technical knowledge, I want you to build it. Guys, there are people listening to this right now who remember knowing how to use a fax machine, literally made you the office hero. And some of you just heard the word fax, F-A-X, and remembered that horrible, horrible screeching sound. Well, we adapted then and We're gonna keep adapting. What interests me about the future of work is that employers are not only talking about AI and technical capability. Research on future skills continues to emphasize things like creative thinking, adaptability, leadership, and social influence right alongside technology. That makes complete sense to me because technology changes what we are capable of doing. While leadership determines what we actually do with that capability. So the strongest professionals will not be the people who somehow guessed every technological change correctly. They're gonna be the people who kept learning and increasing their value while that while the work changed around them. It's simple. So I want you to come back to the question that I asked at the beginning. What are you becoming better at? That will still create value when your job changes. I don't want you to be leaving this episode with 10 answers and a giant professional development plan that immediately becomes one more thing that you feel guilty about finishing. You have one action after listening to this episode, and it's very simple. I want you to choose one skill that you believe will make you more valuable over the next few years. And then I want you to deliberately find One opportunity to practice that skill this week. For you, it might be communication. Perhaps you're fantastic at your job, but when a senior leader asks you what your team is accomplishing, you disappear into 17 minutes of technical detail and you lose them somewhere around minute three. Your opportunity this week is to then practice explaining the business impact instead. for someone else, their their one thing might be the strategic thinking, which means choosing one problem that you would normally rush to solve and give yourself the time to ask if you're even solving the right problem. So if AI is the area that you've been avoiding, I want you to use it on one real task instead of spending another week watching people on YouTube tell you about 57 AI tools that you supposedly need by Friday. Just choose one. One. Just choose one. You guys, the skill itself is going to be different to everyone listening to this, but the action is still going to be the same. Pick one thing that will make you more valuable in the future and practice it in a real situation this week. Career growth does not happen because we created a beautiful list called Things I Should Probably Learn Someday. It happens because we deliberately start becoming the person that we are going to need to be. Next. And that's what gives me a lot of confidence about the future of work. You don't have to predict exactly what 2030 is going to look like in order for you to have a successful career. There's going to be tools that we haven't even heard of yet, and probably jobs that sound completely ridiculous to us today, but they'll be completely normal five years from now. Somewhere there's also going to be a 23-year-old patiently explaining one of those tools to us while we Nod along as if we completely understand what they're saying. And guess what? We will all be fine. Your advantage is not knowing everything that is coming. Your advantage is becoming someone who knows how to learn when it arrives. Someone who can use new technology without handing over all of your thinking and whose entire professional identity is not tied to one task or one system. Is electric leadership. Your power does not depend on the outlet staying the same. It comes from knowing what you're bringing to it and continuing to strengthen that value as the world changes around you. So this week, instead of spending your energy wondering whether your current job is future-proof, ask yourself one question: What am I becoming better at that will still create value when my job changes? Choose one skill and find one real opportunity to practice it because you cannot future proof your your job, but you can invest in your ability to keep creating value wherever your career takes you next. All right, friends, I'll see you next time. Remember, one thing, just one thing. The magic is in you. Bye.