{"id":1004,"date":"2015-08-29T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-29T11:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/social-skills-and-reputation_082915\/"},"modified":"2015-08-29T11:51:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-29T11:51:00","slug":"social-skills-and-reputation_082915","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/social-skills-and-reputation_082915\/","title":{"rendered":"Social intelligence and reputation are the keys to survival in this automating world"},"content":{"rendered":"
However, I have good news for the paranoid – computers are still really bad<\/em>\u00a0at simulating social interaction. What’s more, team work is becoming more critical than ever, as we need to keep adapting to a changing work environment. Your personality and ability to excite, befriend, intellectually stimulate, or just have a laugh with the people around you, is now more critical than ever.<\/p>\n Welcome to the socially-intelligent workforce, where your reputation is everything<\/span><\/p>\n What’s more, there is nowhere to hide<\/em> anymore – if you repeatedly behave badly, back-stab, lie, or are just an asshole to work with, your reputation will spread across the digital and social networks, like it never did in the past. \u00a0When smart future employers check you out, it’s so easy to find former colleagues to conduct informal background checks. \u00a0There is no hiding anymore, so prepare yourself for the socially intelligent workforce, or scramble for one of those fast-disappearing legacy jobs, where you can hide away for years, unnoticed by the world.<\/p>\n Your ability to interact with people, applying intelligence and creativity to your craft, is where you add value<\/span><\/p>\n People, increasingly, want to work with people they like <\/em>and people who spark positive energy, first and foremost, as technology\u00a0continually makes\u00a0jobs more sophisticated and intelligent. I don’t need an accountant who can tell me my revenues this month, as I have software that can do this for me easily… I need an accountant who can talk me through the nuances of sunsetting a legacy product and its impact on my profit line. \u00a0I don’t need a lawyer who can create employment contracts – I can pull these off Legal Zoom… I need one\u00a0who can talk through the nuances of creating incentive plans to motivate my staff. I don’t need a web developper who can integrate a few databases – most of these new websites come with them already native to the package… I need a developper who can help design the sexiest website ever to embarrass my competitors. I don’t need content people who just check the boxes to fill content space – you can get content produced anywhere these days (and even automated)… I need content people who want to exchange ideas on creating\u00a0content that gets noticed and read by our clients. I don’t need marketing people just to send out email-push campaigns – I need ones who can help me figure out which conferences to go to, how to associate my brand with the right partners, how to use social media more intelligently, how to create communities among my clients etc.<\/p>\n I can go on through each profession and business function in turn, but the underlying premise is the same – I need intelligent people I can work<\/em> with, whether in my company, or in a partner organization. \u00a0And they don’t need to be rocket-scientist intelligent, just smart enough to understand by business and engage with me to figure out how to do things better. But the value is in the ongoing interaction and team-work, not a wooden worker\/manager reporting line model.<\/p>\n Design Thinking will increase in significance, as the need for socially-intelligent workplace interaction takes hold<\/span><\/p>\nAutomation hype and anxiety is everywhere<\/em> today. \u00a0In fact, haven’t you been amazed by the emergence of all these “automation experts” that have suddenly appeared on your LinkedIn recently? It’s as if these people went to school 20 years ago with the sole\u00a0purpose of becoming an automation expert…<\/p>\n