Jamie-Merisotis-WIP

The shift toward human work and what it means for society

A conversation with Jamie Merisotis, president & CEO, Lumina Foundation
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“The role of workers in being transformed by automation and artificial intelligence.” This could sound like a dire warning about the future of work. Instead, Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, issues it as a challenge. A challenge that we can—and must—rise to.

“There’s been a lot of discussion about whether or not the robots are coming to take our jobs, and I don’t think that’s the question. What we’re seeing is a shift towards human work, which is the work that only humans can do,” Merisotis tells me in this week’s Work in Progress podcast. “What we have to figure out here is what tasks we do that are uniquely human and how we can actually prepare for those tasks in work and in life.”

In his new book, Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines, he lays out the importance of figuring out how we can work alongside smart machines, doing that which only humans can do: “thinking critically, reasoning ethically, interacting personally, and serving others with empathy.”

“Machines can learn by essentially using algorithms and they dig deeper and deeper into data. And that’s how they gain the ability to perform tasks faster, to recognize patterns, to do things repetitively, et cetera,” he explains.

For humans, we learn differently, over time, consuming content, and through our personal experiences. It’s important, he argues, to talk a closer look at how we can improve both formal and informal learning after high school to “enhance and develop our human capacities, our compassion, our ethics, our critical thinking, our interpersonal communication, through formal learning experiences, through work, and living our daily lives.”

Why is this important? “For us, as humans, work matters. We work not only because it helps us economically, but because it gives us social mobility, personal satisfaction, meaning, and purpose.”

Our conversation goes deeper into the reasons that this “human work” concept is so important as we look at the work of the future. I think you will find it—and the book—compelling.

You can listen to the podcast here, or download it wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t forget to subscribe!

Download the transcript of this podcast here.

Episode 151: Jamie Merisotis, President and CEO of Lumina Foundation
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.