As I climbed the ladder in my corporate job, I found myself less able to find emotional and creative satisfaction at work.

I then had to turn to my hobbies and what I did in my spare time and at weekends to top myself up.

I asked friends and former colleagues recently about their experiences and I'm not alone.

Many said they find themselves zoning out due to the nature of modern work - too many meetings, overstuffed workloads, requests for pre-reads and deep dives for decision-making forums that run late and then slash their time slot last minute.

Demoralising to say the least.

The Great Dumbing Down

Inadvertently, this behaviour from the top sends the message to the rest of the organisation that their deep thinking isn't valued.

That their effort isn't worth it.

And there's a distinct lack of space made for sharing innovative or creative thoughts.

Someone even said to me, "I sometimes ask myself, "What's the point?" It's hard to hide how I feel from my team when they've put so much work in."

This numbness, dumbing down, dispirited, cog-in-a-wheel modality breaks my heart. 💔

Where's the space for inspiration, creative stretch and human flair?!

The fact that some leaders feel the need to hide their humanness, supress their creativity and save it for the weekend is a big red flag. 🚩

It's also a nod to why we continue to struggle to step change our productivity in the UK.

But, enough doom and gloom because I do think a window of opportunity is opening up for us to reclaim the fulfilment that I truly believe work can bring.

Work's good for us as individuals and as a species.

Human progress is hardwired into us and it's great for our mental health - as any doctor will tell you, people need to feel like they're contributing to society in order to feel well.

So what's the window? Where's the opportunity? It's thanks to AI, if we play our cards right...

The Sorting Hat

Love it or loath it, AI is here and I know you're already getting to grips with it.

I see it just like any other technology, like email, the Blackberry and the iPhone, it's becoming part of life.

Similarly, as a tool and enabler, it will not offer competitive advantage in the medium to long term as all boats will rise.

But there's an opportunity for us to be really intentional as we adopt it.

The opportunity here, is to redefine what we do in our working hours.

Not overnight, but as leaders, with each meeting and project that passes through our hands, we need to proactively sort through it, "this one's for the robots, this one's for the humans."

AI's going to get better and better at much of the mediocre, mundane work from call-handling to manufacturing, from transportation to check-outs.

So it's left to us to seize on the possibility for bright spots of ingenuity and face into the knotty issues we're procrastinating over or avoiding altogether.

It's the businesses that are able to take this baseline of robotic mediocrity and inject flashes of brilliance and enhanced value through enveloping consumer touchpoints with the warmth of humanity.

And that'll make for happy, returning customers who will sing your praises.

If that sounds good, here's what I believe needs to change inside those organisations that are up for it.

We can do hard things

A leader's job is to create the conditions for change.

This means we need to figure out how to get the right people in the room for the right reasons with the right questions so that the problems get solved by the collective wisdom of those in the room.

Easier said than done.

Creativity and pushing the boundaries is hard. Changing the rules of the game is hard.

It's hard because of resistance. It's hard because it might not work.

So we need to nurture the skills, behaviours and dynamics of our people in order to create the right conditions where;

• People have the guts to speak up
• Call something out when it could be better
• Ask a difficult question
• Invent something that might not work.

This is what CREATES opportunity for that all important human touch and in my experience, it's how you protect an innovation's value as it passes through an organisation that just wants to make it like everything else.

Leaning into our humanness will create value that's inconceivable for an AI because it cannot FEEL the consumer's frustrations and tensions or grasp the potential from delighting our customers.

Everything Starts with Trust & Community

People need to trust they'll be heard and trust they'll be supported if it doesn't work out this time.

We need to organise ourselves into circles of people who give each other the benefit of the doubt, trust each other and can openly exchange ideas.

This is what it means to be part of a community.

It's the satisfaction that means at the end of the day, we can step back and say, "We made this, together."

This is why I made Art After Dark.

Because I believe in the power of humans coming together and doing hard things.

That's how, together we become remarkable.

This Week's Painting🖼️

I've just painted, "Flair" in celebration of this irreplicable human characteristic to encourage the nurturing of our raw creative spirits.