As a former history teacher I keep an eye out for lessons it teaches about today.
The ATM & Bank teller one spoke to upskilling/reskilling due to automation. Toll booth operators was pretty clearly job elimination. But this story of the Longshoremen and containerization is a pretty solid analogy (see link in comments), and lesson for today about process elimination and eventual work redesign due to AI.
Before containerization, ships were loaded and unloaded by hand. Cargo arrived at the docks as individual items that longshoremen sorted, moved, packed into the ship, unloaded and moved etc. Ships had become faster (sail-steam-diesel), yet cargo handling remained largely unchanged. The weak link in it all was how long it sat at the dock getting loaded/unloaded.
The shipping container changed the question from “How do we move cargo faster?” to “Why are we moving cargo this way at all?” (See the AI connection coming yet?)
Once cargo could be packed into standardized containers BEFORE reaching the port, much of the old process was moot. Ships began to be redesigned to accommodate containers, ports became huge open areas, specialized cargo cranes appeared, and trucks, rail and terminals adapted around new way of moving goods.
As for longshoreman, becoming a more efficient packer/mover wasn’t the answer because much of the work was disappearing. They needed to see what work becomes important because containers now exist. They needed to look downstream at roles in operating and maintaining equipment, coordinating containers, managing terminals, scheduling, inspecting and connecting ships to trucks and rail.
Employers faced the same shift. Some tried to layer containerization onto existing operations, while others, like one called the Matson Navigation Company, studied the larger transportation system and redesigned itself completely around the container technology (Seeing the AI connection yet?). Which brings me back to today or what’s coming.
Much of the conversation today is still about helping people use AI to do their current work faster. It’s useful, sure, but the story of containerization suggests the bigger change comes when we start asking why the process exists at all!
As I shared yesterday in an image here (https://lnkd.in/p/geP6A59p) – its this progression I find interesting:
- Task automation = AI helps me do my job.
**2. Workflow automation = AI does parts of my job. - Process elimination = why we’re doing this at all?
- Role reconstruction = what my job is now?
**You are probably here.
As they saying (widely attributed to Hockey great Wayne Gretzky) goes, “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”