Dreaming of the ultimate workplace app
Every Labor Day, I resolve as an employee to accomplish ever more in everless time with evergreater efficiency in my workplace. Luckily, quantum leaps in digital technology — artificial intelligence, machine learning and whatnot — have already equipped me to be more productive than I ever imagined possible.
But sometimes I dream about innovations yet to be invented. Certain breakthroughs still to come could prove more practical — and yield more psychological advantages — than anything currently available.
What if, say, I could install a miniature MRI in my eyeglasses that enabled me to see right through clients and colleagues? I could tell once and for all whether they’re being truly transparent and authentic. The tool would be sensitive enough to detect hidden agendas and ulterior motives, even whether intentions are, in fact, honorable.
Suppose, as well, I could tap an app that instantly translates what all the other SVPS at my office say into what they truly and actually mean? It would
decode doubletalk, corporate boilerplate and just plain gobbledegook to prevent the misunderstandings now so rife cubiclewide.
“Let’s team up on this,” for example, would come out as, “We should operate by committee so everyone and his second cousin can smudge this project with his oily fingerprints, so much so as to render its original purpose unrecognizable and delay its completion indefinitely.” Hey, just spitballing here. But maybe someday soon I can deploy a search engine powerful enough to track down, as I often wonder, exactly where my day on the job went. Or dispatch a hologram version of myself so I can appear to attend conferenceroom meetings in the flesh while instead going out to lunch. Or unleash a special GPS engineered to locate my true feelings about what I do for a living and even determine whether I still have anything left resembling a soul.
But why stop there? While we’re at it, maybe a predictive algorithm will pinpoint the probability that my expectations about my career becoming a big success will factually evolve into reality. Along similar lines, a nextgeneration dashboard might project my prospects of ascending into the coveted Csuite versus being forever stuck in the purgatory called middle management.
Opportunities abound to hardwire my office with such advances and forever change the equation in how I fulfill my responsibilities. What about wireless sensors programmed to interpret my perspiration drop by drop to discern whether I’m still sweating the small stuff ? Or a motioncontrol detector that charts, in longitude and latitude, whether my career is currently moving in the right direction or going off course? Or a secondbysecond countdown clocking in real time just how long it will be before I’m finally automated out of my professional existence?
I know: Maybe all this speculation sounds farfetched. But what would be wrong with data analytics that quantify your exact value in the organization at any given time? Track whether your stock is trending up or down? Give you a headsup when your workload has suddenly gone from overwhelming to youmustbefreakingkiddingmehere.
Shake hands with your future. Make no mistake: Utopia awaits.