Adaptation is a superskill in the age of AI

- As a young technology reporter in the 1980s, I was assigned to write about artificial intelligence. In those days, it took a lot of computing power, money, and expertise for AI to deliver just a little bit of business value. Wow, have things changed. Today, AI is seemingly everywhere, even quite literally in the palms of our hands. AI is changing the way we call through data, serve our customers, diagnose disease, identify fraud, secure the supply chain, even write emails and so much more. If you've ever asked Siri, Alexa, or Google to answer a question or give you driving directions, well, that's AI, too. And as AI becomes an essential business tool, some people are left wondering, what work will be left for humans to do? The answer is, plenty. That work might not look like it does today. It might require new skills or a new approach, but there's no doubt that humans will continue to drive business creativity, innovation, and value creation well into the future. How can I be so sure? Because even as AI becomes more and more powerful and lays claim to more and more work, AI is still not human. Humans excel in the messy and complex problem solving that comes from insight, creativity, observation, empathy, ingenuity, and our relationships. That's the stuff of business value creation, and that's one area where AI really struggles. We are living now in an era of continuous change, and that change is only going to accelerate. Our past experiences and the skills we've developed throughout our careers may not fully serve as new technologies transform our jobs. We will need to continually challenge ourselves to change, too. Now, that might sound like a tall order. Yet, by adopting an adaptive mindset, change becomes an invitation to learn, to grow, and to seize new opportunities. Adaptation steeped in self-leadership is a super skill. It is the skill that you rely on most to navigate a challenging and changing landscape. Agile adaptation relies on your ability to recognize what's changing in the midst of an often ambiguous situation, to imagine a future state, and to upskill to move to that new place. In the face of continuous change, adopting an adaptive mindset will make your career more resilient and it will also make you more valuable.