‘Future of Leadership with Robotics’

Robotics is a branch of technology dealing with automated machines that can take the place of humans in environments that involve risk or manufacturing processes, or resemble humans in appearance, behavior, and/or cognition. Many of today's robots are inspired by nature contributing to the field of bio-inspired robots. The first digital and programmable robot was invented by George Devol in 1954 and was named the Unimate. It was sold to General Motors in 1961. Since then The field of robotics has undergone a phenomenal change. However, will it totally replace human beings or merely assist them in the coming decades is the question to be debated.

Consider a scenario where a fleet of robots is designed to perform multiple front-end and back-end functions that are deployed across different systems. The robots capture critical customer-specific and industry related data and insights such as customer preferences, challenges and inventory turnover region wise. The data is then stored on a centralized cloud system that can be retrieved by different stakeholders to make informed decisions/strategic progress.

For instance, companies can better understand how products are placed in the store and the corresponding impact on sales. With the availability of geography-specific customer browsing data, they can also come up with location-specific planograms. This applies to retail space and may hold true for healthcare, hospitality, military, manufacturing, industrial and even agricultural fields to some extent in the coming times. We are seeing this change take place and robots are becoming more and more smarter with progress of time and technology.

We are seeing a ‘furl’ of changing way of working alongside humans. So we need to prepare ourselves (if we have not done so already).

Furl stands for:

Future pacing: preparing the future workforce (of mixed age groups) for what is coming their way and helping them be future ready by working out probable solutions

Unlearning: letting go of limiting beliefs and be willing to allow space for newer stuff to be imbibed internally

Relearning: behavior, systems and techniques that will help us all to adapt and accommodate a smarter future that helps work get done quicker and, in some fields, more efficiently

Leveraging: making most of energy, money and time to improve productivity manifold by stripping off unnecessary processes/dependence on human capital and getting stuff done seamlessly

The past few years have prepared us for this Furl. We now begun seeing more integration of Robotics in different fields across sectors right from Agriculture, Banking, Defense forces, Food Industry, Entertainment, Healthcare, Manufacturing and beyond. What role do you see yourself playing here as a leader? Will robots overtake more roles? Yes, they will but the human intervention will stay as an integral part of every industry going ahead too. What will differentiate us is who amongst us is willing to run with the changing times and ‘furl in’ with technology to keep pace and be there to offer their clients as well as stakeholders the best of both worlds or an option to choose from in forthcoming times.

About the Author

Parineeta Mehra                                                                                                    

PURPOSE COACH: I enable and support Individuals & Teams to identify and work with their purpose. I explore, engage, empower others| PCC-Deep Coaching & Hogan Certified.