Empowered to Think

Cognicent | 31, October, 2024 | Newsletter

One of the best things about the work we do at Cognicent is that we get to work with a broad range of people and businesses, spanning different geographies, different cultures and different industries. To steal a cliché or two, it has helped me to realise that you don’t know what you don’t know, and that the more you know, the more you realise you don’t know.

Last week we had a couple of great learning opportunities in two very different settings. The first was on a client site in WA’s Pilbara, working with a team who are paving the way for the mine’s autonomous fleet. The second was in much more comfortable surroundings, attending the 15th APS Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference at the Westin Hotel.

While the settings were quite literally thousands of miles apart, they were connected by the discussions of technology and the increasing investment being made in AI applications. In simple terms, businesses are spending a lot of money on getting machines to think for themselves, and to continually learn and find better and more efficient ways of working.

This got me thinking about people. Not in the sense of people being replaced, but in the sense of how we are investing in our people, and more importantly, what are we investing in with our people. While we are ‘training’ our machines to think for themselves, are we also encouraging and supporting our people to think for themselves?

Psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci developed a theory known as Self-Determination Theory, which describes three critical needs we have as humans. These are a need for competence, a need for relatedness, and a need for autonomy. In simple terms, we like to be good at what we do, we like to be connected with other people, and we like to think for ourselves and make our own decisions. When these things are taken away from us, we stop ‘working’ properly, with physical, emotional and mental harm the likely outcome.

Martin Seligman, the godfather of Positive Psychology, coined the term ‘Learned Helplessness’ which aptly describes the state we enter when we have no capacity to meet these three important needs. Flipping this around, however, when we ensure that people are provided with these three needs, they flourish – becoming more healthy, creative, happy, and productive individuals.
There are growing indications that of the three needs, if we were to focus on only one, we should focus on autonomy; enabling people to have agency and control of their lives. When we are given the freedom to make our own decisions, we are also given the opportunity to develop personal responsibility. We know from decades of research into Locus of Control, that when we take personal responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, words, and actions, we achieve better life outcomes across the board, both at work and at home. We become better at positively influencing those around us, have greater confidence, and are better able to contribute as a part of a team.

So, while we invest in getting our machines to think for themselves, are we simultaneously investing in supporting our people to think for themselves as well?

We hope you have a safe, well and productive rest of your week.

– The Cognicent Team