How To Make Automation More Creative?
Edition #168
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. You share your valuable thoughts and comments, and start a conversation here.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession, to drive peak performance.
The Checklist Trap: How We Turned Leadership Into A Lifestyle Product.
Here’s a thoughtful and provocative article about leadership in Founding Fuel by Kavi Arasu. He raises some pertinent questions about how, more recently, leadership has sometimes been packaged as if there is some kind of quick 2-minute formula or 7 easy steps to becoming one. He deep-dives into the probable root causes and the reasons it has led to where it is in this state today.
Here are some powerful thought starters about leadership for you to think about from this article:
‘Many of the most powerful shifts in leadership show up quietly—in the quality of questions asked, in a pause before reacting, in how a leader makes space for someone else.’
‘Leadership development has a long arc. It isn’t linear. It moves two steps forward, one back. Sometimes, the insight comes long after the conversation is over. Sometimes, the change is invisible—but profound.’
‘Real leadership development resists that clock. It shows up in how people deal with ambiguity, how they step into new roles, how they recover from failure.’
‘The best leaders do this beautifully—without needing any tech tools. They start with people, not platforms. They walk the floor, tune into conversations, and observe carefully. They notice who’s thriving and who’s stuck—not just based on reports, but on real, everyday interactions.’
‘Culture isn’t what’s written on the walls, but what unfolds in conversations when status is set aside and curiosity is genuine.’
‘The best leaders don’t wait for ideal conditions. They get to work—with what they have, where they are.’
‘Redesigning work means giving people room to think, space to speak, and permission to stretch. It means creating feedback loops. It means asking better questions.’
Read the entire article here.
Right Kind Of Wrong: A Conversation With Amy Edmondson.
Amy Edmondson is a Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. She has also written widely acclaimed books, including Right Kind of Wrong and The Fearless Organization.
She starts her conversation with her early doctoral research work, which had two interesting questions that were being studied and investigated, then :
Do differences in teamwork lead to differences in error rates?
Do better teams make fewer errors?
The contrary findings made her curious to study this further, leading to the concept of ‘psychological safety’, which is defined as ‘belief that you can candidly speak up about work-related content, ideas, dissenting views, questions and even about errors!’
‘Learning happens when you are able to take risks even when you are not 100% sure or even 50% sure.’
Psychological safety does not mean any quality is acceptable, but you are setting an environment of high standards, which means you are setting up a platform to aspire for excellence.
Being ready to accept missteps is ok. When you have missteps, stop, challenge and choose.
Failures can be categorized as basic failures, complex failures and intelligent failures. ‘Failing well or even living well is about, yes, preventing the basic failures, averting and mitigating the complex failures, and yes, welcoming and maybe even upping the frequency of intelligent failures.’
The most successful among us have not failed less often than the rest of us.
You can also listen to this episode on:
How AI Could Change The Advertising Business | Quantum Marketing.
Stephan Pretorius, WPP's Chief Technology Officer, is in conversation with Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard's Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, about how AI is being used at WPP to transform the marketing industry.
Here are some thought-provoking quotes that Stephan makes during the conversation about how AI can impact the advertising industry and why it is imperative for marketers and agencies to adapt to this change:
“Every time you bring technology to knowledge work that automates mundane tasks, it pushes people to become more intelligent.”
“People are not meant to be assembly workers.”
“I don’t believe AI destroys jobs, but I think AI shifts tasks.”
“If you are a marketer, start doing things right now. Start learning by doing.”
“AI is a very interesting technology that is obscure and may be a little intimidating at first, but as you start working, it changes the way you think.”
“You don’t become an AI-driven company by having an AI department.”
You can click the above link and watch the entire video.
How To Make Automation More Creative?
One of the quotes from Stephan’s conversation opened up a lot of ideas and thoughts, which was the one where he mentions, ‘People are not meant to be assembly workers.’ That statement has a fundamental and raw truth because industrial-era production thinking and processes have percolated into knowledge work. That’s why you see indifference, attrition, lack of involvement and excitement in how people work in many industries. The hard truth is that most companies and processes, as they scale, treat people as assembly workers. We need an ‘Unfactory Thinking’ movement in every industry, company and profession. AI may be driving this transformation faster and quicker than expected.
The most important question to answer is, ‘How can you make boring production systems, thinking, and processes more creative?’ Therefore, we must ask ourselves, ‘ Can we learn how to do this from companies, countries, work cultures, and industries that practice this approach?'
The Toyota Production System(TPS)
One thing that can amaze and help you learn about this is how Toyota has mastered its production systems by ‘adding creativity to a relatively mundane process like manufacturing.’
When you look at TPS's vision, it says ‘making work easier for workers.’ That’s a phenomenal vision in a world where we often hear robots replacing assembly lines. There are two pillars in this philosophy:
The first pillar is jidoka, which can be loosely translated as "automation with a human touch"
The second pillar is Just-in-Time, based on the concept of synchronizing production processes
While Just-In-Time manufacturing has received considerable attention, Jidoka can help us teach many things about how not to treat people like assembly workers. Its principles have a potential direct application and relevance to industries, companies, and people who feel threatened by AI and automation.
‘Jidoka applies ‘human wisdom’ to automation. Human wisdom is the ability to detect the abnormality and stop automatically. Automation does not mean ‘mindless’ automation.
‘To do this, rather than starting from machines, you must first try doing it thoroughly by hand… It doesn't matter how much machines, robots, or IT excel, they can't evolve any further on their own.’
‘Craftsmanship is achieved by discovering the basic principles of manufacturing through manual work and then applying them on the production line to steadily implement kaizen.’
‘Human wisdom and ingenuity are indispensable to delivering ever-better cars to customers.’
What can be learnt from Jidoka?
As much as we need AI, we need to embed human ingenuity in the automation process of knowledge work.
Blindly applying AI models without a deeper understanding of how they work is a recipe for disaster.
You must follow the ‘Start doing by hand first’ principle. Whether you are an accountant, lawyer, or creative designer, your craft is as important, if not more, in the age of AI. Work towards continuously mastering your craft. This will become true and essential for the AI-first generation of the future.
Then, incrementally replace the mundane tasks that take up a lot of your time, which are a hindrance to investing time in mastering your craft. This is where AI models and systems can help you automate and save time for more ‘problem-solving’, ‘creative’ and ‘intuitive thinking’ time.
Ask yourself one question: What is the ratio of ‘learn or build or develop time’ versus ‘Follow-up or Ops time’ in your day? See how this ratio can be improved every day. That’s Kaizen at work for you.
Unassemble your thinking and ideas. However, automate and assemble your mundane and repetitive tasks.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
The best leaders don’t wait for ideal conditions.
Avoid making people into assembly workers.
Your craft is as important, if not more, in the age of AI.