This is the first article in a series to introduce and explain the concept and the significance the Bionic Enterprise and the importance of adopting a Bionic Mindset. In this series we will look at:
Adopting a Bionic Mindset
Becoming Bionic – The Individual and the Organization
The Bionic Enterprise Framework
Bionic Effects, Bionic Fusion Strands, Bionic Design Thinking
The AI Risk-Fear Spectrum
We need better people. The problem with adopting AI isn’t the technology. It’s the mindset. This is not a new problem. It has followed us as humans throughout history. It is a problem that leadership has had to address since the beginning of - well - leadership. We saw this same challenge when computers were first adopted in factories for production systems, and in offices for financial accounting, and business reporting. Of course, anything new and unfamiliar usually comes with both a healthy dose of skepticism and fear on one hand and a zeal for change and opportunity on the other.
In decades past, many feared then that computers would cause significant job losses. In fact, the advent of computers resulted in tremendous job creation, eventually leading to a tech explosion called the internet. While some jobs were replaced, opportunities were created for those with an open enough mindset to embrace change and a willingness to learn new skills and a new way of thinking. So the takeaway was, that computers won't take away your job, but someone who knows how to use them, maintain them, or program them will.
Technology changes – human nature does not. There will always be those intrepid, pioneering souls who are drawn to new things, curious and open-minded by nature. To balance that on the other end of the spectrum of human personality are those who see the glass as half empty, or who allow fear to control them and hold them back from opportunity and growth. Neither are "bad" people. Some embrace change or even race toward it. Some fear it. Both emotions and personalities must be cultivated and channeled to achieve meaningful transformation. Both perspectives introduce levels of risk, but different types of risk as we will see later in this series.
You wouldn’t think it would be the case that even with the person who is open to change that there would be risk in having that mindset in an organization. As we will see, there is risk in both perspectives which is what gives us the AI Risk-Fear Spectrum.
We need a Bionic Mindset - For AI to work, for a Bionic Transformation to a Bionic Enterprise to work, organizations and individuals must first adopt a Bionic Mindset. You must think Biconically if you are to succeed in creating a Bionic Enterprise. And as you will see in this series - the key to thriving in the future is developing a Bionic Enterprise. To do that, like any paradigm shift and transformation effort, you must start at the top with visionary leadership. Visionary leadership must understand and embrace Bionic Transformation. As always, when striving to achieve change – first win the hearts and minds, then the rest will fall into place. Why? Because an organization that has that kind of top cover and visionary leadership will also create a culture of adoption, education, and innovation.
“Not adopting a Bionic Mindset is a formula for obsolescence.”
In my book, The Bionic Enterprise: Architecting the Intelligent Society of the Future, I state that,
“The future belongs to those organizations that can do three things:
“See” and use their architecture to fuse intelligent Bionic technologies with every aspect of the organization to achieve improved human experiences,
Recognize and adjust to paradigm shifts to maintain enterprise relevance and vitality,
Manage their transformation to maintain competitive advantage and strategic relevance.”
The organization literally needs to be mentally re-tooled to the concept of continuous transformation – to a Bionic Mindset. This is the start of Bionic Transformation, not merely digital transformation.
What do we mean by a Bionic Enterprise? It is about fusing AI-driven technologies into an integrated Bionic Digital Platform that is ubiquitous within the organization. Where Bionic Technologies (including those of the 4th Industrial Revolution) and Bionic Agents inhabit and animate these technologies. A Bionic Enterprise augments individuals and organizations to achieve Bionic levels of performance and collaboration previously unattainable in a purely human paradigm. The Bionic Enterprise provides highly immersive user experiences with a variety of advanced interfaces and helps individuals and organizations achieve purposeful Bionic Effects across all user experiences.
“The key to the future is not simply in devising more amazing technology, but in evolving our own maturity and relationships to this technology; how we view it, use it and fuse with it in our daily lives; how we think about it and even how it thinks about us. That is the Bionic Enterprise and an intelligent Bionic Society.”
- The Bionic Enterprise: Architecting the Intelligent Society of the Future
World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov is often quoted as saying, “You won’t lose your job to AI. You will lose it to someone who knows how to use AI.” He has also stated in his book Deep Thinking that “We need better people not less technology. As our machines become more adaptable, more powerful, we do as well.”
We have the technology - Let’s take a step back to look at the genesis of my concept of the Bionic Enterprise. As a child, I had been a fan of the ‘70s television shows, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. That phrase - we have the technology - was part of the opening sequence of The Six Million Dollar Man. The prospect that a human could be fused with Bionic Technologies and achieve superhuman levels of performance and capabilities captured the nations’ imagination. It captured mine, and the intersection of that concept and the practice of enterprise architecture resulted in The Bionic Enterprise.
After a long career working as a software engineer and later as an enterprise architect, I was always seeking ways to model and help transform organizations to achieve higher levels of performance. Afterall, the goal of architecting an organization is to help leadership and management “see” their organizations – for all their faults and flaws and to envision a better organization – to begin transformation. You can't manage what you can't see and the purpose of models and architecture is to help see the organization. Imagine building the Great Pyramids without an architecture. Imagine building an aircraft without an architecture. Why build an organization without one?
When I began the journey of writing the book, I pondered the idea of the future and transformation, but transformation to what? That is when the concept of a Bionic Enterprise entered the picture. Imagine an organization endowed with intelligent AI-driven technologies that animate the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution. Imagine that these technologies transform human processes, activities, tasks, and actions at the most atomic levels, at the most intimate levels – in thousands of small ways and in large ways.
In the 1970s, the Japanese auto industry began radically improving the quality of their cars to compete with American cars. Their transformation began with a thousand small improvements. One improvement at a time. Collectively, these improvements enabled them to learn how to apply total quality management and "bake" in quality across the design life cycle and into the assembly line. The result – cars that were reliable, fuel efficient, and well-constructed. It was time for Detroit to wake up and adopt a new mindset and lose their complacency or lose the auto market. Another result of this shift to continuous improvement was that the rate of change began to accelerate. The duration of business development cycles began to shrink and that continues today.
John Zachman, creator of the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture © is widely recognized as the “father” of enterprise architecture. (And, I might add, he was gracious enough to write the foreword for my book!) He has famously stated that, “When the rate of change increases to the point that the real time required to assimilate change exceeds the time in which the change must be manifest, the enterprise is going to find itself in deep yogurt.”
How does that relate to enterprise architecture? Because the EA helps manage change at many levels. Mr. Zachman's quote presents us with a conundrum. We have an increasing rate of change, and yet we have many who have an inherent fear of change. Where does the change come from? It comes from those who understand the importance of those three bullets I mentioned earlier about to whom the future belongs.
The Bionic Mindset - Back to the Six Million Dollar Man. Astronaut Steve Austin, the character who lost both legs, an arm and an eye that were replaced with Bionic components did not simply wake up after his surgery and start running 60+ miles per hour and lifting cars with his Bionic arm. He went through a significant period of adjustment. He had to learn how to embrace this new normal. With the help of his doctors and leadership he had to adopt a Bionic Mindset. The TV show did an admirable job of portraying the human side of his journey. It taught us that with all the technology that had been fused to his anatomy and to every human activity that he might engage in –at the core of it was the need to adopt a Bionic Mindset. A paradigm shift had just occurred. He now needed to begin his personal transformation to embrace it and how the Bionics allowed him to achieve Bionic levels of performance. Organizations and individuals must do the same.
If an organization or an individual cannot begin even in the smallest ways to embrace change and learn about the opportunities it provides, then their role in the future will be greatly marginalized. In short, it is dim. Embracing Bionic Transformation is simply not an option. That is not to say that we should all blindly jump off the Bionic cliff and not pose thoughtful questions about the nature of the change or the unintended consequences and risks. Doing so should be standard procedure. Questioning and understanding the impacts, both good and bad, makes for a well-balanced and healthy approach to adoption. But make no mistake – The Bionic Enterprise is coming. Not adopting a Bionic Mindset is a formula for obsolescence.
In my book, in a section titled, Becoming Bionic - I state – “An overarching driver for any enterprise is the need to stay ahead. Enlightened leaders get this. They’re always looking for the next great management paradigm, an approach to value creation that gives them an edge. How can we better organize work, people, digital assets and so on? Enterprises must stay forward-leaning to survive and to effectively serve their stakeholders. That truth holds in business, government, or national defense. Periodically or even continuously, enterprises must transform or risk stagnation.”
(Excerpt from the Bionic Enterprise: Architecting the Intelligent Society of the Future)
Any company, organization, or military force is comprised of people, teams, departments, and individuals. These individuals need leadership, inspiration, and vision. These organizations also cannot remain static. Leadership must draw them toward the future. Successful organizations must continuously evolve and even periodically transform themselves. In the Human Perspective of the Bionic Enterprise Framework (C), we consider the means and the effects of visionary leadership, innovation, and creativity. We employ maturity models that provide a framework to guide organizations to higher levels of maturity. The Bionic Enterprise Organizational Maturity Model provides a means to mature the Human Perspective.
In the age of artificial intelligence and the Bionic future, it is no longer sufficient to purchase and implement technology. Technology and humanity must achieve harmony. Technology must become an effective and desirable extension of ourselves – our physical and cognitive aspects. The Human Perspective must welcome the change and the capabilities presented by the Technology Perspective and fuse with them to achieve new levels of human and organizational potential.
(End excerpt)
Top-Down and Bottom-Up - So how do we adopt a Bionic Mindset? It can come from anywhere and everywhere within an organization, but at a minimum it must come from top leadership. It is the job of the visionary leader to communicate and inculcate this message down through the ranks. Any vision and major direction must start at the top. I wrote a message on a whiteboard at work as just one way of communicating that change:
“If you’re not having a daily conversation with your AI, you’re doing it wrong.”
When I first put that quote up, I was teased and even mocked. The skeptics shook their heads and walked by. Some were simply uninformed and didn’t understand the implications of that simple statement. I shared examples of how I was using AI to produce content that they were using in development and work products. I described how it saved me time and those few ideas were picked up by the folks who could readily see the potential. As more individuals began to utilize AI in more ways, its adoption rapidly spread - even to the skeptics. Smart people, even if skeptical, often are able to see the writing on the wall - or the whiteboard! That was more than a year ago. Today the AI genie is out of the bottle and my colleagues look to this cognitive power tool in many tasks they perform. They are always looking to see if there is an opportunity to save time, to produce a better result, or just a faster result. But of course, just to help the skeptics along a little further, I had to follow that message with another:
“AI isn’t the final answer. It’s the first draft.”
Visionary Leadership, as always, must lead. That means providing a vision, explaining the vision, expecting the vision, and creating an environment that supports the individuals across the AI Risk-Fear Spectrum as they embrace, own, and execute that vision.
Leadership must help the skeptics embrace the vision of Bionic Transformation while tempering the enthusiasm of the trailblazers and rapid adopters just enough so they don’t hurt themselves or race too far ahead of the organization. But rushing to adoption will still happen when you have a group that is enthusiastic. Leadership’s role is to provide those fearless souls with at least some guardrails that emphasize caution, and focus.
Below is an outline for a strategy for leadership to implement in adopting a Bionic Mindset and embracing the core elements of the Bionic Enterprise Framework © in my book.
Strategy Outline: Adopting a Bionic Mindset - the First Step in Bionic Transformation
I. Winning Hearts and Minds:
A. Empathy and Communication:
Emphasize the human-centric nature of the Bionic Enterprise (as highlighted in the book's description of Society 5.0).
Communicate clearly how bionic technologies will enhance human activity, not replace it.
Actively listen to and address concerns and fears about job displacement or technology taking over.
Show empathy for the challenges of adapting to new technologies and workflows.
B. Education and Transparency:
Provide comprehensive education and training on bionic technologies and their applications.
Be transparent about the transformation process, including timelines, changes, and expected outcomes.
Share success stories and examples of how bionic technologies have improved efficiency, productivity, or user experience.
Address concerns regarding Dark AI and ethical AI implementation.
C. Inclusivity and Empowerment:
Involve employees at all levels in the transformation process.
Seek input and feedback from diverse groups within the organization.
Empower employees to contribute their ideas and expertise to the development and implementation of bionic solutions.
Recognize and reward those who embrace and champion the bionic mindset.
II. Providing Visionary Leadership:
A. Articulating a Compelling Vision:
Develop a clear and inspiring vision for the Bionic Enterprise, focusing on the benefits for employees, customers, and society.
Paint a picture of the future where humans and technology work harmoniously to achieve greater potential.
Communicate the vision consistently and passionately.
B. Modeling a Bionic Mindset:
Demonstrate a willingness to embrace new technologies and ways of thinking.
Encourage experimentation and learning from failures.
Foster a culture of innovation and creativity (as emphasized in the document).
Act as a role model for adaptability and continuous learning.
C. Strategic Guidance and Support:
Provide strategic direction for the transformation process, aligning it with the overall organizational goals.
Ensure that resources and support are available for employees to adapt to the changes.
Establish clear metrics and milestones to track progress and celebrate achievements.
Address paradigm shifts proactively.
III. Adopting a Bionic Mindset:
A. Emphasizing Continuous Learning:
Promote a culture of continuous learning and development.
Provide opportunities for employees to acquire new skills and knowledge related to bionic technologies.
Encourage employees to stay curious and explore emerging trends.
B. Fostering Collaboration and Connectedness:
Break down silos and encourage collaboration across departments.
Leverage technology to enhance communication and knowledge sharing.
Build a sense of community and shared purpose around the Bionic Enterprise vision.
C. Embracing Adaptability and Resilience:
Prepare employees for the inevitable changes and disruptions that come with technological advancement.
Encourage a growth mindset and resilience in the face of challenges.
Promote a sense of optimism and excitement about the future possibilities of the Bionic Enterprise.
In part 2 we will look at Becoming Bionic from the perspective of the individual and the organization.
For more information and free downloadable Bionic Canvas diagrams go to:
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