Are you too busy?

Ask anyone these days and the word “busy” seems to be the top of the list. I admit I am also guilty of saying that in response to, “How are you?”

And then I was thinking about how I would respond to a young professional’s question where he asked, “Can you recommend a career where I won’t be replaced by a robot?”

That made me think.

My reply was that accounting is still a great career if you learn how to use the skills that computers don’t have and learn how to harness technology and not avoid it. In other words, it will take the very hard work of “thinking” more and learning more.

In a period of rapid change and disruption (hard trends), we have to be more future focused.

The faster you go, the farther ahead you have to see (and think).

Despite these top challenges facing accounting and finance professionals:

1. Being reactive vs proactive
2. Not enough time
3. Information overload
4. Success and talent development
5. Doing more with less

We have to make more time to think!

It was true in 1911 when Thomas Watson, Sr., CEO of IBM Corporation had this sign made and it is even more true today in 2015 when things are changing exponentially faster than they were in 1911. “The trouble with every one of us is that we don’t think enough. Knowledge is the result of thought, and thought is the keynote of success in this business or any business.”      – Thomas Watson, Sr. From IBM’s History page, “The THINK motto had come to him in 1911 at an early morning meeting of NCR sales managers. On this day, the managers didn’t have any good ideas about how to improve the business. He decided on the spot that henceforth THINK would be the company’s slogan, and ordered a subordinate to post a placard with “THINK” printed on it in bold letters on the wall of the room the following morning.”

It is no surprise that IBM is the one who brought us IBM Watson, the first cognitive computer that thinks and is the one collaborating on a series of learning programs about leading-edge technology like Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Big Data, cognitive computing and even chatbots. See our press release

IBM Partners with Maryland Association of Certified Public Accountants to Train Accounting and Finance Professionals in AI and Data Science

Are you too busy to THINK?

I challenged all of those young professionals to schedule an appointment for one hour per week to think about the future and I am challenging you to do the same.

Tell me how you "think" and make time for deep reflective thinking and learning?