3 Ways Embracing Automation and Technology Can Turbocharge Your Entrepreneurial Quest – Entrepreneur

Technology has long been lauded as the savior of modern business, but some fear it may also hasten its downfall. Pew Research Center reported that a full two-thirds of Americans think robots will overtake most humans work over the next 50 years, inspiring feelings of both resentment and awe toward the technology we ourselves have created.

Rather than be intimidated by this looming possibility, however, entrepreneurs should recognize that this means they have more control than they realize. Technologys power puts them in a position to create value, which should reveal opportunities and fuel the entrepreneurial spirit.

The problem is that most entrepreneurs have trouble shifting their perspective to see whats overwhelming as empowering.

People are worried about machines, computers and factories taking their jobs, dwelling on whether their own positions will be threatened. Its not a question of whether its going to happen -- its a matter of when. The takeover is already underway, but were so busy staring at whats fading into the mist that were overlooking the amazing possibilities that come with technology.

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Here a few steps we can take to reframe technology as our ally, not our enemy:

Not that long ago, we lived without cellphones. Now, we carry powerful computers in the palm of our hands, telling us which roads to take when were in traffic, enabling us to check in for flights and letting us look up anything we need with the push of a button. They save us time, energy and money, freeing us up to spend our most valuable resource -- our lives -- on the things that really matter.

The same idea applies to our companies. Things that are time-consuming but not thinking-intensive -- aka the stuff we called busywork in school -- suck up the hours and brain cells that would be better spent on the difficult tasks we cant hand off.

A study published in Behavioral and Brain Functions concluded that a prolonged cognitive load -- too much to think about -- results in mental fatigue. That means that when you finally do find the time to devote to those high-value tasks, you dont have the energy to do so.

McKinsey & Companys 2016 Automating the Insurance Industry report assessed how automation could be applied to the insurance industrys current tasks, and it found that up to a quarter of the fields existing roles could be combined or removed in the coming decade. Machine learning could take over up to 60 percent of an insurance sales agents job, for example, but only 35 percent of an underwriters. That means that in 10 years, insurance companies will be able to dedicate more of their team members brain power to more complex tasks while handing the easier ones off to computers.

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Entrepreneurs erroneously assume that everything they do for their businesses is valuable. It likely is all worthwhile to some extent, but some efforts add more value to their companies than others. Growing a company and leading a team makes it essential that you identify where youre adding the most value so you put your focus there.

Ive worked with leaders who realized their time was best spent working on developing business partnerships or on hiring executive-level positions for their companies, but they were investing their days in approving ad copy or backing up data -- things that could be handled by automation. To be sure, backing up data is vital to a company, as GitLab could tell us after experiencing data deletion, followed by a backup failure.

GitLabs incident initially occurred as a result of a system administrator accidentally deleting a folder of live production data. In the wake of this disruption caused by human error, industry professionals recommended that others use all-in-one platforms with analyzers to determine what should be backed up and then automatically back those files up. This underscores the fact that what those entrepreneurs Ive known have spent their time on could have been better accomplished by technology than by them -- and allowed them to spend time building high-revenue partnerships instead.

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We all know entrepreneurs who wouldnt have a blog on their website if it werent for a platform such as WordPress. Technology can be seen as an extension of your business that enables your company to do things and offer services or products it couldnt otherwise.

My company has consulted with businesses that have held group brainstorming sessions to determine what they should be doing but couldnt with their current technology, staff or skill sets. They were clients of ours that hoped our platform had the ability to assist them with their new efforts. In some cases, we already offered a way to do what they wanted and simply had to show them how to integrate it; in others, we discussed how we could create what they were looking for or tweak an existing feature to do so.

In both instances, my company -- and theirs -- took advantage of technology to expand our offerings and grow our businesses.

Technology may ultimately change how many of our jobs look. But this is a time of opportunity, not fear -- what our companies and roles look like in the future will be enhanced, not diminished, versions of what we do now. If you free up some brain space, identify where you add the most value and pinpoint what you want to do in the future, youll be driving the technology changes youll encounter rather than be driven by them.

Lena Requist, with her background of building startups into multimillion dollar organizations, is passionate about growing businesses and developing teams. Her current project, ONTRAPORT, has been recognized for many awards including; fast...

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3 Ways Embracing Automation and Technology Can Turbocharge Your Entrepreneurial Quest - Entrepreneur