Epilogue
Our Invitation to You
Our purpose in writing this book is to invite you to consider a new way of thinking and behaving—a new “story”—for the SMA. Our story has two heroes, NewSmart and Humility, and four supporting actors—the NewSmart Behaviors. No matter how you work or where you work, we believe that accepting NewSmart and the Humility mindset and embracing the NewSmart Behaviors will be necessary for you to excel cognitively and emotionally in the SMA and thus increase your chances of being successful in a world transformed by technology.
If you’re a manager of a team or leader of an organization, we believe that this book applies to how you lead and engage others in the pursuit of organizational excellence and value creation. The organization of the future is likely to be a NewSmart organization with a humanistic, emotionally positive, collaborative work environment in which individual learning and development drives value creation for multiple stakeholders. Helping people grow and improve personally will be one of your primary responsibilities. It’ll be hard to do that for others if you’re not also doing it yourself.
Coming technology advances in such areas as smart robots, artificially intelligent smart machines, the Internet of Things, biomedical and genetic engineering, additive manufacturing, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and virtual reality will challenge our humanness, our organizations, and our society. All of us and our children and grandchildren can be served by a new mental model and the behaviors that enable the highest levels of human thinking, learning, emotionally engaging with others, and making meaning together as we all try to navigate a volatile new world that may seem farfetched but is likely to be upon us within the decade.
We invite you to begin implementing your NewSmart Behaviors Personal Improvement Plan so you’ll have a better chance of creating meaningful work and meaningful relationships in a world driven by ever-advancing technology. You have the choice to break the chains of automaticity, to quiet your ego, to listen reflectively, to manage your thinking and emotions, and to emotionally connect and relate to others in order to reach your full human potential in the SMA.
Aristotle is reputed to have said it this way: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Our warmest regards and best wishes are with you on your journey to human excellence.