How are you preparing for the next industrial revolution?
These days the world is buzzing with AI. With products like ChatGPT by OpenAI and Google’s recent release of Bard, generative AI has taken the world by storm. Bill Gates Says AI Is the Most Revolutionary Technology in Decades. Businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it. From marketing to software development, we are in the midst of the next industrial revolution, which is both exciting and terrifying all at once.
We’re only just beginning to explore the ramifications and uses of AI for business, particularly for the community association industry. Today, AI uses in the industry might be as simplistic as writing a job description or blog post (not this one), or using AI to analyze governing documents or respond to customer service needs. All things that a human can do well, the AI just does it faster. But the tidal wave is upon us, and the question we have to consider is, will our businesses ride the wave, or drown under it?
With the integration to CINC, SmartProperty customers will receive access to a new critical tool for boards and community members, the SmartProperty Report. According to Chris Millner, Chief Product Officer at CINC Systems, “This report transforms the way HOA and COA boards receive communication from their management companies. The data is synchronized in real time between property information in CINC and SmartProperty. This means every decision that a board makes can be made with the confidence that the information provided to them is accurate and up-to-date.”
The Opposite of Fragility is not Resilience
One way to help businesses thrive through uncertainty might be found in a concept from an 9-year-old book called “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.” It was coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the famed author who was a former options trader that wrote “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” in 2007.
The premise in short: fragile things break under stress and pressure, while resilient things are able to withstand stress and pressure without breaking. Anti-fragile things, on the other hand, actually get stronger under stress and pressure
“Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind.”
– Antifragile:,Things that Gain from Disorder
Imagine you drop a wine glass on the hard floor. It breaks to pieces, right? That is a fragile object. You might think the opposite of fragile is resilient. Like a plastic tumbler. You drop it on the ground and it survives. It may get a scratch or crack if dropped repeatedly, but it’s resilient.
Taleb posits that there is a higher level than resilience: an exact opposite to fragile. Like how an oyster reinforces its shell in response to stress, making it stronger in the future. The oyster’s shell actually gets better under pressure.
What are you doing to prepare for the next industrial revolution?
For businesses in the community association industry (which includes not only management companies and service providers but also the community associations themselves) we need to begin thinking of ways to embrace uncertainty and volatility, rather than trying to simply avoid or control it.
The next industrial revolution is upon us. If we want to not only survive but thrive, as a business and as an industry, we can’t afford to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. We need to prepare with strategic planning, risk management, flexibility, and agility.
We can learn to see randomness and chaos as sources of energy and opportunity, rather than threats. This will help us become anti-fragile, and better positioned to thrive in this uncertain environment.
