In a recent conversation with my daughter, she attributed her success as a small business owner to what she termed her Superpower. I questioned her further on what she meant by her “Superpower.” She explained to me that while her experience in school, college, and the corporate sector looked good on a resume, in real job situations, she could find workarounds for tasks and problems that proved valuable.
My next question, of course, was: “What is a workaround? Well, Dad, my Superpower is finding alternative paths when the obvious one is blocked—the ability to adjust, improvise, and still get the job done when your training, rules, and chains of command make a straightforward approach impossible. You know, Dad, to be blunt, in schools and corporate settings, workarounds are defined as cheating. I define workarounds as finding an individual, a system, a supplier, a source of information, a venue, or a skill set that is off the grid, so to speak. You know you are working off the grid when your boss and colleagues give you that look—I don’t know how you pulled this off…but it worked.
I then asked her why others in the organization were not using this Superpower. Well, in her words, most of my bosses and colleagues have been taught and have been relatively successful at following the rules—they are very good at following scripts. She reminded me of her struggles in the academic world and several corporate structures, where following the rules was simply what was expected. In her case, early on in school and college, she developed workarounds—extra credit, tutors, smart boyfriends—to get by in her courses. In the corporate sector, her proclivity to work around standard operating procedures allowed her to solve problems and complete tasks that no one else in the organization could resolve.
She then went on to explain how AI, for her, was becoming the ultimate workaround. I interrupted her by asking if she wasn’t concerned that AI could eliminate her business. Her response, “Dad, not at all.” To summarize her response: Dad, the service I am offering is something no AI can replicate. What AI does provide me with is the mechanics that surround the services, which frees up my time to further develop the service I am offering.
As a lifelong educator—teacher, administrator, professor—I had worked my entire career designing curricular and school organizational structures that taught students how to follow the rules. As my daughter pointed out, the concept of workarounds, her Superpower, was considered cheating in the schools I worked in. What struck me in this conversation is that we may be entering an era where various technologies reward those who find workarounds and challenge traditional rules—while punishing those who simply follow them. To put it another way, schools should be rewarding Superpowers—unique talents and problem-solving abilities—rather than just super achievers who simply meet standard expectations.
Alan C. Jones 