Blog, Pitang.

I am not a futurist. I know little about it. That is why I went looking for inspiration from Jacob Morgan, whom I have been following for some time. According to Jacob, in his book “The Future Leader,” just in the last decade:

• Leaders were obsessed with stock prices.

• Inclusion and diversity efforts were just beginning.

• Artificial intelligence was not as advanced or fast-changing as it is today.

• Hierarchy was challenged, but not to the degree we see today.

• Social Media was just beginning.

• You didn't hear the phrase “Employee Experience.”

• Purpose and Impact were concepts people laughed at.

• The workforce was not distributed and diverse like it is today.

• The workspace was a traditional cubicle.

In his book, Jacob interviewed more than 140 CEOs of companies across various segments about the future of leadership and shares six trends that are shaping the future of leadership:

• Artificial Intelligence and Technology

  
  

Considering leadership with two major responsibilities—making decisions and leading people toward those decisions—AI is and will continue refining the data that makes it possible to improve the assertiveness of these decisions. Bad managers, he explains, focus solely on the responsibility related to decision-making. These will have their value reduced, leaving leaders to direct their focus toward the human side of leadership, meaning motivating, inspiring, engaging, and coaching their team members.

• Pace of Change

  
  

I loved the quote from interviewee David Henshall, CEO of Citrix. He talks about the intensity of change for the coming years and how that will be reflected in how people and companies organize themselves, saying: “The only way to be successful in this world is by challenging the status quo.” Coupled with the finding that 85% of jobs in 2030 have not yet been invented (Dell. “Realizing 2030: A Divided Vision of the Future.” 2017.) The accelerated pace of change shifts the leadership focus toward understanding what lies ahead to help people adapt to the new paradigm, constantly.

For me, this cements the understanding that designing and running experiments constantly is an essential practice.

• New Talent Landscape:

  
  

There is a talent shortage to make up the workforce. There are also gaps in the skills of the available workforce. The case for training and developing new skills within the company is stronger. Investing in keeping available and experienced talent in an advisory capacity and genuinely allowing training programs to gain space to be constant and ongoing is essential. Jacob also recommends investing in diversity and inclusion.

Purpose and Meaning: Here it is:

Source: https://medium.com/jacob-morgan/the-difference-between-purpose-meaning-and-how-to-create-both-d59ea31c387b

• Morality, Ethics, and Transparency:

  
  

It is a challenge to work in the era of opacity. The suggestions in this topic are to find your moral compass, communicate (excessively and intentionally) what the right thing to do is, and continually consider and reflect on how you can be more transparent as a leader.

• Globalization:

  
  

There is a lot to learn from other cultures. Jacob suggests paying attention to global megatrends and the importance of gaining experience leading in other parts of the world.

You might have noticed that the topic was about the future of work, but the focus was on the future of leadership. That is because the future of work is shaped by the leaders of the future. 

We are living in curious times, where a virus is accelerating trends in proportions previously unimaginable. While working from home used to be something for disruptive, avant-garde, daring companies, now, in less than 60 days, it is a fait accompli, in the most painful way possible. 

Online training, once perceived as low quality, easy, and incomplete due to losing much of the human interaction, is now "what we have for today," and people are discovering that those who were already prepared in this arena have a lot to offer and that the disadvantages pointed out above are pure fallacy. 

Even so, we largely see the culture of improvisation in the amount of online training experts who quickly migrated their content. Reactivity, right now, is costly. The time for discovery & exploration in this area has already passed and happened before the pandemic. Now it is exploitation for those who dared to venture into the uncertain past. 

Remote Work

Finally, we are experiencing the advent of remote work: people are discovering videoconferencing and collaboration tools, flabbergasted by the possibilities technology offers; fortunately, this is nothing new in my field, and it has been our day-to-day for a few years now. 

These are just a few examples to address my conclusion: offices (as we know them) will no longer exist; they will be smaller, collaborative spaces, rather than “cubicles,” those small islands of isolation and property. 

Remote work will now amount to something close to 80% instead of being the 20%, and what's more, you who are facing unemployment can now work for a company on the other side of the world, from your home or a coworking space. I'm not saying this wasn't possible before, but it was the 20%. 

And finally: don't you miss it? How you must miss spending two to three hours a day in traffic jams, arriving home to find the kids asleep… working late because there are fewer people and interruptions, and also because you would just waste more gas and get stressed in traffic; it was better to stay working, it was more productive. Young folks, the future of work is now the past.