The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here

If I think about my own future and that of my children, and factor in the uncertainty we face, then of course it’s a good idea to develop plans that are flexible, and to pursue ideas that are robust under a wide range of contingencies. In other words, it is wise to develop coping strategies in the face of uncertainty. However, what is also important is to strive to improve the accuracy of our beliefs about the future. This is crucial because, as I will show, there might well be traps that we are walking towards that could by avoided with foresight, or opportunities we could reach much sooner if we could see them further in advance.

Knowing something about the future helps us to prepare for our future, it influences the advice we give others, and could have a fundamental impact on the choices that we, our family and friends, our community and our company decide to make; about the competencies we decide to develop, the communities and networks on which we focus our attention, or the companies and organisations with which we choose to be associated.

The Future of Work Research Consortium

The challenge is that even with my own three decades of knowledge about work I find the future of work still fiendishly difficult to predict. That’s why, by way of preparation, I created a research consortium designed to tap into ideas and knowledge from across the world. The research takes place every year – beginning in 2009 and progressing to more global and diverse groups every subsequent year.

Each year, my research team and I begin by identifying the five forces that will most impact on the future of work (these are technology; globalisation; demography and longevity; society; and natural resources); we then go about amassing the hard facts for each of these five forces. These hard facts for each of the five forces are then presented to members of the research consortium. This consortium is perhaps one of the most fascinating experiments ever conducted between management, academics and executives. In a sense it creates a ‘wise crowd’ of people. In 2009, for example, more than 200 people participated. They were members of more than 21 companies from around the world including Absa (the South African bank), Nokia, Nomura, Tata Consulting Group (in India), Thomson Reuters and the Singapore Government’s Ministry of Manpower, together with two not-for-profit organisations, Save the Children and World Vision. In 2010 the number of participating companies had risen to 45, with over 15 from Asia including SingTel in Singapore and Wipro, Infosys and Mahindra & Mahindra from India, and Cisco and Manpower from the USA.

The research began in earnest in November 2009, at the London Business School. At this point we presented the hard facts of the five forces and asked executives to construct storylines of a day-in-the-life of people working in 2025 on the basis of what they had heard. We then went on to repeat this exercise with many more people in Singapore and India. The storylines that began to emerge became the blueprints for the stories I will tell later in the book. These are important because, while they are works of fiction, it is through these descriptions of possible everyday life that we are able to imagine the interplay between different ideas and knowledge. These storylines of a day-in-the-life in 2025 are not, of course, forecasts. What they portray are ways of seeing the future, and of assembling different versions of the future. They are crucial because in them we can begin to see just how much the future is full of possibilities.

Once the research team and consortium members had developed the storylines, they took the initial conversations about the hard facts and storylines back to their own companies. Over the following months they brought back the thoughts from their wider community, and from more than 30 countries. At this point we were able to work together virtually in an elaborate shared portal, and also to discuss the emerging ideas in monthly virtual web-based seminars. We followed this up later with a series of workshops in Europe and Asia. At the same time I tested out some of my initial thoughts through a weekly blog, http:// www.lyndagrattonfutureofwork. It is these ideas, insights and anxieties that became stitched into the storyline narratives and brought depth to the conversation. They are also the basis of the personal reflections that you will come across in the debate that follows.

The paths to the future

As we looked more closely at the future, what became increasingly clear was that in fact there is not one but many possible paths to the future. It is certainly possible for each one of us to construct a path into the future that simply accentuates the negatives of the five forces. This becomes a future of isolation, fragmentation, exclusion and narcissism. This is the Default Future in which the five forces have outpaced the possibilities of taking any action. In these storylines we see people who may have been very successful in one aspect of their life, but who have failed to take positive action around an important issue or have only taken actions that are straightforward and seemed easy to take. In the Default Future no one is prepared to work together to take cohesive action or to change the status quo. In this future, dealing with the current problems takes place without consistency or cohesion, and events outpace actions.

There is also a future where the positive aspects of the five forces are harnessed to create a more crafted outcome. These are career and life stories in which collaboration plays a key role, where choice and wisdom are exercised, and actions create a more balanced way of working. In these stories of a Crafted Future people are experimenting with ways of working, learning fast from each other, and rapidly adopting good ideas. These are storylines where the forces that transform work could result in the possibility – the promise, even – of a better future. It is the future that can emerge when people actively make decisions and wise choices, and are able to face up to the consequences of these choices. It is a future in which people can work more harmoniously with others, where they can become more valued and masterful, and where the different parts of a working life can be integrated in a more authentic way.

The storylines within the two paths capture possibilities; they are a way for us to explore the future, and indeed construct our own future. A word of warning: these stories are not in any sense mechanical forecasts of what will be. Instead they are based on the recognition that each one of us holds beliefs and makes choices that can lead down different paths; they reveal different possible futures that are both plausible and challenging.

Taking the right path: the shifts

Each one of us would want to choose the Crafted Future rather than succumb to the Default Future. But how do we ensure we are on the right path? The journey that I went through, and the journey I am inviting you to take, will make you question your mental map of the future, just as it has for me. You and I already have a mental map of the future – that’s what has been driving the decisions we have already taken, and the choices we have already made. The question is: is this the right mental map, and are you on the right path?

In understanding what is the right path, it is crucial to have as much information and knowledge as possible about how the future will emerge. My research team and I have understood this deeply and will present it to you as the stories unfold. It seems to me that the storylines, hard facts and scenarios demand that we re-examine our assumptions, and ask three key questions:

* What are the potential milestones or events that could particularly affect me and those around me?

* What are the most significant factors that will influence my working life, and how could these play out?

* Therefore, what should I be doing over the coming five years to ensure I am on the right path to creating a future-proofed career, particularly in view of the turbulent times ahead?

My aim in this book is clear. It is written to support you as you develop your own point of view about the future – and your own path to creating a future-proofed working life. To do this you will have to understand the hard facts with as much depth as possible; to play through the possible scenarios and storylines to understand what they mean to you; while at the same time really being aware of the aspects of your specific context that will shape the choices you have. Only then can you look hard at your mental models and assumptions of the future and construct a path that will ensure your working life is robust, purposeful and valuable.

So, in creating a future-proofed working life, what are the assumptions that will need to be questioned, and what are the implications for how we live our future working lives? I am predicting that there are three shifts in assumptions which each one of us will have to make in order to craft a meaningful and valuable working life over the coming two decades.

First, our assumptions that general skills will be valuable has to be questioned. It seems clear to me that in a joined-up world where potentially 5 billion people have access to the worldwide Cloud, the age of the generalist is over. Instead, my prediction for the future is that you will need what I call ‘serial mastery’ to add real value. That has got crucial implications for understanding what will be valuable skills and competencies in the future, for developing deep mastery in these areas, and yet being able to move into other areas of mastery through sliding and morphing. It also has implications for an increasingly invisible world, where self-marketing and creating credentials will be key.

Second, our assumptions about the role of individualism and competitiveness as a foundation for creating great working lives and careers have to be questioned. In a world that could become increasingly fragmented and isolated, I believe that connectivity, collaboration and networks will be central. These networks could be the group that support you in complex tasks; it could be the crowd of diverse people who are able to be the basis of ideas and inspiration; it could even be the intimate, warm and loving relationships that will be at the heart of your capacity to regenerate and remain balanced. What is crucial here is that – in a world that becomes more and more virtual – strong, diverse, emotional relationships cannot be taken for granted, they have to be shaped and crafted.

Finally, as I consider the five forces that will shape our working lives over the coming two decades, and see how the storylines could play out, I am struck by the need to think hard about the type of working life to which we aspire. Do we follow the old assumptions of continuously going head first for consumption and quantity? Or is it now time to think hard about trade-offs and to focus more on the production and quality of our experiences and the balance of our lives, rather than simply the voraciousness of our consumption?

It is possible for each one of us to construct a very clear view of the challenges we face, and many of the trade-offs we will have to consider. Of course, our own future, and indeed the future of those we care about, is essentially unknowable. But that does not mean that we leave it to chance. I am convinced that we can prepare for the future in a way that increases the possibilities of success. We can do this by really understanding the five forces that will change our world. We can prepare by constructing storylines of possible futures that we can use as a basis for making choices and understanding consequences. Finally, we can prepare for the future by acknowledging that some of our most dearly held assumptions are misplaced and that we will be required to make some fundamental shifts in how we think and act our way into our future working lives. By doing this we are ensuring we are better equipped to construct a working life that excites us, brings us pleasure and creates worth for others and ourselves.

PART I

The Forces That Will Shape

Your Future

Chapter 1

The Five Forces

If you want to understand the future, you need to start with the five forces that will shape your world over the coming decades. What’s more, you need to understand these five forces in some detail, since it is often in the details that the really interesting stuff can be found. For me it has been an incredibly exciting journey to collect from around the world the 32 pieces about the forces. I cannot remember being so excited about getting up in the morning and researching and writing. I have been fascinated, surprised and intrigued by what I have found. I had no idea that in 2010 China was building 45 airports; or that the centre of innovation of handheld money devices is Kenya; or that by 2025 more than 5 billion people will be connected with each other through handheld devices. These are the hard facts that I will share with you in order to create a deeper and more accurate view of the way your working life will change. They are also the hard facts that will aid you as you begin to decide how you will construct your future working life, and indeed the advice you will give to others. In finding and putting these 32 pieces together, I have been influenced by the need to be global rather than local; historical rather than simply of the moment; and broad rather than narrow.

Taking a global focus

One of the challenges about understanding the future is that much of the contemporary research and books about technology, oil or globalisation tends to take a single-region focus – typically either the USA or Europe. This makes sense as the boundaries are well understood and so the context is agreed up front.

However, this local focus does not suit my purpose for this book. In the past, I have been delighted that people across the world have read my books, and my hope is that this book will resonate with people across the world. So it’s really important to me that wherever you are reading this book you have some sense of inclusion. But it is not just you as a reader that creates the need for a global viewpoint. Perhaps more than at any time in the history of mankind, the story of the future is a ‘joined-up’ story that can only be told from a global perspective. For example, it is impossible to imagine future carbon usage and the impact it could have on work patterns without knowing something about China’s likely industrial development. It is impossible to understand potential future consumption patterns without knowing something about the savings preferences of the average US worker.

So, for both these reasons, my mission is to create a global perspective. However, I am acutely aware that as I have developed the 32 pieces that follow there are many missing regions. The challenge is that if I wrote a sentence or two for every region, then what follows would become more like an encyclopaedia and lose the flow I believe to be crucial to a story that’s worth reading. So, generally I have assumed a global vantage point, and focused on specific regions when I believe something particularly interesting is happening there.

Looking back to a historical focus

It is slightly odd in a book about the future to be often casting a glimpse back to the past. Of course there are books that are resolutely future focused. However, I believe that if we want to increase our ability to understand the future of work we also have to glimpse back to the past. Taking a historical perspective can be useful in both creating a sense of momentum and velocity, and also providing a view of historical precedence. This is important for, as we have seen, there are clues to the future of work in both the first Industrial Revolution of the 1870s and indeed in the changes in production that occurred around the 1930s. It also seems to me that knowing a little about the past can serve to bring deeper insight into the future. This is particularly the case when we come to think about societal trends, including family structures and consumerism.

Understanding the broad context

Over the following 32 pieces you will see that I range far from the confined space of work itself. We will take a look at how we have lived and might live in the future, our family structures, our modes of consumption, oil prices and institutional trust. I have chosen to take this broad brush because it is clear to me that work cannot be seen without acknowledging the broader context. Work takes place in the context of families, expectations and hopes; it takes place within the context of the community and in the context of economic and political structures.

As I put these pieces together I am reminded again of my mother’s quilt-making. Over the years she collected scraps of material from many sources and then one day would sit down and work out a pattern from the pieces. I have to admit that one of the reasons the earlier metaphor of my mother’s fabrics and the quilts appeals to me so much is that, although I am not a maker of quilts, I am a collector of fabrics. Almost any trip I go on, I come back with tiny snippets of embroidery from Seoul or swathes of silk from Mumbai, or woven grasses from Tanzania. I even have a small woven Aboriginal basket made from pine needles. I’ve always patched together information in the same way. I like to travel and talk to people, and every year I make a point of visiting Asia, Africa and America.

Being a business professor is a huge advantage in this endeavour since I’m not trying to sell my ideas as I might in consulting, and I am not hiding my views as I might if I was an executive in a multinational company. I find that people tend to talk with me openly, sharing their hopes and confiding their fears. And, of course, perhaps the biggest advantage in being a professor is that I have the luxury that few have of extended periods of time to think and write. This has been crucial because, as you will discover, while this is an incredibly exciting journey, it is also very complex and it is only with time and reflection that I have been able to take a perspective and view of these pieces.

To help you find you own way through this maze of information, I have assembled the pieces of hard facts about the future under five broad headings: Technology; Globalisation; Demography and Longevity; Society; and Energy Resources. The truth is that these are rather superficial ways of categorising and the reality is that they can be re-sorted in many other ways. But it strikes me that this is a good place to start.

I have then created for each of these broad areas about five to eight smaller pieces. Each of these pieces has some kind of internal consistency and tells a story on its own: a story, for example, about how the West is ageing, or how the developing countries are becoming powerhouses of innovation, or how the population of the world is moving from the countryside to the city. I’ve chosen each of these pieces because I believe they could be important to your future, your children’s future or the future of your community. It is up to you to decide what to do with the 32 pieces as you craft your personal point of view about the future.

So, let’s take a closer look at the five broad forces that will shape the future of work, and the more detailed pieces that create a deeper understanding.

The force of technology

Technology has always played a key role in framing work and what happens in working lives. When we fast-forward to our working lives in 2025 and even out to 2050, we can only do so by knowing something about how technologies will develop in the near term – and by taking a guess at the possibilities for the long term.

Technology has been one of the main drivers of the long-term economic growth of countries; it has influenced the size of the world population, the life expectancy of the population and the education possibilities. Technological changes will continue to transform the everyday nature of our work and the way we communicate. Technology will also influence working lives in other deeper and more indirect ways – the way people engage with each other, their expectations of their colleagues, and even their views on morality and human nature. You don’t have to be an out-and-out supporter of technological determinism to recognise that technological capability – through its complex interactions with people, institutions, cultures and environment – is a key determinant of the ground rules within which the games of human civilisation get played out.

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That’s not to say, of course, that the experiences of technology of those living in 2025 will be similar across the world. There have been, and no doubt will continue to be, large variations and fluctuations in the deployment of technology. That’s because technological developments do not happen in isolation but instead are dependent on context – be that cultural, economic or the values of people. What’s more, the deployment of any particular aspect of technology is not inevitable and will not necessarily follow a particular growth pattern. It could be that some technological developments will create revolutions in work while others will be a slower and steadier trickle of invention. It may be that in the future, as there has been in the past, there will be important inflexion points at which technologies divide and history will take either path with quite different results.

The Cloud, the technology net that creates the means by which people across the world can access resources, is a case in point. Technologically it will be feasible within the next decade for anyone with access to the Cloud around the world to access the World Wide Web and all the enormous information held in it. However, it could be that in certain countries and regions and at certain times, issues about security and access will severely limit the deployment of the Cloud. However, in spite of these likely variations in deployment, the impact of different growth patterns across the world, and contextual variations, what is clear is that technological developments will continue on a broad front.

For those of us on a journey to understand the future, the question is what might we expect this broad front to be – and how will it impact on day-to-day working lives in 2025 and beyond? Here are the ten pieces about technology that we will see played out in the storylines that follow.

1. Technological capability increases exponentially: one of the key drivers of technological development has been the rapid and continuous fall in the cost of computing. We can expect this to continue and it will make increasingly complex technology available in relatively inexpensive handheld devices.