Managing the Future – Part 4: Living with Continuous Change

April 3, 2019 – In a World Economic Forum posting I read in 2017 the authors wrote: “change may arrive as a gentle breeze or as a violent, category 5 typhoon.” The article described our world in 2030, painting a pretty picture with change arriving gently rather than with violence. Let’s hope this Utopian vision is truer than the one that appears to be unfolding in the present.

Living with continuous change is hard and we are trying to accommodate it. For different generations, there are different aspirations. At age 70 by the year 2030, I will be 81. For me managing the change of my last forty years may reflect what so many younger people are going through today. In my personal life, I became a father and dealt with a child born with a significant genetically-caused heart condition. The continuous innovations in medicine proved to be the difference between her living or dying as she has survived into adulthood and now is happily married, working, and enjoying life. Today she faces a world I couldn’t have envisaged at the time of her birth, where full-time employment was hard to achieve, and where a degree earned had little to do with the realities of the new working world.

Continuous change was the norm of my business career and that was rare at the time. I started in book publishing, went on to manage a computer store, then on to writing software and computer systems documentation, software development, and eventually telecommunications systems design. I would describe this multiple career path as one that more reflects the norm of today than of my time. For today working at a job for 10 or more years is a rare occurrence. Instead, we see the proliferation of what is being called the “precariat,”

My futurist friend, Thomas Frey, recently posted in his blog an article that looks at the future through the eyes of a child. It’s not so much the child talking about the future as it is Frey’s speculation on what skills that child will need in growing into a world of continuous change.

He begins stating “the workforce of tomorrow will need to be resilient, flexible, resourceful, creative problem solvers, ethical, epithetical, situationally aware, perseverant, purpose-driven, relentless, and totally distraction-proof.”

He goes on to state the future will require young people to “be better at virtually everything – smarter, quick to adapt, high energy, work long hours, durable, and much more resilient.” 

Are parents today preparing their children to be this? If you understand the expression, “helicopter parents,” then you can see the challenge that lies ahead for the next generation that will face 2030.

So what will continuous change mean to those entering adulthood and the world of work by 2030?

1. Job security will long be a thing of the past. It won’t matter the field, the industry, the sector, the paradigm for companies will have altered dramatically to one of contract and project-based assignments. We are already seeing this in the workforce of today. In many cases work will be something meted out online in the form of “gamification” like protein-folding to solve biomedical challenges, or prize contests, like the XPrize, encouraging collaborative efforts to solve big challenges.
2. Governments will have to rethink taxation, employment protection, and the social safety net as terms of employment alter to reflect the new business reality.
3. Education will be a lifetime experience beyond secondary school. The role of colleges and universities will reflect the change which may alter the granting of degrees with the exception of areas of pure research. Expect a work time-learning split close to 50/50 as continuous changes make continuous learning ubiquitous.
4. The world’s population, particularly young people, will be more urban-centered than now with almost two-thirds of all humanity living in cities by 2030. Owning a home, and a car will no longer be the prime objective of youth and this will lead to changes to both accommodation and transportation infrastructure. And considering how the automotive industry has been central to manufacturing in North America, Europe, and Asia, falling ownership demand will mean disruption on a transcontinental scale.
5. The Internet will be ubiquitous connecting almost everyone on the planet, transforming the world of information and entertainment into infotainment, a blend of the two.
6. And finally, people my age, which will be 81, will work side-by-side with the young, bringing generations together as never before, creating opportunities for mentoring as well as the cross-fertilization of perceptions and ideas.

Adapting to this world of continuous disruptive change will require flexibility in mind and spirit. Of that, there is no doubt. And I hope it will end our fixation with the distraction of digital screens rather than their purposeful use for mastering the skills necessary to adapt to a future of relentless change.