Think Like a Futurist: The future of labor
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•465 views
Presentation given to 700 members of the American Federation of Government Employees (union for employees of federal and D.C. agencies), a group that is facing fascinating and challenging times (animations missing, of course).
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (19)
Similar to Think Like a Futurist: The future of labor
Similar to Think Like a Futurist: The future of labor (20)
More from Cecily Sommers
More from Cecily Sommers (9)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Think Like a Futurist: The future of labor
- 1. Know What Changes, What Doesn’t, and What’s Next C E C I LY S O M M E R S
- 3. 65% of today’s grade school kids will end up at jobs that haven’t been invented yet. United States Department of Labor Futurework : Trends and Challenges for Workforce in the 21st Century (1999)
- 4. By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human. Gartner Research
- 5. Social Networking in the 1600s
- 6. What Changes What Doesn’t What’s Next
- 7. THE FOUR FORCES What Changes
- 11. Vistage
- 15. Hershey Learn to Grow: Connected Classroom Hershey Launches Innovative Distance Learning Program to Connect Children in U.S. and Rural Ghana HERSHEY, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Nov. 12, 2012-- The Hershey Company (NYSE: HSY) has launched a unique distance learning program linking school children in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and Ghana through real-time, high-definition technology that creates a common, virtual classroom.
- 16. The Climate • The cultural and political shift to the right: structural forces • Celebration of entrepreneurship (vs. temporary workers) • Push for global trade for workers, products, and raw materials • “Cross-sector” partnerships picking up slack for decrease in government services
- 17. Policies Training Workers Inside Outside • Commitment to diversity, sustainability, health • Internal social networks for mentorship and opportunity • Non-linear career paths • Gamification of HR services • Employee training • Women in power • Elite, high-tech workforce • Us-Them divide hardens • Social networks are key • Entry-level jobs shrink • STEM-focus intensifies • More camps, internships • Transition into entrepreneurship • Young and old affected • Unemployment soars
- 18. The Fertile Delta • What changes: tools and institutions, and values – Entrepreneurism vs. career employees – Social networks vs. formal organizations – Populism vs. Socialism – A great political divide makes way for a change • Dig into what doesn’t change: – The need to be seen and heard, to be considered, to have a voice, to fair, safe, moral environments and policies – The need to connect personally. Bring more high-touch to high-tech • Create a movement – Study successes: Obama’s elections, gay marriage, medical marijuana, sustainability, climate change – Look for tipping points
- 20. Solving for X:
- 21. Looming Questions • Where are the “Fertile Delta”s? – Is there an opportunity in providing services that employers, government, and businesses are dropping? • Where is labor today? Its locus has shifted • How do you make employers fall in love with you?
Editor's Notes
- Three takeaways:Change is predictable (not its outcomes, but its mechanics)The future lives in your imagination, so how you engage it determines what kind of future possibilities you seeYOUR future depends on the choices you make (so understanding change, and knowing how to engage your imagination is the value of thinking like a futurist)
- Question 2: What’s a futurist?FUNCTIONAL DEFINITION: futurist studies change, identifies emerging trends and potentials shaping our world, helps people and organizations envision new possibilities: strategy and innovationPERSONAL DEFINITION: Zoomologist, The core of strategy = Who are you and where are you going the ability to see systems and the relationships among them
- June 22, 2013Social Networking in the 1600sBy TOM STANDAGELONDON — SOCIAL networks stand accused of being enemies of productivity. According to one popular (if questionable) infographic circulating online, the use of Facebook, Twitter and other such sites at work costs the American economy $650 billion each year. Our attention spans are atrophying, our test scores declining, all because of these “weapons of mass distraction.”Yet such worries have arisen before. In England in the late 1600s, very similar concerns were expressed about another new media-sharing environment, the allure of which seemed to be undermining young people’s ability to concentrate on their studies or their work: the coffeehouse. It was the social-networking site of its day.Like coffee itself, coffeehouses were an import from the Arab world. England’s first coffeehouse opened in Oxford in the early 1650s, and hundreds of similar establishments sprang up in London and other cities in the following years. People went to coffeehouses not just to drink coffee, but to read and discuss the latest pamphlets and news-sheets and to catch up on rumor and gossip.Coffeehouses were also used as post offices. Patrons would visit their favorite coffeehouses several times a day to check for new mail, catch up on the news and talk to other coffee drinkers, both friends and strangers. Some coffeehouses specialized in discussion of particular topics, like science, politics, literature or shipping. As customers moved from one to the other, information circulated with them.The diary of Samuel Pepys, a government official, is punctuated by variations of the phrase “thence to the coffeehouse.” His entries give a sense of the wide-ranging conversations he found there. The ones for November 1663 alone include references to “a long and most passionate discourse between two doctors,” discussions of Roman history, how to store beer, a new type of nautical weapon and an approaching legal trial.One reason these conversations were so lively was that social distinctions were not recognized within the coffeehouse walls. Patrons were not merely permitted but encouraged to strike up conversations with strangers from entirely different walks of life. As the poet Samuel Butler put it, “gentleman, mechanic, lord, and scoundrel mix, and are all of a piece.”Not everyone approved. As well as complaining that Christians had abandoned their traditional beer in favor of a foreign drink, critics worried that coffeehouses were keeping people from productive work. Among the first to sound the alarm, in 1677, was Anthony Wood, an Oxford academic. “Why doth solid and serious learning decline, and few or none follow it now in the University?” he asked. “Answer: Because of Coffea Houses, where they spend all their time.”Meanwhile, Roger North, a lawyer, bemoaned, in Cambridge, the “vast Loss of Time grown out of a pure Novelty. For who can apply close to a Subject with his Head full of the Din of a Coffee-house?” These places were “the ruin of many serious and hopeful young gentlemen and tradesmen,” according to a pamphlet, “The Grand Concern of England Explained,” published in 1673.All of which brings to mind the dire warnings issued by many modern commentators. A common cause for concern, both then and now, is that new media-sharing platforms pose a particular danger to the young.But what was the actual impact of coffeehouses on productivity, education and innovation? Rather than enemies of industry, coffeehouses were in fact crucibles of creativity, because of the way in which they facilitated the mixing of both people and ideas. Members of the Royal Society, England’s pioneering scientific society, frequently retired to coffeehouses to extend their discussions. Scientists often conducted experiments and gave lectures in coffeehouses, and because admission cost just a penny (the price of a single cup), coffeehouses were sometimes referred to as “penny universities.” It was a coffeehouse argument among several fellow scientists that spurred Isaac Newton to write his “Principia Mathematica,” one of the foundational works of modern science.Coffeehouses were platforms for innovation in the world of business, too. Merchants used coffeehouses as meeting rooms, which gave rise to new companies and new business models. A London coffeehouse called Jonathan’s, where merchants kept particular tables at which they would transact their business, turned into the London Stock Exchange. Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse, a popular meeting place for ship captains, shipowners and traders, became the famous insurance market Lloyd’s.And the economist Adam Smith wrote much of his masterpiece “The Wealth of Nations” in the British Coffee House, a popular meeting place for Scottish intellectuals, among whom he circulated early drafts of his book for discussion.No doubt there was some time-wasting going on in coffeehouses. But their merits far outweighed their drawbacks. They provided a lively social and intellectual environment, which gave rise to a stream of innovations that shaped the modern world. It is no coincidence that coffee remains the traditional drink of collaboration and networking today.Now the spirit of the coffeehouse has been reborn in our social-media platforms. They, too, are open to all comers, and allow people from different walks of life to meet, debate, and share information with friends and strangers alike, forging new connections and sparking new ideas. Such conversations may be entirely virtual, but they have enormous potential to bring about change in the real world.Although some bosses deride the use of social media in the workplace as “social notworking,” more farsighted companies are embracing “enterprise social networks,” essentially corporate versions of Facebook, to encourage collaboration, discover hidden talents and knowledge among their employees, and reduce the use of e-mail. A study published in 2012 by McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, found that the use of social networking within companies increased the productivity of “knowledge workers” by 20 to 25 percent.The use of social media in education, meanwhile, is backed by studies showing that students learn more effectively when they interact with other learners. OpenWorm, a pioneering computational biology project started from a single tweet, now involves collaborators around the world who meet via Google Hangouts. Who knows what other innovations are brewing in the Internet’s global coffeehouse?There is always an adjustment period when new technologies appear. During this transitional phase, which can take several years, technologies are often criticized for disrupting existing ways of doing things. But the lesson of the coffeehouse is that modern fears about the dangers of social networking are overdone. This kind of media, in fact, has a long history: Martin Luther’s use of pamphlets in the Reformation casts new light on the role of social media in the Arab Spring, for example, and there are parallels between the gossipy poems that circulated in pre-Revolutionary France and the uses of microblogging in modern China.As we grapple with the issues raised by new technologies, there is much we can learn from the past.Tom Standage is the digital editor at The Economist and the author of the forthcoming book “Writing on the Wall: Social Media — The First 2,000 Years
- Question 3: What does a futurist actually do?Okay, let me back up. In order to understand what a futurist does, you have to understand three things: first, how the outside world works, how the inside world works--in other words, how our brains process information, and generate ideas and insights—and how the organization works. All from a systems point of view.As for the outside world, I use an examination of what I call the Four Forces of Change—resources, technology, demographics, and governance—as a predictive model to help clients see what their particular piece of the future will look like as they prepare to meet it. The inside world relates to, literally, how we think: the neural basis of how we perceive change, make predictions, generate insights, and problem-solve. Finally, to really be effective in leading change—working proactively to anticipate changes in the environment, by aligning strategy, resources, and productivity—you have to do two things: widgitize the functions of foresight and innovation and make them scalable.
- The Four Forces of Change are resources, technology, demographics, and governance. I will show you how to familiarize yourself with them in order to get a big-picture perspective on any challenge you may face. Understand how they work together to drive change, and you will be able not only to avert crises but also to uncover ideas and opportunities for your future along the way.Current trends are not the purview of a futurist anyhow. Our concern is with the deep, structural forces that are constant and that cast a longer shadow on the future. In my work as a futurist, I have sought to reduce change to its most elemental components, and have come up with the Four Forces Model. Like hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, and sulfur are the four building blocks of all life forms, resources, technology, demographics, and governance are the four building blocks of all change. These forces generally move more slowly than and have a permanent effect. Because we understand the relationship among the Four Forces – [PICTURE] -- , we also understand that the changes they bring about occur in a fairly predictable manner. What we can’t predict are its outcomes.
- Minneapolis Grain Exchange, circa 1933Futures trading: a gentlemen’s agreement to deliver a certain amount of wheat during a certain upcoming month. “Open Outcry” auction system: Offer, counter-offer, then a nod Centralized system for farmers to know whether the price they were getting for their grain was fair or not.Purpose: promote fair trade of agricultural riches within a national and international marketplace
- A different form of “Futures Trading.” No longer commodity prices, but the trade of ideas among entrepreneurs, VCs, designers, etc (same fertile environment as the coffeehouses of 1600s)
- Makerbot 3D printer
- Bubbles and Busts: Periods of Creative DestructionBetween the two periods – characterized as Installation and Deployment– there would usually be a recession of uncertain duration, when all the negative social and economic consequences of the bubble come to the fore and gather intense pressure for radical policy changes. These new policies generally tend to regulate financial practices and to contribute to the expansion of markets through public demand or income redistribution. In essence, at this turning point, the conditions are there for the socio-institutional framework to be modified in ways that would make it possible for the new production capital, incarnate in the already powerful new firms and industries, to take the helm of the economy away from financial capital.
- Emerging developments in each of the 4 forcefields point to what’s pushing the future in new directions. These forces converge and combine to create new opportunities that are fleshed out in scenarios.
- Implications for workforce development: creating a global cohort that learns together, sees the world together, feels kinship and “team.”
- Today’s technologies confer more and more power to the individual. Each of us creates “my world,” “my tribe,” “my designs, ideas, products, market, etc.” Baked into that shift is a keep-your-mitts-off-mine mindset that supports a more Libertatian POV (culturally, if not politically, though it does translate to a political climate that speaks to those values).
- Inside = corporate environment. A world onto itself, increasing in size and influence. Drastically different reality for those operating outside the corporate bubble.
- Polarization is a strong force ripping through society at every level. We see it in economics, politics, religion, technology. Rather than focus on what’s being lost or destroyed, the key to creating new opportunity is to look at “The Fertile Delta” – the space in-between.
- Role AssetsThemes:Mission-based ExperienceService/consiergeMultichannel
- A labor movement based on values rather than membership would look more like other social movements that have bent the arc of history toward justice: the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, the movement for women's rights, revolutions against colonialism.Turn your assumptions on their head! Go through the process of redefining everything to arrive at new ways to engage and grow.
- Imagine, if you knew which professional fields would be growing in 10 years, what you might encourage your children to study….Imagine, that you saw how technology would transform your business, what decisions you’d be making today…IMAGINATION = where the future livesCHOICE = the power we have to influence changeNeed big perspective to see what’s at play, and also have to understand what you’ll need = zoomologistIn other words, have to understand what changes, what doesn’t, and what’s next.