Lynda Gratton - The Future of Work

A letter from Davos

Davos may be full of leaders, but that doesn’t stop them questioning how their roles could change. The pervading theme this year is of extraordinary change and challenge: ‘ we don’t have a moment to lose’; ‘we have to do things differently’; ‘this is a unique moment in history’; ‘there is a crisis of consent’ are phrases I’ve heard from academics, CEOs and politicians. Yet while there is broad rhetorical agreement, conversations about the means of action are less clear. In this Davos blog, I’m going to concentrate on what this means for leadership. In the panels I have attended and conversations I have had, there are two emerging themes which stood out beyond the normal leadership rhetoric of purpose, values etc.

These are:

• Leading in a multi-stakeholder world. There is broad agreement that leaders will increasingly be called upon to operate effectively in a multi-stakeholder world. These stakeholders could include governments, NGOs, citizen groups, and the other businesses in their ecosystem. To do this, leaders must develop networks across these stakeholders, and understand and deeply empathize with their position. The sheer complexity of these stakeholder relationships will also require them to operate successfully in ambiguous, often chaotic circumstances. These are complex times that will require patience when gaining commitment across multiple stakeholders.

• Leading in society. Leaders must also have a point of view about their role and the role of their business in society. Being a bystander will no longer be sufficient. How leaders engage will be determined by their unique personal values, as well as the core competencies of the businesses they lead. It could be reaching out into the immediate community, working actively on global issues such as poverty, or engaging employees in community activities. Though it’s true that many are already doing this, the call is to do more, to do it quicker, and to scale with speed. It’s about ‘thinking beyond’…

Reflecting on what these two themes mean for how leaders are developed, it strikes me that neither can be ‘bolted on’ to current leadership. Instead, they have to be ‘baked in’ to the very core of what a leader does and how they spend their time. For example, ‘leading in a multi-stakeholder world’ means making a significant and early commitment to spending time with people who are different. It’s only through these committed time periods that deep understanding and empathy can emerge. We know that empathic relationships and broad networks take time to develop. Similarly, ‘leading in the society’ cannot suddenly emerge from classical leadership training. Again, it requires a deep understanding and sense of empathy with the challenges and dilemmas faced. It also requires the courage to understand that, while the short-term stock market may require a leader to simply make a return on profits, the society in which they are a member requires much more of them.

Are you an Adult at Work?

Photo: Two of a Kind by Ali Elan

It’s been an exciting year – economic turmoil in Europe, extraordinary growth in many of the developing countries, the rise of some companies and demise of others. What is clear is that we are in the midst of an industrial revolution greater than the world has ever seen with all the turbulence, the challenges and the opportunities that previous revolutions have brought. Partly as a result of this, it seems to me that the relationship between companies and their employees is undergoing a fundamental shift. All over the world the old Parent to Child relationship is moving towards a potentially more balanced Adult to Adult relationship. This is generally good news - but don’t underestimate what this will mean to your working life and what you will have to do to make the most of it.

I’ve looked back over my own experiences of 2011 – multiple trips to Asia and the USA, some fascinating work with the World Economic Forum on leadership, and the research of my team on the future of work. Mulling over this it seems to me that there are 5 questions we should all be asking ourselves about our preparation for the future. All of them in some way resonate with this shift from a Parent to Child relationship at work, to a more balanced Adult to Adult. Yet whilst there are great aspects to being an Adult at work – it also shows that this brings with it responsibilities and commitments. Here are five questions to ask yourself:

1. Am I letting my context overwhelm me?  

Spending time in China last month I was struck by the upbeat enthusiasm of Chinese youth. It’s clear they have much to play for. It was a stark contrast to an earlier visit to Madrid where I heard at first hand the impact of 40% youth unemployment. Being a young graduate in a country with near zero growth is not pleasant, and we know what psychological scarring this experience can have. Context can indeed be overwhelming, and it can feel as if there are no real options against which choices can be made. But looking forward it seems to me that it crucial to see choices even in these potentially more restricted contexts. That’s why, for example, last year I supported my son Christian Seiersen to spend a year in China and India before he went to university. What is clear is that we are at the beginning of a major re-balancing of world’s growth and prosperity. You need to be very clear sighted about this and work out the choices you have – and then go for them – even if that means re-locating to the other side of the world. Children wait for Parents to make the world good for them – Adults try to make their own context.

2. Am I a Technological Child?   

One of the exciting research projects we undertook this year at the Future of Work Consortium was to look at how Gen Z’s (those under the age of around 12) think about work and technology. We have video clips of kids less than two years old working proficiently with iPads and Skype with ease and saw a real excitement in this group to engage with leading edge technologies such as holograms. But what we also found is that it’s not simply age that defines technically savvy. In the ‘technology and productivity’ survey we undertook with our consortium members this month, we also found some Baby Boomers and Traditionalist just as excited and knowledgeable. There are indeed enormous opportunities for each one of us to use technology to significantly boost our productivity and indeed create greater innovation. Many of us are choosing to do this by buying our own technological tools rather than waiting for our company to do this for us. This makes sense. It’s all part of the bigger Adult to Adult shift we are going to see. Parents buy their Children their computers: Adults make their own choices.

3. Am I in control of my competencies?  

We have just completed a 72 hour ‘Jam’ where we asked 1,500 Gen Y’s from one of the global professional firms to enter into a world-wide virtual conversation about their experience of work. I was slightly surprised by the extent to which this generation (now in their 20’s) is defining work almost exclusively in terms of how much they are learning from it. Good Work provides opportunities to do exciting, stretching work with talented peers: Bad Work may pay well, but in the long term erodes your intellectual capital. It seems to me that this is a group of people who are preparing for a world where the only game in town is to develop deep skills, preferably in more than one area. Work then moves from the old deal (which I talked about in my book The Shift) – ‘I work…to buy stuff…that makes me happy’ – to the new deal – ‘I work…to learn stuff…that makes me long term employable’. It’s a good trade – between short term gains to longer term personal resilience and capability. Sounds like an Adult to me… the Child would go for the ‘buy stuff’ anytime (although having said that the Gen Z’s we watched seemed mad about learning).

4. Do I have the courage to make the hard choices?   

Here is the emerging deal about work. Your working life will be shaped by the shifting patterns of longevity (you are likely to live considerably longer than your parents) and demography (in many regions there will be a much higher proportion of people over 50). This means that looking back to your parent’s working lives is not really going to give you much of a handle. Moreover, your current employers are unlikely to take a parenting role in really looking after you in the long term. So it’s time you faced up to some of the hard choices you face:  1. To build a career that enables you to work longer (at least into your late 60's or early 70’s), 2. Be prepared (like the Chinese who save around 40% of their income) to save a significant proportion of your income throughout your working life, 3. Consider ways to reduce your consumption and live more simply. You don’t have to make all of these hard choices – but you are going to have to take at least one. It’s about making choices as an Adult.

5. Am I making the most of the future? 

No question that Number 4 was a tough one – so let’s finish with a more uplifting question. The future of work will require us to make some tough decisions – but it will also provide some great opportunities. Here are my top four opportunities:

• To live a longer, more healthy and productive working life.
• To spend more time working from home in an increasingly flexible way.
• To hook up with people across the world via rapidly developing ‘collective intelligence’ technology.
• To get technology to do the mundane stuff – leaving you to build deeper skills and engage in more meaningful work.

How far advanced are you in making them happen? Over the next couple of years there will be many opportunities for each of us to craft exciting and meaningful working lives – let’s make sure we don’t simply wait for others to make them for us. 

 

China's Human Capital Future

Photo: Shanghai by SmokingPermitted

I’ve just spent the week in Shanghai and Hong Kong with a team from London Business School, meeting alumni, talking to business people and generally understanding the scene. What is clear is that there is no such thing as ‘Asia’, and that broad-brush descriptions such as ‘developing countries’ are antiquated and reductionist. Differences between regions across Asia are becoming ever greater as regions write their own signature. So here are five aspects of the signature that I see shaping China’s human capital future:

1. The One Child Family

Imagine almost a billion people with one social element in common – they are all either the parents of a single child, or they are single children themselves. As a psychologist, I see this as a social experiment on a gigantic scale. China’s one child policy has implications on the social development of the nation, and on the rapid ageing of the population over the next 30 years. In contrast, Asia’s other billion-citizen country, India, is reproducing at a rate of 2.7 children per family, and prides this boom as a ‘demographic dividend’. Time will show the extent to which these differences in demography create challenges and opportunities for Asia’s tiger and dragon.

2. Young Educated Chinese join the ‘global talent pool’

Young educated Chinese are not able to become the classic ‘Facebook’ generation, as they cannot access the site. But that does not stop them from becoming part of the global conversation that marks out Gen Y. Their Baby Boomer parents may have been isolated from the world, in part because they did not learn to speak English, but many millions of their children are. These young, educated people are excited about the future, know they are in the right place at the right time, and will do what it takes to make sure their lives are more comfortable and wealthier than their parents. They are increasingly joining the global Gen Y conversation on topics such as global warming and work-life balance.

3. The rapid rise of the micro-entrepreneur

In every meeting, we asked the audience two questions: “how many of you are entrepreneurs”, and “how many are planning to start your own business?” With the second question, almost everyone put his or her hand up. It’s exciting to be a well-connected, educated Chinese youth right now. There are countless opportunities to arbitrate between European luxury houses and the status desires of China’s big-city citizens. But it’s not just about luxury. We heard that, across the hundreds of thousands of rapidly growing Chinese cities, there are opportunities to bring to market basic products and services that we take for granted in the West. These various opportunities are exciting young educated Chinese as well as acting as a magnet for mobile Westerners – some of whom are London Business School alumni.

4. The dominance of State Regulated Industries

While the entrepreneurial sector is buzzing with ideas and energy – it’s important to remember that the majority of larger Chinese companies are state regulated. Moreover, outside of the entrepreneurial sector, we heard that the most desirable careers for talented young Chinese are in the civil service. China’s companies are primarily there to serve the needs of the state, rather than the needs of shareholders. This translates to ‘building China’ as a key business objective, be that bringing millions of rural people out of poverty, encouraging Chinese workers to consume rather than to save, or focusing on the production of higher value goods.

5. The discussion of governance.

There was a great deal of conversation over our week in China about the demise of the Euro and the economic woes that currently confront Europe. It is clear that the inability of European and American leadership to confront rising debt is being seen in China as a poor reflection of Western style democracy. We heard open questioning of the speed of democratic capacity to deal with crisis, and its need to ‘pander’ to the requirements of its citizens. In China, it is clear that the Western notion of democracy is simply held as one form of governance, and by no means the most successful one.

The 10 Ways to Know Whether Your Job is Meaningful

In my book The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here, I made the point that the formula for the traditional deal at work is as follows:

I work... to earn money... which I use... to consume stuff... which makes me happy.

I suggested that this deal is not a sufficient description of what work can and should be. Instead I put forward the following future-focused deal at work:

I work... to gain productive experiences... that are the basis... of my happiness.

But this begs the question – what exactly is a meaningful productive experience, and how do you know when your work is meaningful? So here are the 10 questions to ask yourself to establish whether your work is meaningful.

1. Do you use the majority of the knowledge you have on a daily basis?
   ...because meaningful work provides an opportunity for you to keep your knowledge fresh by using it constantly.
   
   
2. Do you feel intellectually stretched in your work?
   ...because meaningful work both uses the knowledge you have and pushes the boundaries of what you can become.
   
   
3. Are you able to learn something new at least once a week?
   ...because meaningful work creates constant opportunity for learning.
   
   
4. In your view are your colleagues at work knowledgeable and do you learn from them constantly?
   ...because meaningful work is also about the colleagues who come with it, and your learning and development comes primarily through learning from others: what I have called ‘The Posse’.
   
   
5. Are the tasks you do at work interesting and complex?
   ...because at the heart of meaningful work are the day-to-day tasks that you do.
   
   
6. Do you get lots of feedback about how you are doing?
   ...because meaningful work enables you to grow, and feedback from others is a crucial part of this.
   
   
7. Do you think that the work you do has a positive impact on the business?
   ...because meaningful work enables you to make a clear link in your mind between the tasks you perform and the broader goals of the business.
   
   
8. Do you think that the work you do has a positive impact on society?
   ...because meaningful work is made up of tasks that you believe do good and, as a consequence, make you feel good about yourself.
   
   
9. In your daily work, do you have the opportunity to reach out to develop networks with people very different from yourself?
   ...because meaningful work creates opportunities for you to develop the ‘Big Ideas Crowd’ that is so crucial to developing your innovative and creative capacity.
   
   
10. Does your work give you time to really develop deep regenerative relationships with people inside and outside of your organisation?
    ...because meaningful work creates time and space for you to develop emotionally.

So where are you on meaningful work?

Score 8-10
Through your active choices, or sheer luck, you are working in a meaningful way. Cherish the opportunities this provides and don’t compromise in the future.

Score 5-7
Some aspects of your work are meaningful. Take a closer look at those you have said no to and search for the underlying patterns. Is it possible to focus on developing these areas?

Score 1-4
Your job lacks meaning – you already know that! The question is – what are you going to do about it?

This is my take on meaning at work – are there any areas you would add?

The Skill Gap: Asian Style

One of the paradoxes of contemporary business life is that, just as unemployment soars, the number of unfilled vacancies increases. In the USA right now there are over 3 million unfilled jobs, while in countries like Spain, youth unemployment stands at a jaw dropping 47%. The extent of the gap between what employers need and what the labour market provides in terms of skills and talents seems to be continuously widening.

 

Why the skill gap is here to stay.

This is not a surprise. There are three trends that we believe will only gather momentum and, as they converge, will continue to impact on the extent of the skill gap. None of these trends will go away fast; in fact, our research suggests that they will only accelerate in their velocity.

The most obvious creator of the gap is technological advancement within work. This has been felt most in semi-skilled work, where business analytics have replaced many clerical activities, while much service work has been outsourced from the high-cost West.

Historically, these were jobs that those with minimum educational qualifications could perform.  But it’s not just about technology replacing semi-skilled work. Increasingly, the knowledge and skills that high value jobs demand has shifted to engineering, IT and the sciences. This is good news for countries like Germany and India, where these disciplines are considered a good professional choice – but bad news for the UK and the USA, where fewer students take these options. To make matters worse, the Asian students who fill the science classrooms of the West are increasingly likely to take the first plane back after graduating, rather than staying and filling those vacancies as they might have in the past.

Demography is also playing a hand in the skill gap: Over the next decade, the largest workforce cohort the world has ever seen - the Baby Boomers - will rete in their millions. Many will take with them the deep tacit knowledge that has come from a lifetime of experience, and which they have often failed to bequest to those members of Gen X who follow them. This demographic time bomb is particularly deadly in sectors such as aerospace and pharmaceuticals, which have traditionally had long apprenticeships.

 

The Asian Response

Anxieties about the skill gap are no less prevalent in Asia. With 15% compound growth rates and, in many countries, a missing management class, companies across the region are deeply aware that this could prove a significant barrier to growth.

However, what is interesting is the speed, depth and complexity of their response. Take Singapore: here is a country, with few resources save its people, with aspirations to play a significant role in the industrial life of Asia. For them, closing the skill gap is crucial. This is achieved by actively creating close ties and a constant information flow between the key stakeholders, be they in companies, the government or educational establishments. The Ministry of Manpower and the Economic Development Board have the role of coordinating this flow of information, and provide the resources to  ‘nudge’ when necessary. This could mean, for example, supporting Unilever’s opening of a major leadership campus, funding scholarships in high value skills, or working closely with pharmaceutical companies and Western universities to build a cluster around bioengineering.

In India, the speed and scale of the response has taken a very different form, spearheaded not by government, but by the private sector. Indian companies face a huge potential skill gap for, while the technical education in the Indian Institutes of Technology is of a high level, the general education standards across the country are poor. For Indian’s rapidly growing IT sector, represented by companies such as Wipro, Infosys and TCS, this could be a disaster. Yet instead of accepting this, these companies have reached out into communities across the continent to significantly impact the development millions of youngsters. Executives at Wipro, for example, work with tens of thousands of colleges across India to train teachers to develop IT skills, build state-of-the-art curricula, and encourage students to become what they term ‘work-ready’. With a recruitment target in 2011/12 of 60,000, the teams at TCS play a similar role in helping young people across India understand from an early age what the most valuable skills for the future are, and how best to acquire them. Like Infosys they also work closely with hundreds of thousands of teenagers to actively increase their skills.

The global skill gap is here to stay for as long as technological advances, globalisation and demography continue to redefine work. For some countries, it will be the government that takes the initiative to bridge the gaps. For others, it will be companies themselves who will step up to the challenge. What is clear is that, if neither of these stakeholders are actively engaged nor prepared to put significant resources into the problem, the unemployment rates now seen in Spain could become the norm for many countries in the West.

It's Education, Stupid

It’s that time of year when I spend much of my time reading the books that have been nominated for the FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year. It’s a judging duty that is both a pleasure and a pain. The pain is the sheer amount of time it takes to wade through thousands of pages.  The pleasure is reading books that would not necessarily cross my path. This year, as with the last, many of these books are written by economists and, understandably, focus on the state of the world economy. It is interesting to read how many agree that education and training are crucial to long-term economic success, for individuals, companies and countries. I made a similar argument in my most recent book The Shift, focusing in particular on the types of education and training that create specialization. Here are the two reasons why it has never been so critical to become educated:

• Rampaging connectivity - will see at least five billion people around the world using some form of mobile device to download information, access knowledge and coach and teach each other. Some will have the intellectual capacity and motivation to really make something of this extraordinary opportunity, wherever they happen to be born. These people will want to join the global talent pool and, if possible, migrate to creative and vibrant cities. By doing so, this vast crowd of talented people will increasingly compete with each other, continuously upping the stakes for what it takes to succeed.

• The technological revolution - brought mobile devices to billions, and is now transforming how work gets done. Robots are taking the place of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, while business analytics, modelling and collaborative technologies are taking away much of what has traditionally been the role of the middle manager. However, while technology may be replacing the mechanical aspects of work, it is not replacing the more complex, skilled work that involves creativity and innovation. That’s the high value piece that remains, and it is once that requires education and training. 

As high quality education becomes more of a premium, we can expect the sector to begin to transform itself even more rapidly. Just what this transformation will look like is difficult to predict with accuracy. But here are two emerging trends that I believe will shape it over the coming decades:

The Gutenberg Project: the race is on to digitalise many of the books and articles of the world, while the professors of academic institutions such as MIT are making their key lectures available on the web. Combined with hyper connectivity and the potentially global reach of the Cloud, this means that knowledge and wisdom will be available to anyone with access to the Internet. This could see the development of new ways of educating that leapfrog those of normal educational institutions, creating more fluid, virtual and vibrant networks of learning. 

Virtual Schools and Universities: there has been a great deal of research over the last decade focusing on how people learn. This has looked at e-learning, face-to-face teaching and over-the-phone coaching. What has become clear is that none of these on their own are the best; it’s the combination of all three that has the greatest impact. This is important for educational strategies since at least two of these processes are virtual, and F2F can largely be substituted by video conferencing. I saw the speed of this transformation recently when I visited UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) in Barcelona. Its sleek headquarters are the hub of a virtual university that has 60,000 students (and growing) taught by a faculty of over 3,000 virtual educators. Using simulations, games and collaborative environments, the institution is building deep expertise in supporting education across the world.

Some have argued that, of all the institutional forms, education has changed least over the past few decades. It looks as if the need for deeper knowledge and rapid advances in learning technologies may change all that.

Because I Can

It was tough watching parts of London burn a few weeks ago. My son Dominic, who was roaming around Camden on one of the nights, told me that the looters he saw on the streets were intent on breaking into shops to steal Nike trainers and mobile phones.

It was also tough watching bankers award themselves significant bonuses again this year and pay themselves extraordinary salaries compared with almost all other jobs in our society.

These are not unrelated events. It seems to me that at the heart of both is the simple refrain ‘because I can’. At that moment in time in Camden High Street, it was possible for people to steal Nike trainers and mobile phones, and some chose to do so, because they could. And at that same moment, it was possible for bankers to pay themselves large bonuses, and some chose to do so, because they could.

Whether it’s trainers or bonuses, it’s about seizing the opportunity, making the most of today. It’s not just looters and bankers who are taking action on the basis of ‘because I can’. The trainers the looters stole are branded with the slogan ‘Just do it’, and the shampoo they use could well have come from the brand that tells them ‘because I’m worth it’

When I wrote The Shift last year, I talked about the increasing need in the future to build sustainability into our lives, our communities and our companies. I’ve been reflecting on this as these two events have infolded over the summer. I’m reminded of Dov Seidman, CEO of LRN, who in his book How described the way that two competing kinds of values are being played out in our lives, our societies and our corporations. He called these ‘situational’ and ‘sustainable’ values.

It was situational values we saw played out this summer. Actions were taken based on the calculation of what is available in the here and now and then how best to exploit these short term opportunities – whether it is the Nike shoes in a looted shop, or bonuses in an industry that’s used to dipping into the trillions that washes around it. It’s about calculating what we can or cannot do in any given situation – and what we saw this summer in these two events was ‘because I can’.

Sure, if your pals are picking up Nike shoes – you can do the same. And if the banking industry is paying out big bonuses this year again and you are a banker – you can do the same. The 'because I can' is essentially a question taking place in an amoral space. The calculation is 'can I do it?', 'Can I do it right now?' It’s about making the best bet right now. So the emphasis is always on the short term and the optimization of current options.

When our actions take place in a moral rather than an amoral space, the question is not what can I do? but what should I do?

Over the coming months, we will see severe sentences passed out in the UK courts for people caught looting Nike shoes in Camden High Street.  The hope of the courts is that demonstrating the tough consequences of looting will force people to recalculate the question of 'Can I do it?' by factoring in the severe punishment of being caught. But this is essentially addressing the ‘situational values’

Sustainable values, those that address the question 'Should I do it?', have their foundation not in the perceived consequences of actions, but rather from a much deeper belief about what is right and wrong. These beliefs come primarily from how we see others behave; in other words, the role models we see in our society.

Whether it’s bankers, government representatives or celebrities, these are the role models that are creating the values in our society. And if they are seen as short-term opportunists operating on the basis of 'because I can', let’s not be surprised that our sustainable values are eroding.

The 10 ways to Future Proof your Career

 

With the publication of my new book The Shift: the future of work is already here - there has been much debate about what it really takes to craft a career that is likely to stand the test of time. In the book I talk a great deal about the five forces that will shape work and careers: ever greater globalization of innovation and talent; the development of ever more sophisticated connective technologies; profound changes in demography and longevity which will see many live until they are 100 and others live in regions where 40% of the population are over 50; broad societal forces that will see trust in institutions decrease and families become ever more re-arranged; and finally, the impact that carbon use and Co2 will have on how we think about our own consumption patterns. Taking this rich cocktail of forces into consideration here are my 10 tips about skills, networks and choices.

 

1. Don't be fooled into walking into the future blindfolded - the more you know what's in store, the better able you will be to meet the challenges and really capitalize on your options. So keep abreast of the forces that are shaping work and careers in your part of the world and think about how they will impact on you and those you care for. Making wise choices will in the end come from your capacity to understand – don’t rely on governments of big business to make the choices for you.

2. Learn to be virtual - we are entering a period of hyper technological advancements - avatars, holographs and telepresence are all just around the corner. If you are a young ‘digital native’ you are already connected to this – but if you are over 30 the chances are you are already behind on your understanding. Work will become more global and that means that increasingly you will be working with people in a virtual way – its crucial that you learn to embrace these developments and don't let yourself become obsolete through lack of technical savvy.

3. Search for the valuable skills - think hard about the skill areas that are likely to be important in the future - for example sustainability, health and wellness, and design and social media are all likely to be areas where work will be created over the next decade. Also remember that jobs that involve working closely with people (chef, hairdresser, coach, physiotherapist) are unlikely to move to another country.

4. Become a Master - don't be fooled into spread your talents too thinly. Being a 'jack of all trades' will mean you are competing with millions of others around the world who are similar. Separate yourself from the crowd by really learning to master a skill or talent that you can develop with real depth. Be prepared to put your time and effort into honing these skills and talents.

5. Be prepared to strike out on your own - there will always be work with big companies - but increasingly the real fun will come from setting up your own company. We are entering the age of the 'micro-entrepreneur' when ever decreasing costs of technology will significantly reduce the barriers to getting off the ground, and when talented people across the world will be connected and keen to work with each other.

6. Find your posse- to create valuable skills and knowledge you will need to quickly reach out to others who can help and advise you. This small  'posse' of like-minded and skilled people is a network that will be central to your really building speed and agility in your career. Don’t leave it too long to find and cultivate it.

7. Build the Big Ideas Crowd - the future is about innovation, and sometime your best, most innovative ideas will come as you talk and work with people who are completely different from you - perhaps they have a different mindset, or come from a different country - or are younger. It is this wide network, the 'big ideas crowd' that will be a crucial source of inspiration. Make sure that you don’t limit yourself to working only with those who are just like you.

8. Go beyond the family  - your career success will depend in part on your emotional well being and resilience. In a world of ever shifting relationships, it's important that you invest in developing deep restorative relationships with a couple of people - this is your 'regenerative community' and they are crucial to your well being and happiness. Make the investment as soon as you can and make an effort to maintain and build these relationships over decades.

9. Have the courage to make the hard choices - your working life will be shaped by the shifting patterns of longevity (you are likely to live considerably longer than your parents) and demography (in many regions there will be a much higher proportion of people over 50). So you need a strategy for the long term. You have three hard choices:  1. Build a career that enables you to work longer (at least into your late 60's or early 70’s), 2. Be prepared (like the Chinese who save around 40% of their income) to save a significant proportion of your income throughout your working life, 3. Consider ways to reduce your consumption and live more simply. It does not matter which hard choice you make – but you are going to have to make at least one of them.

10. Become a producer rather than a simple consumer - And finally... the old deal at work:  'I work, to earn money, to buy stuff, that makes me happy' is rapidly becoming obsolete. Engaging in meaningful work where you can rapidly learn will become a priority (although fair pay will always be important). So think hard about sharing and great experiences rather than simply building your working life around consuming.

 

Take a look at my videos and download The Shift Workbook at www.theshiftbylyndagratton.com. You can also download The Shift from the App Store now.

When Women Rule The World?

Teaching a class at London Business School last week for 70 MBA’s and Sloan Fellows on the future of work, I encouraged the students to create vignettes for 2030. This is part of the research I have been directing for the last couple of years through a global consortium of companies on the future of work. I had chosen 2030 as the time of the vignette as it’s sufficiently far ahead to break current thinking (most will be aged between 40 and 50 at that time), but not too far ahead to be impossible to imagine.

The class went through the various aspects of the future with near total agreement – yes, CO2 emission will be a big theme and will impact on how we work, particularly around transport; and yes, globalisation will increase at an ever greater pace with Asia in particular taking the lions share of growth; and indeed, yes, we can expect big companies to get larger whilst at the same time ecosystems of micro-entrepreneurs to become ever more crucial in the creation of value. It was a future world of work rather different from the current world and there was much agreement on how it would unfold.

And then I asked a rather innocent question of the class. ‘So what does this mean for female representation on the executive board in 2030?’

What followed was a fascinating and I must say rather surprising discussion. I had imagined that the class would rapidly reach a consensus that by 2030 at least 50% of top jobs would be filled by women. However, it quickly emerged that unlike the other future topics we had discussed during the week, there was no consensus within the class about the proportion of women who would be on the boards of companies by 2030. Estimates ranged from a high of 70% women to a low of 10% (even lower than it is now).

Those on the high side believed that the cooperative nature of many women would be a natural fit with the future of work where cooperation and relationships would take centre stage. They also saw companies taking a more active role in mentoring women and indeed in creating workplaces more conducive for family responsibilities. Those on the lower side argued that many current Gen Y women (those in their 20’s) would make active choices not to seek for an executive role – preferring instead to either build a family, or indeed to opt out of big corporation life altogether and create small entrepreneurial businesses. As the conversation developed, some of the class talked of seeing Baby Boomer senior women (now in their 50’s and 60’s) struggling to ‘have it all’ and thought this was a myth. Simply put – they argued – looking at their own mothers who worked or other senior female figures, it was clear that tough choices had to be made and tough consequences faced up to. They see large companies as essentially masculine places built by men for men and this was unlikely to change over the next couple of decades.

As I reflect on this conversation a number of thoughts are in my mind. I guess what it shows is that those who thought equal gender mix in future boards is a ‘done deal’ need to think again. If this class is anything to go by, then the jury is still out. It also shows that the masculine cultures that still predominate in the upper echelons of many companies are seen by the young as unlikely to change. Even the most forceful women in the room felt this was a barrier they would have to overcome. And it is not just women who are put off by this culture of masculinity– it is also a turn off for many of the men in the class who want to make a significant contribution to bringing up their children.

But the good news is this: in 2030 women may not be running large companies in any greater proportion than they are now. However, they will be building and leading their own entrepreneurial companies. In a future world of rapidly falling technology costs, emerging global talent pools and big challenges that need innovative answers – women can take their place in the world. Perhaps not leading large corporations – but instead ruling the ecosystems of micro-entrepreneurs that surround these companies. 

Is this an opt out – or a realistic assessment of the possibilities for the future?

The Five Aspects of the Future Keeping MBA Students Awake at Night

What happens when 70 MBA and Sloan students from the London Business School spend a week talking about the future of work and creating vignettes for a day in the life in 2030? That was the question on my mind last Sunday as I made the final preparation for a one-week programme I was running about the future of work. A week later and after many, many conversations and some incredible presentations, I can now tell you. Here is what is on their minds…

• Why are we blind about CO2?

The presentations from a senior executive from Shell and Professor Michael Blowfield from Oxford University made absolutely clear that the number one priority for this group and their children is significantly reducing CO2 emissions. Unless this is achieved, the research points to significant and long lasting climate change. What the class was worried about was whether we are going to be able to take short term pain for long term gain, why Business Schools don’t make more of this global challenge, and what role they can personally play.

• How do we stop our world from fragmenting?

This group is already being trained by technology – to keep their Blackberries on 24/7, to respond in a nanosecond, and to get used to being interrupted every 3 minutes. But this is already significantly reducing their capacity to concentrate and to really focus on learning and developing. How can they learn to train the technology rather than be trained by it? We talked hopefully about ‘cognitive assistants’, the technology butlers who anticipate our every need, analyze and prioritize our incoming mail and basically keep the crazy world of information overload at bay. But these could take years to develop and come to the market – and in the meantime, we remain in an ever more fragmenting world.

• What does it mean to be a master?

I’ve argued in the first of the shifts in my new book The Shift – that the age of the generalist is over, taking with it much of what was the role of the middle manager. Being a generalist might have worked in the past – but it sure won’t work for the future. But that leaves the challenge of what to become a master in, how to achieve mastery and when to morph or slide into another area of mastery.

• What will I do when I am 65?

A significant proportion of people in the class will live until they are at least 100 and few can count on being able to retire at 60 for 40 years of leisure. They will simply have to work longer. But doing what? Most of the vignettes my students designed for the year 2030 (when many will be in their 50’s and 60’s) described themselves with portfolio lives working as consultants. But how realistic is this? Right now it is well near impossible to become a consultant at the age of 65 - and what will change this?

• How am I going to be a good parent?

Many of the MBA and Sloan students at London Business School come from successful families with hard-working fathers and mothers. They understand the choices their parents made to create a comfortable life for them – but they are also faced head on with the consequences. Fathers seldom at home, mothers under real stress as they try to juggle a family and work. Of course that’s not to say that this group won’t want to live the same work-focused lives – but they are faced with the consequences of this in a way their parents were not. What choices will they make about the family lives they craft?

It was a great week – raising some crucial issues. Do you have any thoughts on how they face these five challenges?

The Barriers to Joining the Global Talent Pool

There has been much hand wringing in the UK this week about social mobility. It is clear that over the last couple of decades, a child’s family situation has become ever more predictive of their future career. A quick look at the membership of the current UK government (with wealthy parents and private education at centre stage) only confirms the present lack of social mobility.

What does our research from the Future of Work tell us about how social mobility might develop over the coming decades?

First, let’s not forget that the ever increasing forces of globalisation will simply serve to mount pressure on jobs. There will always be someone in the world who is cheaper, smarter and better educated who can pick up work that was previously the domain of UK jobs. Of course that’s not true of face-to-face personal service work (think of hairdressers, masseurs and waiters). But it will be true of an increasing proportion of jobs that where previously considered the domain of nationals (think of the Indian maths coaches who are currently providing on-line support for the UK’s exam candidates). Markets for jobs are becoming ever more global and this will put greater pressure on people to develop skills and knowledge that have valuable currency in the global job market.

At the same time, the technological shifts we are studying are showing clearly that more and more work will be replaced by robotics and artificial intelligence systems. IBM’s sophisticated computer, Watson, trouncing the human brains in the recent American show Jeopardy gave a clear signal of this. It’s not just that machines are putting low-skilled workers out of the job: we have to get used to AI replacing even rather complex analytical work.

As we look at the forces shaping work, it is clear that workers will bifurcate into the highly educated and skilled – who have a place in the global talent pool – and F2F personal service workers – who need to be located in a specific place. All other work will be up for grabs on the world spot market.

This will put enormous pressure on the development of human capital - both in terms of intellectual capital (knowledge, know-how and competencies) and social capital (the connectivity and potential innovation built through relationships and networks). Intellectual capital is a product of education and training – social capital a by-product of networks created through activities such as early working experiences, mentoring, coaching and internships.

The bottom line is this: the competition for work is only going to get tougher. So the priority for any society, family or individual is to put an enormous focus on education and training in order to develop the intellectual capital that will be the entry ticket to the global talent pool. But this will not be enough. We also have to realise that the development of social capital – and in particular of diverse and rich networks - will play a crucial a role.

That’s why the current debate about social mobility is so crucial. It’s not sufficient to think about who gets access to the elite educational opportunities. It’s also crucial to debate who gets the elite networking opportunities, be they early job opportunities, coaching or internships. It’s in the combination of the two that the ticket to the global talent pool is crafted. When societies erect barriers to entry, they create the potential to denude both the intellectual and the social capital of their members.