Lynda Gratton - The Future of Work

Davos 2016: My Three Take-Aways

So here is what has got me thinking after a week at the 2016 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos:

1. The rise of the scientists.

The dominant Davos talk last year was of the Greek crisis and the possible break up of the Euro - this was a time when politicians and bankers were centre stage as they were called into action to solve the crisis of the moment. This year, whilst bankers and politicians were still around in abundance, now at centre stage were AI scientists, robotic experts, neuroscientists, medical researchers and authorities on the science of climate change. The questions they debated are just as challenging as the economic questions of 2015, though less likely to be resolved any time soon. Questions like: ‘What will be the impact of AI and machine learning on jobs?’; ‘How are humans different from the robots already present at the forum?’; ‘When will we understand the human brain?’; ‘Will a cure for Alzheimer’s be found in our lifetime?’, ‘What role can science play in mitigating climate change’. It seems to me that we should forget the rise of the robot – what we are watching is the rise of the scientists.

2. Questioning the status quo.

What caught my attention was not grand theories – it was the questions that were being asked, and the small experiments that were being described. Here are three I’m still pondering: First, a question from Tharman Shanmugaratnam the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore in a session I ran on the skills gap “Why aren’t education institutions measured on their outputs – for example their ability to create productive skills and knowledge?” He is right, why aren’t they? Next an experiment described by Yasuhisa Shiozaki, the Japanese Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare, in which tax breaks are being created in families where three generations are living together. That’s an interesting experiment in a country where the isolation of older people is a national challenge. Or the question posed by Thomas DeRosa the CEO of Welltower, USA, “We have ‘bring your babies to work’ initiatives – why not ‘bring your ageing mother to work’?” Hmm – why don’t we bring our ageing mothers to work?

3. The individualised future.

I’ve been thinking and writing about the future for a decade now. But what is really beginning to strike me is that there are no ‘grand theories’. The forces that are shaping our future - be they the forces of technology, demography or resources - are playing out very differently across the regions of the world and are impacting areas and communities in unique ways. There is no one grand theory of the future – instead there will be multiple futures. What that means is that shaping positive futures will come from the experimentation and social change that individuals, families, communities and cities embark on as they try to navigate their own way through this highly volatile environment.

My guess is it will be these experiments and questions that will increasingly shape the global conversations that take place in groups like the World Economic Forum.

Building resilience in a fragile world

We live in a fragile world. Every one of us faces profound and escalating challenges– youth unemployment touches many families; income inequality and poverty are a source of shame for many of us in developed countries; whilst it is only the least observant who could fail to recognise the early signs of a profound change in the climate. These challenges are no longer particular to one country or area: they affect most people around the world. 

 The challenges faced by organisations are no less complex. They too are faced with the implications of climate change, of inequality, and of the gap between their needs and the available pool of talent. These challenges are on a greater and more global scale than ever before, and emerging at an ever faster trajectory. Previously stable companies find themselves on shaky ground – and the negative consequences of the problems that surround them are proving difficult to reverse.

Over the last five years I have directed the Future of Work Research Consortium which brings together executives from more than 50 companies to consider how best to address these challenges. What is clear is that resilience is the key, and to build resilience companies will be called upon to develop a whole new set of tools and ways of innovating.

Building inner resilience

Resilience starts with what happens inside the corporation –with an, intellectually challenging, emotionally vibrant and socially connected community of employees. Those companies, like Tata Consultancy Services and Unilever who are attempting to do this, are using newly emerging technology to amplify the intellectual ideas and knowledge of employees across their businesses. They are ensuring that they gather the social wealth held in the different communities of people and in the networks that crisscross the company and stretch beyond its boundaries.

Executives also need to think hard about how to design jobs in a way that they enhance rather than denude the emotional vitality of their employees. For some, like BT, the wide-scale adoption of flexible working is allowing people to manage their own time in a positive and enhancing way. Others, like Deloitte are thinking hard about how to break the career hierarchies and introduce a matrix process that allows people to increase or decrease their contribution at different stages of their working life.

The importance of outer resilience

Creating a foundation of resilience is critical – and in some corporations there is also a focus on building resilience in supply chains and in the wider world they operate in. This is crucial because increasingly companies do not exist independently of the rest of the world, and their future is reliant on their interaction with the communities in which they are embedded

I saw this at Danone where people across the company are actively working with farmers in their supply chain to ensure that they are building strong communities – the John Lewis Partnership is doing the same in the UK. These are corporations that are facing the challenges of our increasingly fragile world head-on, by recognising their connection with the outside world. They understand that their businesses are profoundly related to the communities in which they work and are able to think differently and comprehensively about the larger environment in which they operate. Some, like Royal Dutch Shell, are using scenario planning to help executives really become aware of the forces shaping their lives and their businesses. It is this awareness that will enable them to face these forces in a positive way, seeing them as opportunities rather than threats. The final piece of the puzzle is leadership: building resilience needs leaders who are prepared to balance long- term needs with short- term financial results.

What is clear to me is that being resilient requires making the choices that are positive for employees, investors and those in the communities they touch.

Lynda's latest book, The Key: How Corporations Succeed by Solving the World’s Toughest Problems, is out on 9^th June.

 

 

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Davos 2014 – what is on and off the radar screen?

One of the interesting aspects of attending and blogging about Davos each year is that I can look back and reflect on my impressions of previous years. For example, looking back at my Davos 2012 blog, I wrote: “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.”

By Davos 2013, I wrote of some change: “Looking back to the 2012 Davos, the talk was all about the final playing out of the financial crisis and the deep concerns about the break up of the Eurozone. Just a year later, and the mood seemed more optimistic, though with a strong undercurrent of realism”.

Looking forward to Davos 2014, what can we expect? The Eurozone has now stabilised and the prospects for a less turbulent world are emerging. But this is also a world that FT Editor Lionel Barber in his pre-Davos briefing described as likely to experience ‘terminally tepid growth’. It is a world of low growth and low inflation. In light of these facts, here is what I think will be on (and off) the radar screen at Davos 2014:

 

On the radar screen:

The rise of nationalism

A crisis is in a sense a great way of diverting attention. Now that the realities of ‘terminally tepid growth’ are beginning to be apparent, many people across the world – and in particular the developed world – do not like what they see. Economies may be healthier, but people are unhappy. And so we are already seeing issues of identity, atavistic politics, and the emergence of fringe populist parties. Those gathered at Davos will be concerned that this will destabilise labour and capital flows and impact on economic recovery.

The misery of youth unemployment

Last year, I saw youth unemployment as one of the major emerging themes at Davos, and I think the debate will continue in 2014. Youth unemployment continues to be a structural issue that is particularly damaging in the fragile economies of Africa and the Middle East. What makes this worse is the ever widening gap between the needs of the work place and the education system. Last year at Davos many of us were entranced by a session in which a young Pakistani girl talked about the incredible progress she had made by using an on-line learning module created by professors at Stanford University. As fascinating as her story was, it’s clear that her experience is the exception rather than the norm. For the vast majority of young people the promises of low cost education and flexible labor markets are yet to be delivered.

 

Off the radar screen:

After the crash and the crisis it is remarkable how quickly the old systems are re-emerging – and as a result some of the challenges we thought might begin to be solved through disruption, seem instead to be moving off the radar screen:

Climate change

Right now what is emerging is a dissipation of political will, for example shale gas has brought the prospect of cheaper energy and disincentivised the investment in renewable energy sources. Governments and corporations alike are still finding it difficult to tackle global problems like climate change which involve multiple stakeholders and there is a growing realization that we don’t yet have the requisite global infrastructure – so I expect the debate about climate change to be pushed onto the back burner.

Gender parity

As any visitor to Davos will notice, women participants make up a tiny proportion of those who attend. Next week at Davos I will be chairing one of the workshops on the subject of diversity, but I don’t expect much to happen in gender diversity in 2014. The glacial movement of women assuming senior positions is surprising and disappointing to those who expected more. As always I expect there to be talk of quotas and much debate about the Norwegian experience. But I don’t expect to see much action. 

The Magic of a Joined-Up World

We crafted the Future of Work Consortium to help people across the world think more deeply and accurately about the future. The combination of Future Proofed Cases, Thought Pieces plus the portal and webinars have together created a fertile ground for conversation and reflection across the 200 people who are engaged. 

As we near the end of 2010, I’m reflecting on what the insights from this year can tell us about the next two decades of work.

For me this year has seen ever more confirmation that a joined- up world (over five billion in the coming decade) will have magic properties as it brings opportunities to people born in those regions who, even a decade ago, would have very little hope. The programs to give computers to Rwanda’s children, to digitalize the world’s books and knowledge, and to innovate around the cost of mobile phones and connections all bode well for the future. 

I’m particularly interested in how this magic of a joined-up world will impact on one of the world’s most pressing problem – climate change. 

When we asked the executives in our consortium to talk about energy conservation and issues of carbon reduction, most saw it as a crucial factor for 2025. However, they also acknowledged that right now there is insufficient action taking place at the corporate level, in part because it is difficult to know what path to take.

However, what is interesting is that in the magic of a joined-up world, the most crucial developments in carbon reduction are more likely to come from the bottom-up, rather than top-down institutional or governmental edicts. Change will come as a result of individual team members taking action about their carbon usage, and as individual business units monitor and take action. In the past, these individual pilots and small discrete experiments often languished, unknown beyond their immediate circle. However, now with the magic of a joined-up world, processes like Open Innovation and the impact of hyper-connectivity will be that it is possible for these pilots and experiments to be shared, and for communities across the world to take a closer look at the outcomes and rapidly disseminate their findings. 

We discovered pilots in many companies designed to reduce one of the major creators of carbon – the commute to work and overseas travel. For example, at BT, many thousands of people are now working from home, and the business is also creating town ‘hubs’ in which local workers can meet without making the long commute into a major city. Technological connectivity is also becoming part of daily work. We heard from the executives at Cisco, how rapid developments in video conferencing are enabling them to build full wall videos to connect one team with another. We also saw how webinar developments are making the connectivity between virtual teams ever more efficient. It's clear that these new ways of working will over time reduce the carbon footprint of those that adopt them.

What is so exciting about the future is that we don’t have to wait for moribund governments or bureaucratic corporations to make the first move. When it comes to issues as large, complex and global as carbon use, it will be the connectivity between thousands of pilots and experiments that will make the greatest impact.

So as we look to the future, it’s the magic of a joined-up world that can give us hope. See you again in 2011!