Future Thinking

A recent survey study by the Institute for the Future, The American Future Gap revealed that, “The vast majority of people never think about the far future.”

As author of the survey and senior researcher Jane McGonigal adds, “The majority of people aren’t connecting with their future selves, which studies have shown leads to less self-control and less pro-social behavior.” McGonigal adds, “Thinking about the future in 5, 10 and 30 years is essential to being an engaged citizen and creative problem solver. Curiosity about what might happen in the future, the ability to imagine how things could be different, and empathy for our future selves are all necessary if we want to create positive change in our own lives or the world around us.”

So, if future thinking is shown to have positive benefits for us and society, then it might behoove us to consider learning ways in which a futurist may approach thinking about the future.

To think more like a futurist, let’s dig a bit into Dr. Joseph Voros’ work A Primer on Future Studies, Foresight and the Use of Scenarios, and to what he refers to as the three “laws” of futures:

The future is not predetermined.  Understanding that there are limitless and or endless possibilities for the future, is also in understanding that while the present does have bearing on the future, the future can and does remain undetermined by our current situation. Or as Dr. Voros adds, “Therefore, there is no, and cannot be, any single predetermined future, rather there are considered to be infinitely many potential alternative futures.”

The future is not predictable.  The future is not some process that keeps marching forward in a linear, predictable manner. As Dr. Voros shares, “Even if the future were predetermined, we could never collect enough information about it to an arbitrary degree of accuracy to construct a complete model of how it would develop.” And yet, in many ways, especially in our organizations, we continue to approach the future in a safe, linear, predictable manner, which is at odds with the velocity and acceleration of change in today’s complex world.

Future outcomes can be influenced by our choices in the present.  And while we are faced with infinite possibilities of how our future will emerge, that does not mean that we have no influence on that emergence, no matter the limitless possibilities it proposes. For which Dr. Voros puts forth, “Even though we can’t determine which future of an infinite possible variety will eventuate, nevertheless we can influence the shape of the future which does eventuate by the choices we make regarding our actions (or inaction) in the present.” Too often we remain cognitively unaware and immune to the power of seeing how we think and act can have great influence on this constantly evolving and emerging future, allowing our mental models to provide us with a predetermined approach to the future.

In A Primer on Future Studies, Foresight and the Use of Scenarios, Dr. Joseph Voros provides “four” classes of potential and or alternatives when considering the future.

Possible futures.  As Dr. Voros shares, “This class of futures includes all the kinds of futures we can possibly imagine – those which might happen – no matter how far-fetched, unlikely or way out.” These fall into the class of might happen future.

Plausible futures.  These futures fall into the class of “could happen” futures. While possible futures are often reliant on future knowledge, plausible futures are driven more by “current knowledge.”

Probable futures.  These futures tend to fall into the class of “likely to happen” futures. As Dr. Voros adds, they “stem in part from the continuance of current trends” and are “a simple linear extension of the present.”

Preferable futures.  Whereas, plausible futures fall into the class of what we “want to happen” futures. The difference of preferable futures to the three classes of futures is that preferable futures are “largely emotional rather than cognitive” and the other three classes of futures are “concerned with informational or cognitive knowledge.”

In the end, it doesn’t matter that we think like futurist, as much as it matters that begin to spend time future thinking.

As Jane McGonigal shares, “Future thinking is one of our most under-developed skills sets. It takes less than a minute a day, but studies have shown it can lead to improved health, better financial stability and much more.” And yet, “The vast majority of people never think about the far future.” Even though “Studies show the less people think about their future lives, the less self-control they exhibit and the less likely they are to make choices that benefit the world in the long-run.”

And while it is important to be in the present, it may be just important that we spend a bit more time thinking about our future.

Preparing in the present, can keep us from being stranded in the future.

References and quotes from…

Voros, Joseph.  A Primer on Future Studies, Foresight and the Use of Scenarios.  2001. Thinking Futures: Designing Collaborative Conversations about the Future

McGonigal, Jane. The American Future Gap. 2017. Institute for the Future

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That World Doesn’t Exist Anymore…

“One of the key issues in an exponential world, whatever understanding you have today is going to rapidly become obsolete, and so you have to continue to refresh your education about technologies and about organizational capabilities. That’s going to be very challenging.”  -Salim Ismail Exponential Organizations

Working one job until retirement…

(According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average time in a single job is 4.2 years and individuals born in the latter years of the baby boom (1957-1964) held an average of 11.9 jobs from age 18-50.)

The lifespan of Fortune 500 companies…

(According to BBC News, the average lifespan of a company in the S&P 500 index has decreased by more than 50 years in the last century, from 67 years in the 1920’s to just 15 years today, according to Richard Foster from Yale University. He also estimates that by 2020, more than three-quarters of the S&P 500 will be companies we have not heard of yet.)

Big organizations are responsible for the main creation of new jobs…

(A recent study by Harvard and Princeton economists showed that 94% of net job growth from 2005 to 2015 was in ‘alternative work,’ defined as independent contractors and freelancers.)

The skills that got you here, will keep you here…

(A World Economic Forum report found that 63% of workers in the U.S. say they’ve participated in job related training in the past 12 months, yet employers are reporting the highest talent shortages since 2007. On average, by 2020, more than a third of the desired core skill sets of most occupations will be comprised of skills that are not yet considered crucial to the job today, according to the respondents.)

Phone Booths…

(According to Google, the number of mobile phone users in the world is expected to pass the 5 billion mark by 2019. In 2014, nearly 60% of the population worldwide already owned a mobile phone.)

According to The Telegraph and Business Insider here are few more things that technology have made obsolete in today’s world…

• Printing out photographs
• Getting film developed
• Movie rental stores and VCR’s
• Record stores, buying CD’s
• Fax machines
• Backing up your data on floppies or CD’s
• Long-distance charges
• Phone books, dictionaries, encyclopedias
• Checking a map before or during a car journey
• Dial-up Internet
• VHS Tapes

Not to consider the jobs that no longer exist due to technology and the current level of digital disruption. The jobs and the percentage of work that we continually hear about as being on the verge of being replaced by automation, robots and artificial intelligence in the near future.

As an example, Fast Company shares these 10 jobs that will likely be replaced by robots…

1. Insurance Underwriters and Claims Representatives
2. Bank Tellers and Representatives
3. Financial Analysts
4. Construction Workers
5. Inventory Managers and Stockists
6. Farmers
7. Taxi Drivers
8. Manufacturing Workers
9. Journalists
10. Movie Stars

For which, Martin Ford shares, “The impact that accelerating progress has on the job market and overall economy is poised to defy much of conventional wisdom.”

Of which Ford adds, “Technology is not just advancing gradually: it is accelerating.  As a result, the impact may come long before we expect it…”

Preparing for this automated, augmented, artificially intelligence infused future is difficult to imagine, let alone prepare effectively for, both as individuals and organizations. So the objective then becomes, not to try and predict the future (which is impossible), but to try and forecast and determine those signals for the future that are arising from the chaos of the present. It is in understanding…

Preparing our students for an automated future, is a much different proposition.

For which I will leave you with this excerpt from The Economist (Economist Intelligence Unit-EIU) report sponsored by Google, Driving the Skills Agenda: Preparing Students for the Future, “It is also a safe bet that most Americans will need to acquire new knowledge and skills over their work lives in order to earn a good living in a changing work world. In this context, the nation’s challenge is to sharply increase the fraction of American children with the foundational skills needed to develop job-relevant knowledge and to learn efficiently over a lifetime.”

For what we are learning and realizing more and more, is that the world we grew up in, the world that we so easily recognized, may no longer exist anymore…

It is in realizing what changes, AND in what stays the same, that we can more effectively support our individuals and organizations in moving more successfully into this new and unknown future.

And also realizing that human aspirations such as love, compassion, caring, understanding, resilience, empathy, imagination, inventiveness, creativity, emotional intelligence and awareness tend to continually stand the test of time.

Or as Faisal Hoque and Drake Baer share in Everything Connects, “We have to assume that everything we think is right today will be wrong tomorrow.”

Experimentation Is Not An Event

“The most important and visible outcropping of the action bias in the excellent companies is their willingness to try things out, to experiment. There is absolutely no magic in the experiment. It is simply a tiny completed action, a manageable test that helps you learn something, just as in high school chemistry. But our experience has been that most big institutions have forgotten how to test and learn. They seem to prefer analysis and debate to trying something out, and they are paralyzed by fear of failure, however small.”  -Tom Peters In Search of Excellence

Without experimentation we limit our opportunity to evaluate the value of new ideas and thinking.

Without experimentation we lack space to discover and engage new learning and knowledge.

Without experimentation we fail to have a process that invites innovation.

Without experimentation, we never become true learning organizations.

As Stefan Thomke shares in his work Experimentation Matters, “Experimentation matters because it fuels the discovery and creation of knowledge and thereby leads to the development and improvement of products, processes, systems, and organizations.”

In other words, experimentation allows us the space, the processes, and the opportunity to continually retool and upskill our thinking, our ideas, our processes, our systems, and our organizations.

It allows room for learning.

However, the problem with experimentation for many individuals and organizations begins with how we see experimentation, with our mindset. Too often we treat experimentation like an event. Something we do occasionally.

Rather than an iterative and reflective process for continually improving and determine how to get better.

Which means we are going to need to strip away the “event” aura that surrounds our idea and thinking in and about experimentation. To begin to think of experimentation as something natural, something designed into the everyday processes of our organizations and systems.

To move from event thinking, to natural integration.

If we are going to transform ourselves and our organizations, both incrementally and exponentially, we have to begin to see exploration, experimentation and discovery as everyday processes intertwined and designed into our systems and organizations, not one time events that do little to move us towards that transformation and a mindset of continuous improvement.

Innovation is not determined by a well-defined plan, but discovered through ongoing experimentation, risk-taking, reflection, and feedback. It is in this process that not only is new learning engaged, but very often, new knowledge is created.

When experimentation is intertwined and designed into an organization’s processes and systems, new learning and ongoing idea flows become a much more natural and open phenomena in and across the organization.

Which is the very foundation of what a learning organization should be.

For far too long, individuals and organizations have limited themselves to becoming initiative implementers, which is the antithesis of the autonomy and learning that is required for organizations to retain relevance in an accelerated world shifting at a volatile and exponential pace.

If we truly intend to become learning individuals and organizations, we have to determine how to work discovery, exploration, experimentation, creativity and innovation back into our individual and organizational DNA.

Divergent Thinking + Creativity = Big Ideas

Big Ideas + Experimentation + Execution = Innovation

Innovation + Technology = Acceleration

Acceleration + Network Learning = Collective Impact

Learning Organization

“Perhaps the attribute most critical to a learning organization is experimentation.”  -via Exponential Organizations

The Future Will Be Very Different (Part 2)

In March, responding to Mark Cuban’s comments to how Artificial Intelligence was going to change the workforce, the current Treasury Secretary, when questioned about Cuban’s comments, inferred that, “Artificial intelligence is so far in the future that it’s not even on my radar screen.  We won’t have to worry about how it affects the workforce for 50 to 100 more years.” (per Business Insider)

Which, for many, was a shocking comment, to say the least…

Especially in that it was in direct contrast to what was shared in December of 2016, in which the White House released two reports, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy, which was a follow up to the Administration’s previous report from October of 2016, Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence. A report that indicated that “as many as 47% of all American jobs could be at risk from artificial intelligence in the next two decades.”

The following was shared in regards to these reports…

“Although it is difficult to predict these economic effects precisely, the report suggests that policymakers should prepare for five primary economic effects:

• Positive contributions to aggregate productivity growth;

• Changes in skills demanded by the job marked, including greater demand for higher-level technical skills;

• Uneven distribution of impact, across sectors, wage levels, education levels, job types, and locations;

• Churning of the job market as some jobs disappear while others are created; and

• The loss of jobs for some workers in the short-run and possibly longer depending on policy responses.”

To add, in an article shared by Gizmodo, “According to a study by the Center of Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, 5.6 million manufacturing jobs were lost in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010. An estimated 85% of those jobs were actually attributable to technological change-largely automation.”

While CNBC shares, “The White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) ranked occupations by wages and found that 83% of jobs making less than $20 per hour would come under pressure from automation, as compared to 31% of jobs making between $20 and $40 per hour and 4% of jobs making above $40 per hour.”

And it isn’t only the threat of automation and artificial intelligence that is changing work.

According to a recent article from World Economic Forum, “The days of working for 40 years and retiring with a good pension are gone. Now the average time in a single job is 4.2 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. What’s more, 35% of the skills workers need – regardless of industry – will have changed by 2020.”

To add to that, on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics webpage, “Individuals born in latter years of the baby boom (1957-1964) held an average of 11.9 jobs from age 18-50.”

The World Economic Forum Future of Jobs of Survey adds that, “On average, by 2020, more than a third of the desired core skill sets of most occupations will be comprised of skills that are not yet considered crucial to the job today, according to our respondents.”

To say we live in very interesting times would be an understatement. While some find this new world exciting and filled with possibilities for change, others see it as tumultuous, chaotic, and even a bit scary. But one thing we can say, is that after years of incremental change, we now stand on the cusp of some very steep and disruptive shifts. Our individuals, our organizations, our systems, our governments, and even our societies are facing some very unsteady and uncertain winds created by the pace and acceleration of change in today’s world.

Winds that are heightening our awareness of the vast unknowns emerging from this future.

And awareness of what is emerging is vital to our ability to design a better future. Otherwise, we will continue to create larger gaps and ongoing disconnects for individuals, organizations and our systems. We can ill afford to be overcome by the urgency and plethora of technical problems, while barely sensing, let alone keeping up with the a whole new set of adaptive challenges that are arising.

We can ill afford to face this new and emerging future overwhelmed, unequipped and unprepared.

We can ill afford to…

• Have a lack of awareness
• A lack of vision
• A lack of clarity
• A lack of communication

We can be certain that content knowledge is no longer enough for success in a world and workforce that has shifted exponentially. A world and workforce that is facing an uncertain future from what automation and artificial intelligence might do, might create, and the affects it may have on us, our organizations, our systems, our governments and our societies.

We can ill afford to wait for these uncertainties to become certainties. We have to determine those “unknown” skills and abilities that will help prepare our generations to come for those “unknowns” and the “jobs that are yet to exist.”

Skills that Singularity Hub share as; critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration across networks and leading by influence, agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurship, effective oral and written communication, assessing and analyzing information, and curiosity and imagination.

Or as CareerBuilder would add as; adaptability, self-motivation, networking, self-awareness, and computer coding.

And the Institute for the Future’s 10 Skills for the Future Work of 2020; sense-making, social intelligence, novel and adaptive thinking, cross-cultural competency, computational thinking, new media literacy, transdisciplinary, design mindset, cognitive load management, and virtual collaboration.

“According to a 2016 Pew Research Center survey, The State of American Jobs, found that 87% of workers believe it will be essential for them to get training and develop new job skills throughout their work life in order to keep up with changes in the workplace.”

Which gives an entirely new meaning to the idea of lifelong learner…

Creative, innovative, imaginative thinking will always be valued, but we are finding that its value is expanding in an age of increasing automation and artificial intelligence.

Engaging and infusing skills and abilities into the educational world of content, better prepares our next generation for a world that is shifting and emerging through a fog of uncertainty and unknowns. While we can never predict the future, greater awareness does allow us to forecast and better prepare for whatever is to emerge…

“However much change you saw over the last 10 years with the iPhone, over the last 20 years with the Internet, over the last 30 years with with PC’s, that is nothing. Nothing! Things are getting faster, processing is getting faster, machines are starting to think, and either you make them think for you or they will take your place and do the thinking for you. That could be problematic for many people.”  -Mark Cuban via CNBC