Let’s do a thought experiment about the future, Mr. or Miss Business Leader. These will be common experience:
– Practically any information will be available digitally, including real-time data.
– Data storage is not limiting, nor is data organization/indexing. Wired bandwidth trends towards fiber-optic speeds to every computer.
– 5G wireless to mobile devices (think “download feature length movie in 60 seconds”).
– At least half, probably 80% of the jobs people do today are gone – either through automation or because there’s cheaper labor elsewhere.
– Technology options open up completely new products, services, and business models.
– The rate of change continues to accelerate. (Not the amount of change, but the rate of change.)
Those are hard-trends, my friends. We can disagree about when particular milestones come, but they will come. We know this because each of these is already true in some part, or some part of the world. (William Gibson said, “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.”) How successful will your business be in that future state? These are disruptive changes that affect every business. Combine this thinking with the fact that not everything changes in the future:
- People are messy, craving leadership and needing management.
- Every individual has to learn, and keep learning.
- Both individuals and organizations must adapt to changing environments, or die.
- The future is full of possibilities and relentlessly destroys what no longer works.
Business leaders like you are responsible for thinking out further, imagining possibilities, and shepherding people and organizations to go there. Look again at the hard trends. What will be your limiting factors 3-5 years from today?
- People with the right skills and capabilities (they may not be employees)
- Ability to adapt to changing markets and competitors
- Your leadership ability
(Notice that “Access to capital and investors” is not on the list now, but would have been pre-Internet. If you’re working in the developing world this may still be on your list for another 3-5 years, but no longer. This is one of the astounding economic shifts in the history of the world.) What about 20 years from today? You will have the same list of limiting factors:
- People with the right skills and capabilities (they may not be employees)
- Ability to adapt to changing markets and competitors
- Your leadership ability
What skills do people need for the future? Forecasting the specific technical skills your business will need is difficult to forecast more than 2 years out because of the pace of technology changes. A smart business leader invests in technical skill learning in the existing employees, but also seeks out skills from a global workforce of contractors and freelancers. These crafts, however, are timelessly valuable:
- Self-leadership
- Communication
- Project management and getting results
- Analytical ability and Decision-making
- Influencing people, working in alliances and different organization models
- Marketing and Sales abilities
- Imagination and Vision-Casting
- Financial analysis and management
- Systems Thinking
- Teaching and Mentoring to develop others
- Personal Resilience
I use the word ‘crafts’ because each of these is a combination of learnable skills and art, which together create something useful and beautiful. The best business leaders invest time, energy, and money into these crafts because these are timeless and continue to be important no matter what technology changes and business model shifts occur. Like oak trees, these crafts take time to mature. What’s the best time to plant an oak tree? 20 years ago. Next best time? Today. How do you get there? How do we get there, knowing that everyone has to learn and adapt? These change trends are relentless. You will never “arrive.”
This is how I coach leaders: Intentionally and publicly embrace change. Let others see you lean into it. The safest future is the one you invent. Figure out what part of the past success you need to let go of in order to take hold of the success for the future. Hunkering down and hoping this change will blow by you without affecting your business or your family is a foolish and dangerous strategy. Commit to investing in people and in yourself. I worked with one very savvy entrepreneur who unapologetically invests 15% of his employee salary pool into training and learning opportunities. Treat this as a long-term investment that yields 10, 30, and 60-fold. [Sidebar: The best people in the world will want to work with you and in your business.]
Sharpen your use of technology, and adopting new technology quickly. Caution: Don’t let the technology spotlight distract you from investing in the timeless crafts that only people can do well. Seek wisdom. The more senior your position in an organization, the less likely you will fail based on specific technical or business skill. Your failure points increasing become working with people, communication, self-leadership, and mindsets. Notice what the best business leaders gravitate towards reading: biographies, history, fiction that has stood the test of time, deep religious books. This is where you find wisdom and fertile soil for learning the hard stuff that makes all the distance. Get a buddy. Share the journey. Seek their perspective. It’s less scary to do this with others. Community drives out needless fears.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below. Perhaps more importantly, what will you do about this today?
I will continue learning more each day about these various topics, Glenn. It seems the need for technology and skill will keep continuing to grow. Great post that really makes us think.
One of the benefits of writing and teaching on these topics is that I have to learn and practice! Thanks for your comment, Adam.
I appreciate that you list communication and people skills as a time tested trend that will still be around in the future. I think the future of leadership will also require us to challenge conventional roads to leadership (i.e. MBA or business school grads) and embrace how to tap into the leadership potential of people who don’t consider themselves leaders.
Good point, Julia. I have observed that many terrific business leaders and church leaders without formal business degrees are free to use other frameworks for leading.