The Future of Work

No more drowning in a sea of work! The Future of Work will combine passion, genius, well-being, collaboration and innovation as a whole new experience of business in the world.

As we emerge from the global lockdown of 2020, the fundamental difference will be our collective unwillingness to return to 'normal'. Because we've seen sweeping changes in a matter of months on things like climate change, universal basic income and the need for inclusive health care systems, our collective tolerance for corporate immovability will be replaced by an excited orientation to purchasing from businesses making the world a better place for us all. Innovative companies and community ingenuity will thrive.

There's now a powerful sense of priority for our individual and collective well-being. It's no longer going to be profit at any cost ... to the detriment of employee & customer well-being and to life on Earth. We have seen just how interconnected and interwoven we are all over the world. We're learning all over again to celebrate the richness of diversity in soil for local food production and the elegance of diversity in each person and animal's contribution to a thriving world.

As a result, success from now on will come from prioritising contribution to people and the world over profit at any cost. Capitalism as we know it will cease to be a dominating force on the planet, replaced by a whole new philosophy of interweaving companies and communities that work collaboratively towards enhancing life for us all. For example, major drinks brands are now looking to invest in plant based alternatives to plastic.

Business will become a playground for innovation with open source collaborations replacing the concept of competition. As an expert on genius, I know that we cannot keep the brilliance of people's inventive genius in check much longer. As this pops into play (which it's had the opportunity to during the lockdown), leadership will shift from a hierarchical, top down structure to empowered, leaderful swarms of people, moving from project to project, working in collaborative genius fusion ... the exponential outcome of fusing the unique genius of multiple people to create something more extraordinary than any of the parts. Excitement about work & empowerment of others will become strong performance indicators. Employee owned businesses (like Riverford Organics in the UK) are already demonstrating the strength and versatility of employee driven businesses. The ability to innovatively pivot in the face of change has now been shown to be essential in our ever changing world.

Watch my video on COLLECTIVE COLLABORATION.

As of 2nd quarter 2020, we have become one big, global, on line workplace. Working from anywhere will replace big city, big building commuting and on line meetings & events will take precedence over expensive and exhausting travelling to meet. My guess is that we will initially see big city folks working part time from home and part time in the city, but that will move over time to distributed workplaces with everyone feeling more productive and happier working in a place of their choosing. Digital nomads have been trending over recent years (I even did it myself for 2 years) and my prediction is that we will see a thriving combination of travel, adventure and work eventually become the norm.

I haven't dared yet to mention AI, which personally I am very excited about. Just like a global pandemic did not turn into a zombie apocalypse (it's been more like a kindness pandemic), the world will not be over run by robots railing against their human masters ... that is simply movie dramatics. Artificial intelligence will partner the human race to make life more incredible for all life on this planet. It will facilitate innovation in ways we can't even see yet. It will assist us in brilliantly navigating space travel and building communities on Mars and other planets over time.

All of the things I've written about above are to me an 'of course!' and are already emerging now. But what will truly alter the face of business and work in the world will be the creative joy and unleashed imagination that will emerge as we're given the freedom to contribute and collaborate like never before. In this milieu, meaningfulness and difference making will rise and a sense of fulfilment will replace the 'get ahead at any cost' approach seen in a lot of organisations today. I also believe that more and more people will make the move from corporate life to entrepreneurial endeavour while corporations themselves will discover the efficacy of interwoven entrepreneurial hubs within their own larger organisations. The world she is a'changing fast and brilliantly .... and isn't that a wonderful thing.

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Read more about how I see our new future emerging into the world now at https://www.innovatingthefuture.life/