By Chris Mayer
Changes in how and where we work, especially the division of labor between humans and machines, will impact how well organizations are able to achieve their missions and even what their missions are. This makes the future of work an important topic for current and emerging leaders.
Despite its importance, the future of work is typically not included in leader development programs. Futurists are well positioned to address this gap with organizations for whom they work or support through consulting.
WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF WORK
Much has been written about the future of work, and discussions about this topic intensified during and after the COVID pandemic. The future of work concerns how work is performed, who is performing that work, and how the workplace will evolve given changes in the external environment. McKinsey defines the future of work as “an informed perspective on what businesses and other organizations need to know about how work could shift (given digitization and other trends), plus how workforces and workplaces can prepare for those changes, big and small.” Gartner defines the future of work as “changes in how work will get done over the next decade, influenced by technological, generational and social shifts.”
Both definitions are in line with how futurists describe a specific domain, and although not specifically mentioned, both definitions suggest that conceptualizing possible futures related to work and the workplace and considering their implications would be useful. The future of work is an important topic for organizational leaders as they will need to strengthen their organizations’ resilience and identify opportunities to transform work and the workplace in ways that provide an advantage, support the flourishing of their employees, and create positive change. A basic understanding of foresight and futures thinking is necessary to making an exploration of the future of work useful for organizations.
THE FUTURE OF WORK WITHIN LEADER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS
Organizations use leader development programs to equip their leaders with the skills and knowledge needed to serve in a leadership position as many program participants have not served as leaders or are increasing their leadership responsibilities. Leader development programs ensure that corporations have the leadership necessary for achieving their goals, but the future of work is typically not included in the curriculum of these programs.
Leader development programs typically address a range of topics related to leaders’ responsibilities and can be viewed through two categories. One category of topics involves interacting with and leading teams. This often includes emotional intelligence, inclusion, communication, fostering a collaborative environment, project management, and coaching and providing feedback. These skills are essential for motivating and guiding team members to accomplish missions and goals and are especially important for new leaders who have not had the experience of leading teams.
Another category involves topics related to the leader’s role in guiding the organization at the strategic level. This category includes skills such as strategic thinking, innovation, and change management. These skills enable leaders to contribute to the development and achievement of organizational level goals. While the skills in this second category often address thinking about the future, foresight and futures thinking are typically not included within leader development programs.
The absence of foresight and futures thinking is a significant gap for leader development programs, especially programs for emerging leaders. This gap means that organizations are not building internal capacity that can help navigate and thrive in uncertainty. Additionally, the future of work as a topic is also missing from leader development programs, which means that organizations are not systematically thinking about changes to work and the workplace.
MAKING THE CASE FOR THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FUTURE OF WORK
Futurists should seek to incorporate foresight and futures thinking and the future of work into leader development programs. This will prepare leaders to anticipate, respond to, and shape the evolution and transformation of work and the workplace.
One challenge in adding these topics is that there will not be space in most leader development programs due to the range of topics they already cover. Another is that most organizations are probably content with the structure of their leader development programs. To overcome these challenges, futurists will have to explain how incorporating foresight and futures thinking and the future of work will improve leader development programs. They will need to work with and gain the trust of HR leaders and the organization’s senior leaders who design, execute, and have a stake in the organization’s leader development programs. By doing this, they make it more likely that the future of work and foresight and futures thinking will be added to leader development programs. For in-house futurists, this effort might have the added benefit of demonstrating their value to senior leaders.
One way to do this is to demonstrate how the approach and outcome of foresight and futures thinking is different than that of strategic thinking, innovation, and change management.
Strategic thinking considers trends in make decisions that support organizational goals, but it does not provide the depth produced by the application of foresight tools, and its focus is more often on the short- or medium-term to achieve those goals rather than the longer-term perspective provided by foresight and futures thinking.
Innovation relates to new ideas, products, services, or processes for an organization, but it often lacks the systematic focus on the future provided by foresight and futures thinking.
Change management focuses on implementing change to reach a desired end state. However, it does not necessarily inform what that end state could or should be, nor does it describe the future external environment in which the organization may operate.
Foresight and futures thinking can fill these gaps. Providing products produced by foresight tools and use cases related to the future of work would also be helpful to illustrate these differences and provide decision makers concrete examples.
In addition to convincing program designers to include foresight and futures thinking as part of leader development programs, it also will be necessary to show why it is important for leaders to be able to employ foresight and futures thinking to the future of work. Organizations will be tempted to only apply foresight and futures thinking to consumer behavior or competitive analysis. Highlighting the operational advantages that an organization can obtain by being on the cutting-edge of how work is performed or, in a similar sense, identifying opportunities for innovation regarding the workplace and how this might help attract and retain talented employees, will enable decision- makers to see the benefits offered by focusing on the future of work.
HOW TO INCORPORATE THE FUTURE OF WORK IN LEADER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS
A good place to start is for organizations to incorporate a framework such as the Association of Professional Futurists’ Foresight Technical Competencies Model (Framing, Scanning, Futuring, Visioning, Designing, and Adapting) into leader development programs and use the future of work as an example as participants learn the framework. There are many benefits to doing this. . Introducing participants to Scanning, for example, would prepare them to consider how the areas addressed by an approach such as STEEPLE (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Legal, and Ethical) is a more effective way to scan the external environment and identify signals of change that may impact the future of work than only focusing on signals in the business domain. It also will emphasize the importance of collecting and discussing scanning hits with their teams.
As participants learn about foresight, they will see how alternative futures diverge from the baseline future. Descriptive scenarios will allow them to identify how differences represented in each scenario would impact work and the workplace and will offer a structure for thinking about what this means for their organization. The implications of each of the created scenarios will become clearer in the Visioning competency as participants develop a preferred future. This will emphasize the agency that business leaders have in shaping the future of work rather than merely reacting to it.
As they make their way through each of the six Foresight Technical Competencies, participants will gain an appreciation of the value of foresight and futures thinking and will gain a basic understanding of how to apply these competencies in their roles as leaders. Participants will develop a structured approach to thinking about the future of work in a level of detail that most will have not undertaken. This will benefit them and their organizations.
Ideally, leaders in the program will come to recognize the importance of building foresight and futures thinking capacity in their organizations by introducing team members to a version of what they have learned in the leader development program or designating a group to do foresight and futures thinking work, or both. Another goal is to focus this new capability on the future of work in addition to consumer behavior and competitors. Continually scanning for developments related to the future of work and scenarios of possible futures will be extremely helpful for leaders and the organizations in which they serve.
THE WAY FORWARD
Futurists have an opportunity to help prepare leaders to explore and learn from possible futures related to the future of work and the workplace. This will empower leaders to promote the positive change needed to shape the future of work and the workplace in ways that benefit their organizations and team members.
Chris Mayer is Director of Philosophy in the Department of Law & Philosophy at the United States Military Academy (West Point). The views in the article are his own and not the views of the United States Military Academy, United States Army, or Department of Defense. Chris’ writing on strategy, foresight, and leader development can be found at Futures Empowered.
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