The Future of Almost Everything, page 29
Corporate HQs overtaken by events
Elaborate HQ spending by huge multinationals will grow, with a number of embarrassing mistakes as mergers or sell-offs force relocation or re-sizing of HQs, even before buildings have been completed. More real-estate rich companies will sell off and lease back their properties to release cash for their core businesses, creating a boom in real estate management.
Future of homeworking
Over 4 million in the UK work mainly or exclusively from home, 14% of the workforce, but this has increased by only 3% since 1998 – hardly the stampede out of office life that many pundits predicted back then.
Even IT companies like Yahoo and Google have discouraged or banned homeworking. Of course, it could be said that almost everyone now works from home to a certain extent, due to ever-present email, smartphones, and so on, but very few people decide to work mainly or exclusively from home when offered the chance to do so by their companies. More popular is working at home one day a week, or for short periods of time.
Most so-called homeworkers are self-employed, in the older age bracket, and higher earning. Many self-employed people work outside their own home – for example, as cleaners, plumbers or childminders. Only 34% of homeworkers are employed by an organisation.
Patterns of daily work will continue to change
Most office workers will still commute to work in 20 years’ time for at least two to three days a week, although they will be entirely mobile, able to work at any desk, any seat, in any situation. The primary function of workplaces will be sharing ideas, provoking thought, testing solutions, making decisions, monitoring progress. As we have seen, paper will still be used in many meetings by 2025, and whiteboards or flipcharts will continue to be a vital way of capturing and synthesising ideas in 2030.
We will also see more virtual teams and virtual organisations – particularly smaller companies with employees scattered in every continent, most of whom have never met, and where most are paid as required in consulting-type arrangements rather than fixed salaries.
More portfolio workers
More people will work shifts as our whole world transitions to an always-available culture, and as companies become more globalised, supporting staff and customers across time zones.
Far more people will work part-time or as portfolio workers. Over a million men in the UK now choose to work less than full-time, following what was predominantly a female work pattern. For many, part-time contracts will be a door into portfolio working, picking up a day or two a week of regular work, or project work, alongside longer roles.
Time zone challenges
Globalisation will continue to mean long-distance travel for many senior executives, because most people find endless electronic meetings rather impersonal.
The greatest barrier to the global village is sunlight. In a ‘perfect’ working world, every team member would be in the same time zone. And that is the crux of a growing problem.
Longer, less intense working hours
As a result, we will see a shift in how leaders work – with many virtual meetings, very early or late, but with more time off in the middle of the day. A new kind of routine that will make more sense to those who work a lot at home, especially if their partners frequently do the same.
Living ‘on call’ is nothing new. Doctors, among others, have been used to it for decades. Some say that this new pattern of global time-keeping is unhealthy or unnatural. But it is far more in tune with the old hunter-gatherer pattern of life, and of course is the normal pattern for mothers or fathers at home alone with several small children. The daily routine in such environments cannot be neatly switched on or off.
The problem of daylight incompatibility is made worse by cross-cultural differences. A company in San Francisco trading with Dubai finds not only a disruptive time difference, but also that Dubai works from only 7 am till 1 pm and does not work on Fridays – yet works a normal day on Sundays.
Workforce in danger of being left behind
Despite new technology, people will always be less mobile than capital, technology, information and raw materials. And as we have seen, tribalism is a social force that thrives on breathing the same air, so local teams are here to stay.
Skills in a workforce will continue to be a vital national asset. Expect large-scale investment in work-related skills, with special emphasis on health, engineering, technology and other sciences, by governments of many emerging markets such as China, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. Imagine trying to create a new Silicon Valley in France, attracting hundreds – even thousands – of key technology personnel there from the US. It would be almost impossible. If you want skills, you will move your site to where those skills are. This is not just about local communities, but about national psyche, tax incentives, conversations in the local bar or coffee house, or a deal forged over a game of golf.
Home ownership makes moving more difficult and expensive. In France, Italy, Spain and Belgium the cost of selling a house and buying another is rather high. Home ownership is less of a barrier to moving in the US, as the process of buying and selling is easier.
Home ownership will continue to be popular, but owner-occupation may decline because of pressures on mobility. Many home owners will become absentee landlords, renting out homes while they are working in other places.
Executives often need more than money to move, however, and in many Western nations where most people have a reasonable standard of living, other factors will become more important. For example, most workers with frail parents will continue to think twice before making long-distance moves. Similarly, parents with teenagers at a critical stage in their education are often extremely reluctant to make a major move. As are those on their second or third marriages, having perhaps learned painful lessons from the past about neglecting home life, and now with a ‘new’ set of very young children they are determined to give more time to.
Employers will need to give far greater attention to double career households, where two people’s futures need to be considered in any major move.
Lower down the social scale are armies of mobile male workers in countries like India who are used to spending 11 months a year away from home, earning money to support a wife and family. Many go farther afield, for example working in Dubai as taxi drivers, returning only once every 2–3 years to see loved ones. But these kinds of lifestyles will not be tolerated by a younger generation of emerging middle-class workers, who have fought hard for a university degree.
Ageing workers – radical changes ahead
One in three people who are still working after the age of 65 in the UK have no idea when they will be able to retire. One in seven of the entire workforce have no plans to retire at all, and a third have no private pension. Bizarrely, most 25–31-year-olds believe they will probably retire when they are younger than 65, presumably because they cannot imagine being so ‘ancient’.
Older workers will form an increasingly important part of the workforce, especially in Europe, Japan and China. Managers will face many delicate dilemmas as retirement ages are abolished. How do you counsel someone out of their job who has become too rigid in thinking, or is slightly forgetful, or too physically frail to continue safely? With no fixed retirement ages, managers will have to fire older people. Managing elderly team members will be one of the most stressful and time-consuming aspects of any senior role in future.
Managing talent with purpose
Expect rapid growth in consultancies and management tools, to help large corporations identify, promote, reward and develop the most talented people they have. Making best use of people with the right skills, experience, cultural understanding, product knowledge and customer insight will give companies a key advantage in the future. It will be a natural extension to knowledge management – making the most of what we know – although knowledge management projects often fail to deliver. Linked to this will be a growing emphasis on giving people purpose and fulfilment at work, connecting with their natural desire to make a difference. We will explore this further in the next chapter.
And finally… a ‘BIG IDEA’
Clusters of radical single issues do not make a political creed. The vacuum in politics will remain. We have seen how a void was created with the collapse of communism. And in the depths of this empty chasm we will see new issues emerge.
The hunger for radical change is certainly there. I was lecturing recently to a group of Fellows from the World Economic Forum who were asking all kinds of radical questions about the way the global economy works. How can we find a more sustainable model? Is it right to assume that relentless economic growth is a good idea, and so on. How can we find models of capitalism that are more humane?
Lesson from communism
Karl Marx was born in Prussia in 1818 and died in London in 1883. He wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1847. He was a product of his time: a protester against the Industrial Revolution, which placed wealth and power in the hands of a few, ‘enslaving millions’ in primitive working conditions. Revolution to free workers from capitalist control was Marx’s Big Idea.
Tomorrow’s Big Idea
We can expect to see another Big Idea emerge (or several conflicting ones), radically different from any large-scale political system in the twentieth century. This new ‘ism’ will feed on stored-up hunger for change.
The longer the delay in its coming, the longer and deeper the vacuum will be, and the greater the speed with which it is likely to grip the earth. This Big Idea is likely to draw heavily on Islamic or Christian influence, but be separate from mainstream traditions.
What will this new ‘Big Idea’ be like?
It will be radically different from the old left wing/right wing political divides, a mass movement driven by a cluster of single issues, grouped around a central philosophy or ideal which is likely to be based on the teachings of a respected leader, hard to analyse or describe at first, constantly adapting and reinterpreting, rapidly evolving, long lasting in its effects, highly confusing to old ‘logic’ politicians. And because of the way our world is shifting demographically and economically, it is statistically more likely that such a movement will have its origins in emerging nations, or will rapidly become established in those parts of the world after a far less dramatic start in a developed nation.
Such a Big Idea could profoundly influence how several billion people think about ethics, values, motivation and personal spirituality, which we now need to turn to in the final chapter.
Chapter 6
ETHICAL
ETHICAL IS THE MOST IMPORTANT Face of the Future. Ethics strikes at the very heart of what it means to be human, to have purpose, ideals, direction, vision – and in some cases spirituality.
Recent banking scandals have been a sharp reminder of why ‘ethics’ really do matter. From 2009 to 2014, 43 of the world’s largest banks were fined $184bn in 117 cases, and that’s just those where fines were more than $100m per case, with another 174 cases still to be decided. To give an idea of scale, those fines are equivalent to the size of the entire GDP of New Zealand.
Every week yet more scandals emerge around the world, where executives or government leaders have made money in bad ways. Cheating, deceiving, covering up, over-charging, price manipulation, with whole teams involved, fraud taking place on a gigantic scale, and in a hundred different forms. We will return to this later.
Corruption costs at least 5% ($2.6 trillion) of global GDP – fat bribes for government contracts, tax revenues diverted into secret bank accounts, dishonest judges or crooked policemen, and so on.
Without ethics, our future will surely descend into a lawless hell with more greed, wealth, weapons, chaos and abuse of power. As we have seen, every trend has an ethical dimension, whether invasion of privacy, increasing retirement age, uncensored web, outsourcing of jobs, contrasts in wealth or access to health care.
What kind of world do you want?
Ethics is linked to values, purpose and the meaning of life; why you get out of bed in the morning, what motivates and inspires you, your sense of destiny and personal spirituality. Ethics is also about corporate behaviour, expected conduct, compliance, regulations and boundaries of what is acceptable.
Ethics is also about what kind of world we want to live in. All these things connect with how we feel about life, our hopes, dreams and desires, our passions and motivations. Ethics gives us the framework for a better future. Right or wrong; desirable or undesirable; moral or immoral.
Ethics is usually about our future rather than my future – about the greatest good for the greatest number – and is therefore linked to sustainability. If a group of people dominate a community in a way that the rest regard as unethical, the result is usually revolution, even though that may only be after a great struggle.
Of course every tribe and nation has its own culture, way of life and ethical code, every religion its own standards. Can there be, therefore, a universal ethic that will shape our future? Can we find a view of all future ethics based on future common sense?
The search for future purpose
Our world is changing, but human nature is the same as it was two thousand years ago. People still look for meaning in their lives and want to feel that they make a difference. As a physician, I worry if someone tells me that they don’t feel they have any meaning in their life, they don’t feel they contribute anything very much to those around them, and that although they may be loved by their families, they have nothing really to offer.
I can tell you that such a person should be put immediately on the danger list. They are surely low in spirits, and their risk of self-harm or suicide will be high. When we lose a sense of purpose or of making a difference, something dies deep inside our soul. That is one reason why old people tend to live longer when they own a pet dog or cat, and why so many old people die soon after the death of a partner or a pet. ‘I have to get myself going in the morning for his sake’. ‘I worry about who will look after her when I have gone’. These are motivating feelings.
This search for purpose is more intense when people have more money and time to think. The M generation (see p. 11) is particularly focused on purpose. I have taught at various business schools over the last 15 years. The new generation no longer see an MBA as a fast track to joining the board of a multinational. Most want instead to be successful, work for themselves and ‘have a life’. They want to make a difference. They want to work for companies they believe in, selling products and services that make the world a better place.
The ultimate ethical test
When I started out as a cancer physician over three decades ago my job was to look after people dying at home in the last few weeks of life. I learned a very important lesson. Life is short.
Life is far too short to waste it doing things you don’t believe in.
When I lecture around the world, I often ask audiences to put up their hands if they agree with me, and almost everyone does. Sometimes they shout, cheer and clap.
Why sell rubbish? Believe in yourself.
Why sell things you would never dream of recommending to a friend or a member of your family? Why bother to sell things that you know are not right for your customers? Why bother to work for a company that you are ashamed of, or uneasy about? The meaning of life is fundamental. Purpose for living is a deep human desire.
As we saw at the start of this book, many people are realising that there is more to life than selling. There is more to life than managing. There is more to life than working. In fact, there is more to life than life itself. What will I leave when I die? How will my children remember me when I’m gone?
I remember giving a trends presentation in New York to the board of a huge global corporation. Among many slides, I showed one for a few seconds with the words:
Life is too short to sell things you don’t believe in
I learned afterwards that one of the board members was so struck that she resigned her post almost immediately, not from that board, but from her high-flying job as CEO of one of the largest private banks in the world.
She realised in a moment of crisis that she did not believe in what she was doing, selling bank products with the highest commissions rather than those that were best for her customers. She now runs her own corporation, providing independent financial advice to very wealthy clients. She was not doing anything ‘wrong’ before, but suddenly felt very uneasy.
Unethical – or just feeling uneasy?
The question of ease or unease is a central test of how ethics will play out in future. You may be asked to do something, and there is no law against it, nor is there any absolute reason why you should not do it, many others are already doing it, but the thought makes you feel uneasy.
Ease of mind is the whisper of conscience, and a powerful guide to future ethics.
We have seen this hundreds of times in the last decade alone, in banking scandals, corruption investigations, and a host of other media stories. All too often, actions that only caused a flicker of unease at the time are condemned as unethical within a year or two, and soon become illegal, with offenders in prison.
Follow the spirit of every agreement
A strong test is not what the letter of a long contract actually says, but what the spirit of the agreement is all about. Not what you may be able to get away with, but what is the right thing to do.
I have advised many large corporations on tricky ethical issues. Time and again I have seen that the kneejerk reaction of most business leaders is to protect company profits and their own share options, even if it means kicking their customers, or suppliers, or staff or regulators. But the bitter reality usually dawns on them soon after. They realise in most cases that the future of their business, and personal careers, will depend on being more gracious, more considerate, and more rounded in their approach.
