Futurist Bob Johansen is a distinguished fellow with Silicon Valley-based suppose tank Institute for the Future (IFTF) and the writer or co-author of 12 books, together with Leaders Make the Future, The New Management Literacies: Thriving in a Way forward for Excessive Disruption and Distributed The whole lot and Full-Spectrum Considering. His subsequent e book, Workplace Shock: Creating Higher Futures for Dwelling and Working, tackles a topic each CIO I discuss with is grappling with at this time: the workplace upheaval created by COVID-19.
As Johansen factors out, the upending of the standard workplace has created alternatives to reimagine how and the place workplace work can and needs to be executed. It additionally opens new prospects for human connection in additional significant methods. Even in a extremely unsure future, we will make good selections to create higher methods of residing and dealing, he says. However first, we’ll must reboot our expectations about the place, how, and why we work.
Johansen joined me on two episodes of the CIO Whisperers podcast to unpack the implications of workplace shock and “officing” on the way forward for work and to discover how CIOs can suppose from the longer term again to make higher choices at this time. He additionally mentioned the abilities and qualities that may outline these corporations which might be in a position innovate shortly and get early mover benefit. What follows are highlights from these conversations.
Dan Roberts: You typically discuss in regards to the self-discipline of pondering “future again.” Are you able to share extra about what you imply by that?
Bob Johansen: It’s so noisy within the current, and corporations are simply struggling to get by, so they’re counting on the technique of the previous. What we’re instructing is that, particularly in these extremely unsure instances, when you exit to the longer term and suppose backwards—suppose future again—it’s really simpler to see the place issues are going. And it encourages you to be clear about route however versatile about execution. So, it’s nonetheless a really noisy current, however no less than you may have readability of route.
Bob Johansen, Distinguished Fellow, Institute for the Future
IFTF
The large query CIOs are asking is true now’s when ought to we return to the workplace. However you say that’s not the primary query they need to be eager about.
It’s an inexpensive query, however for us, it’s quantity six out of seven of questions we’re asking. The primary query is, why do you need to go to the workplace within the first place? What’s the goal of the workplace? I believe that’s the place you’ll want to begin. And once you suppose future again, you may start to see how places of work could be thrilling locations with goal, enabled by new methods of working, empowered by new applied sciences to attain actual affect.
However query primary is, why do you go to the workplace in any respect? Function is so vital, notably in a VUCA [volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous] time like this. There may be new analysis that we discuss in our work from the Blue Zones undertaking that claims purpose-driven persons are happier, more healthy, and reside as much as seven years longer. Function-driven individuals who work for purpose-driven organizations are happier, more healthy, and reside as much as 14 years longer, and the businesses carry out higher. Function is so key to all of us, and the workplace definitely performs a task in our private sense of goal and likewise our neighborhood sense of goal. So, there’s a spectrum from the person goal to the neighborhood or the social goal.
Are you able to additionally discuss briefly in regards to the different questions CXOs needs to be asking?
The second query is, what are the outcomes you intention to attain by officing? Shareholder worth is the form of traditional spectrum, however more and more, corporations are being requested about social worth, or neighborhood worth. The third is impacts and, particularly, local weather impacts. It’s not sufficient to say zero affect. The query now’s, is your workplace regenerative? That’s going to be more and more vital over the following decade.
Then we ask, how will you lengthen or increase the intelligence of your workplace? As a result of when you take the future-back route ten years forward, we’re all cyborgs, we’re all augmented by digital aids ultimately. HR received’t be capable to isolate the human from the digital assets. So, over the following decade, we’ll must reply the questions of what people can do greatest and what computer systems can do greatest.
The fifth query is, with whom do you need to workplace? What’s the correct mix of individuals? You possibly can consider this as the way forward for range and inclusion. It’s apparent, pondering future again, that we’re going to be extraordinarily numerous ten years from now in our places of work. The query is, how can we be purposely completely different, as a result of we all know numerous groups are extra productive and modern. Variety is right here to remain, so how can we embrace that? Inclusiveness and belonging are the laborious half.
And now we get to the query of the place and when. The spectrum right here is from bodily places of work to the metaverse, and it’s actually going to be a meta, meta metaverse. It’s going to be a nested community of networks with growing blended actuality potential, and the youngsters are going to be significantly better at it than we’re.
The final query is, how do you design an agile and resilient workplace so that you could be versatile in the way you reply to the VUCA world.
You’ve gotten a trilogy of books that delve into the management abilities, literacies and mindset leaders want for the longer term. May you discuss what impressed these and spotlight two or three abilities that CXOs needs to be notably targeted on proper now?
It started with my first go to to the Military Struggle School, the place I used to be launched to the idea of VUCA. That prompted the ten abilities to thrive within the VUCA world. I spotted, nonetheless, in utilizing it, that abilities weren’t sufficient, that it required literacies or practices, these 5 disciplines. However then I spotted there’s additionally a mindset that you’ll want to thrive. I wrote the final e book within the trilogy, Full-Spectrum Considering, about that means to suppose throughout gradients of risk as an alternative of simply labeling and categorizing the way in which that many individuals do these days.
Proper now, I believe readability is a very powerful ability. In a VUCA world, you’ll want to be very clear about route, however very versatile about execution. You possibly can’t make sure. The longer term will reward readability however punish certainty. Certainty is simply too brittle.
That leads us into the fact of the current time, the place we’re so polarized in pondering, and that’s very harmful. As leaders, now we have to calm issues down and search for widespread floor with out getting caught within the polarization of 1 facet is true and one facet is unsuitable. Once more, future again pondering helps, as a result of when you look lengthy, yow will discover your zone of readability, yow will discover your widespread floor and what you do agree on, after which pursue that as an alternative of arguing about what you don’t.
The third is what I name dilemma flipping. A dilemma is an issue you may’t remedy and it received’t go away, however you may make it higher. In the event you’re a frontrunner, particularly when you’re a C-suite chief, you don’t get to unravel issues anymore. The individuals who be just right for you remedy the issues. So, you’ve bought to cope with the dilemmas, and when you’re undecided if it’s a dilemma or an issue, you’re higher off assuming it’s a dilemma, as a result of if it seems to be an issue, you get further credit score since you solved it, they usually didn’t suppose you possibly can remedy it.
We’re going by means of a lot disruption and transformation, with the pandemic layered on prime of all of it, however there might be winners—those that are capable of innovate and get early-mover benefit. What do they do otherwise?
It’s a readiness recreation. You possibly can’t predict, however you may follow to make you roughly prepared.
That’s the place simulation and gaming is available in. You’ve gotten to have the ability to anticipate the longer term after which attempt to create protected environments so you may follow in low-risk methods.
That’s a part of the issue with the place we are actually. We weren’t in any respect ready for Covid, regardless that we should always have been. The chance was apparent when you look future again. The shock was how poorly we reacted to it. Our minds are ripe for simplistic options, and in a VUCA world there simply aren’t any. You’ve bought to have the ability to have interaction with that uncertainty and be clear about no matter you’re investing in.
The IFTF is the longest-running futures suppose tank on the earth, and it’s had fairly a formidable monitor document over these 50-plus years. How would you describe the work that the IFTF does?
We name what we do a forecast, which is a believable, internally constant, provocative story from the longer term. No person can predict the longer term, so the way in which you consider a futurist is, does the foresight provoke perception that results in a greater resolution? We’re not advocating any specific future, however we’re advocating the worth of pondering future again and the worth of strategic foresight. A number of the future we’re forecasting proper now round local weather, round pandemics—I hope they don’t occur. However the insights that come out of it, that’s what we go for. We’re impartial forecasters, and we need to provoke your perception, whether or not you agree with our forecasts or not.
Once you consider the innovators of the longer term, what do their reimagined places of work and officing appear like?
The primary phrase that involves thoughts is versatile. The whole lot’s going to must have flex. I exploit the time period “shape-shifting organizations.” Hierarchies come and go, boundaries are extra porous, they’re half bodily, half digital. I believe the extra digital we grow to be, the extra we’re going to worth in-person experiences, notably for onboarding and renewal and belief constructing, however we’re not going to have the ability to do it as casually as we used to have the ability to do it, and there might be ongoing precautions. We’ll be transferring out and in of this for the foreseeable future, and we’re going to must have places of work which have that form of flex. Which means you’ve bought to get actually good at digital, in order that’s an actual problem for lots of leaders.
The second factor that involves thoughts is deeply digital. As I discussed, we’re all augmenting already. The query is, how can we get from right here to there? Proper now, now we have human assets and knowledge know-how. In ten years, we’ll have human-computing assets. Each HR particular person needs to be deeply digital and actually thinking about gaming, video gaming, simulation—that’s going to be the training medium of the longer term.
I’m not as involved about synthetic intelligence. Quite a lot of futurists suppose there might be circumstances the place people are changed by computer systems, however that’s not the massive story. The large story is people and computer systems doing issues collectively which have by no means been executed earlier than. Tom Malone at MIT calls these “tremendous minds,” and that’s what leaders are going to must be. So, when you consider that form of workplace, it’s actually a versatile, shape-shifting workplace of tremendous minds. That’s my aspirational situation.
