Back to the Future - Part III
What do you need to do to be ready for the hoverboards?
In the second movie in the trilogy, Marty and Doc travel forward into 2015. From the 1980s, they imagined what this far-off distant time might hold in store. That time was actually now five years ago in 2015, so we know that they had some hits and some misses.
They accurately predicted technology included things like drones, tablet computers, and fingerprint identification. Unfortunately for them (and us), they were wrong about hoverboards, self-lacing shoes, and flying cars.
The fact is that we don't know exactly what the future of work entails for all of us, but we can make some good predictions based on what we know is on the horizon. Here are three things that have been predicted and are worth taking your teams towards:
Even more need for collaboration
In 2018, I asked Atlassian co-founder, Scott Farquhar, at a conference two years ago the question of "Why teams?". He made a great point and talks about a great concept quoting Jeff Bezos. Asking yourself what is not going to change over the next decade. "It's always going to be hard to communicate and collaborate with people, so we focus on that problem. Until we get brain-to-brain communication, telepathy, I think that we're pretty safe that will be a problem".
There is every chance that our teams are going to become more diverse in every sense (not just demographics like age, gender, and ethnicity). Our teams are likely to become more cross-functional, more remote, and even across organisations. All of that makes the ability to operate in teams a trend that is likely to be more valuable than less.
The rise of Artificial Intelligence
You don't need to know a lot about artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications to understand that rapid developments in these areas to understand that machines will increasingly be able to learn, adapt, make decisions and take actions based on the masses of data that we are generating. You only need to consider the way that we use features like Siri or Google Maps to imagine what the next decade might bring in that space.
During the same Q&A session that I referenced above, Scott Farquhar spoke about the fact that the jobs most at risk of automation are those that can be done alone. Interestingly, he suggested that a highly skilled heart surgeon was more likely to be replaced than a team of emergency nurses at the same hospital. I don’t know if that’s true, but there is some pretty sound logic from smart people that suggests it is. The reason being that tasks that are repeatable and predictable are more able to be learned and improved through the use of the data that is now available.
The gig economy
We have seen the rise of companies like Uber and Deliveroo that don't actually have a very large workforce. They engage workers on an ad hoc basis - when and where it is needed. There is every indication that this trend is likely to continue driven by technological, social, and economic factors. As "gig working" becomes increasingly prevalent, employers or bosses doing the hiring and allocation of work will no longer be able to rely on hierarchy and employment contracts for access to the best talent. If you want to do great work, you'll need to be able to rapidly form high performing teams taking on interesting projects and the ability for people to work when and where they choose.
The good news about these trends is that even if they don't come fully to fruition, moving towards them will give you an advantage in current circumstances - as well as position your teams ahead of many others if they do arise.
Two years from now, what lessons are you likely to recall from this time?
How might you get more benefit from that hindsight now?