by Jim Ware
Last fall I was asked to contribute to a special issue of The Futurist, the official magazine of the World Future Society. My task was to describe the most interesting jobs I could think of that don't yet exist but will be commonplace in the year 2030. I was one of a dozen or so futurists who responded.
The resulting series of speculations and predictions ("70 Jobs for 2030," published in January, 2011) was exceptionally provocative.
But if the challenge of predicting those new jobs was difficult, it was nothing compared to the question I was then asked by IEDC (The International Economic Development Council): How do we train people to fill jobs that don't yet exist?
I'm now preparing a response that question, which I'll be speaking about at IEDC's "Understanding Tomorrow's Industries Today" conference in Indianapolis June 4-7.
What follows is a synopsis of my notes for that presentation.
Why is it difficult to predict what jobs will be prominent in 2030?
We all know the answer to that one: there are at least six drivers of change affecting the future of work, and not one of them has an obvious or definitive end state. Without belaboring something I speak of all the time, the future is uncertain and essentially unpredictable because of:
- Technology;
- Demographics and the aging populations of the industrialized world;
- Changing social values and expectations;
- Globalization;
- Public policy (especially regarding health care, retirement programs, labor and working conditions, and environmental and financial regulations); and
- Sustainability and global climate change
Taken together, these six factors create discontinuity and uncertainty on a scale we haven't seen since the Industrial Revolution in the mid-nineteenth century.
So where does that leave us? What do we know about the future of work? I believe the shape of the future can be summarized—very briefly—as:
- Conceptual
- Creative
- Collaborative
- Diverse
- Dynamic
- Distributed
Certainly each of these six dimensions of work deserves extended attention—and I promise to do that in future issues of the newsletter. But for now let's focus on the question of how we can possibly prepare people to succeed in that world.
How can we train people for jobs that don't yet exist?
My answer: We don't. Because we can't. "Training," according to Wikipedia, is ". . . the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies." [emphasis added]
But if the jobs don't yet exist, we can't define the specific competencies required to carry out the work.
What to do? I believe we have to focus instead on core skills, or generic competencies, that we know will be required for success in just about any knowledge-based job in the future of work that I described above.
My candidate list of those generic competencies (in no particular order):
- Problem-solving
- Curiosity, creativity, and imagination
- Information searching (which is a whole more than "The Google")
- Critical thinking
- The Scientific Method (experimentation; evidence; hypothesis testing)
- How to ask questions
- How to build relationships and establish trust
- Leading others
- Influencing without formal authority
- Adaptability and personal agility
- Being a lifelong learner
That's a short list, but it encompasses a complex set of cognitive and interpersonal skills that I believe will serve as a foundation for any future job you can imagine.
How can we build these competencies and prepare for the future of work?
As I thought about this central question, it occurred to me that we have many formal and informal ways of anticipating and preparing for the future. Some are ancient, while some have been developed more recently. Just consider all the ways we prepare for the future:
We Play
Children spent hours and hours at play, and while it often seems random or frivolous, in fact play is all about acquiring skills they'll need as grown-ups. Whether it's motor skills, eye-hand coordination, or being a member of a team or community, children's play is actually very serious work.
We Play Games
Whether it's board games like "Life," "Monopoly," or "Scrabble," or video games, or sports like baseball, soccer, gymnastics, swimming, or wrestling, games teach both physical and mental skills.
We Study History
Mark Twain gets credit for saying "History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes a lot." We study history to learn about great leaders, about social movements, and about how we got to where we are today. And even though we can no longer reliably predict the future by extrapolating from the past we can learn from studying the great upheavals in history—how they came about, how people coped, and what their consequences were.
We Create Stories
Stories are without doubt the most common way we think about "things that never were"—but might be part of our future. Whether it's a story about a murder mystery, a galaxy far, far away, a battle with the Klingons of Star Trek fame, or an indigenous tribe of blue creatures on a mysterious asteroid called "Pandora," stories help us imagine worlds we've never experienced, or that haven't happened yet. We all relate to stories, which help us think through situations and their consequences with essentially no personal risk.
We practice
Rehearsal—whether for playing an instrument, for acting in a stage play, or for a sport—Is one of the most common ways we prepare for the future. We disassemble a piece of music, or a scene from a play, or a fast-moving activity on a playing field, and then we practice its component parts over and over until they become second nature.
We create Playbooks
A Playbook is simply a "script" for how we intend to handle a specific situation, like the last two minutes of a basketball game or for the first ten plays of a football game, or opening a new office in a foreign country. A Playbook helps define the options, explore what opponents or competitors might do, and master the things we want to be able to do when we actually get to that situation.
We build simulations
There are all kinds of simulations. Some are paper-based, like the classic "Inbox" exercises that let a future manager go through "a day in the life of. . ." by reading and acting on a series of memos, reports, and telephone messages. Increasingly, however, meaningful simulations are computer-based; they may create imaginary visual worlds like Dungeons and Dragons, World of Witchcraft, or Second Life; they may enable an astronaut to "fly" a simulated space shuttle; or they could put business executives through a strategic planning exercise that tests profit sensitivity to variables like prices, sales volume, quality improvements, advertising expenditures, or labor disputes.
A Call for Action
These examples suggest just some of the ways that we can prepare people for an uncertain, ill-defined future. But note what's not on my list: traditional classroom education. It is time for radical change in the way we think about teaching and learning.
I am well aware that I'm hardly the first person to call for major education reform. But if we accept the basic premise that the future of work is uncertain and essentially unpredictable, then I believe we must redesign the entire learning experience. As Alvin Toffler pointed out many, many years ago, traditional schools prepare students for factory work: the school bell represents punching the time clock; the rows of desks represent rows of machines on a factory floor; and learning by rote prepares students for repetitive assembly-line tasks.
If we want to prepare people for jobs that do not yet exist, we have to focus on generic competencies, and we should adopt the kinds of learning experiences I've described here.
What do you think? Please send your comments directly to me, or post a comment here. I look forward to learning from you.
