WHAT'S NEXT?

As you know I’m writing a book. This makes me question everything I read and get very tetchy (ask my wife.) In my research I’ve just come across Georg Vielmetter who runs the European leadership and talent practice at Hay consulting. He’s spearheaded their study Leadership 2030 which is the result of a foresight research and analysis program conducted by Hay Group

and Z_Punkt. The research (it says) “pinpointed six megatrends that will create the greatest shifts in the business environment.”

Georg (that’s right, no “e”) and Z_Punkt together raise all the instincts of a Private Eye investigator. (Who’s pulling whose I wonder?) Well  Z_Punkt are based in Cologne and seem quite a weighty bunch whose role in life is  - hold on while I sit down - to “futurise” business.
We all know that “futurising” is best left to J.K. Rowling. Because no one in business or government ever gets it right. Futurising is work for fiction writers. That’s why people who write fiction love the idea of an uncertain future.

So what do Z_Punkt make of it?  (By the way Z_Punkt’s the sound an elastic band makes when pulled back then released snapping painfully across your fingers. So I’ll call them Z_Punkt_ugh! In future)

These are “Megatrends 2030” courtesy of Z_Punkt_ugh! and Hay.

1. Globalization: Asia dominates the global economy, and a new middle class emerges.
2. Environmental crisis: Sustainability moves from CSR initiative to business-critical imperative.
3. Individualism and value pluralism: Freedom of choice erodes loyalty and overhauls employee motivation.
4. Digitization: Work goes mobile, and the boundaries blur between private and professional life.
5. Demographic change: Aging populations intensify the talent war.
6. Technological convergence: Powerful new technologies combine to transform many aspects of everyday life.

I feel like bursting into that song from Annie, the musical:
“The sun'll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow
there'll be sun
Just thinkin' about tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow till' there's none
When I'm stuck in the day that's grey and lonely
I just stick up my chin and grin and say ohh…”                                                                               repeat …

Because I think I knew all that megatrend stuff, I think the Asia thing, the ageing thing, the green thing, the mobile thing, well I think I knew all that - didn’t you? I don’t think that’s “futurising” anything I think it’s “sun’ll come out tomorrow” stuff.

But it gets worse.

The leader of the future will be “Altrocentric”. No that’s not “Al” is in “Allan” it means focusing on others. The leader of the future will be sweet and kind, give people presents and sing them to sleep. The leader of the future will be useless. Just as the footballer of the future unlike that nasty Suarez with his beastly nippy teeth, will be sportsmanlike, never tackle and will applaud his opponents’ goals.

Me? I’m back to writing and my own brands of centricity: prandiocentricity, risocentricity, bibente-centricity.

That’s lunch, laughter and booze.
Z_Punkt_ugh! to you all.