Translator: Ian Hamel Reviewer: Denise RQ
When I was seven,
my dad taught me to play chess.
I was a hyperactive kid,
and chess calmed me down and helped me focus.
So I didn't realize at the time was that chess was helping me
to be able to spot patterns, trends,
look at the future in a different way,
and predict what may be happening in the future.
It also helped me prepare.
It helped me prepare for any future that I might encounter.
And finally, it helped me pivot.
It helped me know when to take decisive action,
when to be bold, when to be patient.
Those chess skills
are the bedrock for any master or grandmaster chess player.
They also happen to be the bedrock for preparing for this future of jobs
that is coming at us like a tsunami wave.
And it all comes down to one word:
how can we make ourselves "indispensable"?
How do we help our children and grandchildren
and others we are mentoring make themselves indispensable?
Charles Dickens,
a very entrepreneurial guy from another time, great writer,
lived through the Industrial Revolution,
where a lot of jobs were destroyed and created.
To paraphrase him,
it will be the best of times and the worst of times.
And which it is is up to us.
So, the first question a lot of people ask is,
"Can we really predict?"
Predicting seems to be more than just tea leaves.
And the fact of the matter is
that if you look at cyclical versus secular trends,
and understand the difference,
you can predict with some accuracy, and, I won't say it's easy,
but you can at least figure out where the arrow is going.
So a cyclical trend - just think of,
"What goes up must come down."
That would be short-term moves in the stock market,
that would be planting and harvesting seasons,
and it's what the 24/7 media most focuses on.
And yet, it is the most irrelevant to our future in most cases.
The longer term secular trend
- here we have a long-term trend of the stock market -
is where what goes up doesn't come down.
You'll notice a lot of little squiggles along the way,
a lot of little cyclical pieces within the long-term secular trend,
and yet, this has been one of the greatest wealth-creating engines in the world,
in our lifetime and in the lifetime of the world.
So, the concept of creative destruction, in jobs,
means that you're destroying jobs but creating new jobs.
There are many expert studies, most recently, an Oxford study,
that say that 40 to 50% of today's jobs may disappear
or be marginalized in the next ten to 20 years;
40 to 50%.
That's a pretty scary number, but keep in mind, this is nothing new.
The United States of America was built on the concept
of, "If it ain't broke, break it. Fix it better."
We're coming into a time where global supertrends are converging.
Those supertrends will make that change just be at a faster and faster rate.
Probably faster than many of us can keep up with.
The key question is, "Will new jobs replace the old ones?"
The answer is "Maybe."
Experts are divided
on whether we're going to replace a quarter or all of the jobs that we lose,
and in that not knowing
is where we have to prepare better for this future.
The paradox is that, today,
we have 4 million unfilled jobs in the United States,
most of them skilled jobs.
By 2020, it's estimated we need 122 million skilled jobs,
and yet, there's only 100 million that we are predicted to have by 2020.
So, in this very difficult environment,
where, today, we have 4 million unfilled jobs,
that's going to go to 22 million by 2020.
So that represents a great opportunity if you prepare now,
if you dig your well before you're thirsty.
Why should we care about global supertrends?
One word: jobs.
Two words: your job, or your children's job,
or your grandchildren's job.
Why are these jobs being created and destroyed?
Here's a powerful supertrend.
This comes to us from Dr. Carlota Perez.
She's one of the leading experts in bubbles and golden ages,
and she's created this model
that has replicated itself over hundreds of years.
The eruption phase
is where new technologies come in and create tremendous change.
It is inevitably followed by the frenzy stage
where we have a speculative bubble,
a lot of money chasing that new technology.
It is inevitably followed by the crash where things get bad for a while.
But then, you get the synergy phase, where you have a golden age of growth,
and that synergy phase,
most people don't even know we're there when we're there,
because they're still back in the crash licking their wounds.
The question is, "Why?"
Let's go back to caveman days.
Our minds are an incredible thing, but we still have this reptilian brain
that hasn't progressed that much in 10,000 years.
Back in the days of the caves,
if your best friend was killed by this saber-tooth tiger,
you were going to stick around the cave for probably a few days or a few weeks,
until the saber-tooth goes off somewhere else.
Today, you are watching replays in the cave of CNN,
replaying your friend getting killed over and over again.
You may not come out of the cave at all!
And that is part of the issue that, in today's world,
we may be coming into the "synergy phase"
of great possibilities, great job growth,
and yet, be so fearful
that we're not out there trying to prepare for it.
So, in the predict, prepare, and pivot model,
we have these three super trends.
We have globalization -
and globalization, that is "the world is flat"; Tom Friedman...
Originally, it was jobs moving offshore, now we have jobs moving onshore.
Lots of trends there
that are actually going to help our job picture in the future.
Globalization has created massive change in the job market.
"Technology accelerators" - some people believe this will be the thing
that will create the most change in the future,
and it is indeed powerful.
There are a lot of places where technology is replacing people,
and yet, there's a lot of places
where people can use technology to their advantage.
Finally, "the global age wave."
Around the world, we have aging populations.
Here in this country, we have the baby boomers.
We have 10,000 of them retiring every single day.
That's actually a godsend because those 10,000 retiring,
dropping off the back end of the truck,
are what allows a huge number of jobs,
whether we destroy 30, 40 or 50% of those,
to be available for our young people coming up if they have the right skillset.
So, can we prepare?
This is one of those a masterchess player tries to figure out in advance,
"How can we prepare?" "How can we dig our well?"
And again, "What makes us indispensable?"
Number one: be really good at what we do. That seems pretty obvious.
But the fact of the matter is
a lot of people kind of know what they need to do,
but they may not do what they need to do.
Malcolm Gladwell talks about having the "10,000 hours of practice"
to become an expert or a master at your particular craft.
There's a lot of companies, and even our military,
that are figuring out ways to cut that time in half.
What we need to do is figure out,
"How can we be better faster, in this new world?"
And knowing what I know I need to do,
along with the doing, close that gap.
Number 2 is "sharpen EQ skills."
If I had to pick one that I think is pretty important, this is it.
Because this is the thing:
EQ stands for "emotional intelligence," "people skills", "communication skills,"
"ability to deal with other people,"
that is most likely to cause you to lose your job,
and studies have shown,
that it is most likely to be the reason that you rise to the top.
The good news is EQ can be learned.
Hire a coach.
You may be surprised to hear this from a professional financial planner,
but if some young person has 2,000 dollars left over,
don't put it in a Roth IRA.
Go hire a skills coach.
Try to sharpen your axe for the future.
Your human capital will grow much faster than that Roth IRA.
One of our clients out in Silicon Valley...
They're so keyed in on the EQ skills.
They hire engineers, highly technical skills,
and they've hired a few out of Stanford
and many of the schools in Northern California.
But now, they're looking for the "keggers" at Midwestern schools.
The guys who tap the keg
who have great people skills and good engineering skills.
So, EQ trumps IQ,
and that will be doubly true in the future.
"Better Process Rules" -
All of us know the Blockbuster / Netflix story,
or pieces of the story.
We know that Netflix came along, built a better mousetrap,
executed it well,
and put Blockbuster out of business.
Here's a story you may not know.
Garry Kasparov, the chess world champion, played Deep Blue.
You may recall that when Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov,
there was a lot of hand-wringing about it, "It's over for us, over for humans."
"The future of jobs is automation's going to take over."
The rest of the story is Garry played in a tournament after this,
that was an open tournament,
where there was any combination of people and computers.
And you would think that Garry Kasparov,
combined with Deep Blue would be unbeatable.
It was won by two amateurs with three laptops and a better process.
Don't forget process.
"Practical Creativity" -
this is one of the more difficult ones to prepare for.
Some people say, "Well, I'm either creative or I'm not."
There's actually a lot of ways you can become more creative.
In that vein,
you can go to sessions like this, you can go to workshops,
you can do it inside your industry, outside your industry,
learn from experts; lot of great ways to do that.
You can surround yourself with teams of creative people,
if you're not so creative.
And then, finally, you can just find creative people to hang out with.
That's one of the things I try to do, even people that I don't know.
That gets us to "Network Smarter."
In today's Facebook and Linkedln world,
networking smarter means doing things
like taking somebody to lunch two times a week
that you don't know, but you need to know.
It also means looking for mentors.
Very high skill sets are developed by having good mentors,
and usually not just one, usually many.
Question,
"How could we prepare our community in this supertrend world of great change?"
The fact is that we have three areas
that all tie in to those five prepared areas we just talked about.
"Foster an Innovation Culture" -
turns out that innovative areas create a lot of interesting opportunities
for job growth in the future.
Number two, "Help Entrepreneurism Thrive."
It is still true in this country that most of the jobs created
are from entrepreneurs not from the big companies.
And number three, "Enhance the Quality of Life."
We're living in a world where you can telecommute from anywhere.
So you better have a pretty darn good quality of life locally
if you're going to make the jobs and keep the jobs locally.
So, it comes down to being really good,
sharpening those emotional intelligence skills,
better process rules,
practical creativity,
and network smarter.
Then, finally, in the predict, prepare, and pivot stage,
"How Can We Become a Master at Pivoting?"
I've found that when I understand, at least generally,
which way the arrow is going in the future,
knowing that nobody can predict the future exactly,
it helps me understand how to pivot,
and preparing better helps me understand how to pivot.
So, in that pivoting...
The story of Shell Oil is very interesting.
In the late '60s,
Shell Oil did the largest scenario learning exercise
that was in existence at that time.
They tried to figure out, "Where is this future going?"
They did it almost from the CEO down to the janitor level.
They did a pretty good job of thinking about those future trends.
In the "Prepare" category, they actually feel like
they didn't prepare as well as they should have,
but when the oil shocks hit in '73-'74, they were the best pivoter out there,
because they had "played the movie."
They had gone through and thought about the future,
prepared for the future, and to this day,
they credit that for going from one of the weakest Seven Sisters of Oil,
to one of the stronger Seven Sisters of Oil.
So, don't underestimate that ability to pivot.
Even if you haven't predicted or haven't prepared,
you can still pivot.
In this future,
if you do one of these well, you're in good shape.
If you do two of these well, you're in great shape.
If you do three of these well, you're in world-class shape.
What I would suggest to you
is that we all need to work like the dickens
to be able to get our own future where we want it regardless.
Thank you.
(Applause)