Thinking about the future is an essential part of leadership.  Doing well today is not good enough. The ultimate test of leadership is ensuring that the organization will continue to do well in the future.  Leaders fail their followers when they fail to anticipate and prepare for the future.

A recent talk by Rohit Talway to school principals in the United Kingdom last week on the future our children face must leave our heads spinning as to how leaders are to think and what they have to do.

Talway is one of the top futurologists – people who are experts at thinking about the future.  A report on Talway’s talk can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/10/07/a-better-life-for-our-children-forget-it-says-british-futurologist.html.

According to Talway, advances in medical science will have people living till 120 years old, and they would probably be doing a variety of jobs at any point in time. Technology will eradicate many of today’s jobs while creating new ones we cannot yet see or imagine.

What this means is that children today are very likely to have to work until they are 100 years old, in the course of which they would do 40 different jobs in 10 different careers! 

Schools will have to prepare kids on how to cope with such a future of work, how to reduce stress, how to sleep better, how to work more productively, and so on, over and above all they already have to learn in terms of knowledge and skills.

As Abraham Lincoln said: “The best way to predict the future is to create it”!

But in order to create the future, one must first think deeply about it. Are you?

What are you doing today to prepare yourself and/or your children for the future?

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