The Now vs The Future

The sense of urgency to catch up with the “future of work”

One of the most fascinating and complex dilemmas in business is how to stay focused on today’s operation (“cash cow”) while keeping an eye in exploring future opportunities, strategies, threats, and innovations. 
 

When organizations are mostly focused on satisfying today’s needs, they may allocate fewer resources to think about the future or explore opportunities to remain relevant and sustainable in the long run. It can get somewhat “confusing” because very often the organization’s executives have in mind that what makes their company successful today will keep it successful in the future. And that’s a very expensive mistake. 

I have experienced this first hand in hundreds of conversations with business and HR leaders from around the world. They are less concerned about the future of work than about today’s operation. They think the future of work is too far out, thus no actions are needed at the moment. 

However, they err in one small thing: the future of work isn’t happening in the future, it is happening right now. Therefore, preparing for it shouldn’t happen in the future, but also now. 

Take the case of the brick and mortar retail industry as an example. About twenty-five years ago these companies were warned that as access to the Internet became ubiquitous, customers would rather shop online than going to physical stores. Company executives brushed off that idea as ridiculous. They were so focused on the way they were operating at the time that they couldn’t see the huge wave of disruption coming towards them. 

In 2017, more than eight thousand brick and mortar stores shut down, it was more than five thousand in 2018 and almost five thousand closures have been announced in 2019. 

Would things have been different had those executives paid more attention to the future? Who knows…But for many of them, it is already too late. 

I understand that most of us are extremely busy all the time. We have projects, activities, chores, tasks, emails, messages coming at us nonstop. And I know how difficult it is to think about the future when there are so many unresolved things in the present. 

My challenge, encouragement, and call to action for you is to find ways to carve out time to get ready. All you need at the beginning is to increase your awareness of the changes that are already happening and will continue to happen, learn about trends that may impact your industry, company and your own career, and start-up and re-skilling yourself and your workforce. 

“The best way to predict the future is to create it” said someone (maybe Abraham Lincoln?). Don’t wait for the next “retailpocalypse” kind of catastrophe to catch you off guard. Get ready!

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Enrique Rubio is an HR and Tech Evangelist. He's passionate about Human Resources, People Operations, Technology, and Innovation. Enrique is an Electronic Engineer, Fulbright Scholar and Executive Master in Public Administration with a focus on HR. Over the past 15 years, Enrique has worked in the HR and tech world. A lot of his research and work revolves around the digitization of the workplace and Human Resources. Enrique currently works as an HR Specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank. He's also the founder of Hacking HR and Co-founder of Cotopaxi, an artificial intelligence-based recruitment platform for emerging markets. Connect Enrique Rubio Follow @erubio_p Visit www.hackinghr.io