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Our COVID-19 Reality
The world seems almost dystopian in nature, and understandably so. Specific predictions are  almost always difficult (if not impossible) to get right. Even in a world of big data, unforeseen and disruptive events have the potential to change the trajectory of everything – the systems, careers, and lives – we have collectively grown accustomed to. Such is the case right now. Thus, for any  enterprise operating in today’s complex environment, the need for foresight becomes not just a strategic priority, but one of strategic urgency.

As we look to the future of work, some key questions to consider include:

• How will COVID-19 speed up the use of robots to replace human workers?
• How will companies expand how they use robots to increase social distancing?
• How will COVID-19 change perceptions of trust?
• How will the fast-tracking of digital transformations impact the future of work? What might some of the biggest lessons and takeaways be when the dust settles?
• What are some of the “silver linings”/opportunities that may emerge from the first truly acute worldwide crisis in generations?
• How do we begin to re-imagine our businesses, products, services and systems?

Leaders across the board, but particularly those in innovation, face an important inflection point today. The urgency of COVID has unlocked human ingenuity…and institutional ingenuity as an extension of that. What once may have taken years of R&D, strategizing, planning, etc. is now being done in months. What once took months is now taking weeks. Long-delayed initiatives have suddenly been rolled out at scale overnight. Today, more than ever, we all face the pressing need to question all we do, how we do it, and how we survive, compete, and thrive individually and organizationally.

AI, Work & the Evolution of Human Labor:
One particular area of focus has been the evolving role of humans in an age of artificial intelligence (AI). In the last couple of decades, the expectations, risks, challenges – all of these have greatly escalated. Almost overnight, global circumstances have changed to bring about an era that will usher in massive changes to human labor. The accelerated disintermediation of human labor across a wide range of sectors will be one of the most fundamentally important outcomes from the current pandemic. From this, one fundamental question emerges: How will humans be economically relevant in a world that is rapidly being disintermediated by advanced technology?

The Competency Tree:
COVID, in particular, is changing what it is that we value in the workplace – and the skills and competencies that are required to future-proof your organization. As such, competitiveness will rely on the creation of an entirely new framework. To ensure that we have the thinking required to solve the big issues that will arise in the future, we need to start viewing and training for these skills and competencies as interconnected. Our proprietary Competency Tree is meant to serve as a modeling outline to help visualize potential arenas for future jobs – even ones we have yet to be able to imagine. How might we future-proof the human workforce to make them more innovative than ever? How can a business begin to rethink workforce strategy to effectively leverage The Competency Tree?

Generational Compression: Understanding Cybrids
Another area of focus is on generational trends – particularly from a values and attitudes perspective. Generations have long been grouped in birth year cohorts of 15-20 years. But generations are now seemingly refreshing every two-to-three years. Technology is changing so rapidly that kids only a few years apart struggle to have the same cultural and technological frames of reference. Today’s youth are not just “digital natives” – they are Cybrids – cyber hybrids, who have a fully symbiotic relationship with the digital world from the moment they were born. Understanding what makes this generation tick is critical for understanding retention & recruitment, advertising/marketing, education/learning, etc.