Graeme Codrington's Future of Work

A special bonus edition to introduce our new Podcast to you. Sign up now so you don't miss any of the episodes of The TomorrowToday Podcast. Buhle Dlamini and I are the co-hosts, mapping the future of business for you and your team. Our goal is to show you what it will take to build an organisation that can handle the rest of this decade and the 2030s. We will show you what a true future-proof business looks like, and what changes you need to make now to build one. Each episode highlights key research and our experiences, providing resources and actionable insights. Sign up links to various podcast platforms are : Find all the podcast links at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2365037 OR: Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tomorrowtoday-podcast/id1746264816?uo=4 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fphQFAXYCGNIAxbJtyn38 Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1746264816 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1436a5d9-920a-4820-b5d7-d89623ff0fd0/the-tomorrowtoday-podcast Castbox: https://castbox.fm/channel/id6149206 Podcast Index: https://podcastindex.org/podcast/6911071 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhZgoak3HZrDFgfAUcrDmF6oY63MEJq2d

This is the final episode of Season 4 of ThrowForward Thursday. It's a longer episode today, as we review the most significant theme of the last 40 episodes. This is your reminder that the future isn't just written in data — it's shaped by those who know how to use it. Lead with data, and let it lead you to unprecedented success. Download the Strategic Imagination Toolkit at http://bit.ly/SIToolkit   

Come with me to the future, where we realise that Artificial General Intelligence is not just an improvement on Generative AI but something different, developed on a different path. GenAI / LLMs are brilliant. They're amazing tools, taking the sum of human knowledge (including all the incorrect stuff lots of people believe) and making it very accessible. Keep using and improving GenAI, but don't get sucked in by the hype of AGI just yet. AGI is coming. But it is coming down a different path than we are on right now. 

Imagine a world where the boring parts of learning - the dumping data into our brains - is all done easily using neural transfers, augmentation and technology assistants. What's left is for the human brain to do what it does best: creative thinking, problem solving, idea generation, and more. This week's leap into the future takes a view that Generative AI is not actually that intelligent - it just has access to all the data. When human beings have access to the same data, we will come up with much better new ideas, insights and wisdom than GenAI seems capable of now. The future is bionic: humans and machines working together, each doing what they do best to move our world forward.

Imagine the Indian elections in 2052 taking just 5 minutes to process, rather than the 6 weeks it takes this year. The vision is of digital first, ubiquitous, secure, personal technology connections in every sector and industry, reducing friction, demolishing time scales, flattening barriers.   

Ageing musicians still touring, and ageing fans still wanting to go to their concerts, might prefer an afternoon start time rather than waiting until 9pm or later for the main event. It's not just Festivals that should schedule afternoon concerts - maybe every band should do so.   The theme of this week's "jump into the future" is that we should be open to questioning what is considered "normal" in our industries, especially when doing so could open us up to new opportunities, markets and customers. What's "normal" in your industry? And what experiments could you try to see how you could change that?

All plants extract minerals and nutrients from the soil they're growing in, but some appear to be able to extract metals as well, or at least metal ions that we can in turn extract from the plants. If we can do this at scale, we can use phytomining to get the metals we need to build the batteries we use to power our lives. Here are some links to experiments underway on phytomining, and the promise of what this might bring in the future: https://thebulletin.org/2024/03/the-greenest-way-to-mine-metals-for-batteries-could-be-with-plants/ https://resoilfoundation.org/en/innovation-technology/tropical-plants-contaminated-soils/ https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/metal-guzzling-plants-harvested-to-make-nanomaterials/2500240.article

As we watch elections in 2024 spanning nearly 70 countries and 4.2 billion people, one thing is clear: the current systems are not working. Voters are not happy, and have little enthusiasm for the politicians they can choose between (if they have any real choices at all). So, come with me to the future, and consider four 'ridiculous ideas' for new approaches to Parliaments and Governments. We need to stretch our strategic imaginations in an effort to come up with new political systems. Watch episode 9 about AI Politicians: http://bit.ly/TFTAIPolitics  Download the Strategic Imagination Toolkit sample: http://bit.ly/SIToolkit 

ChatGPT, CoPilot, Llama, Bard, Grok and all the other Generative AI Large Language Models have demonstrated that we can engage with our technology using natural language. Now we need to get our devices to understand the heuristics of requests and actions we ask them to do. Rabbit R1 was launched to much fanfare in December 2023, as a first model of a device that can do this. I doubt it can deliver yet, but it's definitely heading in the right direction. And I love their coining of the LAM: Large ACTION models. I think that Apple's AI play later this year will integrate Siri with early algorithm capabilities that take another step down this path of getting our devices to understand how the world actually works and be able to do a lot of repetitive and mundane tasks for us. Your company should already be working on which tasks could be given to LAMs, building the algorithm systems to make these work seamlessly, and deciding how humans and machines will continue to become more bionic as we work together in the future. If you're just thinking about automation you're not thinking correctly about this.

  As the world gets more and more water stressed, those who control water supplies in rivers, lakes and dams, will exercise more power and restrict access to water to those downstream.  This could lead to conflict - legal and physical - that is both internal and crosses national boundaries. Some countries may even use the need for water as a reason to invade a neighbour. Whether as an individual or a business, or a region or country, we need to have a plan for water security that is equitable, agreed on by everyone, and future proof. We cannot live without water.  

We have to do this! In our lifetimes we have to find a way to end the use of plastic as we use it now, so that we stop adding more toxins and pollution to our planet.

Imagine a world in which Rogue Waves made the oceans too dangerous for ships to sail, and we had to stop cruise liners and container ships from sailing. It would change our world as we know it. It is an extreme and alarmist scenario, with one of the worse cases for the impact of climate change and global warming. It's designed to keep us thinking about what needs to be done to mitigate the impact of extreme weather on our world.

It's not a horror movie, with spider-like robots clambering around the outside of buildings. This is the future of the $40 billion window cleaning industry, using robots. They can do more than clean, though - they do real-time, ongoing analysis of the external skin of the buildings, keeping a record of issues and greatly enhancing preventative maintenance.  This is just one example of the potential of predictive data analytics when applied to real world objects that are instrumented and analysed. How might you be able to these data analytic ideas to your business? 

A company is suing its own AI chatbot for providing misleading information to a client. I wish I could make up a headline from the future that was better than this - its actually a real story from February 2024 involving Air Canada.  The practical lesson is that we need to be careful of automating our workforces, rather than augmenting them. People who use AI are better than people who don't. AI, though, is better when it is used by people than when it is left on its own. Learn from Air Canada's mistake. 

Would you trust an AI-driven algorithm to help choose your life partner? If people were honest about the data they entered into these systems, and genuine in their desire to find a true life-partner match, this would definitely be an improvement on the basically random, luck-based most of us rely on. Happy Valentine's Day... from the Love Algorithm. ❤️

In the future, we will use smart devices and even implants to monitor our every move, maybe even our thoughts too. How will we use this data? It could be for Big Brother style management of our lives, or it could be for our benefit and wellbeing. That will be up to us. This is actually not a prediction about the future, but rather a scenario to help us think about what we should be doing in our world and our workplaces now.

Imagine arriving at the office, and the lighting and aircon are just perfect, there's exactly the right ambient noise, the desk is set up perfectly, the food and drinks easily available are precisely what you need... everything is set up just right to ensure you can deliver your best work.  This is the workplace of the future that adjusts in real time based both on who you are and what you're trying to achieve in the next few hours.  Elite sportspeople already use data analytics to craft the perfect work environment for themselves. We need to use the same approach in our workplaces - not to extract MORE from our people, but to help them give their BEST.   

Imagine we voted for the managers of our teams at work. Imagine our workplaces worked like democracies should. Today's episode has a bit of an activist and culture war tone about it, as I suggest that one possible future for corporations is being more democratic. You see, here's the problem: while the corporation is the cornerstone of Western democratic capitalism, there is almost no democracy in our workplaces at all. We don't vote for who our managers should be. We don't vote for how much we should be paid. We are hardly even consulted about strategy or what products and services we should sell to clients. Why not? In a democratic world that glorifies individual freedom and the rights to self-determination, why is the corporation so authoritarian, class-based and anti-democratic. I really do believe that this is one of the keys to building the organisation of the future. I hope this video gets you thinking about ways you can change and improve your workplace today.

Come with me to January 2026, when a major company announces a new reward system for the senior Executives: part of your bonus depends on how well you sleep each night. That's right: we are going to measure your sleep, and reward you if you do it well. The science is pretty clear: sleep is one of the most important factors in clear thinking, regulated emotions, good decision making, ethical judgements, strategic thinking, and actually almost everything that makes a good leader good. So, why wouldn't we insist that good leaders get good sleep? I think we should. I think we will. Soon. This is just one idea in a series of "future of work" suggestions you'll be hearing from me this year. I am passionate about helping organisations getting the BEST out of the people rather than just the MOST. Speak to me for more ideas if you don't want to wait for future videos. 

We decided to publish this edition on Monday, 15 January 2024 - welcome to the first "full on" week of the year and welcome to another year of significant shifts in the world of work. In this video, we look at the ten trends we believe will have the most impact on the workplace and the workforce in the year ahead. For more information on these trends, and if you'd like us to help you think through how they will impact you and create opportunities for yourself and your teams, please be in touch for a no-obligations chat. Have a great year! CONNECT WITH GRAEME AND THE TOMORROWTODAY TEAM Let's start a conversation to find out where I can make the biggest impact in your journey to being future-fit. Email me graeme@tomorrowtodayglobal.com