Talent, people and culture towards 2030

managementtoday.co.uk/talent-people-culture-towards-2030

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Summary

We face a talent crisis. And yes, it was always thus or at least since McKinsey said it was in 1997. But, in Q1 2024, this crisis is materially different.

In an earlier piece in Management Today (July 2023), I argued that businesses were blindsided by the speed of adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) because they were not doing talent, succession and capability planning properly i.e., with a future focus. Organisations whose success is correlated with an ongoing relevance to clients are now under increasing pressure not just to identify future capabilities/skills but re-think their overall people strategies and in essence - culture. Unless organisations do this now then what they thought was ‘best practice’ could fast become past practice. In part one, I set out (i) what the challenges are and (ii) why it is vital to do things differently and in part two, I present some potential strategies aiming to future proof your organisation.

Part One: Towards 2030

Given the pace of change including technology, climate and geo-politics, successful organisations are likely to be different tomorrow than they are today. Themes such as supply chains, working patterns, customer interfaces and investment are unrecognizable from just a few years before. Have you tried buying a drink at ‘Black-Sheep-Coffee’ without a computer science degree? Quite how materially different the future is will always remain unknown, although technology will have a significant impact. Changes such as increasing disruption, demonetization and democratization coupled with an inexorable rise in regulation will require new ways of solving challenges for clients, and so to remain relevant organisations will need to perpetually reimagine everything around 'work' to attract, develop & retain their people.

New entrants can disrupt more cheaply and more quickly than ever before, and they can offer their workforce different things. For example, millennials differentiate between potential employers against a social or 'higher purpose' which is at odds with 'baby boomer/gen x' visions of pursuing a job/career.

This divergence of expectation is likely to continue at least until there are no ‘boomers’ left in the workplace! In the meantime, for established organisations – whose change ambitions ride like a sidecar to existing practice - and start-ups (while superficially attractive & nimble), employee turnover for both remains commercially unsustainable.

In shaping the needs of the workforce of the future, I have chosen a future state scenario - what will the environment look like in 2030? If you are student of change, this is at best arrogant and at worst ridiculous or to quote physicist Niels Bohr “it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future".

As a practitioner, I feel using a "future-to-present" model supports the re-thinking of 'talent management' away from traditional workforce planning and inherent short-termism. This frees up our thinking to unlearn established assumptions, test new hypotheses and in short, reimagine work. For example, much of the current use of 'digital' is used to affect automation within current roles and ‘use cases' rather than the re-design of work itself. Furthermore, talent supply discussions also exhibit linear thinking and pedestrian debates over which 'university/school' rather than discussing what is the disruptive, dynamic, and changing "big picture"? KPMG argues this reimagining should include skills/capabilities, technology, leadership, work structure, people practices and organizational principles - everything.

How do organisations 'future proof'?

We must go further than vague generalizations that de-risk all ideas down to platitudes such as 'hire A-Players', 'digital skills' or 'client skills'. In fact, once we agree the 'things' needed to lead businesses in 2030 and note this is not an 'official view of the future' but more various "strategic radars", we then need to observe our progress both candidly and objectively and adjust as needed. We will make mistakes and need to learn as we go.

In addition, and at all times, we have to ensure our aspirational culture is mutually supporting the growth and performance of the redefined workforce. It is not just that 'culture eats strategy for breakfast' to quote Peter Drucker, these 'talents' will be highly attuned to whether their career growth is supported by what they feel within the organization. As we have seen, the 'boot camp' (sink or swim) learning approach is obsolete, although as evidenced through the current disruption by AI within the legal sector accumulating critical and deep expertise must now be acquired differently.

As Warren Buffet challenges 'predicting rains doesn't count, building arks does'. To build our ark, we need the right types of skills/talents/capabilities in order to improve our readiness to succeed when the proverbial rains stop. Our best way to mitigate the uncertain future is to keep close to clients, listen to them and increase our rigour in client centricity; supplier and client boundaries – in the future - could become very blurred. This will need advanced skills of discovery, precision questioning and in close cooperation with clients develop many testable experiments.

As a strategy, this would require a rapid increase and constant upgrade of client capabilities while cannibalizing old ways of doing things and inventing new business models. This allows flexibility to pivot to the right scenario at the right time coupled with the shared consciousness and market antennae to reduce being blindsided by external disruption. Is this easy? Nope. Yates & Holland at Mach 49 (The Unicorn Within, 2022) strive to solve this problem through the creation of incubators inside large organizations i.e., unlocking purpose driven startups within big, clunky, slow-moving businesses. Does this work? I am not sure, but they are busy!

If we had more of these qualities …

Once we agree - at least loosely - on potential scenarios, we then need to find the people who will lead and deliver these new client centric organizations. These skills might not be readily available outside and so a strategic effort to internally upskill would also increase resilience to succeed in our 'various futures'. Moreover, with a future-to-present mindset, this would require unlearning the here and now and its inherent costly and regrettable turnover. For example, would we still hire graduates? If yes, which universities? Are school leavers/apprentices/cadets the answer? Can we manage a more fluid/transient workforce? How will AI (e.g., ChatGPT) become more embedded into our workflow? And so on …

In essence, we need to identify capabilities and differences beyond 'prima-facie' diversity. Skill sets and ways of working that are just more of the same are not likely to mitigate the challenges of tomorrow. Our efforts going forward should feel radically different than they are today.

With sheer ‘hard work’ a given, indicative qualities (and there will be others) are proposed below and these are not currently plentiful:

Part Two: So, if you feel change is constant and accelerating. And businesses and their inherent cultures will want to adapt to keep up – what if they cannot find these skills/qualities/attributes (described in part one)?

What next?

I propose partnering (i) with competitors and (ii) other industry groups who face similar ‘talent’ challenges while (iii) keeping the 'voice of the customer' front and center of potential “talent gap” solutions. For example, a large global fintech organisation works with their direct competitors to influence University curricula in order to attract campus talent to their industry and not just to their respective companies. Imagine you and your direct/fiercest competitors appearing on campus as one collective? We will then build future talent hypotheses, test, gather feedback and once agreed move forward at speed plus paradoxically factoring in some flexibility too. If we feel this is 100% right, it is probably wrong.

So, can we solve this talent crisis?

The current approach to the talent cycle (attraction, induction, development, performance, exit …) must change. And the broader workforce of the future needs to be reimagined. We want to think and act like a modern-day Noah showing similar vision and ambition with customer/clients remaining front and center in our potential solutions as we work backwards from a 2030 vision to the present day.

Perhaps as expected, we need data. I propose we gather robust information from various stakeholders, external voices, competitors, and further research; perhaps using AI or Q*(star) from OpenAI. Then we need to free ourselves from the shackles of iterative and incremental change and aim for real transformation. We want to create excitement in our organizations (think massive transformative purpose) – which coincidentally drives talent retention.

So, firstly, properly commit and invest to re-skilling current talent. Secondly, attract new and different people/partners from non-traditional sources. Thirdly, develop a working environment where everyone can thrive, create change, and build enduring success for both businesses and their clients in an increasingly disruptive and uncertain future. And finally, having said it would be a huge mistake to predict tomorrow, here are five takeaways just in case I am either a 21st Century Noah or half-decent futurist: