Twenty-One

“Got a feeling twenty-one is gonna be a good year / Especially if you and me see it in together… You didn't hear it, you didn't see it / you won't say nothing to no one/ Ever in your life, you never heard it / how absurd it all seems without any proof ” – The Who, “1921”, Tommy

This year is coming to an end. You’ve seen the tweets and comments everywhere: “2020. The. Worst. Year. EVER.” While the folks in, say, any of the years 1939-1945 or 1861-1865 might quibble, for all of us in the here and now, it’s not an un-apt sentiment.

So as we start the roll into 2021, a forthcoming, huge push from marketing departments and ad agencies everywhere (including certain lame-duck incumbent presidents) will be to try to make you absolutely, positively and resolutely forget that 2020 happened. As if Pete Townshend’s lyrics from 1921 came to life: “You didn’t hear it, you didn’t see it”. 

Leaving us – like Tommy – deaf, dumb and blind.

(And not just because I’m a huge fan of The Who, I keep expecting some major brand/company to imminently launch a full-on ad campaign – just in time for the holidays – with the refrain “Got a feeling `21 is gonna be a good year”… but maybe with that haunting countermelody, too: “You didn’t see it, you didn’t hear it.”)

But we all saw it. We all heard it. Hundreds of thousands of dead. The job losses. The school days missed. The paychecks, evaporated. Now the question is, how can the work ahead in ’21 help us rebuild – in a much better way – what we lost? And maybe, just maybe, get us into a way better place than we were before? 

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Over the years, we’ve made a lot of the number twenty-one in the Center for the Future of Work. 21 Jobs of the Future. 21 More Jobs of the Future… of Marketing… of HR (which made the Harvard Business Review). 

Why 21? 

Well, why not? It’s a bit arbitrary, but it’s also the magic number if you like cards and play blackjack. For drinking in America, it gives our puritan reticence one more year than the even 20 to laissez-le-bon-temps-roulez among our youth (Just as driving at age 16 gives one more than the uneven 15, or Nigel Tufnel’s amp that goes to 11). Our first Cognizant Collaboratory in Manhattan was on the 21st floor (“21 for the 21st century!”). 

And of course, 21 + 21 equals 42, which (in addition to being the number of the immortal Jackie Robinson), as author Douglas Adams pointed out, is the answer to life, the universe and everything — and everything surely must include work.

Being optimistic about days ahead comes with the territory for any good futurist. But will we enter a future in 2021 that’s more optimistic? Or just “optimized”?  Look around. We’ve never been surrounded by more technology. But how do your co-workers or neighbors — or you — feel about it? Is it progressing, or regressing? Modern, or in retrograde?

At work, LinkedIn has become the de facto org chart, but it also opened an escape hatch for the departure of great talent. At home, the family reunion’s now on Facebook, but so are Uncle John’s divisive politics. At city hall, Twitter keeps constituents informed of potholes but also blows up into vitriol and corrosive comments. Nobody — yet — has gotten a handle on how to cope with the speed, intensity and breadth of change spawned by the last several years of technology onslaught.

When the inability to cope is compromised, situational improvement and resilience are too. And when businesses, societies or individuals aren’t resilient, you get “disruptions” and even outright chaos.

And then, 2020 – along came a virus. That sat down beside us. 

Like Townshend’s lyrics – willful ignorance ensued, i.e., “you didn’t see it, you didn’t hear it, you won’t say nothing to no one”. That includes the prosaic and mundane, like turning a blind eye to your company’s bad processes, or its bad technical infrastructure. As Warren Buffet would remind us, it's only when the tide goes out that you learn who has been swimming naked.

But it also includes a society (and leaders) who – like some mutant embodiment of Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes – were obtuse to the devastation wrought by the coronavirus, or to outlandishly disputed election results … or squalor in the streets… or the food insecure as we try right the ship of our countries and the world. The list goes on.

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So, how do we get from here… to there… after we officially get to twenty-one?

Last year, our From & To report offered 42 ideas (21 + 21!) providing answers to everything you always wanted to know about the future of your work, but were afraid to ask. In the spirit of Adams (and Robinson) the 42 ideas orient us to a better tomorrow: “from” describes where we are, and “to” describes where we’re going.  We also presciently noted in the intro (of course, written pre-COVID) an observation by French writer Simone de Beauvoir which may give all of us some much-needed perspective on 2021, “To make something good of the future, you have to look the present in the face.”

Futures are always a reaction to the present; tomorrow is always a judgment on today. By training a microscope on how we work now, we can try to figure out how we’re going to work when this day – and this wretched year 2020 – is done.

 So roll-on 2021. And it’s abundantly clear there’s PLENTY of work for all of to do to make something good of our future. You’ll be seeing much more from the Center about The Work Ahead – across regions, across industries, across the world. We’ll also be bringing you 21 Places of the Future – because the jobs of the future will happen in places of the future (including places like Remotopia and Virtual Space). And we’ll continue to provide a real-time look at “the now of work” in our quarterly Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index.

All of us are adapting – often digitally – to new ways of living, working and forging relationships.

But that doesn’t mean that we will ever forget what happened.

Or put more simply, as we close out the first year of the twenties, let’s pledge – really pledge – to make twenty-one a good year. And the beginning of a good future.