Team Tomorrow
According to the World Economic Forum’s most recent Future of Jobs Report (Oct. 2020), a large swath of today’s jobs will be obsolete by 2025.
2025 folks!
If someone told you today that the stock market was going to crash in three years, or that your car was going to breakdown and require thousands of dollars in repairs in three years – would you do something about the situation today, or would you just wait to see if it happens, with the hope that you’ll “figure it out then.”
Too many organizations are operating with the latter strategy (although it can hardly be called a strategy).
If you’re ready to be proactive - here’s one way to be prepared.
Team Tomorrow
Team Tomorrow is made up of a “special” group of individuals in your organization who can help to define the future and what it will take to get there.
The first group to include are your boomers. Boomers are just on the cusp of retiring and right now they hold the most knowledge in your organization. They are good prognosticators because they’ve seen and weathered many ups and downs and have an historical perspective on the organization.
It’s important to capture what they know and the wisdom of their years.
Note: None of the individuals necessarily need to be leaders in the company. In fact, it might be more useful if they are not. People who are not currently leading and strategizing don’t have preconceived notions of the direction of the company.
Team Tomorrow
The rest of your selected group should be made up of individuals of all types
· Different departments/ specialties
· Different age ranges
· Different experiences and exposures to other industries in their prior employment
A great idea is to ask people to apply to Team Tomorrow, with a short application and interview process. They should identify what unique perspective they bring to the discussion and provide at least one “vision” for the future.
You don’t want more than 12 individuals on the team so that team process doesn’t get bogged down, BUT consider swapping out team members every six months or so to keep new ideas flowing. (Suggestion, every six months 3 people rotate off the team and three new people join.)
The Process
The Team Tomorrow process includes three distinct conversations/brainstorming sessions:
1. What is happening in the world / in our industry that may affect us? How can we capitalize on that so that it’s an asset? For instance, the use of robotics and artificial intelligence is a conversation that every organization should be having right now. Computers changed the way most work was done 30 years ago and digitization/robotics/AI is in the midst of doing that again. You don’t want to be playing catch-up. (You need to come at this “what is happening” conversation from many angles: personnel, productivity, government regulations, etc.)
2. The second conversation to have is, What are our competitors doing? You cannot stay in your own bubble and think that you will survive the future. Your organization should constantly be taking the pulse of its competitors to learn from their successes as well as missteps.
3. The final conversation is Who (or what) is complementary to us? In business we’ve been taught to be wary of the competition, but we haven’t been taught to look for alliances with complementary companies. Complementary industries or organizations create synergy and greater outcomes. Why did Microsoft recently buy Activision Blizzard? They are vaguely in the same industry in that people have their hands on a keyboard/device but there must be a greater synergy that hasn’t been revealed yet. This conversation is aided by the team members who have other-industry experience.
Action
The final course of action is to create a vision for the organization 5, 10, and 15 years down the road.
An activity that is often used in coaching is: Picture that you / your organization has won an award ten years from now. What is it for? What does the headline of the WSJ article about you herald? This headline is something tangible that gives the vision substance and helps your employees to know what you are working toward.
Planning for the future is not a one-time event.
You’ll want the Team Tomorrow meetings to continue monthly and to be constantly scanning the horizon for opportunities for excellence both internally and in terms of serving the ever-evolving desires of customers. This is one of the reasons that iPhones have such loyal fans – the folks at Apple keep re-envisioning the future and presenting it to us.
As you are constantly cycling new members and new ideas through Team Tomorrow, you’ll find your organization becomes resilient and forward thinking… making it future-proof.