The Employee Experience Advantage

CHAPTER 28A Futurist's Perspective

I make a living speaking at dozens of conferences each year, advising some of the world's most forward‐thinking organizations, providing thought leadership to vendors, and creating content for anyone to access, including podcasts, videos, and articles. As a futurist part of my job isn't to predict the future but to keep people and organizations from being surprised by what the future will bring. Not only do I explore the future of work, but I also look at specific industries ranging from finance to pharmaceutical. Every organization around the world is powered by people and the influx of AI and technology is finally forcing us to consider what a people‐centric organization actually looks like.

One evening while writing this book I was watching a show on TV and a commercial came on for a particular drug. At the end of the commercial the side effects were listed—weight gain, nausea, anxiety, difficulty breathing, sleeplessness, hair loss, bleeding from the eyes, skin discoloration, and possibly death. I nearly fell off the couch! Who in their right mind would take a drug like that? Then I thought about it for a moment and realized that most of us work for organizations that have the exact same side effects. Why is it that we aren't willing to take the drug with the scary side effects yet we are willing to subject ourselves to countless hours of working for an organization that has the same results? Save yourself some time, stay home and just take ...