Why there’s always more than one road ahead

Being asked to ponder the future feels a bit like being asked to ponder love.

‘Love’ might mean a feeling you have about your child, parent, partner, friend, place, cake, dog, country, football team, favourite curry, strenuous exercise, way to relax, anything.

‘The future’ seems no less singular and non-monolithic.

In one sense, it might conjure graphs and projections detailing growth, contraction, employment, unemployment, average working weeks and burgeoning or failing sectors. But within each of those macro-stories there are countless more human futures which belong to (for example) people who work from home, people who work in manufacturing, those who work set shifts, others who choose their own hours, as well as people who work in teams, solo, making things, selling things, providing services, and so on.

World-renowned ‘futurist’ Anne-Lise Kjaer came to The FibreHub last month and was the keynote speaker at a Future Focus day called ‘Navigate the Future’. Part of what she communicated was a sense of this plurality of futures: whatever trends might come and go, she emphasised that she was leading a discussion on futures, not just some inflexible sense of ‘the future’.

A four day work week?

Recalling what John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1929, she told delegates that he’d said that by 2030 the major Western economies would have plateaued and the average working week might be around 15 hours. Anne-Lise said that although that’s a low figure which we’re still a way off reaching, it’s worth noting that Sweden’s 30-hour week pays people the same as they previously received for 37 hours, and that studies show productivity at least equalling that of a 42-hour week. While Iceland now has a four-day working week, a pilot study in the UK for the next six months will trial the same thing with 3,300 workers in different sectors. The results, available in January next year, are likely to be interesting and instructive as to possible future directions.

Curiosity as a key skill for the future

Anne-Lise also quoted a recent survey of a number of leading businesses whose responses indicated that they expect half of their 2026 revenues to be derived from products or services not yet even created. Clearly, such an expectation puts a high premium on skills which might not have featured much on employers’ must-have lists even as recently as 15 or 20 years ago, skills such as curiosity and imagination. (This point was emphasised by her quoting from a recent interview with Michael Dell, in which he cited curiosity as the most important quality his business now looked for in prospective employees.)

But clearly (and to return to the notion of multiple futures), the many changes and disruptive factors sweeping business globally do not apply equally to all. For example, changes to the working lives and habits of those employed in manufacturing are likely to be harder to come by and slower to see than those with the option to work flexibly, or from home. In manufacturing, where plant or machinery is a fixed cost and a financial drain when not in use, the imperative to keep employees at a physical place of work, around the clock, remains powerful.

Volatility – Don’t let it prohibit planning

Calculating futures is a hazardous enough pursuit at the best of times, but of course, given the volatility and unprecedented upheavals of the last two or so years, it’s not as if such predictions are being made from a stable base. Anne-Lise was careful to distinguish what she was talking about (a more distanced, analytical and holistic look at 10, 20, even 50 years down the line) from what businesses have lately been obliged to do (fire-fighting, changing long-established practices almost overnight to mitigate extreme turbulence).

It’s also clear – especially in light of enormous, inexorable global events – that we (businesses, individuals, even states) can feel powerless and weightless, blown about by, and helpless in the face of, circumstances. One of Anne-Lise’s messages was that we are, as she put it, ‘active participants’ in our various futures. Much as events will clearly colour the global context, we still retain agency in determining the shape of our future lives.

One delegate, for example, towards the day’s end, spoke of how, as a PR professional who’d built an agency, she had found herself thinking hard about her future (“soul-searching” as she described it). As a result, she had begun to re-shape her working life to scale it back to a more solo existence. This was bringing her no less business but was giving her much more of what she craved and was best at: one-to-one working relationships. It also meant she had freed up more time to spend away from work; thereby rebalancing and enhancing her life. This was an example not only of agency over one’s future, but of how, in a world where multiple futures are available, it’s possible to define ‘growth’ in many ways, including those which transcend traditional income-and-earnings metrics.

There may be no singular future, there may be multiple futures for each of us, but according to Anne-Lise, the coming years will be less about meekly succumbing to events and our fate, and more about the choices we’re all able to exercise in determining what those futures look like.

Looking to get a head start creating a business fit for any future? Future Focus delivered in partnership with The University of Exeter provides the new thinking, inspiration and support needed to enable established businesses to identify opportunities. Find out more.