TALKING HEADS
T
Be more fox — to invent the future workforce
O
Chris Yapp
To navigate
uncertainty, you must
consider the future
from different angles.
ver the past 50 years,
automation has transformed
the working lives of both
blue-collar and white-collar
workers. Advances in machine learning,
big data and other technologies, it is
argued, will have the same impact on
professional work in the 2020s.
How will these changes affect the
jobs and role of HR professionals when
it comes to recruiting future talent in
relevant disciplines? I would argue that,
until recently, it has been all too easy to
recruit in our own image in terms of skills
and perspectives.
Consider the following: how have your
criteria for the HR professional of the
future changed over the past five years?
How do you think these need to evolve
over the next five to ensure that the HR
department of 2030 is fit for purpose?
Factor into this the range of
professional competencies that your
organisation will require for 2030.
Are you confident that the strategic
conversations within each discipline,
and collectively across disciplines,
are sufficiently informed, broad and
well-resourced to generate the ideas
and actions to deliver success?
Four years ago, the HR director of a
large professional services organisation
said to me, “I suspect that half of the
people we recruited over the past five
years won’t want to work the way we will
need to in 10 years’ time.” I fear that his
is not a lone voice.
Yet, making sense of the hype around
technology, alongside the other major
challenges of the 2020s (notably, climate
change and sustainability), creates
a level of uncertainty with which few
organisations feel comfortable.
Futurists have, for many years,
used a simple model — the fox and
the hedgehog — to help organisations
think about their own future. Support
for this approach can be found in Phil
Tetlock’s book Superforecasting. It’s
time for this model to go mainstream
inside leadership work, not just around
strategy, but in operational thinking and
delivery.
Essentially, ‘hedgehogs’ have a world
view that has a single dominant model.
They may see everything through a
lens of, say, money or politics. Wider
considerations such as religion may
also play a part. ‘Foxes’ tend to have
multiple world views, from which they
select according to the problem being
addressed. The mistake is to believe that
any individual is pure hedgehog or fox;
most of us have a mix of characteristics.
What the evidence suggests is that
foxes are better than hedgehogs at
“Many
ambitious young
professionals
suppress their fox
tendencies when
seeking leadership
positions”
considering the future from different
angles, and generating insights into
how it might look. Many ambitious
young professionals suppress their fox
tendencies when seeking leadership
positions, believing them to be too risky.
The trick will be to encourage future
leaders to value these skills and to
create space in leadership to allow ‘fox
behaviours’ to come to the fore.
I don’t believe anyone could truthfully
come up with a low-risk view of the world
of work in 2030. Disruption in careers
will happen, but how far and fast in
any individual sector or organisation
is unclear. What I would argue is that
those organisations that balance the
fox and the hedgehog cultures will better
navigate the uncertainties that we all
face. To quote educator and computing
pioneer Alan Kay: “The best way to
predict the future is to invent it”.
Dr Chris Yapp is an independent consultant
with an interest in innovation and futures
thinking, and a background of over 30
years in the computer industry. He is a
Fellow of both the BCS and the RSA.
February – May 2020 // 49