read me a story my mom who was back then
a young strong caring and loving young
lady grew up in the Spain the followed
our Civil War the 50s as you know was a
very difficult time that was impregnated
with the dogmas of the Franco regime a
regime that had a very very special view
of what women could do in society every
night as he finished the story she said
Sylvia my darling be whoever you want to
be do whatever you want to do in life
but remember these three things be
independent make a difference and always
choose the right thing to do especially
when the right thing is always the hard
thing and so that is exactly what I
promised her I would do and that’s what
I’m here for I have been really struck
by the narrative that we’re using to
describe the challenges of our workforce
when it comes to the advances of
Technology we’re constantly focusing on
the worst case scenario we’ll use in
fear to describe the future
we often hear statements such as 50% of
today’s job could be replaced by
artificial intelligence in 10 years
earlier today Gregor said 10% of jobs in
Germany today could be replaced by
artificial intelligence today he has
even made it to a sport I will in
recently read an article that said that
in 2050 the World Cup in the World Cup
in 2050 a team of robots will beat the
human world champions believe me I have
thought about this long and hard and
just cannot see how a team of robots
that is what the German team does it
appears to me the fear has dominated the
perception of the challenges that come
along with the 21st century and and
while this is human I don’t think it’s
the right thing to do I’m here to change
this narrative and to offer an
alternative for how we help really find
employment as we know today I think this
is probably one of the hardest
challenges that we have as a society but
it’s still looking for a positive future
is the right thing to do so as a
management consultant I have been
trained to challenge the status quo and
to think about finding solutions to very
complex problems as a woman I have
preferred it perfected the art of
discussion and almost disagreement so so
I started to think about the future of
work right and indeed what I do when I
want to find information nowadays I
Google so I googled the future of work
and I found 1.5 billion hits and so I
thought well you know it’s gonna be easy
with all that has been written and
published about the future of work there
surely has to be an answer on how
technological trends impact me today and
what I do the answer is no there isn’t
so I started doing a little bit more
sophisticated research and I spoke to a
lot of different you know mathematicians
philosophers
I spoke to economists and I read
everything that has been published
around how we look at the future of work
and I found that the future of work is
opened this described as one of two
extremes if you like a dystopia of
unemployable lowest skilled citizens who
are unable to find a job this is what
the most interesting historian of our
time professor Deauville Noel Harare
describes as the birth of the unworking
class and I was trying to process this I
thought okay so do you guys remember the
cassette player does anybody know what a
cassette player was or is I I do so you
know maybe dating myself but I just
thought this is as if we were living in
a world that had evolved to Anam mp3s or
CDs and the workforce is like cassette
players so not only are there no tapes
for us to play as workforce this is no
music that we can actually produce we’re
the other the other extreme or the other
the other way of describing the future
of work it’s a utopia a utopia that is
built on a basis of universal basic
income that is built on artificial
intelligence doing all of the work if
you want this is a world where we are
maintained by machines or by the value
created by machines and we have all the
time in the world to pursue our interest
or if you believe that working is
actually innate to the human being who
would actually probably be very bored so
the good news I don’t think that any of
those two scenarios will materialize by
2030 but I wanted to find a picture of
the future that was worth looking for
and I wanted to start thinking about
alternatives for that future they could
actually think as positive so with a
team of economists mathematicians
strategists and philosophers we started
to think about how you build these
futures that you can look forward to as
you probably guessed and I think we’ve
heard it earlier tonight making
predictions about the future is really
hard getting those predictions right is
actually harder so just think for a
second about inventor Calvin’s who once
said
that the worldwide demand for Motor
Vehicles would not exceed a million just
because there wouldn’t be enough
chauffeurs well I guess that he
underestimated women’s appetite for
driving and skill right because because
we did – I go over the 1 million so you
know I just wanted to say that we wanted
to build scenarios and just to make sure
that we made we didn’t make the same
mistake or who didn’t just underlay too
much weight on one assumption we started
playing with variables the we thought
could be significant and make a
difference in employment in a lot of
given sectors and so since we’re in
Mannheim tonight let me talk a little
bit about the predictions that we use
for automobile so we thought okay what
are the things that can really shape
employment around the automotive
manufacturing manufacturing industry
what are the what are the the factors
that we can play with if you want to
think about this it’s like having a
bunch of kicks or nurse thinking about
different what-ifs so what were or our
automotive for its we thought one of the
factors that can make a significant
difference is artificial intelligence
if machine learning is really
transformative that could really make a
drastic impact but if it’s just a hype
then maybe not much will change we also
looked at the role that the metal stand
the hidden champions can play so you
know they are very important and part of
the backbone of the German economy so we
thought what happens if they actually
have the capital to invest in technology
and and bring that future forward or the
alternative would be what happens if
they actually have too tight margins
that don’t enable them to make the
capital investments that are required
for that progress to take place and
finally we looked at demand so we
thought what happens if there are
significant changes in the demand for
automobiles as we know today there is a
thing done in
California that has basically said that
autonomous driving could could cause a
drop in demand for cars as we know it
today of 70 percent so we just play with
that so what did we find across all
scenarios we found the type of future
that I was actually setting out to
challenge and test and so I was I was
thinking about this and you know the
predictions that we came up with had
results like in the best-case 50% of
jobs in automotive manufacturing will be
replaced by machine by 2030 in the
worst-case scenario that was up to 2/3
or 67% and so I thought about this ok we
need to be able to think about this
differently we need to actually come up
with better questions
so I also looked at you know what is
gonna happen with the workforce in
Germany by 2030 what are the changes
that we can expect to see there and
found that we actually irrespective of
what happens with productivity increases
driven by technology we’re gonna have a
shortfall in our workforce of up to
three and a half million workers and so
I thought well why are we actually
talking about this in terms of the job
loss isn’t there a conversation to be
had about how do we transform the
workforce that is at risk or having the
job automated and have them fill some of
the gaps and the for the jobs that we
anticipate we won’t be able to cover in
2030 isn’t that a better way to think
about this so think about think about
coal burns and his prediction around the
demand for automobiles step-by-step Joe
first came and they lost their jobs as
well as driving became mainstream so the
change will continue I think we have all
established that and can accept it but
the question is how are we gonna define
the conditions for that change how are
we going to drive and create those
futures so what I want to do tonight
is share with you four ideas if you want
four shifts in
perspective that we help us create a
better a positive narrative about the
future of work and help us tackle some
of these questions so here’s the first
perspective perspective shift I’m one of
my favorites and you can think about
these perspective shifts as changes in
the way that we talk about things so
today our conversation is focused around
the robot will replace the human and
that is a scary and bad thing what does
I think we could talk about what are the
kinds of things the humans or robots
could do together I have I call this the
augmented humanity scenario or
perspective shift and I think if I look
at what’s happened over the last 15
years I think we have continuously
experienced these bits of automation
positively personally I have long
enjoyed looking good while my car parked
itself
I actually think everybody else in my
car did as well so I can barely wait for
autonomous driving our autonomous cars
to really take on so that I can use the
time that I spend behind the wheel to do
other things that are more productive
for me and this is probably going to be
safer for everybody else as well right
so our ability to accept as positive the
part of our jobs parts of what we do
will be most effectively done by
artificial intelligence algorithms or
robots is actually key for this
transition I think working with AI would
actually enables us to explore new
territory and that’s a huge opportunity
we could start thinking about tackling
things like climate change or eliminate
disease and I think there is a huge
opportunity around this so let me talk
about the second shift which is also a
really interesting one as a society and
organizations we value expertise and
skill set we value knowledge I think a
way to think about the future would be
to think about value in learning and
mindset I think that while the role of
the
spirt has said his role and maybe will
continue to have it it needs to be
combined with other abilities or it will
create rigidity in our system
I think if possible if a positive future
is one where we think about shifting to
a mindset that enables us to connect to
do to embrace broad thinking to do
interlaced thinking we can no longer
afford to treat education as the part of
our life that preceded that precedes
work I think that in order to be able to
adapt to the change in landscape where
technology plays such a crucial role we
need to continue to look we need to look
at lifelong learning and develop our
other skills as technology changes
constantly this implies also a radical
redesign of our education system so let
me talk and this idea is connected with
the next shift so let’s talk a little
bit about our transition would have
called a transition to portfolio careers
or going from value instability in our
workplace to embrace him flexibility a
relationship to work is changing the
idea that we have a job for life stayed
with the 20th century children who are
in grammar school today have a 65%
chance of working in jobs that do not
exist today we’re expecting that they
will have portfolio careers where they
will have been in 12 or 15 different
jobs but they time they reach their
mid-40s their careers are not going to
be linear
they’ll be organic and fluid I think
that we need to start thinking about
moving away from the ladder toward
careers that we have today to lattice
type careers that are organic perhaps
most importantly I think employees
shouldn’t see themselves solely as
responsible for completing tasks or
filling a job I think that as tasks and
jobs can be automated human competence
we must
focus on these human competencies that
cannot be replaced such as empathy
interlaced thinking creativity which is
considered as important as literacy let
me move on to the fourth and my favorite
one of the shifts which is one where we
move from short-term profit to long-term
value I think that is a type of
organization that is evolving that is
looking at the role in the world as one
word they think about people planet and
profit and not just profits I can only
scratch the surface on this and so for
the World Economic Forum there has been
a number of conversations around
inclusive capitalism Larry Fink who is
the CEO of Blackrock funds has actually
written a beautiful letter to the CEOs
of the companies that he invests in and
he manages about just about two trillion
dollars and so I thought that at this
point you might want me to read it to
you so I will just do that it captures
beautifully what I want to say so Larry
says to prosper over time every company
must not only deliver financial
performance but also show how it makes a
positive contribution to society
companies must benefit all of their
stakeholders including shareholders
employees customers and the communities
where they operate without a sense of
purpose
no company either public or private can
achieve its full potential I love this
I’m going to read it again without a
sense of purpose
no company either public or private can
I achieve its full potential it will
ultimately lose the license to operate
from Ischia stakeholders and so let me
wrap this up and say that the line scape
our landscape will have changed in 2030
what we call a robot our children will
call a colleague if we embrace
technology we can help our current
workforce transition
for the jobs that can be automated into
new ones that we will create we can
prepare our children to thrive in an
area of constant change we create a
platform doubling his value to the
global communities and help us chase the
future I hope that you find that these
perspectives is these ideas are a good
starting point to shape our story about
the future and create future of work
scenarios that are worth while living in
or waiting for so only this evening I
told you about my mom
I think the live recreating principles –
engrained on me were her way of
preparing me for a future the she felt
would be significantly different to the
future that she had but the present that
she had well I am a mom – I am their mom
and I often think about how I could I
prepare them for their future which is
why this topic is really important to me
those of you that have children may come
across these questions often those of
you that don’t have children well I’d
say that I can’t change actually I went
from 1 to 3 in less than a minute
and so these like this I did so these
precious creatures that we have around
us that are noisy run around are
actually looking up to us for guidance
and while we don’t know what the future
holds it is our collective
responsibility to create a good
narrative for their future so I came
here tonight to tell you that if
employment as we know disappeared
tomorrow it’s our job to redefine it
recreate it
reinvent it it’s our job to do it
together and it’s our job to do it now thank you