Latest / Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight / Strategic Foresight for Your Career: Planning When Planning Feels Impossible

Transcript

Strategic Foresight for Your Career: Planning When Planning Feels Impossible · Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight

0:27
I'm Nola Simon.
0:28
I'm the host of the Hope and Possibilities podcast.
0:32
Today I wanna talk about foresight and how futurism really plays
0:38
into planning and strategy, but it's not really what you think.
0:45
I came across this quote from Margaret Heffernan.
0:48
She's a leadership expert I follow, and she has this beautiful quote, "In
0:55
an age of uncertainty where so much is murky, planning becomes harder
1:00
than ever, if not actually impossible.
1:04
Flexibility, adaptability, and the imagination to consider what could happen
1:09
become vital skills." So when you come into career development, this is more
1:18
applicable than anything else, right?
1:20
And it is a form of futurism.
1:24
I maintain that career development is a form of futurism.
1:28
How do you make decisions when you really don't know what the future is?
1:33
How do you, Keep yourself open to opportunity and develop.
1:40
And it comes down really to practicing flexibility and
1:46
adaptability and how do you imagine?
1:49
So what practices do you have in place that really stimulate your
1:53
imagination of what's possible?
1:56
A lot of what I've done personally is about tuning into what stimulates and
2:03
supports my creativity what allows me to know who I am, so what practices
2:11
get me closer to understanding myself, my motivation, my real skills
2:17
which then allow me to test and experiment and try different things.
2:26
This is where podcasting came from.
2:28
This is where writing came from.
2:31
This is where, linkedIn Top Voice came from because I was talking about and
2:37
practicing different ways of working and different ways of influencing
2:46
conversations so that I was actually amplifying the possibilities, right?
2:54
So everybody's gonna be different with what these practices are because it's
2:59
all based in who you are, what you value, what your skills are, what you know,
3:05
who you know, and what you truly want.
3:11
Like, where do you wanna go?
3:13
What do you feel is success?
3:17
And also, what do you need in the moment, right?
3:20
Because it's… it can't just only ever be future-focused, right?
3:25
So it's how do you take the foundations of who you are and your history,
3:32
what you need at the moment, and what you're going to need for the future,
3:37
and how do you actually build that out so that you've got strong foundations
3:45
but robust possibilities, right?
3:51
And that's really what foresight comes into.
3:54
It's in an age of stability, planning becomes different.
3:58
It's like you have an idea, you see the possibilities about it, you look at the
4:02
trends that you can see forming, you set a goal, and then you navigate towards
4:09
that, and pretty much when things are stable, you can get pretty close to that.
4:16
But in an age like today, when we really don't know what's happening,
4:20
how is AG going to, affect it?
4:22
How is geo political tension really gonna change things?
4:26
We don't really know, and nobody really truly can predict with any
4:30
certainty about how things are gonna do.
4:33
But you can't really just stop living.
4:35
You can't stop making choices and decisions.
4:38
It's just what do you have in place that allows you to move forward
4:50
But pivot and adjust as opportunities come your way and things become more clear.
4:56
How do you make that decision?
4:59
And a lot of what we're seeing with this is it's the people who aren't able
5:06
to let go of the way things should be, the story of how things have always
5:12
been the story of what things should be that are having a harder time with
5:18
that flexibility and that adaptability.
5:21
You should retire at age 65.
5:24
What happens if the pension age changes?
5:26
Governments are changing the retirement age to age 67.
5:31
All of a sudden, that's a two-year gap where you either have to keep working
5:37
or you're retiring early and it's affecting your pension calculations.
5:40
Can you afford that?
5:42
But it's also, what is your health?
5:45
So my husband in particular, I realize he's got a very different
5:49
perspective on retirement than I do because he has a very physical job.
5:56
He does h- home renovations, and so he's constantly on his
5:59
feet, and he's experiencing, issues with gout and arthritis.
6:07
The concept of being close to retirement…
6:11
We just turned 55, so I don't know that we're really close to retirement
6:14
even by any stretch of imagination.
6:16
But at least, at least 10 years if you're looking at that as
6:20
age 65 as the retirement age.
6:25
I personally don't think that I'm retiring probably until mid-70s,
6:31
early 80s, because my dad is already 94 and my mom died at age 87.
6:38
I've got longevity on my side.
6:42
And I don't have the finances in place to be able to afford that at
6:46
this moment, so I'm going to have to figure out s- income streams
6:51
that'll get me to age probably 100.
6:57
So that's why I'm very interested in what Linda Gratton is writing
6:59
about living the 100-year life.
7:03
How do we prepare for that extra
7:10
a set of working years nobody really ever planned for.
7:13
And quite honestly, I, my mom died of dementia.
7:16
She retired at age 65, and she was gone by 87.
7:21
But I watched how she lived the last part of her life
7:30
And I don't know that I want that.
7:33
I don't know that I want 20 years of really doing nothing
7:42
That's
7:46
engaging and that has resonance and that has impact.
7:52
So it's not that my mom did nothing.
7:54
Like she was involved with my kids, she was involved with family.
7:57
They-- she had day-to-day activities.
8:00
She did a lot of walking, she did a lot of reading.
8:02
She, followed the news, all that stuff.
8:05
But if I look back in terms of legacy from a professional capacity
8:15
I don't know that she had a memorable legacy.
8:19
She took care of her family and she had enough.
8:25
But if anybody remembers her, it's because of who she was individually
8:29
and, how devoted she was to her family.
8:33
And I feel like I want more
8:39
So how do I get that?
8:41
And what does that mean for the next, say, 40 years of my life, 45 years of my
8:51
life in terms of working and engaging and
8:58
if you actually apply that to your own life too, right?
9:01
What does that look like in terms of planning that out?
9:04
My kids have told me that they don't necessarily wanna
9:07
have kids, and, that's fine.
9:08
I was the same at that age too.
9:10
I didn't actually want kids until I was turn- 29.
9:13
So you never know what people are gonna do.
9:15
It's the reality of what they do when it actually happens, right?
9:20
Everybody makes decisions at different times of their lives.
9:23
But they might not, right?
9:27
So if they're making these different choices, it means that I won't
9:33
have grandchildren around to spoil.
9:36
It means that I have to look at the… what Linda Grattan calls the threads
9:44
that fuel your life, so intimacy and friendship and those nurture threads.
9:51
Because I'm an only child, I don't have an awful lot of family.
9:55
I have a cousin that I'm very close to.
9:58
But m- my parents will… my dad's 94.
10:03
There's a reality that's coming my way at some point.
10:07
My aunts and uncles are starting to pass away.
10:11
I just, I don't have extended family support.
10:14
I have my children and my husband.
10:16
And what does that look like?
10:18
For me, that means that I really need to nurture friendships and colleagues.
10:25
And as a sole proprietor, I don't necessarily have that in my life.
10:30
So how do I structure my work in ways that
10:37
aren't going to prioritize my ability to actually have
10:45
people in my life that recognize me, that fuel my sense of
10:50
belonging and relevance really.
10:53
Like, how do I feel witnessed?
10:55
How do I feel seen?
10:57
I spent a lot of time actually reading about retirement because the
11:00
reality of being retired is different than what the, the advertisements
11:07
would have you believe, right?
11:09
There's a guy on Substack, so he used to be in charge of huge ships on the
11:14
seas called The Old Gray Thinker.
11:16
And I spent a lot of time reading his stuff because he talks about the
11:23
perception gap of what re- what retirement is supposed to be, the way that it's
11:28
sold, the way that we talk about it in, you know, pop culture and, what we
11:32
learn from our parents and what we've seen our parents do, and the reality of
11:37
what it is actually to live it and how
11:44
It matters that you have a whole bunch of knowledge that nobody really
11:49
respects anymore because you're not really associated with a profession.
11:54
You don't have a job title.
11:56
That knowledge has nowhere to go.
11:58
Nobody's searching out your information because you're, you
12:02
don't have that credibility.
12:03
You've got the word retired attached to it.
12:06
And how does that actually affect your sense of self-worth?
12:10
Who are you if other people don't necessarily need you?
12:17
And that's destabilizing.
12:18
I've seen it happen to my mother.
12:20
I've seen it happen to my father.
12:22
My father actually worked into his 70s.
12:24
The reason that he retired is because my mother started getting sick.
12:28
We actually really had to force that issue because I was working
12:31
full-time and I had little kids.
12:32
I couldn't handle it all.
12:34
And so he wanted to keep working
12:39
But he had caregiving responsibilities.
12:42
And it's how do you make those choices as well too, right?
12:46
So at all different age groups, what's changing is the decisions that you make
12:53
may not necessarily line up with the other people that are in your age group.
12:57
So it used to be that you were born, you were a child, you lived
13:01
with your parents, you eventually went to, school, high school.
13:06
You either graduated or you went into college or university,
13:09
and then you got a job.
13:11
And there's multiple different versions of what that looks like.
13:13
But essentially, it could be you either went to work or you went to
13:18
school, and then you went to work.
13:20
And then you had… You moved out, you had your own family, and, you
13:24
continued working for, 40-odd years.
13:26
You retired, and then you died.
13:29
But longevity really changes that story, right?
13:35
You make different choices at different times, right?
13:38
And you can see it even in my family's dynamic.
13:42
My parents are the same age as my husband's grandparents, but my
13:47
family has longevity on its side.
13:50
My dad, like I said, is 94.
13:53
My mom died at age 87.
13:55
But Keith's grandparents died in their 60s and 70s.
14:03
On one side, maybe 80, like early 80s.
14:06
And on the other side Keith's mom died at age 54.
14:15
His grand- his father died at age 62.
14:17
That's what my grandparents were.
14:19
I never knew any of my grandparents because they died
14:22
so young, before I was even born.
14:25
And so longevity really plays a factor into
14:33
The support that you have built around you from a family perspective,
14:38
but also how it impacts your requirement to do caregiving, right?
14:44
So I experienced the whole sandwich generation experience of caring for
14:51
young kids and taking care of older people and dealing with estates much
14:55
younger than a lot of people do.
14:57
I was like early 40s.
14:59
Keith's mom died wh- my daughter was one.
15:03
We were 33 when she died.
15:07
So 34.
15:10
And so it all develops as it develops, but things aren't necessarily
15:17
as aligned as they used to be.
15:19
People aren't retiring at the same age.
15:21
They're not having kids at the same age.
15:22
They're not having those shared types of experiences that
15:27
really bond people together.
15:29
And so how does that change the nurture
15:37
that's around you.
15:38
And I think this is where the
15:43
loneliness aspect comes from because, like, when I had my
15:49
kids, I was an older mother.
15:51
I was 32 when my first daughter was born.
15:55
30… I turned 35 the month after my second daughter was born, right?
16:00
A lot of times people were having kids 26, 27, so I was already
16:05
considered an older mother.
16:07
I was 10 years younger than my mother had been, though, right?
16:12
So you just have less in common because there's that
16:17
age gap in terms of experience.
16:19
I remember going to mommy clubs, and everybody was like
16:26
a millennial, like 10 years younger than I was, and I really had nothing
16:30
much in common with them because they just perceived me as being old.
16:37
That's partly why I was really drawn to the Erica M. Yummy Mummy Club because
16:41
it was support that I found online that I couldn't actually find in person
16:51
And that's where
16:54
I'm always a fan of online because what does it open up to you that
17:00
you can't actually get in person?
17:01
And Canada is different in lots of ways than other places because the
17:06
distances between us are so extreme.
17:09
Like we measure time in hours, right?
17:13
So for me to go to Toronto, it takes me an hour and a half and then you
17:17
go to an event, and then you have an hour and a half to come home, right?
17:20
With a young child, to go and visit any one of the people that I used to work
17:25
with as my friends, even if they happen to be available, it was a commitment.
17:32
It was a commitment.
17:34
And so that really is something that impacts my ability to develop
17:39
relationships with people who are like-minded and think like me because they
17:45
h- don't always happen to live near me.
17:49
And so these are the things that I look at when we're talking about
17:55
foresight and scenario planning is
18:01
What are your realities in terms of who, what shaped you, what you
18:08
live with and then where you wanna go and what you wanna change?
18:13
And what has to be true
18:18
for you to actually achieve the things you want?
18:20
And do you have alternative plans, and are you testing out the alternatives?
18:26
So it's like a choose your own adventure kind of game.
18:29
That's honestly the closest version of futurism that I practice
18:33
on a regular ongoing basis.
18:35
These were books that I loved when I was a kid, and I loved looking
18:39
at all the different angles.
18:40
It's like I wouldn't necessarily just find one answer of, this is what the adventure
18:45
is and this is what the story is.
18:46
It's what changes if you change pieces of the story?
18:51
If you make a different decision here, what changes?
18:54
How do you see around corners to predict what… how something is going to react?
19:02
And the only way to do it is to live it and to try it and be willing to adapt,
19:12
and that's really what it comes down to.
19:13
And those skills, those are the skills and abilities that are gonna set us up to be
19:20
able to adapt through the future of work.
19:23
And that, if you're focusing on any skill or ability that you want to learn,
19:29
the practices that keep you flexible, the practice that keep your mental
19:35
agility, your mental acuity sharp the imagination, storytelling understanding
19:44
yourself, all of these skills are far more important than technical skills.
19:51
And
19:56
They're not easy.
19:57
Some people will call these soft skills.
19:59
They're not.
20:00
It's hugely important to do this type of work, and the people who tend to
20:06
be academic, who tend to be divorced from how they feel and can't express
20:13
themselves adequately are going to find it actually more difficult
20:21
because pure knowledge alone, pure technical skill alone that's
20:25
the stuff that's really at risk from AI, in my perspective.
20:32
The people who have the ability to really do the human work the type of
20:38
skills that I've been talking about, that's really where the opportunity is
20:55
So I'd like you to like and subscribe so that you get the up- next update.
21:00
And so I am testing out something in terms of charting.
21:04
And one of the things that I'm testing out is an action that people take
21:08
after they've listened to the episode.
21:10
And so how does that fuel how you appear on charts?
21:15
And the number one thing is like and subscribe and comment and review.
21:21
And the easiest version of that is just subscribe on whatever player
21:25
you happen to be part of because that actually is an action that algorithms
21:29
pick up on in terms of podcast players.
21:31
So if you happen to be on Apple Podcasts, subscribe.
21:34
Spotify, subscribe.
21:35
Anywhere else, just subscribe, and let's test that out