Three Trends in Human Behavior Impacting the Future of Work

One of the major aspects of being future-ready as a leader, team, or entrepreneur is to keep an ear to the ground for trends and shifts in human behavior.


Image Source: FreeImages

Here are three trends that can help you anticipate the future and 'create the solutions.'

Trend #1—People are more impatient and demand faster response time in every area of their lives.

• As a leader, are you delaying responses to team members?
• As a team member, are you delaying or procrastinating your part of a project and impacting team performance?
• As an entrepreneur, are you expecting the customer to adapt to the way YOU run your business?
• Are you leveraging technology to provide real-time 'response' in your absence, such as chat? AI customer chatbot? Texting? Real-time instant messaging?

Trend #2—Video is ubiquitous and is accelerating the trend toward 'everything' being captured.

• Are you aware of your behavior in every situation and that you could be videotaped?
• As a leader, are you leveraging video to communicate with your remote workers and to engage your teams?
• As a team member, are you creatively leveraging video to share knowledge or transfer legacy information in the business?
• As an entrepreneur, are you using video to both engage and explain your products and services in a new and compelling way?

Trend #3—People will be inundated with massive information, and therefore, the trend toward simple solutions and making people's lives easier is going to continue.

• As a leader, are you helping your teams to take speedy action by providing visual interpretations of complex ideas? For example, infographics or dashboards are the communication tool of choice for people wanting to maximize time.
• As a team member, are you thinking of creative ways to simplify processes, meetings, or team collaborations?
• As an entrepreneur, are you seeking to solve the problems of your clients in a simple way, and are you helping your clients to make informed and fast choices?

A major factor in being future-ready is the ability to 'anticipate' and then seek to create the future of work.

Cheryl Cran is a future-of-work expert and the founder of NextMapping.com, future-of-work research and consulting firm that helps leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs be future-ready.

She is the author of six books, including her new one due out at the end of 2018 titled, NextMapping—How Great Leaders Inspire People to Create the Future of Work.

Opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of WITI.