So many of our clients and partners are grappling with the complexity of ensuring they have the best talent possible: figuring out what the next in-demand skill set is going to be, when schools aren’t even teaching it yet; grappling with vastly different expectations of what gives job satisfaction; intense competition from seemingly every other organisation in the world for a tiny pool of talent.

And that’s just the issues of today.

They’re also thinking about what problems they might need to solve next year, and next decade – through all these conversations, we were inspired to take this on. What could the future of careers be? What will be the clear and pressing issues for organisations that are not even blips on our radar now? And what lessons can we learn from these possible futures, that don’t require us to take a decade to act on?

We’ve synthesised – from all the conversations, interviews, and research we’ve done – 14 driving forces that we think will be particularly transformative of the future; they’re already beginning to shape our presents. We’ve also imagined what the world might look like, and the key issues that leaders would need to solve.

We hope that these provocations help with all the questions that you’re trying to answer. Better yet, tell us if they raise only more questions –  we’d love to hear your thoughts and responses to what we’ve pulled together here; we want to keep refining and pushing this resource for other leaders such as yourself.