O


pening his presentation at ACS Cobham’s Future-Ready Forum, applied futurist Tom Cheesewright explained his role was not as an oracle. Instead, he teaches people how to


think about what’s ahead. Tom Cheesewright works largely with big organisations,


multinational corporations and government departments wanting to know what the next two to five years look like and what the big opportunities or threats might be 20–30 years ahead. He guides executives on how to do that thinking for themselves. There is a lot of storytelling involved and trying to convince people of the need for change and action. Most of his work is about innovation and organisational change. This ranges from developing a breakfast product to the shape of the future-ready organisation. Speaking to Tom Cheesewright ahead of the


presentation, I asked him what the future for the ACS students attending and other young people will be. His response was optimistic, explaining he thought their future is going to be quite different. “Look how much culture has changed in the last 20 years, how much the economy and aspirations and expectations have changed. “For example, 20–25 years ago aspirations about what


we own were about having a big DVD collection or a beautiful sound system or a shiny car, whereas now people are so much more aspirational about what they do and the experiences they have both in work and outside of work. They want to learn. They want to travel places and they want to be seen travelling to those places,” he said. “One of the things I’ve noticed coming here to the


school is how much they are using practical exposure, as well as academic education, to really start to develop some of the skills I am going to talk about tonight.”


FUTURE-FOCUSED LEADERSHIP The high school’s students were producing the event on the night, looking after the sound, lighting and video production to share with their peers and the school community. “A lot of organisations I go into don’t think about the


future very much, which is why it is nice to come to an event called the ‘Future-Ready Forum’ inside the school because clearly somebody is thinking about the future, which is very unusual, weirdly!” Clearly the head of school at ACS Cobham, Rob


Crowther, was one of those people. Speaking to him ahead of the presentation about what the future of education looked like, he said preparing for uncertainty is key. “I think the most exciting thing about that question is that we don’t know. We are used to preparing children for jobs that didn’t exist and now we are preparing them for a world we can’t predict, because the world is changing so rapidly. “What we have to do is make sure the kids are future-


ready in terms of their skills: that they are able to enquire, work collaboratively with others, show resilience and empathy and direct their own learning in a world that is changing so rapidly.” Tom Cheesewright emphasised the importance of this


approach and commitment to looking forward. “I advocate taking one per cent of your time to focus on the future. One day every six months, you step back, you think about the future with an open mind on whatever that might be.


“Once you do that thinking and take the time out of


your life and your working day, the single most important strategy is agility. We’ve got to be able to respond to change; we’ve got to be able to respond to what is next. When you start to think about the future, it does open up your mind. It forces you to look at the organisation and ask, ‘are we stuck in our ways?’ and ‘are we tied to the way things are today?’ “Do we need to be thinking about actually not just


what the change should be, but also how do we change and how do we keep changing in order to respond to a changing world?”


MANAGING UNCERTAINTY I put it to him that one of the things that really frightens people is the fast pace of change. How do people cope with that without feeling overwhelmed? Responding, he said: “Even five years ago now when I did the original research, two-thirds of the country said that they felt destabilised and that the speed of change was knocking them off their feet and I suspect it has only got worse since then. “There is such rapid change. Not in everything; I live


in a 150-year-old house and that hasn’t changed an awful lot in 150 years. But lots of things do change very quickly. Media, technology, culture, fashion, food and the range of things we eat has accelerated so much because technology has stripped the friction from innovation and distribution. Things can be designed into products and services and shipped so much faster than they could 10 or 20 years ago thanks to technology. “You’ve got to be able to respond to that. You’ve


got to be able to take in the information, process it and create new things for that changing market demand.” Communicating is vital too, he concluded, “You’ve got to be able to sell your ideas in the current world.” At the presentation to an engaged audience of over a 100


students, parents and guests he explained a process to unlock the future and design a future-ready strategy. Something ACS International Schools are very much on top of. “The most common question I am asked as a futurist


is ‘what should I teach my kids to prepare them for tomorrow’s world?’” said Tom Cheesewright. “Parents understand that the world has changed since their time at school and they are looking for educators who also understand that.” He explained how the future is forged at the intersection


of pressures and trends. Outlining his Intersection Tool, he said it is “a very simple way of thinking about the future that you can take away, no matter how old you are”. It involves two aspects: trends and pressures (see page


102). “The pressures are things that annoy you, that wind you up or slow you down. It is easy to find out what these frictions are because you just have to ask people and, as people like to complain, they tell you. “Looking for trends is again quite easy to do. Explore


what is happening in other countries that might come over here. Are people doing things differently in China or Germany that we might adopt? What are your most forward-thinking customers doing already that the rest of your customers might do? Some of those trends are going to make things better and others are going to exacerbate the problem.”


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GLOBAL EDUCATION FUTURE THINKING


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