What futurists (or “futurologists”) do is to help people plan and prepare for the future, as opposed to offer predictions about the future. This can involve looking at future trends, notably about new technologies and technology trends, and a lot more besides.
If you’re looking for a conference speaker, a keynote speaker, or a workshop presenter or facilitator on this topic, the examples below represent some of the keynote speeches or workshop presentations I’ve given as a futurist speaker in the past. But each presentation is created specifically to suit your needs. If you don’t see a presentation about the future that would work for your conference, by all means contact me, and we’ll see if we can create one specifically for you.
Setting the Stage for High Performance: How Can Organizations Prepare for the Fast-Forward World of Tomorrow?
Every major organization proclaims that ‘people are our greatest resource,’ but the good ones actually mean it. With that in mind, what will the world, particularly the working world, look like in the future?
Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst, strategic planner, and today’s leading futurist. In this peek into tomorrow’s world, he provides an overview of what that world will be like, and how it will affect the high-performance individuals that top organizations depend on for performance. Among the topics Richard will explore will be:
- How the global economy will unfold in future, how it will be different from the past 20 years, and what it will mean to corporations and their people;
- Why technology will be an even bigger factor over the next 10 years than it has over the last 20, and what it will mean to the employment markets, corporate productivity, how it will affect the employment markets, and why it will emphasize the need for the so-called ‘soft skills’ of leadership, teamwork, and empathy;
- How America’s demographics are shifting, why it will change market demand and consumer needs, how it will place a surprisingly overlooked group into new prominence, and what kinds of pressures it will place on workers and the environment within which they perform;
- Why innovation is a motherhood issue that corporations love to talk about but hate to do, and how that can be changed into a tool that enhances leadership and builds cohesion; and
- What will be the social dimensions of this fast-forward world? What kinds of pressures will people experience, and what should nurturing corporations do to help their people cope?
Richard’s overview will provide a broad perspective on the future of the corporate world, and a road map of where we’re going as a society. As well, Richard will provide planning tools aimed at fostering innovation and leadership as an included take-away electronic handbook.
What CIO’s Will Be Bringing to the Party: The Future of Technology, and How CIO’s Will Contribute
Most of the world is both astonished and simultaneously surprisingly blasé about the technological advances of the past 10-20 years. Yet, as CIOs know, the changes behind us are merely table-settings for the changes to come over the next 10 years. More than ever, other C-Level officers will rely on CIOs to provide organizational leadership.
Richard Worzel has a degree in computer science, is a best-selling author, a Chartered Financial Analyst, but is best known as one of today’s leading futurists. In this survey of what’s to come, he will talk about:
- The rise of ‘everyday robots’ and computer intelligences, and how they will change the workplace;
- The big increases in productivity that will be possible for those organizations that can embrace the changes to come;
- The importance of foresight in a marketplace that is changing so rapidly;
- The interplay between the different C-Level positions, notably the rising importance of HR professionals, CFOs, executive officers, and how they can both feed off of, and support the work of CIOs;
- The rising importance of so-called ‘soft skills’ of teamwork, leadership, and interpersonal relationships as a direct result of the rising importance of technology.
All told, far-seeing CIOs will emphasize how C-Level officers will need to support and assist each other to take best advantage of the technologies to come. You’ll walk away with a better understanding of how to be ready for the challenges ahead, both in the rising technologies, and in how to help your organizations employ them.
Inventing Our Way Around the Coming Staff Shortages
Every organization in the country that relies on skilled people is experiencing a shortage of workers in almost every discipline, and every group is trying to deal with this shortage in more or less the same ways. Obviously, most of them will fail. What, then, can a forward-thinking organization do that is different?
Richard Worzel, one of today’s leading futurists, a strategic planner, and experienced at working with HR groups. Instead of just reviewing why this shortage is happening, in this workshop he will help organizations devise ways of dealing with it. To start, he’ll lay out the challenges ahead from demographics, technology, economics, and geopolitics, and then work with participants in inventing new approaches in an area where demand will exceed supply for some years to come. Along the way, he’ll give participants a toolbox of future-oriented planning tools that will help them repeat and continue the work on their own.