Editor’s Note

Managing Tomorrow’s Ultra-Diverse Workforce

The future workforce will be even more diverse than you can now imagine. At least with today’s workers, all you have to worry about is intergenerational and multicultural issues. Tomorrow, look out for the problems (and opportunities) arising from workers who are technologically enhanced.

In this issue of THE FUTURIST, management scholar Barton Kunstler paints a vivid picture of the challenges that a manager of tomorrow will have to deal with when “enhanced” individuals (bioengineered to their parents’ specifications) work shoulder to shoulder with “normal” colleagues. See “The Singularity’s Impact on Business Leaders: A Scenario,” page 00.

Investment strategist Michael J. Mauboussin knows a bit about the stress of decision making in the midst of accelerating change. In “Smart People, Dumb Decisions” (page 00), he outlines some of the thinking traps that leaders often fall into, such as being overconfident in one’s own abilities, overoptimistic about one’s own future, and deluded about how much control one has over random events. Mauboussin offers ways of avoiding these traps and becoming a more effective decision maker.

This issue also sees the continuation of our special series on 2020 Visionaries—individuals with fresh ideas about the future that may provoke thought and inspire action, including Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka, media critic Andrew Keen, American Humanist Association executive director Roy Speckhardt, and Buddhist monk Prem Suksawat. See the special section beginning on page 00.

—Cynthia G. Wagner

Managing Editor

cwagner@wfs.org