Dr. Pero Mićić - BRIGHT FUTURE BUSINESS

Read here in 18 points why and how your mission and vision can become your most profitable investment.

LESS CONFUSION – MORE CLARITY AND ORIENTATION PROBLEM Many of your colleagues and employees understand your strategy and business model in different way than you do? Almost everyone uses different terms, which continues to lead to misunderstandings? If you ask ten team members about the right strategy for the future, do you feel you get ten different answers? SOLUTION Start by developing not one, but at least three to eight strategy candidates. This is the only way to ensure that you have really considered the entire space opportunity. Determine the criteria by which you evaluate the candidates, such as future fitness, risk level, strength fit, unique selling proposition potential, earnings potential and desire to implement. Let your candidates compete in pairs against each other in each discipline - the criteria - just like in a tournament. Identify the winner as the core of your strategic direction and develop the candidate into a clear mission, positioning and vision. FEWER CONFLICTS – MORE UNITY AND ALIGNMENT PROBLEM You, your executives and your employees do not agree on your strategic direction, vision, strategy and the right priorities? Some of your discussions even turn into arguments and persistent conflicts? Your meetings are sometimes characterized by low mutual trust and respect and even rude treatment? SOLUTION Resolve with your management team intensively all the big questions that must finally be answered and decided: Your mission (M): What really is your business and what is not. Your positioning (P): What really is unique about your company. Your vision (V): To where you want to develop your business and where not to. Your vision of the future will only become effective when it is understood and strongly supported by a good part of your employees. LESS SCATTERING – MORE FOCUS AND STRENGTH PROBLEM Do you have the feeling that you are following several strategic directions at the same time? You can't really concentrate your personal efforts on essential tasks? Do you always work on different fronts with only divided power? Your best people constantly have to jump back and forth between different topics? You cannot invest sufficiently in all your business areas to remain competitive? SOLUTION Together with your core team, determine the big, convincing picture of your future consisting of mission, positioning and vision, which all your activities, projects and processes should run towards. Without such a picture of your future, you always have too many business areas, projects and processes. Focus and enduring concentration of forces (mind, time, money) are undisputed success factors. Focus requires saying 'No' and literally "cutting away". Make as many decisions against options as deemed necessary in this regard. Focus is the entirety of the few decisions for a particular strategic direction and the many decisions against other possible strategic directions.. LESS EFFORT AND STRESS – GREATER EFFECTIVENESS OF LEADERSHIP PROBLEM You know everything about leadership with goals, but it doesn't work in the your field? You have a master plan with a roadmap of all projects and initiatives, but it keeps falling apart? You have become the most dilligent foreman and hopelessly overburdened instructor? SOLUTION Without a vision of your future, you do not lead, you merely manage. Leadership is not possible without a vision. The only way to lead your team from today to tomorrow more effectively than before is by having a picture of your future and being able to communicate it effectively both emotionally and rationally. Break the vicious circle of "no time for a vision of our future" and massive work overload and stress. Force yourself to develop the big picture of mission, positioning and vision. Your mission and vision can be your most profitable investment.

Read here in 18 points why and how your mission and vision can become your most profitable investment.

Are you satisfied with the expressiveness and impact of your mission and vision? Does it make you and your employees confident? Do you feel future-proof? A future-robust mission and motivating vision for the future can be the most valuable thing about your company. At the same time you have the most powerful leadership tool at your disposal.

Who has visions should go to the doctor? Not at all! Amazon's vision is to become the most customer-centric company in the world. If the vision were only to become the market leader in online trading, Amazon would never have let its competitors onto its platform. And Amazon would not have the significance it has today. Tesla's mission is to accelerate the transformation of the world towards sustainable transport and energy. Sounds almost boring. And yet this simple thought is the cause of one of the most radical transformations of an entire industry in the last hundred years. Even the proud German automobile manufacturers are forced to copy Tesla. The answers to three questions are the cornerstones of your company. What is the reason for your company's existence in the future? The answer to this question is usually called the mission. You could also call it task or purpose if mission sounds too strange. Recently, a distinction has been made between the "Purpose" and the "Why". The term is not that important.

It is crucial that your mission clearly determines what you and your company will live on in the future and what contribution your company will make to the well-being of your customers and, ideally, society.

How do you stay unique and competitive? A credible and hard-to-copy positioning creates the uniqueness and standalone position with which you can win and retain customers more easily and thereby achieve better prices. But which positioning is compatible with the trends and technologies of the future? What features of your offering and business model will still be valuable in a few years' time?

What do you want to achieve with your team? Without a vision, without a picture of the future, you cannot really lead. Without vision, you have no template for the puzzle in day-to-day business. Without vision you cannot see what should give you and your team the energy and motivation in the here and now and what is worth working for. Decide for yourself which future you want to shape. Don't let other visionaries push you.

Your mission, positioning and vision must be robust for the future. The current and future dramatic upheavals and destructions of business models are constantly questioning your future-strategy. Read here in 18 points why and how your mission and vision can become your most profitable investment.

How do you make your mission and vision your most profitable investment? In the introduction I addressed the three questions that fundamentally define your company. The answers to these questions are your mission, your positioning and your vision.

What's in it for you? In this part we will look at the first category of benefit.

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• Are you the leader of a company, a business unit or a team?
• Are you worried about the sustainability of your business?
• Are you bothered by fears of the future?
• You lack the really good ideas how to make your business great and future-proof again?

Play a wargame!

A very exciting and thrilling experience

I'm here to give you instructions on your wargame. Together with my team at FutureManagementGroup, I have played countless exciting wargames over the last 20 years.

A wargame is a workshop to simulate conceivable, probable and also surprising attacks by competitors against your company and to learn from them. Where are the blind spots in your strategy, where you are vulnerable, but also where your best opportunities for the future lie?

A wargame is a role-playing game, but don't invite your colleagues to a role-playing game. If you call it a wargame, they'll more inclined to participate.

You can also use other common names, such as "be the enemy" or "nightmare competitor" or "disrupt me".

Let me say this upfront: I am a peaceful person and do not advocate aggression or war here. It's only about a harmless, but very inspiring thought game in the field of business.

In 1872 there was an attack of the German Reich on Great Britain.

It was one year after the victory of the North German Confederation under the leadership of the Prussian army over France.

And one year after the foundation of the German Empire on 01 January 1871.

The Germans were in the midst of a strong industrialization and also highly motivated by the foundation of the Reich.

The British Navy was destroyed by so-called "fatal engines". Today they are known as torpedoes.

The German army landed in Sussex.

Both the British Navy and the army were scattered throughout the world to expand and maintain the Commonwealth.

In addition, Britain had demilitarized itself to a large extent and the soldiers were poorly trained. So they were weak at home.

The attack was very surprising. Surprising because there was no obvious reason for the attack, no dispute, no conflict, no crisis.

It came as it had to come. In the decisive battle at Dorking, the Germans defeated the British. The Germans conquered Great Britain and made it a highly taxed province of the German Empire. Great Britain had to hand over its role as the leading naval power as well as the huge Commonwealth to the German Empire.

But wait: the whole thing never happened. It was a fictional story. A scenario. Written by George Chesney in 1871, one year before the alleged attack. Published in this book. The Battle of Dorking. When William came. William, the Emperor of the German Empire.

The book was printed and read a couple of hundred thousand times and caused enormous sensation and hot and anxious discussions.

As a consequence the British hurried to strengthen their army and navy again and made enormous investments. And they founded the Secret Service.

In this way, by inventing a previously unimagined but plausible and frightening scenario of an attack by a strong opponent the horrible scenario was possibly prevented from happening.

The purpose of a wargame is that you can imagine what competitors could do and how they could do it to take away your orders and your customers. To drive your business into insignificance and bankruptcy.

And how they could use the latest amazing technologies and the most intelligent strategies to make you disappear from the market.

But a wargame is supposed to deliberately scare your team only in the first part, in order to wake up a possibly too complacent team.

But fear without hope is harmful.

The second goal is to prevent these attacks by preparing for them. This will make your alignment and strategy more robust for the future.

That's why many government agencies and enterprises simulate attacks on their IT or infrastructure. In order to recognize and eliminate the weak points.

And the third and most important goal is for you to identify your greatest future opportunities in the potential attacks of your competitors by reversing them. Please act only with fair and legal means and for the benefit of your customers. And please do not harm your competitors directly.

A wargame and implementing the resulting insights will make your company and business model much more future-robust and you will never again run the risk of missing significant threats and opportunities due to a lack of attention.

With a wargame you can calibrate the attention of your team for signals in the market. This way you get a kind of strategic future radar virtually for free.

You can play a wargame pragmatically in three hours, but also very professionally in two or three days with several rounds.

You can use your current company and business model as the object of attack. Or, if you have a vision for your future company and business model, you can use it as an object of attack. With this you can perfectly check whether your vision and strategy is future-robust.

Determine for which effects customers pay your company. Don't focus on the tangible products and services, but on the effects that your customers really buy. So not on the car, but on mobility, joy and prestige and not on health insurance, but on the feeling of security as the desired effect.

Choose real, potential and imaginary competitors.

Take competitors who you respect, who you hate you, ones that already exist or who do not yet exist.

Make sure that you always include a rich, intelligent and aggressive Chinese as a competitor.

And if they are not there yet, be sure they will come.

And add Alphabet as a competitor, the mother of Google, so that you can also think of the totally digital disruptions.

In any case, you have to bring the nightmare competitors into the game.

Put two, three or more people of your team in the role of a competitor, depending on the size of your group.

Provide the teams with thinking tools, such as a list of innovative technologies that are emerging in your industry. Or visualize the elements of your business model.

You can also simulate in one round of the wargame that there is a new crash with a subsequent economic crisis, triggered by a not that unlikely collapse of the euro banking system.

Then these competitor teams attack your company and business model.

With the knowledge of your business model.

You'll be surprised what your employees can think of.

That way you can simulate what could really happen in the future or at any time from now.

You simulate the attacks you are afraid of. But you can only get rid of these fears about the future and the feeling of being threatened if you face your fears, deal with them and make provisions for when the scenarios really happen.

Now switch roles. Your teams now become teams of your company again.

Leave one employee from each competitor team in his role. He or she will now present to the team the attacks that the competitor team has selected as the most effective, most dangerous and harmful for you.

Now you can see what impact the attacks are having on your organization's success factors. Where you are vulnerable. You can see where and how bad the impacts of the attacks would be.

The teams then evaluate and decide what to neglect and what to take care of..

Develop so-called contingency strategies in the next step.

These are preventive strategies, i.e. measures that you can already implement today. Either to prevent competitors from attacking, for example by patent protection or better contracts with your customers, or measures that keep the consequences of an attack to a minimum.

And acute strategies that you can prepare and take out of your drawer in case the attack scenario really happens.

The attacks of your competitors are - if you reverse them - exactly the opportunities you need for your future.

After carefully evaluating and selecting your opportunities, you have a clear picture of the business areas, business models and strategies that will sustain your business in three, five or ten years.

You recognize and seize your opportunities in the markets of the future.

In this way, you get rid of your fears of the future and see the future as less threatening and more promising, through the simulation and analysis and reversal of future assaults. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

With your wargame you can achieve the following results.

Recognize and understand future events and changes in the competitive landscape.

Identify and understand the potential strategies, moves and activities of competitors

Derive your own opportunities for yourself from the strategies and moves of your competitors

With these results you will achieve the following effects

Safeguarding your vision and strategy and making them future-robust

Recognizing future opportunities for your company

Increasing the team's awareness of potential threats and opportunities

Set a date for your wargame right away.

If you have any questions about the methodology, the necessary tools or the organization, I will be happy to answer them. Ask your questions in the comments or email me at: [email protected].

Enjoy your wargame and have a bright future.

Our brain is the most complex system in the known universe. Will it stay that way? For how much longer?

Even Gordon Moore, the famous founder of Intel, said it in 2007: Moore's law, according to which the transistor density and thus the performance of a computer chip doubles every 18 months, will soon no longer apply.

Intel itself has not been planning with Moore's Law since 2016, because the performance of conventional computers will no longer grow exponentially. The mechanical limits will soon be reached.

Parallel computing will continue to increase performance, but at a much slower pace. So, is this really the end of the computer revolution?

The decisive factor is the computing power, not the technology used. And that's where great improvements are coming.

Scientists have long been working on new computer concepts such as quantum computers and bio-computers to replace the silicon-based computers we use today.

Neurocomputers use the way a human brain processes information as a biological model. Their artificial nerve cells and synapses imitate the human brain. And they are starting a new era in computer technology.

Our brain is amazingly powerful. The performance of the human brain, with its 100 billion nerve cells and 100 trillion synapses, is still many times higher than that of today's computers.

Above all through parallel processing. Many processes in our brain run side by side.

For some time now, smaller neural networks could be run on conventional hardware, but only with extremely high energy consumption and quite limited performance.

But the latest neurocomputers are significantly more energy-efficient than a conventional computer and are improving at an incredible pace.

Researchers at IBM developed 'TrueNorth' (Link), a neuromorphic processor inspired by the functioning of the neocortex with 256 million synapses. Still a lot weaker than our brains.

And they developed artificial neurons based on phase-change materials. But the performance is still a fraction of the complexity of the human brain.

What can we expect if progress in this area is exponential as it will continue to be?

The coupling of high computing speed and massive parallelism in information processing will lead to breakthroughs that are hardly imaginable today. In ten to fifteen years, neurocomputers could be in use everywhere.

The power of artificial intelligence relies on three factors. First, the performance of the software. But secondly on the performance of the hardware and thirdly on the availability of huge amounts of data.

On the basis of the data from billions of networked digital archives, devices and objects, AI that runs on neurocomputers will make decisions and discover hidden connections.

It will analyze complex situations and recommend the appropriate actions, optimize the traffic flow of autonomous vehicles, make far better diagnoses of diseases and make weather forecasts way more accurate.

By 2030, our brain could be in second place. Then it will no longer be the most complex system in the known universe. Then it could be neurocomputers. Then the crown of creation could have declassified itself.

The more successful the systems become, the more we will trust them - and in certain areas hand over responsibility to them. Neurocomputers will also compete with us on the labour market.

Countless small and large companies will either have to change radically or disappear from the market. And in the long term? Around 2030 to 2040, computers should be able to imitate the performance and functioning of the human brain 1:1.

Should this be achieved one day it is also conceivable to transfer human consciousness as a copy to an artificial system. And possibly back again on a human being. Nobody knows today whether this will ever work.

It would not only be a new era of computer technology, but above all a new human era.

Some futurists claim that we can only compete with neurocomputers if we add neurocomputers to our brains. But that is another topic. There is a good chance that you will experience this era in your lifetime.

Now what?

There is still a long time pass before we have to upgrade our brains. But: Make sure that you personally focus on such tasks that will be reserved for humans in the future. These are above all tasks with little routine and a lot of emotion and compassion.

And please make sure that your company does not ignore the arising opportunities but seizes them to remain competitive and gain a competitive edge.

Will technology serve to accelerate our evolution? Should it? Will we go beyond the limits of our senses? Do we want that? At the beginning of this millennium, the term "anthropocene" was proposed as the name for a new era. The focus is on the humans who have become so powerful as designers that they unmistakably make their mark on biological, geological and atmospheric processes. In the future, this could also include the evolution of humans themselves. Technologically, we will no longer just adapt the environment to our needs or protect ourselves from its influences, but we will begin to optimize ourselves: prosthetically, genetically, nanotechnologically, pharmacologically and digitally. We are increasingly in a position to overcome our limits. We have been doing this for decades. Anyone who wears glasses, has a hearing aid or a cardiac pacemaker is already a cyborg in a way. The glasses of today with which we correct a visual impairment are the contact lenses of tomorrow with which we can zoom in on things far away like with a camera by simply thinking "zoom". Genetic engineering, on the other hand, could one day enable us to broaden our spectrum of vision and see the universe with new eyes. Or a whole new universe. Today's hearing aids will allow us to hear much more, much better and much farther in the future. The performance of our senses determines what we perceive and thus what we think and do. And also what and who we are. Such ideas of enhancement raise big ethical and moral questions. They trigger understandable concerns and fears. As always, they also create opportunities. The goal of such "enhancement" is not only to overcome physical deficits, but also to increase our performance capacity in such a way that it goes beyond the extent given to us by natural evolution. With updates and upgrades we will not only optimize and expand our senses in the future. We will also interact differently with people and machines. We will feel more connected with others because we share sensations and feelings in new ways: - Through wearables, we can easily let family members and friends participate in what we are experiencing, from our perspective. - Insideables like micro-robots, can wander through blood vessels or intestines and diagnose, repair and heal. - With Augmented Reality we can project information as well as people, objects and phenomena into our perception at any time, which are far away or have already passed away or never really existed. - Sensory impressions and feelings can be digitally coded and neurologically reproduced. Within ourselves or even in other peoples minds. Maybe one day we can even pass on all our memories and experiences to our children. - Via networked prostheses and so-called exoskeletons we can control the body movements of others, for example to teach skills in sport or dance. - We can transfer movements to virtual figures or physical robots - or, conversely, give them control over our bodies. - Next generation Human-machine interfaces will make it possible to control devices such as machines and drones just by thought. - In the future, we can increasingly experience other people, devices and objects as extensions of ourselves. Which of these possibilities do we want to use and what are we allowed to do? It is quite probable that in the course of the 21st century humans will trigger their own next stage of evolution. Not through natural variation and selection, but through targeted enhancement. That is the vision of the so-called transhumanists. Not everyone will want to take this step and not everyone will be able to. The removal of the body's internal and external boundaries raises questions about human identity. To what point are we still human? What becomes of the principle that we are all born the same, at least biologically? Will the gap between the rich, who can expand themselves and thus become more and more productive and powerful, and those who cannot afford it, grow bigger and bigger and become unbridgeable forever? Must there therefore be a right to unconditional enhancement? Or do we have to take advantage of the early hour and legally ban all new enhancements? In any case, now is the time to get used to this new reality and form convictions about what is good and right and what is harmful and wrong. Now what? What do you think about these questions? Are you looking forward to it? Or are you committed to prohibitions? What are your beliefs? How will your professional activity be affected? What will become possible? Which skills will become unimportant? What opportunities are there for your company in products and solutions for Human Enhancement?

Will and may we tinker with our genes?

The respected journal "Science" has chosen a biochemical process as its breakthrough of the year: CRISPR/Cas9.

It enables a relatively simple, fast and cost-effective modification of genes.

CRISPR/Cas9 promises to revolutionize medicine and biotechnology.

Like with scissors, a specific sequence of DNA can be cut out.

Gene segments can then be removed, modified, switched off, exchanged for another DNA-sequence.

It is a kind of 'biological word processing program' with which humans can 'edit' their existence and that of their environment. A truly powerful tool.

A continuation of evolution by other means, so to speak.

The fact that humankind is on the cusp of taking evolution into their own hands instead of being its plaything, fuels hope and even fantasies of omnipotence among some and fears among many others.

After all, the process not only has effects on living beings, but also on complete ecosystems.

And in the case of humans, on their identity, their values and their social structures.

It is highly likely that changes in the human germ line will continue to be handled very restrictively in the future, partly because changes are passed on.

But it is no longer a taboo.

In Great Britain, scientists are allowed to modify the genetic make-up of human embryos - albeit only for research purposes, so far.

And Chinese scientists have already performed genetic manipulations on embryos to test whether it is possible to eradicate a genetic disease in which too little haemoglobin is produced, i.e. the pigments of the red blood cells.

However, this is all still pretty far away from clinical application.

There are many fears: They range from the danger of abuse by a self-optimizing and empowering super elite to the extinction of humankind by 'mutants' who overpower us.

It does make sense to think of such extreme scenarios.

But they also have a disproportionate effect in a world in which millions of people die every year from the consequences of alcohol and tobacco consumption or from car accidents because they are allowed to take unreasonable risks and act

This is exactly what responsibility means here: taking risks consciously and sensibly. But it also implies an obligation to seize opportunities. And they are immense and numerous. Imagine the future when CRISPR/Cas9 is mature:

• Numerous genetic hereditary diseases have been eradicated cancer and AIDS are curable, even preventable
• Replacement organs for humans can be bred in animals
• Higher-yielding and more robust plants have solved the food problem of a growing world population
• The use of pesticides in agriculture could be dramatically reduced or even completely avoided
• New enzymes have revolutionized biofuel production mosquitoes can no longer transmit malaria and other dangerous pathogens

It has always been humankinds's goal to improve themselves and their living conditions. To this end we use science and technology and in doing so we always crossed borders.

In a way, this is also an emancipation from an often threatening or even deadly natural environment.

This can be criticized as human arrogance and a never-ending mania for optimization.

But please do not overlook the fact that we live in a much better world today than we did 100 years ago. Thanks to progress in science and technology.

It is hard to imagine how burdensome and short our lives would still be if we hadn't taken advantage of earlier opportunities.

Gene editing is another technology that outright forces us to make decisions.

It forces us to be sovereign designers of our future - even if it means to decide to use these technologie deliberately only to a limited extent or even not at all.

But perhaps we will decide to use it not only in the fight against disease, but also as an enhancement technology to improve our physical and cognitive capabilities and lead a healthier and longer life.

These are strong needs that some people are already today spending a lot of money on satisfying them. Those who have the money.

Wouldn't it be better if these opportunities were available to virtually everyone?

With CRISPR/Cas9 and similar techniques, we can put an end to fateful diseases, make our land pesticide-free and much more.

These prospects alone make it worth leading the discussion about genetic technologies not hysterically and not dogmatically, but to consider all the arguments, including the huge benefits.

The real challenge lies in the fact that we can never completely master complex systems. We simply cannot be absolutely sure what tampering with our genes will cause. But we were never really sure about all the consequences of our progress. And yet we enjoy a higher quality of life than ever before.

If, however, we were to prohibit gene editing altogether, we would actually also have to prohibit most medicines and surgeries on the same principle.

Now what?

Take a closer look. Perhaps you are working in an industry that has not yet realized that and how white, green or red genetic engineering can better solve its customers' problems and fulfill their wishes.

For the benefit of your customers, your company and - what es most important - the benefit of humankind.

In the end - as so often - the advantages should be very welcome and the dangers largely controllable.

Since the first early cultures, people have tried to see, understand and have more of the future. Obviously, we can't help ourselves. You become curious when something is different from the familiar and familiar. You suspect that the future will be different from the present. That is why scenarios of the future have an almost magical attraction. People are driven by five motives to look into the future.

1. You want to make better decisions. That is why you want to know the probable future. You want to know what will come, what will stay and what will work. That's why people used to go to fortune tellers. Today they do it more professionally. Everyone knows that one cannot predict the future, but at the same time nobody can get along without future assumptions. Every decision is based on assumptions about the future, consciously or unconsciously.
2. They want to feel more secure. They want to avoid fear and anxiety. They want to be less surprised by the future. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegard distinguished fear from fear. Fear has no particular cause, it is the unpleasant feeling that something could happen to you. Without you knowing exactly what it could be. And so you look around and look for signs of unpleasant surprises that could be dangerous for you. On the other hand, you are afraid of a concrete event that would obviously harm you. In the best case you try to learn more about it and to prepare yourself. In the worst case, as is so often the case, you put your head in the sand.
3. You want to develop, make more of your life, be successful and happy. You strive for the beautiful feeling of hope and confidence. Therefore, you are looking for possibilities and opportunities to improve yourself and your situation in the future. You want it better in the future than it is today. And you want to have it better or be better than others. Sometimes you suspect that this alone is enough to make you better, so that you are not worse off than you are today.
4. We want to give your life and actions a meaning and a direction. You want to know where you should develop and why you are taking all the trouble of the day on yourself. Therefore you develop a vision of the aspired future in which you hope to find fulfillment.
5. You want to do the right thing today for a better future. You want to act intelligently for the future in order to realize your vision. This is why you set yourself goals, plan and implement projects and processes, and set yourself in motion towards the future.

You will find these motifs in many places. Immanuel Kant has spent his entire philosophical life's work searching for answers to three questions in which these five motives are also asked: What can I know? Here we see the striving for knowledge about the probable future and the possible surprises. What can I hope for? Here we find questions about opportunities and vision. What should I do? That is clearly the question of the right actions for the future. These five motives and goals for the future are deeply anchored in you. They correspond exactly to the five future glasses, as I call them.

The future has never been precisely predictable. And yes, in this fast and complex world today even less than ever before. But three things remain. First, every important decision is based on assumptions about the future. Whoever makes a decision is determined by an orientation. And thus has assumptions about the future, whether consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally. There is no other way. If assumptions arise simply out of emotion and intuition, then they can also be improved. There are no perfect assumptions, because that would be like trying to predict. But there are bad and good future assumptions. At least the decision maker can have more and more solid knowledge about how his environment might change and what might surprise him. Second, more than ever, people are longing for orientation, meaning and vision. Especially when the environment is so unimaginably complex and changes breathtakingly fast, a clear mission and vision can bring a good deal more peace and clarity into life and work. Above all, managers must have a vision of the future to which they can lead their team. Effective leadership cannot be achieved without vision. And third: Most of the ideas, technologies and solutions that will determine our future are already there today. Those who want to recognize opportunities for new markets and professions only have to look around in the here and now to see much of the future. And if you want to discover threats to your company or profession today, you have to do exactly the same.

Do you find the term "future management" strange? One cannot act in the future. You can only ever manage something in the here and now. In addition: How should one be able to manage something that cannot be measured, counted, weighed or grasped? Have you ever seen the future? The future does not exist in visible reality. The future is only in one place: In your head. There you have all the convictions, thoughts, assumptions, ideas, opportunities and visions. The future begins in your head. Your thoughts are real. They take place in the here and now. That is why you can also be managed.

In the United Arab Emirates they have a Minister for Artificial Intelligence. It's a real ministry. In Germany and other countries, there are Departments for the Homeland now, which is certainly important. But the UAE have a Ministry for Artificial Intelligence because they have recognized the enormous challenges.

Because everything a human can do, the machine of hardware and software can already or soon do better.

What does the machine need humans for?

This question sounds evil and disrespectful. What else than humans does really matter? Everything else is just our tools. But the question is also useful. This question is helpful to our search for our markets, businesses and jobs in the future.

Recognize

Humans can recognize. Humans are a sensory miracle. We can see, hear and feel all kinds of things. And yet the machine can already do it better. Better than the average human, it can recognize from the face of a person whether he or she is lying.

And it can recognize the sexual orientation from five photos of a person. With 91% reliability. With one photo it is 84%. This is true for men; with women, sexual orientation is somewhat more difficult to recognize from the face.

Learn

When we have recognized, we can learn. We are unbelievably good at learning. We were not born to ride a bicycle or build submarines and yet we can learn it.

For 1500 years we have been developing the game of chess. As you know, we've had chess computers for decades that humans do not stand a chance against.

And then comes Google AlphaZero, looks at the game, derives the rules, plays four hours against itself, and beats Stockfish, the best chess computer that humankind could build so far, 28:0. We cannot learn so fast and so well.

What applies to the field of cognition with artificial intelligence, also applies to the physical form, to the robots.

The universal robot Baxter does not need to be programed. You can guide its arms and fingers and literally show it what to do.

For example, if you have taught it to cut onions, you will save that skill and upload it to the global robot skill platform.

So each and every Baxter-style robot in the world is able to cut onions immediately.

The effort we make to transfer knowledge and skills from one person to another is enormous. From kindergarten to schools to colleges and further education. The robots and artificial intelligences do not need that. They simply copy the skills.

The robots will watch us and they will learn like children, by imitating us. They will be watching all of our Youtube videos, hopefully filtering well, and then they can do anything we can. Today we present the world two-dimensionally in photo and video, but soon we will use much more three-dimensional representations through virtual realities. Then the machines can learn even better to be able to do what we can.

Consulting

When we have recognized and learned, we can advise and consult. If I get seriously ill, if I suffer from cancer for example, I want this Watson to be used. For several years, Watson has had the skill to advise on finding the best therapies.

The system reads millions of medical scientific publications and recommends the best treatment for the patient's cancer based on their genetic profile. And then the second and third best. For the next patient, it does the research again, all within a short time. No doctor can keep up with this performance.

However, I would like a human to look at the results. Why? Because I am a human. Because I want to look into eyes that I trust and that make me feel good about Watson's recommendations.

But I would also like that the people who advise me, whether it is doctors, architects or lawyers, to use such machines. I would like them to be professional by not ignoring the new tools and not be left behind.

Rather, they should "sit on top" of the increasing performance of these new tools, so as to be carried upwards in the quality of their performance and their professionalism. We can all only benefit from that.

After Watson has advised me, I may want or need psychological counseling. AI bots can already do that today. They can ask questions, give hints, engage in dialogue, just as a therapist. But they are not dependent on a limited memory. They will soon be able to treat psychologically almost as well as the best experts on earth.

But, the AI ​​bots are not a substitute for humans. They make it possible for therapists to support us more personally and with more time. And they make it possible for millions of people to enjoy individual and yet almost free coaching in everyday life.

Communicate

Consulting also involves communicating. We will be able to speak as many languages ​​as we want. In principle, today all non-native speakers should focus on speaking excellent English and immediately stop learning all other languages.

Those who privately want to speak a language out of sheer joy should learn it, of course, but for professional reasons that no longer makes sense.

Artificial intelligence today can make voices sound so natural that we can no longer distinguish them from a human voice. AI can even emulate your voice within a few seconds. So the machine sounds like you.

Already, even the appearance of virtual assistants is hardly distinguishable from that of a human.

So we will soon have access to consultants on any topic and at any time. They never get tired, never go on vacation and they will cost almost nothing.

Whenever Artificial Intelligence can learn a field of knowledge, man will be at a disadvantage for standard skills.

But in the end, we will still want to talk to a human.

Create

But creativity, that is our domain! Right? I am not sure. If you can map creativity into algorithms, if deep learning can learn creative processes, then in this field, too, we are no longer the crown of creation.

Many years ago, an AI composed a symphony for the London Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra played the symphony and were surprised that they did not know the piece. Quote: "We were amazed by the quality." That is how good it was.

Mind you; it was not composed with software, but by software.

There are software machines today that can draw comics from a textual description and even create movies.

The idea is not so crazy that the movie scripts and novels of the future will be written by artificial intelligence. At least the mass products. They, too, will be guided by the structure of the so-called "hero's journey," as most Hollywood movies and novels do. The first experiments are promising.

Even Shakespeare like sonnets, AI is able to write.

When AI develops new forms of steel and new vehicle batteries, we will soon be able to use BIM, Building Information Modeling, to do a fully integrated planning of a building or our home with a touch of a virtual button.

We will determine the cornerstones of the house, its functions, its design, the style and within seconds get eight variants or eight hundred variants, from which we can choose the best. Of course, even our decision process will be supported by artificial intelligence.

Act

But we will be in charge of acting, of doing things, right? If you need a little bluffing in a purchasing negotiation, the algorithm cannot do that, right?

Yes, it can! An AI has been playing poker against the US champions for thirty days. The human players had no chance. One of the players said, quote "I always felt that the thing knows which cards I have in hand. And probably that was the case.

That is why self-driving cars that make far fewer mistakes and will drive much safer than we do, are not that far away as many still believe.

Human error causes more than 90% of fatal accidents. Virtually all of these mistakes will not be made when AIs drives the cars.

We will be able to even more drastically reduce the number of people killed in traffic.

Fighter jet pilots have one of the professions with the highest demands on humans. Even very experienced fighter pilots had no chance against an AI called "Alpha." They were regularly shot from the virtual sky. And all this ran on hardware that cost only $ 35 US.

These are all great opportunities that we can take advantage of by leaving action to the machine in a few years while we engage in more important activities.

Administrate

Will we at least still be administrating the processes? Probably not. What blockchain technologies, or more precisely the distributed ledgers, can do today, will take a lot of administrative work from us.

Many professionals need to document so much, before, during, and after their consultations that they barely have time to deal in detail with their customers, clients, and patients. Therefore we should welcome the fact that we have less administrative work to do.

However, hundreds of millions of people worldwide live from simple administrative jobs. For them, there will have to be new jobs and tasks in the future, and this will be one of the greatest challenges humanity ever faced during peacetime.

Decide

Recognizing, learning, consulting, communicating, creating, acting, managing.

If the machine can already today or soon do all this better, will we as humans at least make the decisions?

In Hong Kong, a company called Deep Knowledge Ventures appointed a sixth board member a few years ago. With the same voting rights as the other five.

But it is not human. It is an Artificial Intelligence that decides on the company's investments in biotech companies.

An AI is better at assessing which criminals are most likely to be back in jail after their release. We humans do much worse in this discipline.

It is incredibly difficult for us to believe and accept all that. But at least the scientific experiments show that we have our severe shortcomings in such assessments and decisions.

What does the machine still need humans for?

The first conference on AI was held in 1956. As early as in the 1960s we wondered to what extent the machines will take away our work and our jobs. We even asked that question at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when industrialization was just beginning.

At that time a farmer fed four people, today on farmer feeds 200 people. Yet we do not have millions of unemployed farmers. We have always found and invented new jobs.

At that time, one could not imagine that one day there would be the job of a web designer. Or that it can be a job to make sure that a new car smells the way the manufacturer wants it to smell.

However, then as now, we have a hard time to imagine the markets, businesses, professions and jobs of the future. But we have to.

We will not have less work. We will have more work. But it will be much more sophisticated. It will put much higher demands on people. Even in the knowledge professions, value creation is being gradually eaten from the bottom up, that is, starting with simple knowledge work, such as research and data analysis, in the direction of increasingly complex knowledge work.

So, what does the machine need humans for? It needs humans for two functions. It needs humans to be useful to him or her. We should self-confidently become aware of that fact. If we do not use it, if we do not want it, not buy and not pay it, then the AI ​​will not exist.

And the machine needs humans to be created, operated, improved and used by them. On these two sides of artificial intelligence and robotics, the machine needs and will need people.

It only becomes dangerous when the super-intelligent machine decides at some point that humans are not good enough to develop it

and then the AI itself assumes the role of the developer and operator. Then we have indeed made our last invention. Then the super-intelligent machine develops the even more intelligent machine and so on. Then we will not understand it anymore. Then the so-called singularity will have happened.

We may then begin to help human evolution by upgrading ourselves with artificial intelligence and robots, merging with it and become cyborgs, the combination of human and machine. But that is really futuristic. It will take decades before we face this challenge.

Skills Disruption Inventory

So what? Make a skills disruption inventory. You can do that in Microsoft Excel. In the first column, write down all the capabilities that you personally, your company and your team have.

Write down every skill and every effect you are paid for to achieve. In the other columns, write down all artificial intelligences, software packages, robots and offers of any startups that promise to master these skills better than humans. This provides you with two sorts of insights.

Number one, you will know which skills are better performed by technology than by you. You must gradually, or even immediately, invest less in these skills to be performed by people.

Ideally, you would employ more AI and robotics instead of human work, but to a tolerable degree as you help the people on your team acquire new skills.

Avoid dismissals for technological reasons as much as you can so you do not lose the experience and emotional connection of your employees.

Number two, after the skills disruption inventory, you will know what capabilities you and your team will need as humans in the future because you have not found any substitutive and disruptive technologies or solutions despite thorough research. These are the skills you need to invest in in a future-intelligent way.

What will you live on tomorrow?

To know exactly where and how you need to invest in artificial intelligence and robotics in your organization and to know what skills you will be paid for in the future,

you need a future-proof mission and motivating vision for yourself and your team about how and where you want to be in a world of artificially intelligent machines.

Develop your intelligent vision!