Making Time for the Day After Tomorrow With nexxworks Co-Founder and Partner Peter Hinssen
In this episode of Redefining Work, I’m excited to be joined by nexxworks co-founder and partner Peter Hinssen. He's an author, futurist, academic and a technologist through and through. Peter and I discuss his “day after tomorrow” framework, how generative AI is changing work and much more.
Peter is a technologist at heart, and he’s founded four companies, including his current organization, nexxworks. He’s also a lecturer at the London Business School, where he teaches about innovation and disruption.
His books include “The Phoenix and The Unicorn” and “The Day After Tomorrow.”
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What Is the Day After Tomorrow at Work?
Peter’s idea of “the day after tomorrow” asks leaders a simple question, “How much time do you as a leader spend today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow?” For most people, their “today” is about immediate concerns — emails, meetings, and that sort of thing.
But Peter is even more concerned with how most people look at tomorrow, which “is our very myopic way of looking at the future.” He cites corporate budget season, which too often involves entering fake numbers into an Excel spreadsheet. This creates the risk of neglecting the day after tomorrow.
“When I ask business leaders, ‘How much time do you spend on today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow?’ The very polite, diplomatic answer is, ‘Well, 70-20-10,’ but the reality is that today consumes 93% of our energy,” Peter says. “And maybe, 6% to 7% is spent on tomorrow, the classical way of looking in the future. But that day after tomorrow, it's the thing that you want to get to but you never have time for.”
In a world that’s rapidly changing, leaders must make time for the day after tomorrow. Peter’s framework helps people accomplish the difficult task of solving past problems while investing in the future. This requires “mindset, culture and carving out time,” Peter says. He’s seen how this challenge can be difficult in HR.
“What I found is that if you don't have 10% of your team meetings, of your HR discussions, of your HR strategy, spent on that day after tomorrow, you will never get there,” he says.
Generative AI’s Impact and Risk
Generative AI has exponentially grown during the last nine months. And while much remains to be developed, Peter’s already seeing AI’s effects.
He gave a talk at a private equity firm that developed a proprietary version of generative AI. “The CEO literally said, we would've hired McKinsey to do this for us, and it would've taken three weeks and $300,000. Now we do it just on our own in three minutes,” Peter says. “So the amount of staggering productivity gains that we're starting to see is massive.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge of generative AI will be realizing productivity gains and new ways of working — something Peter says hasn’t happened with other tech leaps.
“I always make the joke that a lot of people that I talk to learned how to type on an old mechanical typewriter when they were younger, but they're still using Microsoft Word in the same way.” Peter explains. “The only difference is they don't use whiteout. … But we're still spending an hour to make a document.”
And with transformative new technologies like generative AI, the risks must be considered alongside the potential.
“AI can generate things that look very real, but they aren't actually. … I am a fundamental believer of the idea of man plus machine,” Peter says. “And I think that's going to be the guiding way of thinking that we need to have if we look at these technologies.”
Generational Gaps With AI and Other Tech
Generative AI isn’t just being used at work. Students and the rest of the general public are eagerly adopting this technology — a trend witnessed by Peter and many other educators. Students are using AI to help with homework, papers and more, leading many professors to require a crash course in AI.
And because future generations will be raised with AI, today’s leaders and managers need to invest time in understanding this technology and how to effectively use it.
“I've always been the technology optimist because I really believe in that combination of man plus machine,” he says. “But the necessity to understand this and to reskill yourself and to figure out how to leverage this in your field is going to be crucial.”
People in This Episode
