Having just had a kid, I find myself constantly thinking about the future. The jobs, technologies, and problems facing the world.

This is coupled with the general feeling that we have moved away from solving real problems and by doing so fail to create fulfilling jobs that either harness technology or develop it. Instead we have created many nonsense jobs that leave people miserable, offer limited development or mobility and with no gain in productivity for the country where these jobs exist. Rather than solving real problems, the focus from the top is on short-term survival. I strongly believe that this is due to a broken system that rewards the self-serving and elevates them to leadership — the CEOs, the politicians, you know our supposed leaders…

Let’s take as an example the lack of affordable housing, many of us know family or friends who will never own or will be under immense financial burden and stress to own a home in the country they were born in. This was introduced to me when I turned 21, I had been working for a few years and realised although I had saved a deposit my salary meant I was never going to own a home in my town. This to me is a real problem and in the 15 years that have followed the situation remains the same. Each year, the news reports that the government has failed to build enough housing or at least create an environment in which the private sector could.

This in my eyes has led to some of the most unexpected outcomes in society where we can’t buy where we grew up so we move further away and lose connections, rather than an impromptu pint in the pub we have to wait months to organise a meet up with friends but as you’ve seen it has also had expected outcomes, such as more adults living with their parents, people not starting families and I do not see a leader In the United Kingdom solving this issue any time soon. Could you imagine a leader solving this real problem? The jobs created, the technology developed or used to increase housing capacity, the fulfilment in a job that you are fixing what appears to be a structural deficit in the country.

Another example that had confused me for some time before I realised it made sense if your aim was survival in the short term is the insistence of management to force some of the most poorly thought out policies that lead to bad outcomes, whether its offshoring teams or return to office (RTO) mandates they never lead to a good future for the business — offshoring with its never ending cyber security incidents or terrible customer service and RTO forcing senior talent to exit leaving a less experienced team figuring it out before they know this culture is toxic and leave too. Instead of short term survival I hope we get those visionary leaders who inspire teams to solve real problems for businesses through automation, AI and new ways of work such as remote and by doing so build a culture that is organic and genuine with fulfilling jobs for those who choose to take on the challenge.

It is possible with a real focus on those 2 real problems above we could potentially level up the United Kingdom by creating remote jobs up and down the country utilising existing technology or by creating new technology and new ways of working which increase productivity, and by saving businesses money we could reduce office space by converting existing stock to housing or mix use buildings and thus alleviate the housing issue in the cities. Imagine that a bit of vision to solve real problems and in the process feel excited about the future rather than dreading we repeat the same mistakes.

Anyway I hope for my kid the future does offer up a great job, with new technologies, new problems to solve and affordable housing. As any parent would say a better life than I.