The future of jobs? Re-framing risk to opportunity
Following our dreams as a nation is going to take courage, vulnerability, creativity and belief. Founder and director of Huddle, Melis Senova, feels hopeful after attending the GAP jobs summit.
I was in Sydney on Thursday 17th and Friday 18th of September, participating in the Global Access Partners Growth Summit on the Future of Jobs. We were privileged to have many amazing speakers including the Deputy Director-General of OECD, Mr Stefan Kapferer and Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Atlassian, Mr Mike Cannon-Brookes.
I wanted to share with you how hopeful I felt when I left the summit. In the last four to five years Australian politics hasn’t been particularly inspiring. During this time, as someone who has more recently been doing a lot of international travel, I have been yearning for a courageous and inspiring stance from people in powerful political positions. And with many serious players in the room, I am happy to share that the topics of ‘courage’ and ‘vulnerability’ were embraced with enthusiasm.
The morning’s discussion circled around risk mitigation. There is a reality that connector-jobs like real estate and recruitment or back office jobs like data entry and analysis are ripe for technology disruption. I was given the opportunity to express my views on the topic and found the discussion was able to be re-framed from being about precautions and protection to courageous decision making. Rather than following a line of thinking about how to protect these jobs from tech disruption we were able to explore what courageous decisions needed to be made to use this opportunity to propel Australia into a leading generator of tech revenue globally.
Re-framing risk to opportunity always opens up possibility areas that have otherwise been unavailable—hidden to the conscious mind. It is a more exciting and generative place to be reimagining reality for Australia.
I had an animated conversation with Senator Conroy on this topic, sharing my perspective that Australia has everything it needs to be an aspirational nation – we just need to believe it is possible. Following our dreams as a nation is going to take courage, vulnerability, creativity and belief. And I hope that Prime Minister Turnbull has a great vision to share for our nation. Huddle and GAP are currently at work creating one, just in case. 🙂
This blog was first published on the author’s website, Reimagining Realities, and is republished with her kind permission.
Dr. Melis Senova is a pioneer in design thinking and founder of global strategic design consultancy, Huddle. She is a leader committed to making a positive change to humanity and focussed on human-centred design for the transformation of service, culture, communities and business. Melis has deep academic qualifications and vast business experience, underpinned by a PhD in Human Factors (user-centred design).
A highly regarded and enterprising thought-leader, Melis brings innovation and creativity to lead businesses and organisations towards exciting and ground-breaking frontiers through the power of design. By collaborating with other influential change makers on a global scale, Melis seeks to provide pathways to re-imagined realties.
Melis is also the founder of Huddle Labs (a research capability innovating the definition of value in a post-capitalist society), Huddle Academy (a school focussed on building creative problem solving skills for individuals and organisations) and Huddle Foundation (a platform that connects designers, philanthropists and social enterprises). She is a member of Creative Victoria’s Creative State Advisory Board, a member of the Victorian State Government’s Innovation Expert Panel, and a member of the advisory board for A Vision for Australia (a series of Annual Economic Summits hosted by Global Access Partners).
