Want to know how to use future thinking today? Join business futurist, Joyce Gioia, as she shares her coveted tips, and tricks to uncover what the future has in store.
Through consulting, speaking and training, Joyce helps clients position themselves for success in the future. She serves clients on 6 continents and in 43 states. She’s the president of the Herman Group, a firm serving a wide range of corporate, trade associations and government clients nationally and internationally.
Joyce is the co-author of 5 books and compiles the popular weekly, Herman Trend Alert. She’s often quoted in the national media as someone who not only knows what’s coming but can effectively communicate that future. Specifically, she’s been quoted in Industry Week, The Christian Science Monitor, Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Week, the Wall Street Journal and on national public radio.
Excerpt from this week’s podcast: “How to Find Powerful Hidden Secrets of Future Thinking”
Q: Joyce, you specialize in helping people understand future trends in business, and I know our listeners would enjoy learning a few of the most important future trends that authors and small business owners need to know about.
A: There are demographic trends that are happening that are very important particularly for speakers to understand. 20 years ago, most of our audiences were baby boomers and now it’s very unusual not to have millenials in our audiences. If you’re speaking to frontline workers, now you’ve even got generation Z in your audience. It’s really important for speakers and for others to understand what are the values and attitudes of those different generations because each generation has its own set of values, attitudes, aspirations, and things that they value are what people make decisions based on.
It’s really important to understand that when you’re speaking to a mixed audience, and that’s what happens most often now, you need to have messages for the baby boomers as well as the generation Xs and the generation Ys who are the millennials and even maybe the generation Z. If you’re really lucky and you’re an employer, the generation Zs are fantastic.
Q. Let’s talk about some of those aspirations and values that we need to know about. Do you want to start with the baby boomers?
A. At this point in time, many of the baby boomers are looking toward retirement, but the chances are they don’t want to really hang up their spurs and why, because we define ourselves by our work. Ask me how I’m feeling and I’ll tell you how my work is going. That’s baby boomers. That’s why folks like me, have no intention whatsoever of ever stopping working. By the way, that is a great frustration to the generation X’ers who are not able to move up in the ranks because the baby boomers are just hanging on.
For more information or to contact Joyce Gioia, Want to stay abreast of trends, subscribe to the weekly Herman Trend Alert.