Drucker’s Predictions

Peter Drucker (published in 1992) drew the follow implications from his analysis of population trends (decreasing birth rates and increasingly older population):

1) Demographics (age and immigration) will dominate politics for the next 20-30 years, which will cause great turbulence.

2) Developed countries are unlikely to have stable politics or strong government in that time; instability is the norm.

3) Retirement will come to mean two things: it will mo longer mean “stopping working”, but “no longer working full time”. Therefore, working lives will become more flexible.

4) Productivity of all workers will (as a result of the above) have to increase rapidly.

I’d say this is pretty prescient. 1 has led to 2 in the UK and in the USA; 3 is a problem and automation of tasks is a reaction to 4.

He goes on to predict: “the first reaction to a period of turbulence is to try to build a wall that shields one’s own garden from the cold winds outside.”

Sound familiar to anyone?

(From Peter F Drucker (1992) Management Challenges in the Twenty-First Century)