All teams uploaded and ready to roll!
- Thanks for your update. Great stuff. OK, who’s left?
The meeting is doing this on purpose. It is obviously aware that he is the last one left to speak. He raises his right hand to take over the progress model.
- Hello everyone. I hope you had a great week. I’m happy to announce that after a few hiccups here and there…
A wave of smiling reactions floods his workspace.
- As you can see on the breakdown, we’re back on track…
He flips new data at the model.
- All teams uploaded and ready to roll!
The model lights up with progress updates. A sleek loading animation optimised to trigger satisfaction of achievement prompts a wave of nods of approval across the company.
Satisfaction slaps a smile on his face. Progress is indeed impressive.
Lately, clients have been interrupting demos in the middle to sign when they realise the whole presentation team is a single person conducting an agent swarm.
He couldn’t blame them. AI has expanded the problem-solution spaces in every industry to an entirely new dimension.
All the successful squares immediately realised they were actually cubes. And cubes have much more problems to take care of than squares. The only thing everyone needed was data, so the data stack became the de facto tech stack. Overnight the decades-old “build or buy” AI transformed into “train or refine.”
These days, competitive edges are not built but trained. Their data house is at the frontier of the gold rush, selling not shovels but excavators. This one was being assembled for a global law firm.
He snaps back when the meeting asks for questions.
- OK, question time. Anything from anyone?
- This looks great, but you’re burning through the budget. Twelve hundred kilowatts?
He nods, biting his lip.
- Thanks for bringing this up. It’s the pre-training and setup rate. For this swarm, the client’s specks require extra fine-tuning so our outputs can offer legally binding quality. Once the swarm is stable, we have a hand shake on a rev-share swap to refinance pre-training and setup.
For now, I believe it’s marked as capex in the long-term projections. Everything else comes pre-trained out of the box, we expect this rate to flatten starting next cycle.
Growth generation interrupts.
- Thanks for this clarification. Has the extra power you’re using today already been allocated, or can we consider onboarding new clients?
- As far as I can remember, the energy budget variants for the next cycle are still crunching.
- What an eloquent way to say you don't know!
He smiles again as reactions flow through his workspace.
- Thank you! I appreciate the compliment. I have wanted to use this one for a long time.
The meeting takes over again. Their progress model turns into a glowing agenda with all items marked as completed.
- I see no more questions, so we can keep this one short and sweet. Just how I like it! Have a great weekend, and see you on the other side.
He stretches his back as the workspace fades back to the tranquillity of personal mode. One final status check, and he’s ready to log out for the evening.
Hello Practical Futurists,
Welcome back from the future where competitive edges are trained, not built, and meetings have moods.
This is Practical Futures, where we help professionals build a future-ready mindset for the age of AI not through vague trends or speculative stats but through relatable products and services we might be using in the next few years.
Hit the "Like" button at the top or bottom of this page to help other change-makers build a future-ready mindset.Great leaders practice experiencing the future, not just thinking about it.
Like athletes visualising their performance, they build vivid mental pictures of tomorrow to make better decisions today.
Our weekly workouts use futures thinking and practical sci-fi to help you create a library of future memories - turning abstract possibilities into reference points that can inform your choices.
To spark your imagination, here's a thought to start with:
Let's make this future personal.
We'll start by connecting this story to your life, transforming abstract possibilities into memories you can use to navigate tomorrow's challenges.
Personal life reflection prompts
1. What 3 visual representations of progress do you use in your personal life, and how do they affect your motivation and satisfaction?2. In your personal development, do you prefer acquiring new skills or refining the existing ones? What influences this preference?3. Picture the moment you realised your professional value was no longer in what you know but in how you direct AI systems: - What task made this shift clear to you? - How did you explain your new role to someone outside your field? - What skill from your past became unexpectedly valuable again? - What did you choose to keep learning despite AI capabilities?
4. Where would you draw the line between useful AI assistance and maintaining authentic human connection in your personal relationships?5. Try to recall preparing for a family gathering where everyone's AI assistants were negotiating the event details: - What unexpected compromises emerged from the AI-mediated planning? - How did family dynamics change when preferences were transparently ranked? - What traditional elements remained strictly human-managed?
Nice!
Your future memory library now has some valuable personal references. Let's fire up your thinking to add some professional leadership moments.
How will you help others navigate this future? It's time to create those memories.
Professional life reflection prompts
1. How transparent is your organisation about resource allocation, and how does this affect team dynamics and decision-making? 2. Think about the quarterly budget meeting where energy allocation replaced financial allocation as the primary constraint: - What creative workaround did the department propose? - How did power consumption metrics change departmental status? - What previously valuable activity was deemed energy-inefficient? - What new opportunity opened because of this constraint?
3. Picture yourself explaining to new hires how your industry transformed from "build or buy" to "train or refine": - What historical example best illustrated this paradigm shift? - Which roles became more valuable and which diminished? - What cautionary tale did you share about companies that failed to adapt? - What surprised you most about your own adaptation to this change?
4. In what 2 ways could your organisation better visualise collective progress to boost morale and alignment?5. Picture explaining to your board why competitive advantage now comes from data quality rather than proprietary software: - What compelling example finally made this concept click? - Which overlooked data asset suddenly became strategically valuable? - What organizational restructuring became necessary afterward? - How did customer relationships change with this realisation?
6. What 3 specific changes would make your team meetings more efficient while maintaining their effectiveness?7. Imagine attending your company's first fully AI-optimized strategic planning session: - What human bias did the AI immediately identify and correct? - How did senior leadership's role change during the process? - What traditional planning element remained stubbornly necessary? - What surprising long-term strategy emerged that no human had considered?
8. What 2 rituals or practices help your team transition between collaborative and focused work modes?You did amazing! Excellent work!
Today's memories are added to your growing library of future experiences.
Thank you for expanding your imagination with us. Leaders with bold ideas move our world forward.
Think bright, and see you soon.
Pawel Halicki
Need more inspiration for the performance review season?
Try this story exploring a future where performance reviews were replaced by performance previews.
Or another future where top performers' annual reviews are streamed as entertainment.
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