Transforming Human Potential, Empowering Purposeful Work

Issue #12 What Actually Makes a Good Speaker Isn't What You Think Don't get me wrong! There are many great advice on how to become a better speaker. All useful, all true and all, I have come to believe, downstream of something harder to name. Follow one of my personal favourites: Vinh Giang Vinh Giang These 5 communication habits make you look insecure even if you're smart! ♬ original sound - Vinh Giang - Vinh Giang Let me start with myself I have spoken on more stages than I can count, big...

Issue #11 Where You Sit Determines What You Get https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-smiling-curve-value-distribution-along-the-global-value-chain_fig1_338327596 The “Smiling Curve,” first observed in the electronics industry in the 90s, shows that the highest value (and profit) accrues at the two ends of a product’s value chain: pre‑production (R&D, design, branding) and post‑production (marketing, distribution, customer service). The middle: manufacturing, assembly, routine operations...

Issue #10 Your job has a shelf life. And you are ignoring it. Every role will ship with an expiry date. The qualification that got you in is not the qualification that keeps you in. Last quarter, retrenchments rose to 3,830 in Q1 2026, the highest quarterly figure since Q3 2023. But the number that should stop you is not that. It is this: degree holders now have the highest retrenchment incidence of any qualification group, rising to 3.1 per 1000 resident employees. The people who did...

Issue #9 The smartest people in the room are not always the most intelligent. Smart vs Clever vs Intelligent vs Wise A very thin book with a very DEEP punch I recently finished The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla in under two hours, part of my fourteen-flight journey from Manchester to Singapore. John Rylands Library, Manchester, England It is a small and slim book. Cipolla does not talk about stupidity the way we usually do. He does not conflate it with low IQ. He does not...

Issue #8 Uncertainty is not the enemy of a great career. Ancient Roots: The 'Impossible' Bird To the Romans in the 1st - 2nd century AD, who had only seen white swans, the idea of a black one was nonsensical. Until 1697, when Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh sailed into what is now the Swan River in Western Australia, he observed actual black swans! This discovery had some profound philosophical implications: Proof of existence: It is proven that no matter how many millions of white swans...

Issue #7 What's actually happening to work? Five things you need to do about it before the window closes. China's humanoid robots dance and fight at China's annual Spring Festival Gala Something is changing about work. You can feel it in the slower hiring cycles, the reorganisations that may not quite make sense, the roles that disappear quietly through "restructuring." The Future Today Strategy Group has just released its Convergence Outlook 2026 — a major research report on the structural...

Issue #6 The ground is shifting. Are you able to help your clients see it? Banksy Exhibition 2024 FTSG (Future Today Strategy Group) has shifted its annual report format from a traditional "Tech Trends Report" to a "Convergence Outlook." This deliberate change reflects a fundamental alteration in the global operating environment where the future no longer arrives one trend at a time. Instead, technological progress, scientific breakthroughs, regulatory shifts, capital constraints,...

Issue #5 Five Weights Keeping You From A Meaningful Career This week, I watched a play about the invisible burdens we carry: insecurity, the need to control, bitterness, guilt, and fear. The message was spiritual. But sitting in that theatre, I kept thinking: these are the same stones I see professionals carry every single day. Stone #1: Insecurity - when comparison becomes the compass We live in a BANI world — brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible. Traditional career ladders are...

Issue #4 Emotional regulation will be our most important modern skill. Does this sound familiar to you? Think about the last time you had a moment of genuine quiet. Not the kind where you are still half-watching your phone, or mentally composing a reply to an email. The kind of quiet where you hear your own breathing and your nervous system actually exhales. For most of us, that moment feels increasingly rare and personally, I even feel guilty! It is as though stillness is something we have...