One of the more uncomfortable conversations I am having with senior leaders at the moment concerns time horizons.  Historically, organisations hired people because they expected the role to exist for years. The individual might grow, the responsibilities might evolve, but there was an implicit assumption that the underlying job was relatively stable. 

I am seeing something different now. Increasingly, leaders are planning in organisational cycles of three to six months. They know what skills they need today. They have a reasonable idea of what skills they will need for the next phase of AI implementation. They also know that the next phase will probably remove, automate or significantly change some of the roles they are filling today. 

That raises an uncomfortable question. Are organisations being cynical when they recruit people into roles they suspect may not exist in two years' time? I do not think most are. In fact, I think something more complicated is happening. 

Most leaders are operating in an environment of extraordinary uncertainty. They need people today to help redesign processes, implement systems, manage change and create the next version of the organisation. Without those people, the transformation cannot happen. The paradox is that successful transformation often eliminates some of the very activities that created the need for those people in the first place. 

This is not entirely new.  When factories introduced automation, they still needed engineers to design and implement the automation. When organisations digitised paper processes, they needed teams to build the new systems. Once the transformation was complete, the workforce requirements changed. 

What is different this time is the speed. 

The cycle from creation to redundancy may be measured in months rather than years. This creates difficult ethical and leadership questions. Should organisations recruit someone into a role if they suspect (but are not sure) the role will disappear?  Should they tell candidates? 

Should employees expect lifetime employment when the organisation itself cannot predict its structure twelve months ahead? There are no easy answers. 

But I think we may need to abandon some assumptions that have shaped careers for decades.  The idea of the permanent job may be becoming less relevant than the idea of permanent employability. 

Those are very different concepts. Permanent employment assumes the organisation provides stability. Permanent employability assumes the individual remains valuable regardless of how the organisation changes. 

That distinction may become one of the defining career challenges of the next decade. 

Which brings us to the obvious question.  What skills should people cultivate now? The answer is not a particular software package or AI platform. The technology will continue to evolve too quickly. The enduring skills are likely to be different. 

• Learning rapidly. 
• Adapting to change. 
• Leading people through uncertainty. 
• Making decisions with incomplete information. 
• Building trust. 
• Communicating effectively. 
• Understanding how technology changes business models. 
• Working across disciplines. 

Perhaps most importantly, understanding how humans and AI work together rather than competing against each other. 

These are not skills that disappear when a technology changes. They are skills that become more valuable as change accelerates. This is why I am cautious whenever somebody asks which jobs will survive AI. 

I suspect that is increasingly the wrong question. The better question is which capabilities remain valuable across multiple organisational reinventions. 

Because the organisations I am speaking to are not planning a single transformation. They are planning a sequence of transformations. 

• The next six months.
• Then the six months after that.
• Then the six months after that. 

Each wave creates the conditions for the next, each wave changes the skills required, each wave alters the shape of the organisation. That does not mean long term careers are disappearing. But it may mean that long term careers look very different from those that previous generations experienced. 

The future may belong not to people who find a job for life, but to people who continuously reinvent themselves while bringing increasingly valuable judgement, wisdom and adaptability to whatever comes next. 

Not cynical but very different.