Good news: Millennials aren’t dominating the headlines anymore.
As we completed our annual leadership trend research for the coming year, we noticed a few formerly hot topics have started to slip off the list. At the same time, several topics are quickly gaining steam.
We’ve tracked 10 hot trends in total—as well as a few that are on the decline. For the full list, visit my article, “10 Hot Leadership Topics in 2019”...but here’s a preview of the top five:
1. The Continued Rise of AI
Artificial intelligence has continued its upsurge as a hot topic as well as a rapidly developing area of technology, and 2019 will be no different. In the past year, advancements such as those demonstrated in AI-generated audio by Google’s new Duplex digital-assistant technology and AI image generation from Nvidia helped to cross uncanny valleys and new boundaries of realism. As Gartner highlights in its Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2019, the influence of AI and developing AI-driven technologies will continue to impact the work that people can and will do well into the future.
2. Feeding a Culture Transformation
The topic of how to shape and leverage company culture continued to come up a lot this past year, often in overlap with other topics on this list as a key factor influencing people and their work. We expect this focus on how culture can drive high performance and innovation, as well as improve employee engagement and retention, will continue as leaders and decision makers grapple with how they can leverage new technologies in the workplace.
3. Keeping Up With the Data Eruption
We have enough data from four years of tracking these trends to know that this is a predictable hot topic. According to Domo, over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every single day, and it’s only expected to grow. By 2020, an estimated 1.7MB of data will be created every second for every person on earth. With all this amassing data, it’s no surprise that in the year of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) we saw “personal data” surge as a particularly hot topic and a challenge that leaders and organizations around the world had to meet head-on. As more people and business decisions are influenced by data, leaders and decision makers must continue to be vigilant in how they use their data to track behaviors and influence people and consumers.
4. Diversity Boosts Innovation
Diversity has been, and will continue to be, a strong focus for organizations as they strive to unleash the full potential of a workforce that better reflects and understands their consumer populations. This continues to spring back as a hot topic among influencers, with more frequent social posts about diversity this past year than the previous two. It also got a boost this year due to new research that demonstrated that companies that have a more diverse workforce are better at developing innovative products and services.
5. Robots Are Here to Stay
Robots are a topic that surged onto our hot list two years ago, and they are clearly here to stay. From cobots (robots who collaborate with people in a workspace) to AI-driven security bots and other robots designed to operate on their own (or with limited guidance) to increase production, we saw an abundance of commentary on new developments in the use of robotics in the workplace this year. As advancements continue into 2020, there will be new opportunities for organizations and their leaders to find ways to leverage robots to free teams from more task-based work.