Advances in technology have revolutionized our lives over the past 10 years, at a rate that is unprecedented in human history. If we think that has all happened quickly, hold on to your hats, because the pace of change is only going to speed up. The sheer scale, velocity and complexity of what we now call the Fourth Industrial Revolution is ensuring that whatever we think is fast today will be pedestrian by tomorrow. We are experiencing a tsunami of change, which will fundamentally transform the way we live, the way we work and the way we relate to each other.

The First Industrial Revolution was fuelled by iron and steam engines. The second was powered by electricity, steel, chemicals and telecommunications. The Third Industrial Revolution ushered in the information age with world-changing innovations in computing, the internet, mobile communications and more. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is based on innovation driven by combinations of technologies and billions upon billions of connections. It is disrupting every company, every industry, in every corner of the globe.

This fusion of technologies is enabling connections in ways we never imagined before. When you connect billions of people and things through mobile devices with huge computing power, the possibilities are unlimited.

Now add to all this the constantly evolving technology in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the internet of things, quantum computing, biotechnology and materials science, and I think you will understand why I use the phrase ‘a tsunami of change’.

When combined, these technologies will drive massive changes to individual lives as well as societies, workforces and economies.

While the first two revolutions powered massive improvements in productivity, ironically, productivity today has sunk to one-third the rate of the previous 100 years. This is why many people are talking about how the Fourth Industrial Revolution will bring massive job losses. There is a huge drive to improve productivity through more automation, which will displace jobs.

A McKinsey Global Institute report on The Future of the Workforce suggests that up to 375 million people globally will have to change their occupation and acquire new skills by the year 2030. Research from Gartner, a global research and consulting business, suggests that 90 per cent of the jobs we are familiar with today will be replaced by smart machines by 2030.

Of the children entering school today, it is forecast that something like 70 per cent will assume careers that don’t even exist yet. Like what? I hear you ask. Imagine roles like a space tour guide, or a medical roboticist. What about an augmented reality architect or an avatar relationship manager?

How about a drone dispatcher, or a nano-weapons specialist? These ideas are not too far-fetched. After all, if there is an increase in the number of medical robots, who will service them? If more and more parcels are to be delivered by drones to our homes, who will manage them?

In addition, technology will enable a more service-based and remote working culture. For example, trained nurses could be freed to relieve the pressure on doctors by going out to people’s homes more, armed with the data they need to provide health services at the patient’s bedside. New technologies are enabling more remote-working, or co-working spaces and teleconferencing. Organizations are likely to have an ever-smaller pool of core full-time employees for fixed functions, backed up by colleagues in other countries and external consultants and contractors for specific projects.

There will be a far greater emphasis on collaborating with other companies to provide joined-up services to customers.

People are now working more fluidly across traditional departmental boundaries, in order to get projects completed more quickly. In order to be more agile, organizations are having to adopt a swarm-based work ethic that allows people quickly to assemble around shared goals and then disperse just as speedily. Maintaining rigid institutions and hierarchies is therefore becoming harder to justify, and organizations are increasingly trying to flatten their hierarchies to speed up decision-making and reduce costs.

The point is that this fourth revolution is moving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Because it is disrupting almost every industry, in every country, it also means that managers need to transform. We need a new kind a leader for this new age of rapid change. Managers will need to think about how to play a central role in enabling this, and turning their organizations into customer-obsessed, innovation powerhouses. This technology revolution is going to force us to fundamentally rethink the role of humans in the workplace and enable them to move into a territory that robots can’t occupy – creativity. This is where humans will focus – creating new value – given that robots will take the drudgery out of daily work and give them the tools and space to be more creative.

Each year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) publishes its Future of Jobs Report, available on its website. It forecasts the top 10 job skills required for workers to thrive in the next year, according to global chief human resources officers. As a benchmark, they show what people thought those skills would need to be for 2015. Compared side by side, the shifts we will experience in 2020 aren’t too dramatic – except for one skill.

THE TOP 10 SKILLS IN 2015 WERE:

1. complex problem-solving;
2. coordinating with others;
3. people management;
4. critical thinking;
5. negotiation;
6. quality control;
7. service orientation;
8. judgement and decision-making;
9. active listening;
10. creativity.

THE TOP 10 SKILLS FOR 2020 WERE:

1. complex problem-solving;
2. critical thinking;
3. creativity;
4. people management;
5. coordinating with others;
6. emotional intelligence;
7. judgement and decision-making;
8. service orientation;
9. negotiation;
10. cognitive flexibility.

Did you spot the rise of creativity? Yes, creativity, which is even above emotional intelligence. Notice it made a big jump from the no. 10 spot all the way up to no. 3. By creativity, they don’t mean artistic creativity reserved for designers, writers or musicians. They mean the ability to think in ways that solves problems, generates ideas or improves processes and products.

For certain, employees at every level in companies will have to become adept at change, and that means being willing to learn, and relearn, and discover and learn over and over again, as the world keeps evolving around them. And managers will need to have the right skills to enable this change.

Leadership is all about change. If there is no need for change, there is no need for leaders. But in a world of such rapid change, there has never been a greater need for charismatic leadership. The pace of a leader determines the pace of the pack, so leaders everywhere have to upgrade their skills of change management and recognize that they have to turbo-charge their ability to lead their teams in the right direction, at the right speed.