The Humans We Need Next: A Personal Reflection on Future Skills, Systems & Soul

I still remember the moment in 2011 when everything shifted for me. I was deep inside one of Australia’s largest banks, working on strategic resource planning — tasked with answering a deceptively simple question: Do we have the right people, in the right roles, at the right time to meet what’s coming?

That question took on a life of its own.

We were in a storm of tech disruption, shifting markets, and rising pressure — but the answers I received were riddled with hesitation. Some optimism, a few acronyms, and a creeping sense of denial. We weren’t ready.

What we had was talent.
What we lacked was future fluency.

So I created a spark: Wired for Wonder.
Launched in 2013, it was a curated learning and innovation initiative designed to prepare both workforce and community — not just for the future of work, but for the work of being human in the future.

We brought in poets and quantum physicists, CEOs and monks. We talked about automation before AI hit the mainstream, wellbeing before burnout broke our systems, and creativity before it was treated as a currency. It was electric. It was sacred. It was human.

But perhaps the biggest gift Wired for Wonder gave me — and those who joined us — was permission to be curious about what lay beyond the frameworks, KPIs, and playbooks we had been taught to cling to. We cracked open the belief that business had to be boring or that leadership had to be linear.

From Future-Ready to Future-Worthy

Fast forward to 2025, and I’m still asking that original question — but it’s evolved:

What kind of humans do we want shaping the future?

Because the truth is, no skill framework in the world matters if we don’t attend to the nervous system, the moral compass, and the imaginative spark behind the skill.

We can teach people to code. But can we teach them to care?
We can build resilience dashboards. But do we actually know how to regulate?

We’ve been so obsessed with productivity and performance that we’ve left behind the very qualities that make human intelligence worth amplifying.

This isn’t just a workforce issue. It’s a design issue. An educational one. A parenting one. A leadership one. A humanity one.

What the Evidence Is Telling Us

According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025:

• 30% of current skills may be obsolete by 2030

• 87% of executives say they face skill gaps

• Emotional intelligence, systems thinking, and analytical skills are climbing the priority list

The OECD’s Learning Compass 2030 emphasizes something deeper: the need for transformative competencies.

These include:

• Creating new value (innovation, creativity, originality)

• Reconciling tensions (holding paradox, building empathy)

• Taking responsibility (moral agency, contribution)

All of these are grounded in wellbeing, not performance. Connection, not competition. Systems thinking, not just siloed productivity.

McKinsey’s 2024 report on The Future of Work in America adds urgency: 92 million jobs will be displaced by 2030. Yet 78 million new roles are predicted to emerge — ones that demand agility, emotional intelligence, and lifelong learning.

We're not just entering a new era of work. We're stepping into a new era of what it means to be wise.

Why It Matters for Leaders, Teachers, HR and Parents

Here’s how these seven future-ready skills translate into real-world action:

What I’m Teaching My Kids (And Myself)

Yes, I want my children to be kind. But not just compliant. I want them to be thoughtful. Brave. Strange in the best way.

I want them to:

• Protect their attention like it’s sacred

• Question narratives — even (especially) their own

• Understand their nervous system before they weaponize or numb it

• Stay in relationship with discomfort long enough to transform it

• Create without permission, because nobody hands out imagination licenses

• Name power and persuasion for what it is

• Unlearn gracefully and begin again, again, and again

I want to raise children who don’t need to break down in order to break through.

But to do that, I need to be that adult too. And that’s the real invitation here — for all of us.

The 7 Future-Worthy Human Skills

These aren’t soft skills. These are survival skills for a post-linear world. They’re the skillset for building lives — and cultures — that feel alive.

Building Evolve X: From Spark to System

Wired for Wonder was the beginning. Evolve X is the expansion.

We are no longer in the age of preparing people for one job. We’re preparing them for multiple evolutions — professionally, personally, intergenerationally.

What we’re building through Evolve X is:

• Immersive recalibration experiences (yes, in nature)

• Executive coaching that includes the soul

• Curriculum that’s neuro-inclusive and culturally intelligent

• Frameworks for families, not just founders

• GPT-powered tools that support healing, not just hustling

We’ve designed this as a living ecosystem, not a static offering. Because evolution isn’t a course. It’s a cycle. A rhythm. A commitment.

For Anyone Wondering What Comes Next

If you're:

• Leading people

• Raising children

• Healing yourself

• Questioning the system you once built or believed in

Then this isn’t just an article. It’s a permission slip. To build cultures that are more human. To stop racing toward success and start reimagining significance. To raise children who won’t burn out before they even begin.

To build the internal scaffolding for external impact.

Because in the end, the question isn’t just what the world needs.

It’s who we’re becoming as we build it.

Let’s make that answer beautiful. Let’s make it whole. Let’s make it together.

www.evolvex.community