I founded Leaders Plus as a catalyst for change, driven by the vision of achieving greater gender equality in senior roles. Through our award-winning Fellowship, we’ve worked tirelessly to equalise career progression, creating an ecosystem where our Fellows, Mentors, and employer partners collaborate to shape the future of work.
In 2025, this mission is more urgent than ever. Women remain underrepresented in leadership, especially in roles with real power, such as those overseeing profit and loss. If we don’t actively shape the future of work, we risk leaving it to outdated norms or a narrow group of decision-makers.
The Changing Nature of Work
Work is evolving faster than ever. Once, we worked on Saturdays; now many don’t. Paper has been replaced by digital workflows. Innovations like AI and experiments like the four-day work week are reshaping how we approach our jobs.
But if only white male tech leaders in Silicon Valley envision the future of work, it will inevitably cater to their needs, excluding the diverse experiences of others. This narrow vision limits progress.
A Call to Action
If you’re reading this, I’m guessing your background differs from that of a typical Silicon Valley CEO. I urge you to use your unique perspective to influence the future of work. Florence Gaub, a futurist at NATO, reminds us that imagining the future is a skill we must all hone.
While we speak of “the future” as singular, it’s inherently plural—encompassing the possible, plausible, and even the improbable. Start imagining: What could the future of work look like?
The Power of Networks to Drive Change
David Ehrlichman, author of Impact Networks, highlights how networks often spark unexpected transformations. At Leaders Plus, our community is one such network, driving change through collaboration and innovation.
Consider job shares: they challenge the traditional notion of leadership as a lone hero at the top. For instance, the job-share CEO role at Von Tobel Bank in Switzerland is an experiment that redefines leadership norms.
How will we know we’ve influenced the future of work? Success might look like our alumni driving meaningful change or sparking innovations that reshape work culture.
Big Questions About the Future of Leadership
What Will a Leader Look Like?
The single “hero leader” archetype is already evolving. In Switzerland, for example, the Federal Council operates as a collaborative leadership team, making the name of the country’s president almost irrelevant to most citizens.
How Will Decisions Be Made?
Will traditional hierarchies persist, or will shared leadership models, like Bayer’s self-guided teams or Buurtzorg’s decentralized accountability, become the norm?
What Will the Work Week Look Like?
Could flexible schedules become the standard for even high-responsibility roles? Organisations like Global Witness are already exploring the four-day work week, and leaders such as Nadia Bunyan are championing its adoption.
Lessons from Freelancers
Freelancers have mastered skills that traditional workplaces can learn from: understanding client value, managing time efficiently, and focusing on outcomes. Could they help teach organisations to adopt outcome-based performance models?
Key questions, such as “What is the purpose of this work?” and “How do we measure success?” should guide us all.
Rethinking Productivity
Traditional productivity metrics—like hours worked or emails sent—don’t reflect true value. Can we develop better metrics tailored to specific roles, especially those outside profit and loss?
Experimentation: The Key to Progress
Brave experiments are crucial to shaping the future. For example, creating sustainable roles is essential. Workloads that demand infinite hours disproportionately exclude caregivers and people with disabilities from leadership opportunities.
Flexibility, often viewed as incompatible with productivity, needs to be tested further. For instance, divisions adopting a four-day work week could help prove that flexible models can outperform traditional setups.
Jobs of True Brilliance
Breakthroughs often require unstructured time. Katalin Karikó’s decades-long research on mRNA, which laid the foundation for COVID-19 vaccines, exemplifies this. Are we investing in potential unicorn innovations, or are we focused solely on incremental gains?
A Better Future for Working Parents
Eighty-five percent of working parents in our Big Parent Career Survey 2023 reported declining promotions due to overwhelming workloads. Reducing this burden could be a critical metric for improving work for parents.
AI has the potential to help leaders balance demanding careers with family life by accelerating tasks and freeing up time. However, as philosopher Christian Uhle argues, AI will only make work better if we’re clear about the outcomes we want to achieve.
Join Us in Shaping the Future of Work
We may not know exactly what the future of work will look like in 20 years, but that’s no reason to sit back. I invite you to become an active participant, shaping a reality that works for future generations. Whether through small experiments or bold ideas, share your thoughts and be part of this vital conversation.