How do i prepare my kids for the future of work?
Graduate hiring is falling, the first rung of the career ladder is disappearing, and the social contract most of us were raised on, work hard at school, go to university, get a good job, no longer holds. So what do you tell a teenager?
The guest
Ollie Pickup, human work evolution storyteller, founder of Pickup Media and author of the Go Flux Yourself newsletter, is back on the pod to answer the question he says he gets asked more than any other. Three parents, six children between them aged three to fifteen, and no experts in the room.
What Ollie brings
The heart skills, seven Cs that matter more as the machines get smarter, and a line from the economist Minouche Shafik: in the past jobs were about muscle, now they're about brains, in the future they'll be about the heart. Why Daniel Susskind thinks the answer to AI in schools is the same one a government review reached for calculators in 1982. Why Ollie wants his kids to be AI agnostics rather than martyrs or zealots. And why over a million young people not in work, education or training is the number that worries him most.
What Alice and Dan bring
The school gate: GCSE options, Saturday jobs, why work is work, why humility is now a skill worth teaching, and the moment Alice admits her daughters are more anxious than she was at their age and considerably more emotionally intelligent.
The quickfire
What parents should encourage, what schools should teach, what young people should experiment with, and what employers owe the next generation. Short answers only.
Also in this episode
The breadpool, a new word for a household with more than one breadwinner, said aloud for the first time.
Mentioned
What Should My Children Do? by Daniel Susskind. Lynda Gratton's follow-up to The 100-Year Life. Go Flux Yourself, Ollie's newsletter. This Boy Cares, the campaign from the Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys.
Find Ollie
Newsletter: Go Flux Yourself [link]
Website: Pickup Media [link]
LinkedIn: Oliver Pickup [link]
