Tectonic Times: 5 Shifts.

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past.Edition 264.

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This Friday while flying back from a couple of speaking engagements in Sweden with European C level execs in the Real Estate and Marketing industries, I calculated it was my 70th flight, putting me on track to fly more than the previous record of 104 flights in a year when I had a full time job.

Looking back just to the beginning of this year between the companies I advise, the companies I have spoken at, the leaders who have been guests of the weekly What Next? Podcast and the Rethinking Work YouTube Show I host, I have interacted or spoken with more than 200 leaders and almost 100 companies in 8 months across 11 countries.

And increasingly there is a common feeling across all these companies and leaders that these times are more than transformational.

The changes underway feel bigger than the shifts felt during the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Post 9/11, The Great Financial Crisis, The Internet, The Rise of China and Covid.

The changes today are fueled by all these transformations interacting with each other at scale and some new forces to create far greater tremors and movement.

These are not just transformational times.

We are in Tectonic Times.

When the very ground under our feet moves, things rupture and quake, all shaking the foundations of what we believe, how we operate and what might happen.

The Five Tectonic Shifts.

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1. Duality : Everything and its opposite is true at the same time.

Here are three examples of duality .

a) Scale matters more. Scale matters less.

Scale matters more than ever as we see the top 4 companies in AI spending ( Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta) on track to spend over 300 billion dollars in one year. For comparison this is just slightly less than half the revenue of the Walmart which is the worlds largest company ranked in sales. 300 Billion dollars is also 5x the total revenue of Accenture and 2x Accentures total total market cap.

Similarly Russia and China and US armies and spending give them significant advantage.

But scale matters less than ever as AI and other technologies enable asymmetric competition providing David with a sling shot to bring down Goliath. The fastest growing, most innovative and highest revenue per employee companies are small. A combination of agility, limited to no legacy structures and AI first/Talent Anywhere thinking are changing the rules of the game.

A combination of drones and new ways of thinking have allowed everyone from Ukraine to the Houthis to fight way above their weight class.

The smartest companies are combining small teams with large amounts of capital and other resources providing them with freedom to challenge and compete for a new age.

b) Globalization matters more. Globalization matters less.

Today two countries, the US and China, with 30 trillion and 18 trillion dollars of GDP dominate and increasing make the rules of the Globe ( for comparison Japan, India, Germany and France have only 4 trillion dollars of GDP each). If the world was not so connected Trump’s Tariffs or Taiwan’s hold on High End Chip making or China’s hold on Rare Earths would not matter but they do. And from Climate to Covid, Mother Nature refuses to acknowledge borders.

But at the same time the Globalization of Davos is clearly over and there is a far greater regionalization and country focus around the world. Covid illustrated the challenges of global supply chains. Europe’s dependence on Russian gas indicated a vulnerability. Strategic resilience now often is more important than comparative advantage provided by free trade and globalization.

c) Markets matter more. Markets matter less.

Market economics and different flavors of capitalism have created more wealth and lifted over 2 billion people out of poverty since 1990 with opening economies in China, India and many other places. Today rapid data transfers and interconnectedness places a premium on markets.

On the other hand, market economics has led to a blowback in many parts of many countries due to job losses and ways of life. Market economics have led to vulnerabilities for countries for key resources and materials making countries increasingly mercantilist and inserting themselves in markets. A new political order is rising everywhere which combines state and markets in different ways.

Image and Source: Rishad Tobaccowala

2. Third Connected Age : We have entered the Third Connected Age.

The First Connected Age began with the advent of the World Wide Web in 1993 where we connected to discover and transact which gave rise to Search and E-Commerce. During this age we consumed content.

In 2007 we entered the Second Connected Age where we were connected to everybody, all the time and to entertainment which gave rise to social, mobile and streaming. We consumed and created content but much of the value created was captured by the platforms rather than the content creators.

These Connected Ages continue to build on each other and roil everything from traditional media companies, elections, what people believe, polarization and much more.

But just as streaming, mobile and social reinforced each other and turbo-charged commerce and search we now have a new set of forces which began as early as 80 years ago (AI), 15 years ago (Blockchain), 7 years ago (5G…but not really available in the US though your phone says you have it…real 5G is 2 to 4 gigabytes per minute with almost no latency as seen in parts of China) and AR/VR which is still scaling but will clearly become important. And due to the Blockchain and the rise of competition in creator platforms from YouTube to Substack to Podcasts to OnlyFans, we will move to a read, write and own era as pointed out by Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz.

AI is the topic of the day as a combination of all the data on the Internet, better algorithms and much better chips such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 has turbo-charged this space. But it is not just AI but also Blockchain that is revolutionary and will likely change the nature of ownership, competition, data transparence. One impact in Finance as most recently seen in StableCoins.

This Third Connected Age will make the first two Connected Ages which were huge look small.

Think of the shifts already underway:

The value of knowledge is going to zero and the value of many types of experience is declining.

World class Knowledge driven companies like McKinsey have stated this is an existential threat and opportunity if played right. Traditionally, a strategy project with a client might require an engagement manager—essentially, a project leader—plus four consultants and a partner. Today, it might need an engagement manager plus two or three consultants, alongside a few AI agents and access to “deep research” capabilities. McKinsey today has 40,000 humans and 12,000 AI agents. Read more here.

Knowledge is being reimagined.

The interface of Search ( First Connected Age) and Streaming (Second Connected Age) is now joined by Conversation (Third Connected Age) as people look for outcomes and answers. This has already got companies thinking about massive reductions in traffic due to search and rewiring themselves for an Answer and Agentic Age. But in addition to the plumbing which is how one reaches the customer we are about to see the rise of poetry where due to Generative AI provides the ability to tell stories and have interactions at scale in personalized way that will disrupt the entire marketing landscape.

Personalization will increasingly be augmented by Anticipation in delivering outcomes and answers. Tech Stacks will be upgraded to Experience Stacks.

The fabric of communications is being rewritten anew.

Source: Nathan Halberstadt

3. Generation Ruptures:

The above chart by Nathan Halberstadt first published in the Daily Wire and much discussed and shared. He has not released specifics on his data sources and there is some debate on the numbers but not the direction of travel.

Clearly younger folks are getting married and becoming home owners much later as some of this data shows

Marriage and home ownership rates are only two of many significant ways there is a marked difference in generations.

Today 66% of Baby Boomers believe in Capitalism but only 22% of GenZ do.

A small sliver of Baby Boomers want to work for themselves but 76% of GenZ want to launch a company. Today 67 percent of GenZ employees with a full time job have a side gig or side hustle to make money.

And here are more differences in mindset.

Source: ChatGPT 5

The irony is that companies that wax and sing hymns to personalization treat all their employees the same. One size fits all for RTO and much more. No wonder talent wonders what has infected managements mind!

Source: ChatGPT 5

4. Work and Job Uncoupling: People have always worked but rarely had jobs. The idea of a job is about 200 years old and it looks like we are in the midst of a decline of full time jobs and a rise in the opportunity for different types of work.

Work is any activity humans do to survive or create value—hunting, farming, caregiving, crafting, etc. Jobs are a more modern idea: formal roles within an economy where you exchange labor for wages, usually under an employer. Jobs are structured, specialized, and often tied to contracts or salaries.

Prehistoric & Agrarian Societies
Work meant survival: hunting, gathering, farming. It was shared among families or tribes, with little concept of individual "jobs."

Ancient Civilizations
As cities grew, work diversified—merchants, scribes, artisans, priests. These roles were often inherited or tied to caste/class systems.

Medieval Era
Work was tied to land (serfs, farmers) or guilds (craftsmen, apprentices, masters). Identity and community shaped work more than wages.

Industrial Revolution (18th–19th c.)
This is when the modern “job” emerged: factory work, wage labor, set hours. Work became standardized and separated from the home.

20th Century
Rise of office jobs, corporations, unions, and the idea of a lifelong career at one company. Benefits like pensions and health insurance tied identity even more to jobs.

21st Century
Work is shifting again: freelancing, gig economy, AI and automation, remote work, portfolio careers. People may separate who they are from what job they do more than before.

Work has always existed—but the structure of jobs (formal, specialized, wage-based roles) is a relatively recent invention, only a couple of centuries old.

Today most companies are structured around jobs and jobs to be filled vs accessing talent and work to be done. But as demographic mindset differences, the shifts of the Third Connected Age and fractionalization of expertise that is increasingly distributed, ricochet of each other, companies will need to rethink their organization, talent base and leadership from the ground up.

Image: Google Gemini Flash 2.5

5. Imperiled Leadership: Leadership is never easy. Today the quality of leaders has never been stronger in pure skills, motivation and drive but the challenges and fears have never been greater for a variety of reasons which include:

a) The Need for Dual Track Thinking: While it is critical to make this years numbers so is reinventing the business for a new age where the business model might be literally completely different. We see this in the struggle of traditional auto companies to ensure profits from internal combustion engines and hardware as they pivot to a software driven electric age. Or companies in the Food and Beverage space who have to balance peoples taste preferences with people’s health needs with the rise of GLP1 drugs and new FDA guidelines that may or may not align with science!

b) Debossification: Due to the generational shifts, distributed work and other factors no longer can one manage through a zone of control only but also has to be adept at managing through a zone of influence.

c) Political Heat and Changing Rules: Every act from changing the name of a firm to where one locates a factory to points of view on anything and everything is open to attack. This is true in India, China and now the United States. This makes some of the most amazing leaders censor themselves or curry favor in ways that are understandable to ensure the well being of their shareholders, but clearly comes at a cost whose price is still to be understood. The rules keep changing and uncertainty is at an all time high.

d) Personal Relevance: Today a leader can no longer stay up to date but needs to stay up to tomorrow. One has to constantly upgrade ones mental operating system. Find time to learn and to unlearn.

Again and again it is awe inspiring to see how so many leaders are rising to the occasion and finding ways to navigate and secure the future of their firms while remaining on the right side of markets, science and political reality.

But it is very very difficult and the pressure has never been higher.

Especially given we are in tectonic times as the five shifts of Duality, The Third Connected Age, Generational Ruptures, the Decoupling of Work from Jobs, and Imperiled Leadership, move in tandem rubbing off each other.

Rishad Tobaccowala helps leaders and companies see, think and feel differently about how to grow themselves, their teams and companies in transformational tectonic times.