Every time I come back to Dubai, I’m reminded of why this place is so extraordinary.
Companies like Emirates Airlines and Emirates NBD are doing remarkable work, and being part of that energy always inspires me.
But today I want to talk about something bigger. The future. How we make better decisions about it. And why the way we’ve been trained to think is no longer enough.
Complexity Stops Us in Our Tracks
Here’s the thing: when something is too complex, we don’t act. In fact, we don’t even realize we’re not acting.
Our brains do what they’ve always done — we delete, distort, and generalize anything that doesn’t fit neatly into our old frameworks of thinking.
Take Volkswagen. For decades, they were solving yesterday’s problems — trying to make the combustion engine more efficient — while the future was already arriving.
Electric cars. Batteries. BYD, a Chinese company, now manufactures VW’s batteries. That means VW can’t catch up. Their share price has collapsed by almost 40%.
And when you drive around Dubai today, the German cars that once dominated the roads are being replaced by Chinese cars. Excellent cars.
That’s what happens when you keep solving yesterday’s problems instead of shifting your awareness to tomorrow.
Efficiency Is Out. Adaptation Is In.
We’ve been taught that excellence equals repetition. Do it faster. Do it cheaper. Do it better. And for a long time, that worked.
But here’s the truth: efficiency belongs to the past. The future belongs to adaptation.
Adaptation isn’t about fitting neatly into a system. It’s about breaking the system. It’s messy. It’s creative. It requires curiosity, awareness, and imagination.
And it asks us to rethink how we structure our organizations, how we lead, and how we define success.
New Game. New Rules.
We’re moving into a paradigm none of us were educated for. Artificial intelligence is creating a brand-new game. And when the game changes, the old rules don’t apply.
So the question is: how do we play this new game? For me, it comes down to three things:
Simplify the future. We’re so busy with today that we don’t lift our heads to see tomorrow. My job is to take the complexity out of the future so we can actually engage with it.
Elevate awareness. Einstein said, “You cannot solve a problem from the same awareness that created it.” Most of us are still trying to solve new problems with old awareness. That doesn’t work.
Restructure systems. Our organizations were built for efficiency. Fantastic at profitability. Terrible at adaptation. We need a new operating model.
Sad. Strange. Adventure.
Every transformation, big or small, follows the same three phases:
Sadness. Letting go of the familiar. The identity we’ve built for decades. The comfort zone we’ve lived in. There’s grief in leaving that behind.
Strange. Entering a world that doesn’t make sense. A world we’re not trained for. If we don’t process our sadness, it shows up as anger. As C.S. Lewis wrote: “I sat with my anger long enough, until she told me her name was grief.” This is no longer an intellectual process. It’s emotional.
Adventure. The moment the wind fills our sails. We understand the new rules. We feel optimistic, curious, and fascinated. That’s when real progress begins.
Where are we right now? Squarely between sad and strange. We haven’t yet reached adventure. And that’s okay — but we need to know where we are to prepare for what’s next.
Our Addiction to Certainty
Here’s the trap: we’ve been trained to crave certainty.
Dr. Joe Dispenza says that by the age of 35, most of us think 60–70,000 thoughts a day, and 90% of them are the same as yesterday.
Think about that. Our brains are on repeat. Not expansive. Not adaptable. Just certain.
But certainty is the enemy of adaptation. And if we don’t adapt, we stagnate.
PQ. IQ. AQ.
History shows us how value shifts.
In the Agricultural Era, it was about PQ — Physical Quotient. Obedience. Strength. Seasons. For 10,000 years, the strongest among us led. Then machines came, and PQ lost its value.
In the Industrial Era, it was about IQ — Intelligence Quotient. Analysis. Efficiency. Following the system. For 200 years, the smartest among us won. But now AI is here. ChatGPT already has an IQ of 155 — the same as Elon Musk — and it’s doubling every 5.7 months. Soon, machines will out-think us just like tractors out-pulled us. IQ is losing its value.
In the AI Era, it’s about AQ — Adaptability Quotient. The ability to unlearn, relearn, and adapt. The ability to stay curious, imaginative, and unique while everything else changes.
The future isn’t asking us to be faster or smarter. It’s asking us to be more adaptable.
From Jobs to Problem-Solving
In the past, you chose one career and did it for life. Accountant. Doctor. Lawyer. That was it.
But according to McKinsey, a 10-year-old today might have 29 different careers. Not jobs — careers.
The future won’t be defined by rigid titles. It’ll be defined by problem-solving groups. You’ll come together to solve one problem, unlearn, relearn, adapt — then move on to the next.
That’s a completely different approach from everything we’ve been taught. It’s the shift from repetition to adaptation.
The Real Skill of the Future
The future is not about what you know. What you know today could be irrelevant in six months.
The real question is: how do you behave when faced with change?
That’s AQ. And that’s what the future will celebrate.
Here’s the truth: machines can out-think us. Machines can outspeed us. But machines can’t out-curious us. They can’t out-imagine us. And that’s where our real advantage lies.
Final Thought
As Alvin Toffler said: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot unlearn and relearn.”
We don’t need more certainty. We need more courage. More curiosity. More adaptability.
Machines can out-think us. Machines can outspeed us. But they can’t out-curious us. They can’t out-imagine us. And that’s where our future lies.
The future doesn’t belong to the efficient. It belongs to the adaptable.
By John Sanei, South African Author, Futurist and Entrepreneur based in Dubai
