Creative destruction can be seen more easily in industries with lower barriers to change than education — entertainment, for example (the demise of the video store vs. the rise of streaming). Education was ripe for disruption before COVID-19. Emerging technologies supported new platforms for learning and news ways of using data to support learning.

We use several frameworks and resources for our work, along with our combined 60+ years of experience: Millions Learning (Brookings Institution); Drivers of Student Performance MENA (McKinsey); Creating Communities of Innovation (Harvard Project Zero); How the World’s Most Improved System’s Keep Getting Better (McKinsey); the Play to Win Strategy (Lafely, et al); elements of design thinking; and a few clips of Mo Saleh playing football.

Nevertheless, many internal talent development programs are grounded more in the stability of the past than the ambiguity of the future. For organizations and the people who drive them to thrive in the future, the very idea of talent needs to change. Employee evaluation programs and the talent pools that result are notoriously biased and inaccurate. They are also typically focused on maintaining existing ways of working and limited to a small percentage of top performers.

My boys were home for spring break recently, and having claimed not to have gamed at all with their friends while at boarding school, they immersed themselves in playing with their friends online. Along with the familiar shouts of excitement from their room came the equally familiar sound of my husband complaining that they game too much. It drives me crazy too sometimes, until I remember that the boys have pretty balanced lives overall.

As a mother and educator, I often find myself reflecting on my children’s futures. I believe in the importance of encouraging them to be entrepreneurial, creative, and innovative. I also want them to learn to be responsible and careful with money. Like many of their friends, my kids could write a Dragons’ Den pitch in their sleep. Their pitch would show their creativity and reasoning skills, as well as their undeniable persuasive powers honed over the years of asking for 10 more minutes of Xbox time. But would they be able to manage investment if they received it?

Over the past academic year, the return to in-person learning has revealed the social and educational limitations of online and hybrid learning. Helping children learn to interact with others again, supporting them as they process trauma, and providing intervention have become the hallmarks of this wave of crisis learning. Second and third-grade students are particularly at risk.