say keeping human capabilities aligned with technological innovation is important.
DELOITTE 2024 GLOBAL HUMAN CAPITAL TRENDS
The Imagination Deficit
Technology is accelerating. The human capacity to imagine how work could change is not keeping pace. The result is a widening gap between what technology makes possible and what people and organisations are ready to create with it.
THE KNOWING–DOING GAP
Knowing imagination matters is not the same as training it.
Deloitte’s research shows that organisations recognise the importance of keeping human capabilities level with technological innovation. Far fewer are making meaningful progress. The constraint is not access to more technology. It is the capacity to imagine better futures, decide from them and move people towards them.
say their organisation is making strong progress towards that balance.
43% say their organisation helps them imagine how their job may change; 76% say that support is important.
WHAT THE DEFICIT LOOKS LIKE
Technology moves. People remain inside today’s assumptions.
Deloitte describes disruption moving faster than many organisations and workers can imagine new ways of working that combine the strengths of people and technology. The warning signs are practical:
- Leaders recognise the need to reinvent work but do not know how to begin.
- Organisations seek creativity, collaboration and social intelligence without deliberately developing them.
- New ideas are imported through hiring or acquisition instead of being cultivated across the existing workforce.
- People are asked to adopt new technology before they have imagined the value and impact it could create.
WHAT CLOSES THE GAP
Human capabilities must become a deliberate practice.
Deloitte calls for organisations to develop and operationalise enduring human capabilities such as curiosity, empathy, divergent thinking, resilience and connected teaming. It also points to autonomy, psychological safety, experimentation and collective exploration as conditions that allow those capabilities to grow.
The report’s direction is clear: conventional reskilling alone is not enough for a future that keeps changing. People need repeated opportunities to imagine, test, collaborate and adapt across multiple possible futures.
THE IMAGYM RESPONSE
Turn imagination into a decision-making capability.
IMAGYM trains proactive imagination so people begin with the impact they want to create, work backwards into the decisions required today and move together with ownership, courage and resilience. This is how imagination stops being an occasional creative exercise and becomes a practical foundation for leadership, innovation and real change.
People practise imagining beyond current conditions, challenging assumptions, building belief in the opportunity, creating collective direction and turning that future into action. The capability grows because it is experienced, reflected on and repeated.
Findings and statistics on this page are summarized from Deloitte’s 2024 Global Human Capital Trends chapter, “What do organizations need most in a disrupted, boundaryless age? More imagination.” This page provides an IMAGYM interpretation and does not reproduce the report.
THE FUTURE STARTS BEFORE YOU CAN SEE IT.