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There is a good reason why culture and engagement are part of our everyday vocabulary, but our grandparents' generation probably never spoke of them during their careers. They talked of things like loyalty, dependability, and opportunity, all of which are still part of the culture equation, but in varying degrees than in the past. The workplace of now differs greatly from the workplace of just 20 years ago. It was a different time and place. Society valued different things. People behaved in different ways.

For one thing, our increasingly globalized and freelance economy means that talent is now borderless. Consider the movement of people.

● In 1990, the world had 154 million international migrants (generally defined as people who reside in a country in which they were not born) (Engaging and Integration a Global Workforce, 2015, 13).

● In 2000, we had 173 million international migrants (244 Million International Migrants Living Abroad Worldwide, 2016).

● As of 2015, that number had grown to 244 million (244 Million International Migrants, 2016).

And about half of those international migrants reside in only 10 countries. The United States alone houses 20 percent of international migrants, followed by Russia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

Let's frame it another way. In 1990, all of us in the world put together took 400 million trips abroad annually, including all business, touring, studying, and everything else (Exploding Digital Flows in a Deeply Connected World, 2016). In 2016, we have nearly tripled that to more than 1.1 billion.

Or consider the growth of emerging economies. In 2015, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the BRICS countries) claimed 30 percent of global gross domestic product (BRICS, 2015). Toss in the other developing economies, and together they accounted for 42 percent of world merchandise trade and for 35 percent of trade in world commercial services (Engaging and Integration a Global Workforce, 2015, 8).

What's more, the World Economic Forum's latest 2016 survey on “The Future of Jobs” projects that by 2030, Asia alone will account for 66 percent of the global middle class and for 59 percent of middle-class consumption (World Economic Forum, 2016). We are seeing the world's economic center of gravity shift away from North America, away from Europe, and toward emerging economies that are emerging as hubs of talent, entrepreneurship, and consumption.

So what does this mean for us? It means the workplace of the future looks unmistakably different than the workplace we know today. We need to expand our thinking of where and when work gets done and who does it.

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, take another trip back in the culture time machine. Picture this: you step into a fresh morning and determine what the day will hold. You commit yourself to useful and collaborative work. You achieve the mighty and intoxicating realm of flow. This is a professional dream, right? Welcome to the surprisingly alluring workplace world of 12,000 years ago, when people mostly foraged wild food for sustenance. According to renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who coined the notion of “flow”), our hunter-gatherer ancestors may not have had it too bad, professionally speaking (Kawamura, 2014). People used their skills to collaborate with others in service of clear goals, and they received immediate, actionable feedback.