The Covid-19 pandemic has had an immeasurable effect on the world and redefined for us what is truly important. We’re witnessing a reversion to the basics of Maslow’s hierarchy as we find ourselves seeking to safeguard our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing. Why? Because we no longer have the luxury of certainty.

For generations, we’ve grown up believing that studying for a defined career and securing a job would guarantee our future. This 'essential' and predictable sequence marked us as productive members of society. But is our society even a healthy one? Are we heading in the right direction or have we been blinded by collective greed and delusion? How can we justify such inequality and environmental degradation in the world? These were questions being asked even before Covid struck – and now the pandemic has accelerated a desire for change. For all the stress and disruption Covid has caused, we now have a gilt-edged opportunity to change things for the better. Now is the time for each of us to cultivate new skills, qualities and characteristics to bring about the collective future we want.

FutureNEXT plots a new way forward by combining the accessible thinking of future strategist John Sanei with the deeply thought economic and philosophical principles of Dr Iraj Abedian. The result is a book about the things we need to rethink so that we may step confidently into the future. About the new roles and responsibilities we will each have as consumers, employees, employers, entrepreneurs and executives. And ultimately about reimagining a more harmonious, systemically fair and sustainable, yet prosperous world.

The health services in South Africa have undergone a major reorientation in an attempt to provide the poorest and most vulnerable segments of society with increased access to affordable, quality health care. Unfortunately, the new policies and health plans have not translated into a commensurate improvement of actual health service delivery and health status. A key missing element has been the lack of an appropriate financial planning and budgeting system. This book, "Transformation in Action", attempts to fill the void that exists between planning, budgeting and implementation in the public health sector. Drawing on local and international research and policy experiments, it outlines an alternative system called the Performance Budgeting System (PBS). Unlike the current budgeting system, the PBS system integrates financial planning and management with strategic, operational, performance and quality management objectives to ensure that, within budget constraints, service delivery outputs have the greatest possible impact on health outcomes. In so doing, this system can contribute substantially to achieving the objectives of recent public sector reform initiatives and the ideals of the Constitution.