LBS Predicting the Future of Work

8/8/2019 LBS Predicting the Future of Work

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PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE: GRATTON

Work is universal. But, how, why,where and when we work hasnever been so open to individualinterpretation. The certainties of the

past have been replaced by ambiguity,questions and the steady hum oftechnology. Now, in a groundbreakingresearch project covering 21 global

companies and more than 200executives, Lynda Gratton ismaking sense of the future of work.In this exclusive article she providesa preview of the real world of 21stcentury work.

You may be a Baby Boomer in your

50s with Gen Y children just joining

the workorce; an alumnus o a

business school, a 40-year-old Gen X

preparing or 30 more years o work,

with young Gen Z children; or an

MBA student thinking about the yearso work ahead o you.

Whatever your age, one o the most

crucial questions you ace is how the

FORCESSHAPINGTHE FUTUREOF WORK

uture o work will develop and the

impact on you and the organisations

o which you are a member. I you

are now aged 30, you can expect to

work or the next 40 years that

means in 2050 you will be a member

o the workorce. I you are 50, you

can expect to be actively employed or

another 20 years thats 2030. I you

have young children, they could be

working until 2070.

Work is, and always has been, one

o the most dening aspects o our

lives. It is where we meet our riends,

excite ourselves and eel at our most

creative and innovative. It can also be

where we can eel our most rustrated,

exasperated and taken or granted.

Work matters to us as individuals,

to our amily and riends and also

to the communities and societies in

which we live.

Many o the ways o working that

we have taken or granted or 20years are disappearing working

rom nine-to-ve, aligning with only

one company, spending time with

lynda grattoninvestigates:

tHe FUtUre

oF WorK

16 BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW Q3 2010

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amily, taking weekends o, working

with people we have known well

in oces we go to every day. And

whats coming in its place is much

less knowable and less understandable

almost too ragile to grasp.

Facing the future

Over the last two years, my mission

has been to understand how workand organisations will evolve. What

I wanted was not rm predictions,

since I know these are notoriously

unreliable, but rather a point o view,

a basic idea o what the hard acts o

the uture are, and a way o thinking

about the uture that has internal

cohesion. I wanted to discover,

with as much ne-grained detail as

possible, how the uture o work is

likely to evolve.

Why it is so important now, to

at least attempt to paint a realistic

picture o the uture, is that we can

no longer imagine the uture simply

by extrapolating rom the past. The

past six generations have experienced

the most rapid and proound change

mankind has experienced in its 5,000

years o recorded history. I the world

economy continues to grow at the

same pace as the last hal-century,

then by the time my children are the

age I am now in 2050 the world

will be seven times richer than it is

today, world population could be over

9 billion and average wealth will alsohave increased dramatically.

We live at a time when the schism

with the past is o the same magnitude

as that last seen in the late 18th

century. A schism o such magnitude

that work what we do, where we

do it, how we work and with whom will change, possibly unrecognisably in

our lietime. In the late 18th century,

the drivers o this change were the

development o coal and steam power.

This time around it is not the result

o a single orce, but rather the subtle

combination o ve orces that will

undamentally transorm much o what

we take or granted about work: the

needs o a low-carbon economy, rapid

advances in technology, increasing

globalisation, proound changes

in longevity and demography and

proound societal changes.

It is not just our day-to-day

working conditions and habits that will

change dramatically. What will also

change is our working consciousness,

just as the industrial age changed

the working consciousness o

our predecessors. The industrial

revolution introduced a mass market

or goods and with it a rewiring o the

human brain towards an increasing

desire or consumption and the

acquisition o wealth and property.

The question we ace now is howthe working consciousness o current

and uture employees will be urther

transormed in the age o technology

and globalisation we are entering.

What is inevitable is that, or

younger people like my two sons,

work will change dramatically and

those o us already in the workorce

will be employed in ways we can

hardly imagine.

The wise crowd

To better understand the uture owork, rom October 2009 to May

2010 I led a research consortium o

21 companies and over 200 executives

rom around the world. The major

business sectors were represented by

a wide array o rms, including Absa

(the South Arican bank), Nokia,

Nomura, Tata Consulting Services

(TCS), Shell, Thomson Reuters,

Novartis and Novo Nordisk, SAP,

BT and Singapores Ministry o

Manpower, as well as two not-or-

prot organisations, Save the Childrenand World Vision. My colleagues,

Dr Julia Goges-Cooke and Andreas

Voigt, also took part.

The consortium community

met initially in November 2009 atLondon Business School where we

looked closely at the hard acts o the

uture, then took the conversation

into their own companies. We wereable to work together virtually in an

elaborate shared portal and also to

discuss the emerging ideas in monthly

webinars and later in a series oworkshops in Europe and Asia. At the

same time, I tested out some o my

initial thoughts by writing a weekly

blog (www.lyndagrattonutureowork)

on which a wider communitycommented. It was these ideas,

insights and anxieties that became

stitched into storyline narratives andbrought depth to our conversations.

What excited the community was

nding answers to three questions:n How will external orces shape the

way my company and its people

develop over the coming decades?n How best can we prepare or these

developments to uture proothe company?

n What can we learn rom othersabout where to ocus our attention

and resources, what will be

tough, and what will be morestraightorward?

Working it out

How will these ve orces aect the

way we work in 2025, and what

does this mean or the choices andactions we should be taking now?

My research and conversations about

the uture o work have led me to

understand that the uture will beless about general skills and more

about in-depth mastery; less about

working as a competitive, isolated

individual and more about workingcollaboratively in a joined world; and

less about ocusing solely on a standard

o living and more on the quality

o experiences. Here are the ways I

believe these three shits will play outin our lives and the lives o others.

The shift to mastery I believe

that in the uture the means by which

individual value is created will shitrom having generalist ability to having

specialist ability and achieving serial

mastery. Why? Because i you remain

a generalist, there are thousands,perhaps even millions, o people who

can do the same work as you do

yet aster, cheaper and perhaps even


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01 Emerging markets are taking over02 The robots are real03 The new global jet set

01 02 03

TechnologicaldevelopmenTsTechnology will infuence the size

o the world population and lie

expectancy and will infuence our

working lives in other deeper and more

indirect ways the way we engagewith others, our views on morality and

our own human nature. You dont

have to be a supporter o technological

determinism to recognise that

technological capability (through its

complex interactions with individuals,

institutions, cultures and environment)

is a key determinant o the ground

rules within which the games o human

civilisation get played out.

By 2025, we can expect that

more than ve billion people will be

connected by mobile devices, the

Internet Cloud will deliver low-cost

computing services, an increasing

amount o work will be perormed by

robots and sel-created content will join

the digitalisation o books to create an

unprecedented amount o inormation

in the world knowledge net. We can

expect that, across the globe, billions

o cognitive assistants will be collecting

inormation, monitoring peoples

behaviour and taking actions rom

their preerences. This massive crowd

o computers is becoming increasingly

capable o learning and creating newknowledge entirely on its own and with

no human help.

globalisaTionThe combination o technology and

globalisation will have a proound

impact on the way we work in the

uture. While many o the new poles

o economic activity are in the Big

Six emerging economies (Brazil,China, India, Mexico, Russia and

South Korea), the economies o

next-wave locations such as Egypt,

Nigeria and Turkey are increasingly

important. These emerging economies

will increasingly add value through

innovation as well as low-cost

manuacturing. Greater numbers o

people will choose to move to the

mega-cities o the world, and new

talent pools will emerge in areas across

the globe where the population is

connected to the world knowledge net.

Much o the world will become joined

both in terms o trade in goods and

services, the mobility o labour, the

opening up o new talent pools and in

the extent o global connectivity.

Globalisation will bring

opportunities or talented and

energetic people to become part o

the world economy wherever they are

born. It will also increase the exclusion

o those who are not part o the global

market, either because they dont have

access to broadband or because they

have neither the talent nor the energyto compete.

Five FoRces

0201 WOne o the rst tasks o the researchwas to identiy the external orcesthat will undamentally change theway that work will be done by 2025.

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01 Older or longer02 Fathers are increasingly involved03 Wind power

030201

socieTalTRendsThe mental lie o human

beings has been transormed by

developments such as language,

literacy, urbanisation, division o

labour, industrialisation, science,

communications, transport and

media technology. These changes

will continue over the coming

years. By 2025, we can expect that

people will be more individualistic

and increasingly prepared to orgeliestyles based on their own needs

rather than societal expectations. At

the same time, we can expect trust

in business and business leaders to

continue to plummet.

I predict that, in 2025, many

people will live their lives alone or

in small amily groups and some

o these relationships will become

more virtual. It will increasingly be

the norm to work much o the time

rom home or in small community

hubs to avoid the carbon costs andgeneral wear and tear o lengthy

commutes. Most employable women

will work outside the home, so the

majority o households will have two

working members with conventional

households no longer the norm.

Younger men will have decided to

spend more time at home and to

take a more active part in caring or

their children. More people will work

as reelancers and neo-nomads,

expecting increasing autonomy and

reedom. As amilies become smaller

and more dislocated, riends (andwhat I have termed the regenerative

community) will play an increasing

role in individual happiness.

loW-caRbondevelopmenTsThe extraction and use o energy

have always ramed the way we

live and the way we work. Each

time a new, more complex energy-

consuming development takes place,

it increases the pace, fow and density

o human exchange and creates

more connectivity between people.

Our uses o energy will also rame

the way we work in the coming

decades. We can expect oil prices to risesubstantially as the developing world

uses more energy and the sources o oil

have become depleted and expensive

to extract. Carbon output will rise

steeply, particularly in China and India

with their rapidly developing urban

populations and manuacturing bases.

The world will have heated up, with

sea levels rising and climates changing.

Some governments will have introduced

a carbon tax, and the carbon ootprints

o individuals and companies will be

scrutinised and orced to reduce. Thiscould result in a rapid escalation o the

cost o moving goods across the globe

and a rapid reduction o commuting

and work-related travel. This will be

a signicant driver to virtual working

and home-based working.

While I have described these

orces separately, in reality these

ve trends will work together.

For example, the combination o

advances in technology and growing

globalisation will signicantly increase

the use o tele-presence, webinars

and other communal tools.

04 05

Five FoRces

03demogRaphicchangesThe new demography will reshape

our understanding and expectations

o work. In many ways, the coming

decades will be dened by the largest

demographic group the world has

ever seen the Baby Boomers. In

2010, they are in their 50s and 60s;

and by 2025 most will have let the

workorce, taking with them a huge

store o tacit knowledge and know-

how as well as, i some commentatorsare to be believed, much o the

wealth o the next generations.

The uture will also see

unprecedented increases in lie

expectancy. There is a strong

possibility that many o the healthy

children born in 2010 will live

more than 100 years, as will some

o those currently in their 20s.

This will undamentally bring into

question our current assumptions

about retirement, about the

employment o the over-65s andabout the provision o pensions.


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The uture will beless about generalskills and more about

in-depth mastery.

phase TWo oFThe FUTURe

The second phase o the research was launchedin October 2010 with companies rom all overthe world. You can ollow the progress on LyndaGrattons blog: www.lyndagrattonutureowork.com

You can also be part o the conversation about theuture o work by joining the communityat www.hotspotsutureowork.com

The research will ocus on

taking action around the our most

crucial themes that emerged in the

rst phase o the work:n How can executives support

the development o a talent pool

and leadership cadre which is

uture prooed?;n what are the means by which

organisations can build and support

the communities, networks and

ecosystems crucial or the uture?;n how can we create the teams and

collaborative working essential in an

increasingly virtual world?;n and what are the implications

or those who have to deliver the

uture o work in particular the

learning, organisational development

and human resource unctions?

better. In the uture, you will have to

dierentiate yoursel rom the crowd,

build depth and yet be prepared to

shit gears across the course o your

working lie. I believe that the perect

storm o the ve orces has created an

opportunity to shit rom the age o

mechanisation to the age o mastery.

In this new age, there is a possibility

or people to put their stamp on who

they are and what they choose to do.

However, this possibility carries withit the necessity to become more aware

o what is valuable and unique and to

crat credentials in a thoughtul and

energetic way. This means becoming

specialised in a variety o areas and

achieving mastery in them and building

and carrying valuable credentials

in a way rarely seen in the past.

The shift to connectivity

I believe that one o the paradoxes

o the uture will be that to succeed

one will need to stand out rom the

crowd while at the same time being

part o the crowd or, at least, the

wise crowd. So, you will need to both

stand out with your mastery and skills

and simultaneously become part o

a collection o other masters who

together create value. Otherwise you

will always be on your own, isolated

and competing with thousands o

others, with no possibility o the

leverage that the crowd brings.

In the past, success was achieved

through personal drive, ambition andcompetition. In the uture, it will be

achieved through the subtle but

high-value combination o mastery

and connectivity.

Thats because, in a uture

increasingly dened by innovation,

the capacity to combine and connect

know-how, competencies and networks

will be key. Its in this synthesis or

combination that real innovative

possibilities lie. So, whom you choose

to connect with, and to whom they

are connected, will be one o thedening aspects o uture working lie.

High-value networks will consist o a

combination o strong relationships

with a ew knowledgeable people

(what I call the Posse) and a larger

number o less-connected relationships

with a more extensive network (what

I call the Big Ideas Crowd). Your

high-value networks will connectyou with people who are similarly

specialised as well as those with very

dierent competencies and outlooks.

It is in the diversity o these broader

networks, the Big Ideas Crowd, that

the possibility o innovation lays.

The shift to quality of experiences

Finally, having conronted the paradox

o both being individually masterul

and yet joined with others, I believe

that there is an even more complex

shit. You, your riends and children

will need to think very hard about whatsort o working lie you want. Simply

opting or a high standard o living

is not going to do it. Why? Because

in the uture, quality o experiences

will trump quantity o consumptionevery time and words like happinessand regeneration will become the

touchstone o uture working lives.

The 19th-century industrialisation

o the Western world heralded the

move to cities and the breaking down

o traditional communities. In its

place came the nuclear amily, otenuprooted as ather moved to seek

work. So while the standard o living

throughout the developed countries

rose, oten the quality o lie hardly

shited. People may have been able

to enter the consumer society andconsume at quantity, but this did

not necessarily bring them quality

o experiences such as happiness

or contentment.

I believe there is an opportunity

over the coming decades to shape

work and lie in a manner thatenables people to reconnect with

what makes them happy and creates

a high quality o experience. The

breakdown o automated work, the

rise o home-based working and the

increase in the possibility o choiceprovide the oundation or a shit in

ocus away rom quantity consumed

as the only measure o success.

Challenges and opportunities

The uture workplace will create both

challenges and opportunities. Grasping

these opportunities will be crucial.

Some o these changes are inevitable

(or example, fexible working), so the

ocus is on making them work as soon

as possible. Other actions will be tricky

and will require the creation o new

practices in the way that companies are

building competencies around virtual

team working.

Perhaps those responses needing

the greatest ocus are those I call

the contested aspects o the uture,

workplace processes and procedures

that have not been ully tested, such

as the need or more democratic

processes and a ocus on experiences

rather than on standard o living. Such

new ways o working are going to

demand a level o trial and error in the

workplace that will prove challenging

to workers and managers alike. Yet, intomorrows brave new world o work, a

healthy dose o courage and optimism

will go a long way.


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01TRanspaRenTand aUThenTic

leadeRshipIn a uture world o transparencyand connectivity, leaders willbe looked upon to work in acollaborative manner. We canexpect their behaviours andactions to be closely scrutinised,so their authenticity will be key. Atthe same time, globalisation willcreate the need or more complexnetworks and or leaders to takethe initiative in engaging withglobal problems and challenges.

Leaders will increasingly becalled upon to be members

o a team, most o which will

02high-peRFoRmingviRTUal TeamsIncreasingly, work is perormedacross businesses, unctions andorganisations. As a consequenceo this cross-border working,teams oten work virtually,actually seeing each other onlyoccasionally. Our own work onthese teams shows that manyail as they become overwhelmedby the sheer complexity o theirtask. So its no surprise that theexecutives in our consortiumranked the capacity to manageand lead high-perorming virtualteams as crucial or the uture.

At SAP, working virtually insideand outside the company hasbecome the norm and hasbeen shown to create widernetworks and allow a morefexible working style. Executivesare using complex dialogueand decision-making tools andsocial-networking tools. At BT,virtual team working has beenenhanced with Telepresence,next generation high-denition

The impacT onorganisaTions

The uture o work will change not just or individuals butalso or the organisations o which they are members. Tounderstand the breadth and extent o these changes, werst identied the 20 areas we believe to be important orthe uture and then asked executives in the consortiumcompanies to rate those they believed to be most

critical or the uture. We also investigated where utureprooed examples existed areas in which memberso the consortium had already developed practices andprocesses that can provide insight and inspiration.

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lynda gRaTTon invesTigaTes:The FUTURe oF WoRK

consist o a diverse groupo people, which will put anemphasis on their skills oinclusion. ThoughtWorks, abespoke sotware developmentcompany, has developed a set

o organisational tools: pairingdecision makers, holdingdemocratic elections or specicteams and setting up virtualnetworks. The philosophy behindthe practice is that leadershipis shared to improve decisionmaking and create balance.Pairing happens at all levels,rom the highest leadership level,to developers writing or testingsotware, to mentoring. Leadersare encouraged to be democraticand authentic through theprocess o election, in whichgroups are nominated and voted

or by their peers.

video conerencing. BT has 60studios around the world thatbring people together in multiplelocations. At Save the Children,the executive team is pioneering

new ways to build a collaborativeapproach across virtual teamsbrought together or emergenciesand development work. Theexecutive team believes that thisis a trend that will acceleratein the uture both in terms owhom they work with and howcollaborative work is perormed.Other companies are ocusingon how the competencies withinteams can be understoodand developed. At TataConsulting Services (TCS), acompetency development and

training tool (iCALMS) holds amaster dictionary o all rolesin TCS, with a descriptiono the accountabilities andcompetencies. This creates animportant global base rom whichto identiy the best candidate ora role as well as any knowledgegaps that training modulescan rapidly ll. It also creates astrong oundation or ongoinglearning to take place.

,,,,


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03valUable cRoss-bUsiness neTWoRKsand RelaTionshipsIncreasingly, the value o theorganisation will be held in itssocial capital, that is, the valueo the networks and relationshipsheld within businesses, acrossbusinesses and into the widercommunity and ecosystems.Building relationships acrossbusinesses will becomeincreasingly important in theuture as the driver o innovationwill require businesses to combineassets and resources in ever moreunusual and creative ways.

We saw a number o examples ohow organisations are breakingdown the barriers between

unctions and businesses andcreating relationships acrossthe company. At Nokia, orexample, the process o strategydevelopment has been opened

to many employees in order todevelop and gain commitmentto implementing the strategy.At Shell, the scenario planningprocess, with the recentrelease o the 2050 scenarios,creates a level o conversationand depth o knowledge thathas become crucial to therms long-term planning.

At the Danish pharmaceuticalcompany Novo Nordisk,social media plays a crucialrole in internal and externalcommunication. The key tools,

NovoTube, Novopedia andNovoIdeas, are designed toimprove collaboration andacilitate knowledge sharing.

Social media has also played akey role at SAP, where a serieso tools has been developed orbusiness networking, businessprocesses and business

decisions. These have enabledmore complex dialogue anddecision making than originalsocial networking tools.

Building valuable networks iscrucial to Nokia, where executiveslaunched a programme calledBooster in 2008 to encouragecross-unctional and cross-hierarchical working and toraise the capacity to acquireand use external resources. Theprogramme covered all 5,000employees o the business unitand started with a two-day ace-

to-ace workshop with 700 teamleaders, ollowed by involvemento the whole community throughonline social networking.

04valUableRelaTionshipsWiTh paRTneRs,consUmeRs andenTRepReneURsNetworks are not simply thosethat arise within the business.Increasingly, value will becreated through the relationshipsheld with those outside, bethey partners, consumers orentrepreneurial businesses. AtThomson Reuters, or example,strong networks with independentpeople across the world havebeen crucial to their success. Formany years, a network o highlyfexible independent journalists,called stringers, have workedon an ad hoc basis in order toensure that news around theworld is covered at minimum cost.Some work on a retainer, othersare hired or ad hoc projects. Thesystem has existed or decades

and works through strong trustedrelationships and reciprocalbenets. For Thomson Reuters,

the system provides global reach,fexibility, speed and tight controlover costs; the stringer gainsvaluable journalistic experience,increased international visibility,higher pay, the chance o ull-time employment, and careerdevelopment through working witha range o companies. Stringersare allowed to work or other newsnetworks as well as local media.

ARM, the world leader insemiconductor intellectual

property, is pioneering aninnovative organisational model an ecosystem intendedto capture the needs o endconsumers (thus providingmore targeted products) whilemaintaining a high degreeo specialisation. ARM is atthe centre o a coalition ocompanies, all using the sameunderlying technology. Thiscreates a wide range o productsrom which to select, so a mobilephone manuacturer can usethe ARM ecosystem to compare

across a range o chips producedby dierent companies, all usingARM research and development.

05Flexible WoRKingThe capacity to work fexibly wasseen by our consortium membersas key to the uture. This fexibility

is a growing competence orcompanies such as BT with itsFollow the Sun Project designedto hook up the UK and Caliorniain a continuous 24-hour operation.The project involved new workschedules and a twice-dailytransatlantic handover that hasbrought high levels o continuityand customer satisaction.

LYNDA [email protected]

Gratton is Proessor oManagement Practice atLondon Business School.

She is the author o a serieso bestselling books includingHot Spots, Glowand

Living Strategy.

oveRvieW

At Thomson Reuters, fexibleworking practices arewidespread, with employeesencouraged to work romhome whenever possible. Sucharrangements cover homeworking, part-time working,

job sharing and fexi hours.These help to meet the personalneeds o sta as well as thedemands o a company workingacross many time zones. Flexibleworking creates challenges orperormance management, andat Tata Consulting Services, anew system has been created toaccommodate workorce needs.

FOR MORE ONLYNDA GRATTONSEE PAGE 74


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LBS Predicting the Future of Work

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