Creating the Workplace of the Future

World@Work

June 18, 2001

Overview

• Who I am

• Objectives

• Approach

• Desired outcomes

Objectives

• Stimulate and provoke thought

• Destroy any remaining illusions about “going back to normal”

• Introduce three overarching principles for the new world of work

• Explore approaches based on these principles

• “Check out” the principles in action - understand why and how they will become primary tools

Agenda

• Introduction & Basic Assumptions– Theory Burst, 5 Key Drivers

• Tapping the Collective Wisdom - What Do You Think

• Decoding the Future – What Does This Mean To You?

Desired Outcomes

• Deliver some core messages:– An unpredictable future– Rapidly increasing complexity– No one-stop solutions; customization is the

key– Principles work, prescriptions don’t

• Clarify the challenges ahead

The Changing Nature of Change

“In the past, change was a periodic event in organizations, and now…

organization is a periodic event.”

Student in eMBA class

5 Key Drivers of Ongoing Change

• Demographics

• Service/Stakeholder Expectations

• Values

• Technology

• Pace of Change

Demographics Change• Obvious Issues

– Baby Boomers still in place & in charge– Aging workforce, looming retirements– Shortages and increased competition for people (the war for

talent)– “Lag” effects of plateauing– Increasing workforce diversity

• Less Obvious Issues– Changed & changing nature of work– Emergence of generation D (for digital)– It takes a long time for change to happen quickly– Values shift ??

Service/Stakeholder Expectations Increase

• “I’m the customer, “dammit” !!!

• “Raising the Bar” – cumulative effect of TQM/drive for excellence, global competition, trade liberalization, increased mobility, and so on)

• More people, diverse needs, do more with less

• Informed and demanding customers

• Accountability issues

• Social/environmental awareness and responsibility

Values Shift• Multiple sources and symptoms of massive values shift

• Amongst others:

– Increasingly strident demands for: flexibility, personal freedom and choice, involvement, consultation

– Changing social fabric: blended families, same-sex marriages and rights, “singlehood”, ethnic/cultural diversity

– A fundamental “New Deal” at work

– Cumulative effect - 30 years of McLuhan, Warhol, the Beatles, the birth-control pill, the Vietnam War, cheap travel around the world

Technology Evolves

• PC’s to LAN’s to WAN’s to Internet

• Internet, Intranet, Extranet, Metanet, social nets, etc.net

• Remote devices, handhelds, wireless

• Biotechnology

• Artificial Intelligence

• New materials

• Synthesis of intelligence and materials – new characteristics

Pace of Change

• Accelerates

• Creates complexity

• Enhances uncertainty

• Increases in intensity

• Cycles more frequent

• Sharper, harder impacts

Change Ain’t What It Used To Be

From:• Discrete events

• Time to adjust & absorb

• Relatively predictable outcomes

• Sense of the future as a continuation of the present (orderly)

To:• Continuous process

• Adjust “on the fly”

• Almost impossible to predict outcomes

• The future as highly complex and uncertain (chaotic)

What Do You Think?

“Everybody Knows”

A Systems Approach

What I Think It Means – The Principles

1. Increasing Complexity & Uncertainty 2. Mass Customization of Work3. Wirearchy

Or … What’s Happening Because of All That Change We Just Looked At ?

Increasing Complexity and Uncertainty = Turbulence

Turbulent Environments

• Uncertainty• Complexity• Unintended

consequences• Unexpected changes

Active Adaptation Principles

• Flexibility• Innovation/creativity• Social responsibility• Participation and

collaboration

Weisbord 1993

Mass Customization of Work

• Mass Customization

– Adapting to custom specifications products, services or activities that are used or carried out by large numbers of people

– A necessary response to environment & changing conditions (values, demographics, technology, expectations)

• Concept popularized by Pine & Gilmour and Stan Davis

Mass Customization of Work“from the outside-in”

The “Job”

20 yrs. of “diversity”Social Values

LegislationLifestyles

DemographicsEducation

Mass Customization of Work“from the inside-out”

The Person My “style” of

working

The other things I want to do

The other things I need to do

Who I

really am

Long-

term

goals

My short-term goals

The choices available to meMy rights

Mass Customization of Work

• Two basic types of work

– Work that completes a step in a process, or– Work that involves/completes a transaction(will be standardized and/or codified, throughout the 1st World)

– Work that synthesizes, or – Work that generates ideas, additional knowledge(involves proactive, transformative skills such as thinking, writing,

imagining, and communication

Mass Customization of Work

In the 2nd type, pressure for performance has led to people insisting on “personalizing” the work - doing it their way

This is a broad underlying - and enduring - trend

The pressures, and the overall trend, are only likely to increase in scope and intensity

Wirearchy

• “Archy” – Greek root meaning “First Principle”

• Other types of “archy”:• Monarchy (single owner/source of power)

• Hierarchy (vertical ascending power)

• Anarchy (no central source of power, random distribution)

• Patriarchy (Governed by father archetype)

• Matriarchy (Governed by mother archetype)

• Oligarchy (rule of the powerful few)

• Archy - the source of organization, the rules, the “first principle”

Wirearchy

• Today, “archy” refers to responsibility for or sources of power such as:

– Vision and Values

– Chain of decision-making command

– Ability to mobilize

– Seniority

In the Industrial Age, Hierarchy is / was the rule

Wirearchy

• Now, It’s an Information/Knowledge Age

– A new set of conditions

– New (emerging) interactional dynamics between people and organizations, based on interrelationships in networks

– “If Knowledge is Power, then…”

– Knowledge is distributed in both diffuse & precise ways, thus it requires context

Wirearchy

Software – smarter &

smarter

Internet – Interconnectivity everywhere – more & more, cheaper & cheaper

Everyone connected to everyone else – multiple cyber-citizenships:

With corporate chieftains

With customers

With colleagues

With competitors

Hierarchy is a prosthesis for Trust

(Wirearchy) is a rich, mysterious “Okefenokee” of every-which-way communications

Warren Bennis, Fortune

W

Wirearchy

• Business strategy is the core and the centrifugal force

• Information and knowledge are bundled and strung together in meaningful ways in order to synthesize/generate value…

• Decision-making & control, stretched out along the value-chain, creates centripetal force

Wirearchy

• Many responses to the ways “work” has been structured and managed, e.g.

– Employee Portals

– Team and Project-based work

– Emotional Intelligence

– Coaching

– Integrated “Smartware” tools

– And so on….

Wirearchy

A Polarity: Very hi-tech, very hi-touch

“Wirearchy” – or interaction supported by technology & based on trust, meaning and

credibility - rather than on traditional methods of direction and control

• Represents a significant change in human interactions

• Observable emerging in new social dynamics of work - otherwise called collaboration

From Hierarchy to Wirearchy

Power & Control based on:

– Size – Stability – Functional specialization– Position & role clarity– Status– Prescribed authority

Power & Control based on:

– Speed– Flexibility– Innovation– Integration– Expertise & knowledge– Intuitive authority

Why You’ll Need to Understand Mass Customization & Wirearchy

“… even now, organization is a periodic event….”

“In the future….

“You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet !”

Alvin & Heidi Toffler

The 90s Are Gone - Get Over It

• We cannot afford to keep thinking of technology as just a tool for us to use

• Each new medium has been additive - Print, electronic, multimedia

- Communication theories stayed the same

• Technology is not a new medium - It’s a new age, a new paradigm

- Agrarian --> Industrial --> Information

- Communication theories must change

The Web:From Novelty to Fad to Essential Tool

• Five years of explosive growth & change

• Just the beginning….

• Integration into every organization & activity

• Not about “web-sites” (or the web) anymore

• Transforming entire sectors

• Requires new thinking, new structures

The Web - A Symbol of the Age

• Interaction among workers replaces command and control from managers

• Direction from the top gives way to collaborative teams for innovation

• The “chain of command” will be a web of peers and customers

• Executives and communicators will fail if they ignore what it means to live and work in a web environment ... life just not the same

What the “Near” Future Holds

• More (many more) people on-line

• Faster connections

• More convergence

• More smart tools

• More interwoven interconnectedness

• More computer-savvy people

• More competitive pressures

And…”So What…..?”

Really “getting it” means understanding that we are moving from organizing by Hierarchy ... to organizing by Wirearchy

“A dynamic flow of power, authority and decision-making authority based on trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people, information and knowledge”

Don TapscottCyber-Dad

• “For the first time in human history, children are an authority on the big revolution that is changing every institution in society”

• “We are at the dawn of an Age of Networked Intelligence - an age that is giving birth to a new economy, a new politics, and a new society”

Design Principles – Creating the Workplace of the Future

• Focus on a preferred future

• Empowerment, participation & inclusion

• Create common strategic information

• Create community (mutual awareness, ownership, interest in success)

• Seek common ground (shared vision & values)

• Make things happen in “Real Time” (speed)