Lynda Gratton - The Future of Work

When Generations Fight

I have a fascinating insight into the future of work through the 45 corporations across the world we are studying as part of the Future of Work Research Consortium. Last month we asked 2,500 executives from these companies to rate the areas they believed would  be critical for the future, together with the extent to which they believed their company was currently competent. We gave them a list of 20 areas that an earlier study had shown would be important for the future. This list included for example ecosystems, open innovation, flexible working and networked leaders.

What was extraordinary is that almost a quarter rated ‘intergenerational cohesion’ as the most significant risk their company faced, and many more rated it as one of the top three risks. This was not an isolated area of risk, but rather was seen to be a risk by executives in both West and Asia companies, and indeed across all industrial sectors. Their concern was that the potential differences and conflicts between the generations could lead to poor cooperation and knowledge sharing, but might also flare into more open sources of conflict and dissatisfaction.

Five Unique Generations at Work. 

The potential opportunities and conflicts that are arising between generations are a recent phenomena and are a factor of both demographic changes (particularly around reducing birthrates and enhanced longevity) and accelerating technological and societal trends (particularly around the use of social media and family experiences). Over the next two decades, many companies will have potentially five distinct generations in the workforce: The Traditionalists (born around 1928 to 1945); the Baby Boomers (born around 1945 to 1964); Generation X (born around 1965 to 1979); Gen Y (born around 1980 to 1995); and Gen Z (born after 1995).

Generations fight for a number of reason. They don’t understand each other, they have differential access to resources and power, their working style and use of technology is in conflict, or they are not really sharing knowledge and experience with each other.

Of course generational conflict could also be great – really create innovation, remove some old style thinking, bring creative tension. However, if companies are to move to creative rather than destructive tension, it seems to me they have to ask themselves three key questions:

1. Does technology favour one generation? The generations communicate with each other differently and one potential source of tension is that corporate communication typically favours the Baby Boomers’ preferred mode of communication rather than the younger generations. Typically, Gen Z and Y use social media such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Ning to access information instantly, to multi-task, and to build valuable networks and stay connected; typically Gen X use portals; whilst Baby Boomers are most comfortable with e-mail as their primary technological communication tool. Yet many companies have banned Facebook and social media, which is the lifeblood for the youngest generations and by doing so have inadvertently favoured one generation over another.  

2. Has flexibility become embedded? Each generation would value greater flexibility. Gen Y would like greater work/life balance in jobs that can be overwhelming; younger Gen X’s would like maternity and paternity leave and time off to spend with their young children, the possibilities of sabbaticals, and to temporarily step away from frontline into less demanding roles, and older Gen X’s can find themselves with ageing parents who need care; whilst Baby Boomers would like sabbatical breaks and the opportunities to work more flexibly nearer the time of their retirement through part-time and reduced hours. What is clear is that the inflexibility of work will create ever greater conflict across the generations as those that need it most (typically Gen X) are denied it. There are many reasons why the rhetoric of organizational flexibility has rarely been delivered in practice: a focus on being present rather than making results, few if any senior role models prepared to work flexibly, and under- designed and over complicated jobs. But if generations are to work together, flexibility has to be a reality.

3. Is cross-generational mentoring taking place?  There are important exchanges to be made between generations; Gen Y in particular are keen to build strong functional skills and industry knowledge and insights that those more experienced can help develop and yearn for feedback; whilst Baby Boomers want to develop their expertise in the use of social media and newly developed technology. These can be crucial issues as Baby Boomer retire taking with them valuable knowledge, insights and connections. However, too often mentoring does not take place because executives are too busy, too stressed and feel overwhelmed and under skilled. Yet the generations have so much to teach each other if only the time and resources could be focused on this.

It seems to me that the creative tensions between the generations can be a real source of innovation and excitement. Have you experienced tensions between generations – and what do you think can be done to ensure these tensions are creative rather than destructive?

 

 

 

Looking to the developing countries for the next CEO

Who will lead our organizations in the future? As the trajectory of the five shifts which will shape our work is becoming clearer – so too are the competencies that will sit at the heart of leadership effectiveness.

Those engaged in our Future of Work consortium believe that leading in the future will require two core competencies: the capacity to tolerate the ambiguity that many will face in this fast changing world; and intercultural sensitivity as the joining up of the world brings greater numbers of nationalities into the frame.

Both are fiendishly difficult to develop since they go way beyond the theoretical framing of much executive development. There may indeed be models and theories of tolerance of ambiguity and cultural sensitivity – but simply knowing these will not get budding CEOs very far. These competencies are not built through theory or classroom lessons – they are both fundamentally experience-based competencies. You have to experience it to learn it – and whilst role-playing and exercises have their place – the real developmental leap comes when you have to deal with these in your every day life. It’s way nigh impossible to become tolerant of ambiguity if your life has been structured and predictable, and it’s hard to become interculturally sensitive if you have only grown up with people just like you. I wonder to what extent structure, predictability and homogeneity is the day-to-day experience of many of the young adults growing up in the developing economies, and to what extent this narrowness of experience will potentially stunt their potential as future executives?

I was reminded of the puzzle of developing executives for the future as I sat with a senior team of Infosys last week in their campus in Bangalore. It began to dawn on me that becoming a leader in developing countries like India is essentially a daily lesson in the tolerance of ambiguity. In Mumbai, the choking traffic makes concepts of punctuality almost impossible; the power cuts in many Indian cities mean that it’s tough to plan with precision; whilst the growing chasm between the rich and the poor forces every executive to confront the ambiguity of the distribution of riches. Under these circumstances ambiguity is rife, and tolerance the most adapted response.

Often in these developing countries these every day situations are not black and white. I remember last year in Mumbai stepping out from one of the wealthy family apartments that are springing up across the city, to find myself confronted by a child no more than three years old sleeping on the pavement in front of me. Like all those around me I picked up my foot and carefully stepped over him. That is ambiguity with a capital A..  Whether of course one can tolerate it is another question. But the fact remains that these developing economies are awash with ambiguity and it seems to me that the daily experience of these ambiguities may go a long way to developing the depth of experience and understanding and the capacity to consider paradoxes that will be crucial for future leaders.

And it’s not just tolerance of ambiguity that developing countries like India may have a lead on. It’s also cultural sensitivity. As we toured the campus of Infosys, our guide told us that the canteen serves over 40 different types of Indian food. Those from Maharashtra for example will not eat fish or meat, the Jains will not eat anything that has been dug from the ground and could have a living insect on it – so potatoes, garlic and onions are out – the list is endless. Each region of India has its own language, own food, and own customs, even its own preferred deity. There is no one homogenous culture that envelops them all. So when young people join Infosys or Wipro or TCS from across the subcontinent they are put with people who may look superficially like them, but in reality are very different – and it is in working with these differences that cultural sensitivity emerges.

What this suggests, is that as we look for the talent pools where future CEOs may be developing, we would be wise to look to the developing countries. It is in these places that life’s daily experiences of ambiguity and diversity may well be creating the crucibles of experience from which the next generation of CEOs will emerge.

 

 

 

 

The Irrelevance of Middle Management?

 

My HBR article on the End of Middle Management this month continues to bring in a postbag of interesting views. Here is Noah Barsky and 

Anthony Catanach from Villanova School of Business in Pennsylvania, USA. Their interest is particularly in the impact that technology itself has on the management of projects and the redefinition of the role of routine management.  

In their view, to become “future-proofed” managers must first commit to a mindset that recognizes the subtle, but important, difference between data and information. Data are exponentially abundant and often available at little or no cost. Followers of my blog will recall my observation of my youngest son’s creation of an essay about bird flu from Wikipedia with very little by way of understanding of the actual phenomena (hey, I’m not being harsh on him – the kid is only 16!)  The ever-advancing developments in technology are designed to manage these data. Their view is that there is a strong message to managers when instantaneous, complete, customized analyses are downloadable at little or no cost from the Internet or company databases. In this case the market assigns a value of zero to such data. However, whilst the market assigns a value of zero to Internet based analyses, information commands a price premium, as most managers readily recognize this as the key ingredient in successful decision-making.

The defining element that distinguishes simple data from information is the timeless human component - insight. Insight is human intervention: the integration of a person’s analytical abilities, technical competency, experience, and intuition that interprets and transforms data into something far more valuable: information.

Downsizings and restructurings provide strong evidence that data-oriented and routine task management jobs continue to be replaced by technology. However, the market needs managers that can make something of the abundant data warehoused and processed by technology; who can create information to guide decision-making. They finish their letter with this… ‘Professor Gratton could not be more correct - managers who simply create or process data face a terrible fate: irrelevance.’

So – to ensure that you do not face the end of management you need both the soft skills of coaching and mentoring, and the hard skills of being able to convert data to information through the knowledge and insight you bring.

What else do you think will save managers from irrelevance in the future?

 

Did Management really end?

I wrote a column for the Harvard Business Review this month in which I argued that middle management as a role is rapidly disappearing. Readers of my blog will have seen some aspects of my ideas played out over the last year. The technology revolution has indeed brought us a lot—dramatic improvement in what we know about customers and how we interact with them, markedly better information to make decisions, the ability to work through virtual teams scattered around the globe. But its unseen legacy might be something much more fundamental: It has changed the very nature of how people work. One consequence seems clear. The classic job of the middle manager will soon disappear.

 Here are the four reasons why I think the disappearance is on the cards: 

• Technology has become the great general manager. It can monitor performance closely, provide instant feedback, even create reports and presentations. When technology can play much of the role of the manager – why have one?

• Skilled team members are increasingly self-managed. That’s not to say they need a team leader – but this is likely to be taken from a member of the team who is highly skilled and it could well be a rotating role. So when teams can manage themselves – what can a general manager add? 

• Attitudes toward management have also changed. As my research makes clear, Gen Y workers see no value in reporting to someone who simply keeps track of what they do, when much of that can be done by themselves, their peers, or a machine. What they do value is mentoring and coaching from someone they respect. Someone, in other words, who is a master—not a general manager.

• It was possible in the past to manage ‘intuitively’ and for good management skills to come as part of the whole ‘decent person’ angle. Now management is fiendishly difficult – particularly if people are located virtually across the globe. These situations take extreme specialist skills to lead.

That leaves people with general management skills in a very vulnerable position. Their value has often come from networks and abilities built up in one company, but as time with a single company decreases, such value looks increasingly non-transferrable. Plus, thanks to the Internet and search engines, everyone now knows or can know about everything. There is little competitive advantage in being a jack-of-all-trades when your main competitor might be Wikipedia.

The argument has created a rather lively response. Some picked up on the point that the role of the manager is to coach and mentor. But I don’t think it is simply to coach and mentor. In a world of deeper and more specialist skills the management role is nearer to the medieval ‘master’ role of skill development. To carve a management role over the next two decades will require two crucial investments.

First, to acquire and build knowledge or competencies that are valuable and rare—what I would call your “signature.” Without it you will become invisible, no longer propped up by the trappings of managerial life. Then to develop new areas of proficiency, or move into adjacencies, throughout your working life to keep your management skills fresh.

To paraphrase from my colleague Professor Rob Goffee – ‘why would anyone want to be managed by you?’

 

 

Are the kids all right?

I bumped into a girlfriend this week on the flight back to London after a New York meeting. Immediately she began to tell me about her 26-year-old son’s work hours. That week he had not made it home until after 1.00am in the morning and was needed in the office by 7.00am. She was proud of the salary he is earning, but also aghast at the pressure he is under.

I’ve been pondering on her words because I had been in New York to meet up with a team from the University of Southern California to talk about what we really know about the current aspirations and experiences of Gen Y. What we do know is that they are in a tough place. Some don’t have work – and many of those who do, particularly those working in investment banking, law or management consulting - are working ‘like slaves’ (that’s the phrase my normally hard-headed business women friend used of her son).

They are having a miserable time. Over promised, over worked – it’s a generation who don’t trust their leaders or big business, and who have seen wage differentials soar in the last decade. It’s no surprise that my girlfriend’s son says he will leave his company in one more year – and he is not alone. In companies around the world, turnover rates for talented Gen Y are running between 15% to 20%.

Why is this happening? It seems to me that the kids are not all right. Without really realizing it, we (that’s the Gen X and Baby Boomers of this world) are failing to look after the kids at the very time in their working lives when they need support and counsel. It seems to me that there are four ways we have failed them.

The first failure is a direct result of the joined-up global world that they are living and working in.  This hyper connectivity means that there is always a client, a project, or a task that has to be finished. When your clients work around the world – there is always one time-zone that buzzing. We have left them at the mercy of extraordinary pressures. There are no boundaries, nothing that protects them from constant work. We’ve failed them because we have not protected them from the demands of a hyper connected world.

The second failure is a result of income disparity. When I was working in my mid 20’s back in 1980, the average CEO in America earned 42 times more than the average worker. For many of the current Gen Y, the figure has increased twelve-fold to 531 times. That creates big problems because it sets out a ‘carrot’ that for most is unattainable if not downright unattractive.  It’s also confusing when few Gen Y’s are swallowing the ‘deferred gratification’ creed - work hard now for riches in some indefinable time in the future. It also sways the whole work deal from working because it is interesting and potentially meaningful, to a deal that has at its centre greed and acquisition. When the whole deal is ‘work here and you could be as rich as I’ – the other parts of the work that could be fulfilling and motivating somehow seem less attractive.

We are also failing them because we have obstinately refused to dismantle the traditional vertical, hierarchical structures that some of us designed, and others inherited. Its been over a decade since we realized that uniform pay systems, constant office based work and inflexible working practices are toxic to a generation raised on more flexible ways of being. Yet despite the toxicity, we have simply changed around the margins rather than completely ‘blowing it up’ and designing companies in a more flexible and agile way.

And we have failed them because we have marginalised, discredited and been mean-minded about Gen Y’s use of technology and social media. One of the most frustrating aspects of being a Gen Y in the employment of most businesses is the inability to bring to the office all the ways of being that are common place in their private lives. The way they link up with ease, or rapidly update each other on progress, or get members of their ‘posse’ to help them out, or use the whole world as a resource when it comes to getting things done.

Of course the truly awful aspect is that we have created socialisation processes within companies that are so pervasive and deeply embedded– that within two years these bright eyed Gen Y’s are harassed, sleep deprived and depleted of energy.

My advice to my girlfriend’s son? – run away as fast as you can. What would be your advice? 

 

Taming the Technology

Our Future of Work consortium is proving to be a delight. It’s really gained momentum, we have almost 170 topics (or threads in the open source jargon) under discussion with 200 people from 30 countries. So I guess we can really say this is a world-wide conversation.

We are holding a virtual conference on Monday morning so I’ve been looking closely at what we have all been talking about. More than 40% of the threads are about how technology will change the way we work. Sometimes the threads are really positive – it will be great to work more from home, or on a mountain, or at the beach. We anticipate holograms that take us around the world with no carbon footprint. Or full- scale video conferencing which allows a bunch of people to meet without leaving their breakfast tables.

So I guess collectively we are pretty chipper about technology. But behind these rather upbeat feelings there lurks a dark shadow. OK, we love technology, but we don’t like everything we imagine. Here are some aspects of the future, which seem to keep us collectively awake at night:

Isolation: We work from home and never leave the breakfast table – but is there anyone else around? With more people living on their own in urban sprawls, the spectre of isolation is never far away. And with isolation comes loneliness. Will technology leave us lonely and isolated – rarely seeing those we work with or care about?

Fragmentation: A couple of weeks ago I started to work with three pieces of technology in front of me (OK, I admit I’m writing this in bed on a tiny laptop – but it is Saturday morning). I write on an old but trusted Dell, I have a big expensive Mac open so I can look at attachments, and my i Phone because I love the way I can breeze through e-mails with it. I mentioned this to Marzia (who does our amazing graphics) and she looked at me blankly – ‘of course’. So I am not the only one with a fragmented life. About five years ago a group of psychologists followed managers around and watched how long they worked uninterrupted. What do you imagine they found – 10 minutes perhaps – or maybe 5 minutes of uninterrupted work? No – the average was 3 minutes; and the really spooky part is that even if they are not interrupted in 3 minutes they interrupt themselves (that’s where the three machines come in). Will technology fragment our world into one minute chunks?

Addiction:  I remember a few years ago one of my most glamorous friends – who also happens to be an eminent professor – telling me that every time her blackberry sounds an incoming email she gets a visceral response. Her mouth starts to water. Well, she and I know enough about psychology to trace that straight back to Pavlov’s dogs. She’d become addicted to the constant bling of the blackberry – I guess it’s not called a ‘crack berry’ for nothing. Will we become ever more addicted to being constantly connected?

I’d been mulling this over when I read a really interesting article in the newly launched UK version of Wired magazine. In it Kevin Kelly – US WIRED’s ‘senior maverick’ has concluded that technology is an unruly child ‘There’s no bad children, just bad friends. So it’s about training the technology, rearing it as if it were children’.

You can see his video on www.tedxamsterdam.nl or visit him at his web-site www.kk.org  ‘Technology’s a complex adaptive system that’s more like an organism than a gadget, and it has its own agenda’ he says ‘The technium – this system – can deliver tremendous benefits to us, but the downside is that it’s selfish. So that we have to discover what it wants to best maximise its benefits to us.- every new discovery in technology challenges our notion of what it is to be human and constantly shifts our identities –so we interact with it by evaluating it through action and then constant monitoring’

Hum – well not sure how to evaluate it – and he tells us nothing about how to train this unruly child. But being the mother of a couple of unruly children I have no problems starting the conversation about how we could treat technology as if it were a smart but unruly two year old.

Remember that you are in control; they are the child – you are the parent.

Set them clear parameters about what is expected of them – and stick with them.

Let them blossom and grow – but don’t let them destroy your own peace of mind or compromise your own preferred way of living.

Create a small set of rules about what is absolutely unacceptable, and stick with it.

Watch them carefully and monitor how it’s going.

Be prepared to create sanctions for misdemeanours.

So with this in mind I’ve put the old Dell, the smart Mac (which the kids insisted I buy) and my trusted iPhone on the naughty step. I wonder how long they will stay there?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thriving in the Future: the shift from the generalist to the master specialist

As the research consortium on the future of work continues at a wonderful pace, we are beginning to move from the five themes , which will impact on the future, to what this means if we and our families and friends are to thrive in the future.

The age of mechanisation, which we are about to leave, had as its central metaphor the wheel and the cog. The wheel was the steady and unflinching manufacturing of goods and services. The cogs of the wheels are those people engaged in this process of manufacturing. As the world of work became mechanised, so too the process of manufacturing was broken down and divided into its smallest possible pieces and tasks, which could then be carried out by people with limited skills and to all intents and purposes acting as automotives. What was required in these bureaucratic hierarchies, was hours of labour – not innovation, not creativity and certainly not the ‘whole person’. Personality, aspirations, hopes were to be left at the door of the departing home.

The five future trends work together to provide a unique opportunity to shift from the age of mechanisation to the age of craft. In this new age, people can put their stamp on their work with regard to who they are and what they choose to do. This has immense benefits as it enables each one of us to become more authentically ourselves. However, it carries with it the necessity to become more aware of what it is that is unique about us and to craft credentials in a thoughtful and energetic way.

 The need to become a master of something and have some specialisation is crucial to the age we are entering. It could be a specific skill or competency; it could be a breadth of knowledge and insight; it could be particularly valuable networks and connections. The actual specialisation or mastery is not the point – the point is that to thrive in the future you have to have something.

Of course developing deep mastery and specialisation is important – but you will also have to demonstrate this to others. In other words, your credentials will have to be prominently on display. Professionals such as doctors and lawyers have historically relied on professional bodies to calibrate and label and display their credentials. A complex system of examinations, references and mentoring ensured that every medical professional had a set of credentials which they carry with them and which demonstrated their value and specialisation at any point in time.

Similarly, companies have often played the same credential role. I recall that the first job title I had, when as a novice psychologist I joined British Airways, was ‘Selection Methods Officer’ on Grade 9. This positioned me with great accuracy in the hierarchy. There was a Senior Selection Methods Officer to whom I reported, whilst my grade signalled I was not yet a manager. If the job title did not provide sufficient measure of my credential, then the size of my office (small and shared) and the power of my car (I did not have one) signalled just how far down the pecking order I stood. Hierarchies and bureaucracies are marvellous places for creating clear credentials – just as professional bodies historically have.

However, as companies become flatter and more project based and as work becomes more specialized, so too there will be a need for talented people to create their own verified credentials, which rapidly and accurately portray who they are and what they can do. This process of verification will place a premium on feedback and self authoring. Here are some ways to think about this:

    * Think about creating the new ‘craft communities’, which like the old professional bodies act as repositories of member’s credentials.

    * Work steadily and actively to build your personal credentials or brand using all the emerging social media technologies.

    * Be sure that every project or task you complete has a means of verification so that your performance can become part of the credential package. This means you will have to have transparent and shared performance ratings.

Not sure how this will work? Well, be inspired by the thousands of physicists working on the CERN project in Switzerland. They engage in a collective task and yet are able to verify their individual contribution by putting each of their names on any of the outcomes of their joint work. Or think about how the programmers who use O Desk post their performance ratings, so that potential buyers of their work can assess their competence.

 Stepping back, ask yourself these three questions about your current work:

  * If I left tomorrow what could I take with me that demonstrated to others what I have achieved?

  * How do people doing my sort of work show the skills they have learnt – particularly to others who are outside of this type of work?

  * How successfully have I been able to create an accurate measure of what I have done and how others have measured the value of my contribution?

 My guess is that this will be an interesting exercise for you – do tell me what you found out.

Letter from Singapore

As I leave Singapore this weekend I thought I’d share with you some finally thoughts about what I have seen and heard about the future of work. I’ve had the real pleasure of spending the week with a group of 35 executives from companies based in Singapore and Abu Dhabi and with a number of civil servants tasked with supporting the Singapore vision. Yesterday we talked about the future of work and constructed five vignettes for the future – describing how people will be working on a daily basis in 2020. Here are eight observations from these Asian vignettes.

1. The role of governments as builders of human capital: I think one of the intriguing questions in the future of work is the extent to which governments around the word will strive to influence the working patterns and type of work of their citizens. Of course it’s easier for smaller countries than for larger, and for those with a shorter history of industrialization. Singapore is not called Singapore Inc for nothing and I’ve seen multiple ways in which the government is influencing the future of work. For example, with the development of the Human Capital Institute and the involvement of the Ministry of Manpower in this project. Our colleagues from Abu Dhabi tell us that their country is also determined to be a magnet for talent. They have a strategy by 2030 to be the one of the top 5 governments for healthcare and education. If you are sitting on as much oil wealth as Abu Dhabi is – then the possibilities are endless. It seems like the war for talent will be fought as hard by governments as it will by corporations.

2. Increased Asian mobility of talent: The group believed that the country barriers which inhibit the movement of labour across Asia will be reduced. As a consequence talent will flow with the ease that it does currently across the European Union. What will a joined up Asian talent pool mean to the future of work?

3. The rise of pandemics:  One of the themes we have not factored in yet is the way in which joined up globalisation will increase the extent of pandemics and how this will impact on work in the future. Singapore for example has drawn up very detailed plans for how work will continue during the next pandemic. Will health fears reduce mobility?

4. Differential home based work:  Like the London vignette creators – this group also saw people working virtually – often choosing to be based at home. One important difference in home working emerged. In some parts of Asia homes are small and full of family members with limited space for working – so going to an office could be a real reward. But this is not true for everyone – many will still prefer to spend time working from home.

5. Mentored by a robot? We talked about the increased need for mentoring and coaching in this virtual, home based world. People really want to know how they are getting on and have the opportunity of talking through their problems. But does this person have to be real? What about being mentored by an avatar?

6. A return to Victorian values? Everyone agreed that more and more relationships will be virtual. So what are the compensation mechanisms? In this new world of work where will communities be formed, and what role will organisations play? Will the company increasingly be the social hub for people? We heard how the founder of Unilever built communities for employees with libraries, art galleries and social clubs. Will this be the new role of companies – the place that connects people?

7. The parent-less generation?  Perhaps one of the most interesting conversations we had was around the experiences of young people. In Asia a recent survey showed that more than 20% of children spend more than 5 hours a day on the computer – much of this time unsupervised. In the majority of families both parents work and in Hong Kong and Singapore a high proportion of these children are brought up by nannies as parents work long hours. These are the workers of the future. How will these young kids evolve and what effect will their childhood experiences have on their preferred working styles?

8. Will companies always discourage good parenting? Right now many corporations have implicitly discouraged good parenting. Of course this is not explicit – but the extent of travel, the long hour’s culture, the weekend working makes it really hard for anyone to be a great parent. One of the ideas we discussed was whether in the future some companies will actively play a positive role in supporting good parenting. Here are some thoughts. Actively encouraging employees to build family ties. Creating targets (like KPI’s) for parenting –‘how long did you talk with your kids this week? what did you do this month to support their self confidence?’. Making a hot-line for parenting skills and anxieties. Sounds far fetched? Perhaps its time the pendulum to swing back? 

Tomorrow I’m back in London – on Tuesday talking with a bunch of groups like Save the Children, UNICEF and Oxfam about innovation. One intriguing question is to what extent these organisations – with an emphasis on quick fire projects, meaningful work and global reach - epitomise the work of the future. I’ll tell you what I found next week.