Lynda Gratton - The Future of Work

Beyond Our Nature - Insights from Davos 2015

The global challenges facing the world – such as rising poverty, youth unemployment and climate change – are not themes that are new to Davos. What is new for Davos 2015, is a growing realisation that to address these challenges we have to go beyond human nature. Let me explain. Underlying all these global challenges are many stakeholders each of whom have their own approach and way of looking at the world. Take youth unemployment as an example. When young people are able to get jobs it is because many stakeholders work together: companies create jobs for youngsters; governments shape fiscal and regulatory environments that encourage job creation; educators focus on skills that are important to the job market and the young people themselves are motivated and able to look for work. When it works it is because within this complex system, multiple stakeholders are able to understand each other, and to act on this understanding.

And here is the rub. As the neuroscientists at Davos reminded us, we humans are evolutionarily exquisite at working with small groups of people who are very similar to us – and particularly so if they are related. In fact, as Dunbar has shown, anything above 150 people and natural groups break up. We are pre-disposed to like people who are like us, we imitate people we admire, and across our networks our behaviours and attitudes are contagious.

So whilst we are exquisitely evolved to work in tribal groups, little in our evolution prepares us for the sorts of challenges we are now facing. Challenges that can only be solved if we are able to work in huge groups, containing many different types of people, negotiating across complex alliances.

Of course technology (which is accelerating some of these global challenges) is also providing an array of solutions. When thousands of people are able to work together in virtual communities and when their insights are augmented by artificial intelligence, then complex problems are more likely to be understood.

But is understanding sufficient to get them solved? One of the sessions I attended at Davos this year looked more deeply at alliances. What became clear was that the alliances that are capable of addressing these global challenges – indeed of addressing the challenges of innovation and resilience – are extraordinarily complex. They require people who are very different from each other to have some empathy for each others’ position; they require a process to build trust when many of the stakeholders are virtual strangers and don’t spend much time with each other; and they require a process of commitment making that is more complex than much we have seen before.

All of this is indeed possible, but it goes beyond our human nature. So the question I think we face is whether we will be constrained forever by our evolutionary behaviours and attitudes, or whether we are able in a sense to leap beyond them. How we do this then remains the key issue. When human nature changes (for example our attitudes to slavery or women’s rights) it is because across society the narrative and stories change, owing to courageous role models. The societal discourse itself then begins to evolve.

Addressing many of the world’s challenges requires us to move beyond our human nature. Now is the time for stories to be told about how it could be, and for role models to courageously act out collaboration and alliance building beyond the tribe.

 

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What will artificial intelligence do for work?

It’s my fourth visit to Davos and it’s fascinating how many more of the academics here are scientists rather than economists or management theorists. What is it that scientists can tell us about business? I had an opportunity to understand this when I led a debate with four professors from the University of California, Berkeley, who are experts in artificial intelligence (AI), neuroscience, and psychology.

The question we debated was “Will machines make better decisions than humans?” Of course this is a crucial question for anyone like me who is interested in the future of work. What impact will machines – be they computers or robots - have on the way we work? There are those that argue that up to 60% of the work we currently do will, within the next couple of decades, be replaced by machines. Of course this is already happening. The ‘hollowing out’ of work has already seen much medium skilled work disappear as executives’ thumbs and their smartphones replace secretaries, whilst assistants are being replaced by a combination of Wikipedia and automatic filing.

I started the debate by asking the audience what they believed: “Will machines make better decisions than humans?” About 50% agreed and 50% disagreed – it seems that even this auspicious group at Davos has no consensus. So what are the issues?

The first is well known to AI scientists.  It is best described in Moravec’s paradox. This is the paradox that right now computers are really good at some things we humans find tricky - solving mathematical equations, playing chess, winning jeopardy, and even driving cars. These are tasks that require speed and precision.  But here is the paradox. Machines are bad at other tasks we find easy  - like clearing the coffee cups from a table or being creative. The psychologist Alison Gopnik studies babies and for her it’s clear: machines are not as smart as a two year old. Why? Well perhaps a two year old cannot play chess or drive a car, but they can do lots that a computer cannot do. They can create theories, make hypotheses, figure out how things work, imitate – and most importantly they learn and can be creative. Moravec’s argument by the way is that computers are great at reasoning, but the often unconscious, sensorimotor knowledge that has evolved in the human brain over billions of years is impossible to imitate.

The second issue, one we debated at length, was values and morality. We humans make decisions on the basis of our values. But do computers have values? The AI expert Stuart Russell argued that it is already possible to programme computers on the basis of utility in terms of gaining the highest value outcome. But whose values and how can the constant changing of consensus on values be programmed? And what of morality? As Bob Knight observed, human decisions are about emotions and we make decisions cognitively and viscerally. This comes from the evolution of the frontal cortex that took place over the last two million years.

Perhaps it’s just a matter of time? Computers cannot make decisions better than humans right now, but what about in 30 years time or a 100 years time? Or will it take another two million years for machines to become moral? Certainly with regard to sheer computing power, the technology is developing fast – recent developments in cloud computing are enabling the connection of millions of devices and that has enormous potential for amplification.

Or perhaps it’s not about time, but more about combinations? Ken Goldberg, an AI expert, believes it is in the combination of computers and people that real progress will be made. And, as I am learning in my own study of open innovation, it is the combination of diverse minds that bring forth the ideas that can be the basis of innovation.

What I have learnt from spending time with scientists is that they have much to tell us about how the world of work and organisations will develop. And even if there is no consensus on timeframes, the direction is clear: there is a great deal more to come in the human/machine interface. 

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The power of amplified intelligence

The quest for talent is one that has long preoccupied the world’s corporations. Many have honed their talent-acquisition skills to a very high degree, continuously boosting their intellectual resources by bringing in the most talented people from around the world. And it is undeniable that one of the biggest assets possessed by large corporations is their potential to find and connect some of the most talented and creative people in the world.

While the talent search is undeniably important, companies still often neglect the next crucial step: taking the intelligence inherent in their carefully picked talent pool and amplifying it to maximum effect.

The amplification of intelligence and wisdom is becoming ever more central to how corporations are addressing the challenges they face and to building resilience. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, The Key: How Corporations Succeed by Solving the World’s Toughest Problems, there are four key elements to achieving this: the surfacing of ideas, amplification through open innovation, experimentation and the celebration of risk taking.

Surfacing ideas

For most of the history of corporate life, collaboration has happened when small groups of people worked together face-to-face. Technology is changing this – we now have connectivity tools which enable us to share ideas and knowledge not just within small groups meeting face-to-face, but also across thousands of people meeting in virtual environments. And yet, many large organisations still find themselves going back to the same small group of people for their next big business idea.

One example of how corporations can break this cycle and start harnessing the intelligence of ‘wise crowds’ is the Indian IT company Infosys. Their executive group decided to give younger employees a more active part in the long-term success of the business, by launching a virtual “Innovation Co-Creation Platform”. The platform enables employees to identify colleagues with whom to collaborate, to gain access to business data, and to consult experts and submit a business case for an idea. As well as generating valuable business insights and creating a fast and continuous flow of information from around the world, the platform has made it easier for senior management to identify the most knowledgeable and excited people in the organisation.

Amplification through open innovation

No matter how many great people you have within your organisation, there are always many more outside. Corporations have always been aware of this, hence their habit of engaging with universities and specialist research groups to boost their innovation capabilities – but they now have the opportunity to cast the net far wider and to gain access to ideas outside their established networks. Some good examples of this are InnoCentive, a platform which uses open innovation to connect problems to those with knowledge, and Proctor and Gamble (P&G), which has opened up its innovation challenges to the world through its Connect and Develop scheme – a process the company expects will deliver $3billion towards the its annual sales growth by 2015.

The importance of experimentation

One avenue for surfacing ideas which I think too many companies ignore is experimentation. This can be a particularly valuable process when you are faced with problems to which no-one has a ready-made answer. All the breakthroughs we have seen in medicine, for example, have come through a process of hypothesis, experimentation and clinical trials where several different options are tried out and compared.

Despite the scientific record, very few companies dare to experiment. When I was seeking out examples of corporate experimentation for my book, The Key, I found that they were few and far between and most of them were led by scholars or academics – further underlining companies’ apprehension about experimenting themselves. In fact, the only two that made it into the finished book were at Roche and Xerox. And yet, I feel that if companies would only dare to try, experimentation has a wealth of benefits to offer. After all, one of the biggest changes in the workplace – flexible working – was the result of repeated experimentation at BT.

Celebrating risk

One of the problems with experiments is that they represent a risk: it is not possible to be right all the time, and some experiments will fail. This can be a serious barrier to empowerment. If an employee is aware that their idea may not lead to the desired outcome, they are less likely to act upon the idea for fear of failure or – in the worst case – losing their job.

So how can corporations encourage employees to set aside their fear of failure? The key is to create a culture where experimentation is valued and failure is seen as a natural part of the process. At Tata Group, for example, the company’s Group Innovation awards include a ‘Dare to Try’ category for daring attempts at innovation which have failed.

It’s clear that the amplification of intelligence and wisdom – whether from inside or outside the corporation - plays a crucial role in helping people and organisations become more resilient. As the examples I have highlighted show, technology has a role to play, but it is those companies who are able to build amplification and connection into specific and every day organisational practices and habits that will reap the benefits.

Building resilience in a fragile world

We live in a fragile world. Every one of us faces profound and escalating challenges– youth unemployment touches many families; income inequality and poverty are a source of shame for many of us in developed countries; whilst it is only the least observant who could fail to recognise the early signs of a profound change in the climate. These challenges are no longer particular to one country or area: they affect most people around the world. 

 The challenges faced by organisations are no less complex. They too are faced with the implications of climate change, of inequality, and of the gap between their needs and the available pool of talent. These challenges are on a greater and more global scale than ever before, and emerging at an ever faster trajectory. Previously stable companies find themselves on shaky ground – and the negative consequences of the problems that surround them are proving difficult to reverse.

Over the last five years I have directed the Future of Work Research Consortium which brings together executives from more than 50 companies to consider how best to address these challenges. What is clear is that resilience is the key, and to build resilience companies will be called upon to develop a whole new set of tools and ways of innovating.

Building inner resilience

Resilience starts with what happens inside the corporation –with an, intellectually challenging, emotionally vibrant and socially connected community of employees. Those companies, like Tata Consultancy Services and Unilever who are attempting to do this, are using newly emerging technology to amplify the intellectual ideas and knowledge of employees across their businesses. They are ensuring that they gather the social wealth held in the different communities of people and in the networks that crisscross the company and stretch beyond its boundaries.

Executives also need to think hard about how to design jobs in a way that they enhance rather than denude the emotional vitality of their employees. For some, like BT, the wide-scale adoption of flexible working is allowing people to manage their own time in a positive and enhancing way. Others, like Deloitte are thinking hard about how to break the career hierarchies and introduce a matrix process that allows people to increase or decrease their contribution at different stages of their working life.

The importance of outer resilience

Creating a foundation of resilience is critical – and in some corporations there is also a focus on building resilience in supply chains and in the wider world they operate in. This is crucial because increasingly companies do not exist independently of the rest of the world, and their future is reliant on their interaction with the communities in which they are embedded

I saw this at Danone where people across the company are actively working with farmers in their supply chain to ensure that they are building strong communities – the John Lewis Partnership is doing the same in the UK. These are corporations that are facing the challenges of our increasingly fragile world head-on, by recognising their connection with the outside world. They understand that their businesses are profoundly related to the communities in which they work and are able to think differently and comprehensively about the larger environment in which they operate. Some, like Royal Dutch Shell, are using scenario planning to help executives really become aware of the forces shaping their lives and their businesses. It is this awareness that will enable them to face these forces in a positive way, seeing them as opportunities rather than threats. The final piece of the puzzle is leadership: building resilience needs leaders who are prepared to balance long- term needs with short- term financial results.

What is clear to me is that being resilient requires making the choices that are positive for employees, investors and those in the communities they touch.

Lynda's latest book, The Key: How Corporations Succeed by Solving the World’s Toughest Problems, is out on 9^th June.

 

 

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The Five Unanswered Questions on Gender

Last month, I took the train up to the beautiful city of Cambridge to speak at their Gender Summit. Over the course of the day, and with the help of a varied panel of business and academic speakers, we explored what it takes to promote gender equality and diversity within organisations. We debated a wide range of themes, from the impact of corporate governance structures on gender policies to the practical steps for increasing the number of female applications for the best jobs. The strength of the debate revealed how much opinion is still divided on this issue, and the wealth of research still to be done. As I travelled home, I reflected on the themes we had covered and found that five questions in particular deserved further research:

1. What are organisations doing to change attitudes to fatherhood?

Throughout the day, we touched on the complexity of balancing working life with being a mum, and the emotional and physical exhaustion that can result from ‘trying to have it all.’ It seemed that the problem wasn’t trying to have it all, but trying to do it all. Women continue to be the primary care givers at home despite taking on more responsibility in the world of work. One of the reasons behind this is that the concept of fatherhood has remained quite static over the last thirty years, with short paternity leave entitlements and a continued focus on being the main breadwinner. To really achieve gender equality in the workplace, we must also work on achieving it in the home.

2. How can women operate in male dominated senior networks?

Women are still drastically under-represented at the senior level, at around 17% of all members of FTSE 100 boards and senior executive teams. The result is male-dominated senior networks that are incredibly difficult to penetrate if you are an ambitious woman. So, whom do women end up networking with if they are not easily accepted in the male-dominated elite circles? All too often, the answer is other women more junior than them who can’t help them advance their career. To get more representation of women at the top, we need to ensure they have access to influential senior networks.

3. Are quotas useful?

Norway has pioneered the quota approach to bringing women into the boardroom and now has 40% female representation at board level. However, this has resulted in some negative labelling of these new appointees as ‘golden petticoats’, promoted to tick a box rather than as a reflection of their talent. So, what is the answer? In my opinion, quotas are still essential in getting women to the top. By forcing the distribution, we can get women networking with the right people and can begin liberating men to take more responsibility in the home.

4. How can people bring their best selves to work?

An emerging theme in management thinking is how to encourage your employees to be the best they can be at work. This requires more than just generous compensation packages; it means that working life must be tailored to individuals by acknowledging their interests, concerns and commitments. In particular, women can’t be their best selves at work if they are distracted with family obligations they are neglecting while building their careers. Organisations must invest time in understanding their employees’ needs and building more tailored arrangements to cater to them.

5. How can we move beyond narrow categorisations of women?

In my blog on May 22nd I talked about how we continue to categorise women leaders by their personal circumstance rather than their goals and ideals. These women are far more heterogeneous in their backgrounds and outlook than many of their male peers, however they are often classified according to whether or not they are married, how many children they have and what kind of mother they are. These narrow categorisations fail to recognise the real difference these women are bringing to the world of work. To truly embrace diversity we must first be able to appreciate difference.

This year I launched an Inclusion and Diversity Research Consortium to bring organisations together to provide answers to these questions. We’re hearing some very interesting insights that I look forward to sharing with you in the coming months.

The Frustration of Diversity

I found myself recently spending almost three days with an extraordinarily diverse group. Of the eight people with me, there was someone from Canada, America, Argentina, Japan, Indian, China, Germany and the UK; we ranged in age from 27 to 58; and in terms of specialism there was a psychiatrist, an international ice hockey coach, the head of HR for a global IT company, a couple of entrepreneurs and the provost of a major design college. I cannot image a more diverse collection of people spending time together.

What had brought us from all corners of the world was the World Economic Forum in Dubai, where more than 1,000 experts had gathered to consider a range of global challenges. The focus of our specific council was the rather ambiguous question about the future of leadership. This extraordinary and rather frustrating experience gave me an opportunity to reflect again on what research has helped us to understand the power of diversity. For, while the experience was indeed deeply frustrating at times, the outcome of our time together was without doubt deeper and more profound than it would have been if we were a group of similar people.

Here are the lessons I took away from my experience:

• Diversity comes at a cost. Our council had been speaking virtually for some time, yet when we met we still struggled to really understand the unique framing each brought to our conversation. My previous conversations with a bunch of psychologists like me was a great deal easier than the conversations in Dubai. And my guess is that was true for the psychiatrist and the ice hockey coach. It’s significantly easier to establish a way of working between people who have the same mindset and experience. So be aware that if the question is ambiguous and the team diverse then they are going to really struggle.

• The power of suspending judgment. So it’s important, given the struggles to understand each other, that each tries to suspend their judgment. In our own group we were helped enormously by a chairperson who frequently asked each of us to reflect on what we were thinking. That means that in these circumstances, being prepared to suspend judgment and simply to listen to each other is crucial.

• Staying with it. We had committed to spend three days together – in the same room, talking about the same subject, with the same people. That’s an extraordinary commitment and one that I know few people are prepared to give. But what we found was that, without that commitment, it would have been impossible for us to truly make some of the breakthroughs in our thinking. We simply had to get through the barriers to bridge to each other and this took time and being present. For me, the point here is that it takes a significant time commitment to make any sort of breakthrough when working on ambiguous questions.

• Focus, Focus, Focus. We had come to the WEF meeting to talk about one question, and one question only: How will our models of leadership have to change over the coming decade? We each had our own perspective on this question – drawn from our professional experiences and what we had learnt in our own countries. This focus was crucial to our coming to any breakthrough thinking. Without this, our individual experiences and perspectives could have led to us simply passing by each other with no real connection. Getting the question right is crucial to pulling the disparate ideas of the team together.

Will I be doing it again? Absolutely! But for the moment I am spending the next month with people just like me!

The 10 Ways to Know Whether Your Job is Meaningful

In my book The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here, I made the point that the formula for the traditional deal at work is as follows:

I work... to earn money... which I use... to consume stuff... which makes me happy.

I suggested that this deal is not a sufficient description of what work can and should be. Instead I put forward the following future-focused deal at work:

I work... to gain productive experiences... that are the basis... of my happiness.

But this begs the question – what exactly is a meaningful productive experience, and how do you know when your work is meaningful? So here are the 10 questions to ask yourself to establish whether your work is meaningful.

1. Do you use the majority of the knowledge you have on a daily basis?
   ...because meaningful work provides an opportunity for you to keep your knowledge fresh by using it constantly.
   
   
2. Do you feel intellectually stretched in your work?
   ...because meaningful work both uses the knowledge you have and pushes the boundaries of what you can become.
   
   
3. Are you able to learn something new at least once a week?
   ...because meaningful work creates constant opportunity for learning.
   
   
4. In your view are your colleagues at work knowledgeable and do you learn from them constantly?
   ...because meaningful work is also about the colleagues who come with it, and your learning and development comes primarily through learning from others: what I have called ‘The Posse’.
   
   
5. Are the tasks you do at work interesting and complex?
   ...because at the heart of meaningful work are the day-to-day tasks that you do.
   
   
6. Do you get lots of feedback about how you are doing?
   ...because meaningful work enables you to grow, and feedback from others is a crucial part of this.
   
   
7. Do you think that the work you do has a positive impact on the business?
   ...because meaningful work enables you to make a clear link in your mind between the tasks you perform and the broader goals of the business.
   
   
8. Do you think that the work you do has a positive impact on society?
   ...because meaningful work is made up of tasks that you believe do good and, as a consequence, make you feel good about yourself.
   
   
9. In your daily work, do you have the opportunity to reach out to develop networks with people very different from yourself?
   ...because meaningful work creates opportunities for you to develop the ‘Big Ideas Crowd’ that is so crucial to developing your innovative and creative capacity.
   
   
10. Does your work give you time to really develop deep regenerative relationships with people inside and outside of your organisation?
    ...because meaningful work creates time and space for you to develop emotionally.

So where are you on meaningful work?

Score 8-10
Through your active choices, or sheer luck, you are working in a meaningful way. Cherish the opportunities this provides and don’t compromise in the future.

Score 5-7
Some aspects of your work are meaningful. Take a closer look at those you have said no to and search for the underlying patterns. Is it possible to focus on developing these areas?

Score 1-4
Your job lacks meaning – you already know that! The question is – what are you going to do about it?

This is my take on meaning at work – are there any areas you would add?

When Time Fragments

In last week’s blog I rallied against the 40% of time at work that seems to be spent "working on projects that had no significance, going to meetings that had no outcomes" and made some suggestions for solving the paradox at the heart of work.

My question about what to do was answered in part by Kevin Ball. His experience makes him wonder if this is a problem that needs to be solved; if there is not some universal truth about people in all this ‘wasted’ effort.

"The knowledge that some part of your day can be spent in pointless activity is really rather relaxing and it can be accomplished guilt-free if you can explain it as ‘necessary’ to comply, conform and cooperate with the organisation around you. For the early days of my working in the spare bedroom, this meant suppressing the protestant work-ethic and doing some housework in the ‘working’ day; it meant measuring the output rather than the hours spent on input and it meant wrestling myself into a position of accepting that it was OK to be unproductive sometimes."

He has been influenced by Oliver Burkeman’s piece in the Guardian about the extent to which busyness is good. Oliver quotes economist Todd Buchholz: "What you really want is to chase your tail, even if you never catch it". His view is that alternative theory: that calm is the enemy of happiness, and that it's busyness on which we thrive. Railing at the calm advocates he calls "Edenists", he proposes that striving keeps us neurologically fit: "The people who sit back and relax… those are the people who become truly miserable." Research, he notes, suggests that retirement prompts a reduction in cognitive abilities. "What you really want," he insists, "is to chase your tail, even if you never catch it."

He quotes the physicist Richard Feynman who experienced the logical consequence of the dominance of productivity over all other concerns. Feynman found he didn’t envy the geniuses at Princeton who occupied a clutter-free environment where they were allowed to think without interruption: "These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves. So they don’t get any ideas for a while… a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you… and nothing happens."

But it seems to me that the choice is not between mindless busyness and tranquil edium – but rather about the extent to which we can focus and concentrate. It’s a process that is central to my new book The Shift: How The Future of Work is Already Here – the idea that what’s really crucial is that we are prepared to concentrate, focus and, from this, to master something – that could be a skill, a knowledge area, an understanding of a particular network. It’s this focus and concentration that will be increasingly crucial for the future. Focus does not need tranquility – but it does need long periods of undisturbed time – when concentration is possible. What is tough about busyness is not that it stops tranquility – but rather that it fragments work into such tiny slithers that the concentration needed to learn something deeply is gone. 

My guess is that Richard Feynman was wrong about the geniuses at Princeton when he saw "those poor bastards" sitting on their own. What they were actually experiencing was the marvelous luxury of undisturbed time, unbroken into fragments, providing them with an opportunity to develop deep mastery.

Busyness is fine - it’s the three-minute fragments that so often comes with busyness that is the curse of modern 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?

 

 

 

The Magic of a Joined-Up World

We crafted the Future of Work Consortium to help people across the world think more deeply and accurately about the future. The combination of Future Proofed Cases, Thought Pieces plus the portal and webinars have together created a fertile ground for conversation and reflection across the 200 people who are engaged. 

As we near the end of 2010, I’m reflecting on what the insights from this year can tell us about the next two decades of work.

For me this year has seen ever more confirmation that a joined- up world (over five billion in the coming decade) will have magic properties as it brings opportunities to people born in those regions who, even a decade ago, would have very little hope. The programs to give computers to Rwanda’s children, to digitalize the world’s books and knowledge, and to innovate around the cost of mobile phones and connections all bode well for the future. 

I’m particularly interested in how this magic of a joined-up world will impact on one of the world’s most pressing problem – climate change. 

When we asked the executives in our consortium to talk about energy conservation and issues of carbon reduction, most saw it as a crucial factor for 2025. However, they also acknowledged that right now there is insufficient action taking place at the corporate level, in part because it is difficult to know what path to take.

However, what is interesting is that in the magic of a joined-up world, the most crucial developments in carbon reduction are more likely to come from the bottom-up, rather than top-down institutional or governmental edicts. Change will come as a result of individual team members taking action about their carbon usage, and as individual business units monitor and take action. In the past, these individual pilots and small discrete experiments often languished, unknown beyond their immediate circle. However, now with the magic of a joined-up world, processes like Open Innovation and the impact of hyper-connectivity will be that it is possible for these pilots and experiments to be shared, and for communities across the world to take a closer look at the outcomes and rapidly disseminate their findings. 

We discovered pilots in many companies designed to reduce one of the major creators of carbon – the commute to work and overseas travel. For example, at BT, many thousands of people are now working from home, and the business is also creating town ‘hubs’ in which local workers can meet without making the long commute into a major city. Technological connectivity is also becoming part of daily work. We heard from the executives at Cisco, how rapid developments in video conferencing are enabling them to build full wall videos to connect one team with another. We also saw how webinar developments are making the connectivity between virtual teams ever more efficient. It's clear that these new ways of working will over time reduce the carbon footprint of those that adopt them.

What is so exciting about the future is that we don’t have to wait for moribund governments or bureaucratic corporations to make the first move. When it comes to issues as large, complex and global as carbon use, it will be the connectivity between thousands of pilots and experiments that will make the greatest impact.

So as we look to the future, it’s the magic of a joined-up world that can give us hope. See you again in 2011!