Lynda Gratton - The Future of Work

The 100-year life: reframing longevity as a gift

Sometimes the future doesn’t turn out as you had predicted. Whatever happened to Second Life and the avatars that I – and thousands of others – created? And let’s face it, Uber caught most of us by surprise – and yet now we have no qualms getting into a stranger's car. Sometimes the future hurtles in unexpected directions, and we just have to learn to catch up.

In some cases, however, the signs are there for all to see. Yet we just don’t notice them, or we misinterpret them. The future creeps up on us. For me, longevity falls into this category. 

Longevity: a creeping curse?

I’ve been studying the trends that will shape the future of work and living for decades. I’ve written about technology and societal trends and the impact of globalization and have certainly always been peripherally aware of demographic trends. I’d seen the inverted age pyramid of Japan and knew that more than a quarter of the country’s population is over the age of 65. Initially, I interpreted this primarily as an issue of ageing, the last decade of life, and of pension provision. I’d seen this demographic data as a curse – when life elongates surely that just means more years of ageing diseases such as Alzheimer’s? It was not something I particular wanted to think about, to study or to write about.

What changed, was that my colleague Andrew Scott and I began to talk more about these demographic trends – and as we did so, we began to reframe the trend data. In fact, rather than looking only at the last decades of life, we began instead to see that longevity impacts on every stage of life. Once you reframe in this way the trend data is extraordinary. Imagine that for every year of life, life expectancy increases by three months. Most of us will live significantly longer than our parents, and right now many babies born today are expected to live for at least 100 years.

The implications are that across the space of the next two generations, individuals, institutions and governments will have to accommodate to two, possibly three more decades of life – and that’s what really caught our attention.

Reframing longevity as a gift

Andrew and I are both academics – he an economist, I a psychologist. The way we normally study the world is by looking at it closely. But how many people currently have lived to 100 years, and can their life experience really tell us much about the future?

So rather than observing what we can see around us now, we decided to project into the future. To do this we took one young woman, whom we called Jane, and built for her a series of scenarios about how she could live the rest of her 100-year life. As we built Jane’s life story, we began to reframe longevity as a gift rather than a curse, focusing on how she could live in a productive and happy way. Our aim was to explore what her possible future lives could be and to play out the consequences of the decisions she might make at various points in her life.

Building these scenarios was fascinating. It taught us a lot of things, which we were eager to share. That’s why we wrote The 100-year Life: living and working in the age of longevity. We believe the conversation about longevity is crucial - and that every one of us needs to re-learn how we plan our lives and our careers.

To learn more about what it takes to live a long and productive life, visit our website at www.100yearlife.com and pre-order the book.

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How improving job design can secure the future of your business

If you could name a single factor as the biggest enemy of employee retention in your organisation, what would it be? My guess would be job design – specifically, the availability of career customisation.

You might think your organisation already offers career customisation and improved job design, but let me make my point clear: improving job design is not that same as bringing flexibility into work. Many – if not most – large corporations have flexible working arrangements. But when it comes to improved job design – by which I mean initiatives such as phased retirement, job share schemes and, on- and off-boarding ramps, they are lagging far behind. I estimate that such companies have a period of three years at most to introduce these elements of job design before the lack of them starts to have a serious impact.

This is becoming an urgent issue. As things stand, when people want to customise their careers they do so by leaving the company. The most valuable people are building their career elsewhere because companies are not providing what they need.

This talent drain is just one reason why companies need to ramp up their experiments and pilots in the field of job design: and it’s about to get worse. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, life stage is becoming an increasingly important factor in people’s career choices – and people reach these stages at vastly different ages. For example, some employees will choose to become parents in their 20s, while others do the same in their 40s. As people start to live longer, we will see more and more people rejecting traditional linear career paths and opting for careers that move sideways, downwards, or even pause for a while. It is the companies that are dealing with these issues already – and the ones that act now to start handling them more effectively – that will prove resilient over the coming decades.

The importance of scale

So why are so many companies, many of whom have already invested heavily in flexible working and job design, failing so miserably in this respect? One reason is that companies have for too long associated the idea of career customisation with motherhood. Often because when women in particular leave an organisation, there is an immediate assumption they are doing so to start a family. In fact, what I’ve noticed about my MBA students at LBS is that often when they leave a company, it’s to start their own business. And a key reason for this is that doing so empowers them to take charge of their own job design.

A damaging side effect of associating career customisation with motherhood is a lack of scale. You may have some great improved job design initiatives but failing to scale them beyond the concept of maternity leave means that employees will continue to achieve career customisation by moving on.

The solution to this problem is to make career customisation fluid, mainstream and transparent. Healthy, loyal employees have control over how, when, where they work and can manage their careers in tune with the rhythms of their life. To enable this, employers need to let workers know that the design of their job can change according to their circumstances and that customisation is available to everyone, not just mothers. Above all, they need to know what their options are at each stage of their life and career, so that they can make the appropriate choices.

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The Three Paradoxes Of Generation Y

Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed a considerable amount of attention focused on Generation Y from both the media and business world. The May 20 issue of Time Magazine led with a cover story labelling them the ‘Me, Me, Me’ generation: narcissistic, fame-obsessed, and self interested; Meanwhile PwC reported findings from a comprehensive Next Gen study of its Gen Y employees – a cohort that will make up around 80% of its workforce within the next three years.

This recent focus on Gen Y reflects a building sense of nervousness around how this generation, the biggest since the Baby Boomers, will reshape work. It’s a nervousness I’ve felt from the HR leaders in my executive programme at LBS who often despair that this generation just aren’t accepting ‘the way things are done around here,' and are instead challenging long-standing processes and practices.

But is this anxiety justified? Are Gen Y really so different from their predecessors? And, if they are, do organisations need to change to accommodate them?

Here are three paradoxes I’ve uncovered that can help us answer those questions.

Short-term focus, but equally committed – Gen Y are fast movers. We know they will change jobs, and perhaps even entire careers, many times in their long working lives. This is a stark contrast with the ‘job for life’ career pattern of their Baby Boomer parents, and the HR leaders at my executive programme. It also shows their desire for meaningful, stimulating work from day one, and their lack of interest in traditional career paths that promote slowly.

This focus on short-term success is sometimes used to depict Gen Y as less committed to work than their Gen X and Baby Boomer peers. Yet this stereotype is certainly not true of those surveyed in the Next Gen study. According to Dennis Finn, Global Human Capital Leader at PwC, ‘this generation is as engaged, committed and prepared to work as hard as previous generations’. They don’t mind working. They just think there are better ways to work.

Tech savvy, but value face-to-face - Gen Y is known for its intensive use of social media and virtual communication. In the USA, this generation send and receive around 88 texts a day according to research by Pew, and 70% check their phones every hour. With these statistics in hand it’s easy to view this generation as happy to conduct their lives, both professional and private, exclusively through their phones, iPads and laptops. But PwC’s research tells us that Gen Y’s aptitude for electronic communication augments rather than replaces face-to-face interaction. Particularly when it comes to performance and career discussions where personal interactions are still the preferred method.

Require recognition, but not necessarily more trophies - Time Magazine rather negatively dubs Gen Y the ‘trophy generation’ who, as a result of receiving too many participation trophies as children, have a sense of entitlement far beyond that of their older peers. It’s easy to see where this assumption comes from. Just look at games such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, which provide satisfying rewards for every action the player takes. So, it should come as no surprise that, according to a study cited by Time Magazine, 40% of Gen Y believes they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance.

 But again, this may be misinterpreting the issue. We know Gen Y place an real emphasis on continual learning, and the drive for regular promotion should not be confused with the desire for regular feedback, which many see as a vital part of their personal and career development. Though a visual indicator of progression, promotion does not always bring with it greater learning opportunities.

So, what do organisations do about these paradoxes and how can they truly understand what drives their Gen Ys? PwC’s Next Gen report has a few recommendations, but one stands out to me as particularly important for this fast-moving, tech-savvy group: ‘Invest time, resources and energy to listen and stay connected with your people’. If there’s one thing we know for sure about this generation, it’s that they like to have their voices heard, and to feel empowered. Whether in the virtual or real world, perhaps the key to understanding this generation and knowing how to engage them is to simply listen to them.

Many of the insights from PwC’s NextGen study came out of Hot Spots Movement FoWlab jam methodology. Have a look at our website to find out more.

 

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?

It's Education, Stupid

It’s that time of year when I spend much of my time reading the books that have been nominated for the FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year. It’s a judging duty that is both a pleasure and a pain. The pain is the sheer amount of time it takes to wade through thousands of pages.  The pleasure is reading books that would not necessarily cross my path. This year, as with the last, many of these books are written by economists and, understandably, focus on the state of the world economy. It is interesting to read how many agree that education and training are crucial to long-term economic success, for individuals, companies and countries. I made a similar argument in my most recent book The Shift, focusing in particular on the types of education and training that create specialization. Here are the two reasons why it has never been so critical to become educated:

• Rampaging connectivity - will see at least five billion people around the world using some form of mobile device to download information, access knowledge and coach and teach each other. Some will have the intellectual capacity and motivation to really make something of this extraordinary opportunity, wherever they happen to be born. These people will want to join the global talent pool and, if possible, migrate to creative and vibrant cities. By doing so, this vast crowd of talented people will increasingly compete with each other, continuously upping the stakes for what it takes to succeed.

• The technological revolution - brought mobile devices to billions, and is now transforming how work gets done. Robots are taking the place of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, while business analytics, modelling and collaborative technologies are taking away much of what has traditionally been the role of the middle manager. However, while technology may be replacing the mechanical aspects of work, it is not replacing the more complex, skilled work that involves creativity and innovation. That’s the high value piece that remains, and it is once that requires education and training. 

As high quality education becomes more of a premium, we can expect the sector to begin to transform itself even more rapidly. Just what this transformation will look like is difficult to predict with accuracy. But here are two emerging trends that I believe will shape it over the coming decades:

The Gutenberg Project: the race is on to digitalise many of the books and articles of the world, while the professors of academic institutions such as MIT are making their key lectures available on the web. Combined with hyper connectivity and the potentially global reach of the Cloud, this means that knowledge and wisdom will be available to anyone with access to the Internet. This could see the development of new ways of educating that leapfrog those of normal educational institutions, creating more fluid, virtual and vibrant networks of learning. 

Virtual Schools and Universities: there has been a great deal of research over the last decade focusing on how people learn. This has looked at e-learning, face-to-face teaching and over-the-phone coaching. What has become clear is that none of these on their own are the best; it’s the combination of all three that has the greatest impact. This is important for educational strategies since at least two of these processes are virtual, and F2F can largely be substituted by video conferencing. I saw the speed of this transformation recently when I visited UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) in Barcelona. Its sleek headquarters are the hub of a virtual university that has 60,000 students (and growing) taught by a faculty of over 3,000 virtual educators. Using simulations, games and collaborative environments, the institution is building deep expertise in supporting education across the world.

Some have argued that, of all the institutional forms, education has changed least over the past few decades. It looks as if the need for deeper knowledge and rapid advances in learning technologies may change all that.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Last week in New York I was astounded to hear a business head from one of the multinationals, who - just off the flight from Shanghai – remarked that in her business right now, turnover rates for young people is approaching 80%.

Imagine for a moment the consequences of 80% turnover – constant recruitment and induction combined with massive overwork as others (called appropriately ‘the survivors’)  catch up on the work that those that have just walked out should have done. And that’s not even taking into consideration the longer-term impact on succession planning and leadership development, or indeed the possibilities of hanging onto intellectual property or signature processes. 

‘Ahh’…I said ‘I guess they are moving for higher salaries’ . That would fit with my own expectations of the over heating Chinese labour market when it comes to the talented young.  But, I was wrong. Instead, she had discovered that people had not left the firm for a higher salary ….they had simply left with no other job offer in their hand. Moreover, they had every intention of staying out of the labour market until something better (more interesting, less stressful and more developmental) came up. 

What we are seeing here is an unintended consequence of something completely different from the anticipated end-result. In this case, the end–result of hyper mobility of talented young people in cities such as Shanghai, is in part an unintended consequence, so my Chinese colleague told me, of the one child per family rule. In the larger Chinese families of the past, it would be impossible for parents to financially support their working age children through their 20’s and 30’s. But in one child families, with more resources focused on the single child - parents appear to be willing and indeed able to step into the economic breach. 

Last week I talked about the acceleration of some of the trends we are watching – I highlighted the situation in Egypt, where the interface between technological developments, rising mobile connectivity, rapidly changing societal norms and the emergence of a new generation of thinkers – together have created enormous energy and volition. 

But as we can see in the emerging mobility of talented Chinese youth – sometimes these events arise from much less understandable paths. 

Scholars of complexity theory have often drawn attention to the limits of rational prediction when it comes to imagining how a system will actually work. They have also shown that it is often these unintended consequences that create some of the chaos that can be such an important feature of a complex system in motion.

And that’s very much the case as we think about the future of work. Yes, we can follow, as indeed we are, the trends we believe will change the face of work. And we can even begin to imagine how these trends will intersect and work with each other to create a vast array of possible outcomes and scenarios. However, what is much more difficult to predict- and for which we need to be particularly observant and sensitive – are the unintended consequences, which through their very nature are less amenable to rational prediction.

So, lets take a closer look at these as they emerge – for, as my acquaintance in China has found – it could be that unintentional consequences frame the future with even more power, than the trends we are observing so diligently.