Lynda Gratton - The Future of Work

What genocide can teach us about change

My partner and I went to Rwanda a couple of weeks ago. Our mission was to trek up the country's highest mountains to see the mountain gorillas that inhabit these bamboo forests. 

People had told us that this would be a "life-changing experience" and indeed both of us came back changed. But it was not seeing the gorillas that changed us. It was being in Rwanda. 

Most people will have a vague recollection of the terrible genocide that ravaged the country 20 years ago when people, often neighbours, turned on each other during 100 days of bloodletting. More than a million people died. 

Yet now people appear to live in peace with each other and the country is prospering. How could this happen and what might we learn from it? 

I realise it's trite to make any comparison between the terror of a genocide and the organisational life and change that I study. Yet I feel I've learnt a great deal from my experiences in Rwanda and wanted to share them because it seems to me that there is a great deal to learn. Here are four insights: 

- Facing up to the truth. The truth in the genocide was beyond imagination. Yet painstakingly and courageously, families and communities faced up to what had happened. First in courts and then in community groups the truth of what happened was openly discussed and confronted. 

- Removing negative symbols of the past. The hatred between groups prior to the genocide was fuelled in part by cattle owning. Some groups had more cattle than others and their superiority was demonstrated through cattle ownership. After the genocide the government stopped the grazing of cattle on public ground - all cattle had to be kept in domestic yards. They also ensured that every family - however poor - owned a cow. 

- Creating pride. Rwanda is spotless - not just cleaner than any African country, but cleaner than London. Every month the whole community get together and clean their space. It's an act of enormous pride. What ever their past, this is a community capable of competence, they can keep their street clean. 

- Creating a sense of the future. Almost every young person we spoke to felt positive about their future. They did not want to describe themselves through their tribal grouping but rather as 'Rwandans'. They felt positive about the future of the country and trusted their leaders. 

These are four lessons that anyone involved in corporate change knows. What the extraordinary change that Rwanda tells us is that it's possible - by following these four lessons relentlessly - to turn around from even the darkest of moments. 

What if money was no longer the most valuable asset a company could offer an employee?

What is the most valuable asset a company can give an employee?

Historically the answer was simple – money. That’s why the HR function of most companies goes to such extreme lengths to design pay packets (bonuses, team-based rewards, stock options and so on) and to decide through antiquated performance management systems who gets paid what. Indeed, it’s why they’ve been persuaded that senior leaders really are worth up to 200% more than the pay of an average employee.

Yet we have known for sometime that although pay might indeed be a valuable asset for an employee, it’s unlikely to be the driver for their motivation. Indeed years of research have shown that this valuable asset turns out more often to be a source of dissatisfaction rather than a motivator. Most people don’t work harder, or more creatively or cooperatively because they are paid more.

So recently the search has been on for more ‘intangible assets’ that could be really valued by employees. Perhaps it’s the opportunity to work more flexibly, or the chance to work for a boss that likes you, or to work in a convivial open plan office that employees value. And indeed, perhaps it’s this combination that results in employees being engaged rather than disengaged.

I think – to use a simple metaphor – we are barking up the wrong tree. Let me explain. Over the last couple of years my colleague, the economist Andrew Scott, and I have been asking a simple question ‘What happens when most people live to 100 years’. It’s been a fascinating exploration. One undeniable truth is that if you live to 100 then you will probably need to work into your 80s. Now there is no doubt that over the course of a long working life money is indeed crucial – no one wants to look forward to an old age lived in poverty. So money is a valuable asset that a company can give to an employee.

However, across a long life this tangible asset, whilst important, has to be balanced by equally important intangible assets. It seems to me that chief amongst these crucial intangible assets is the type of work an employee is given to perform. Work that is valuable both now and as a hedge against the future has three crucial elements:

• It is interesting and allows workers to engage their mind and creativity
• It has developmental potential – particularly to in terms of capabilities that are ‘portable’ in the sense that they can be used beyond the current job
• It is non-routine so is unlikely to be substituted in the short term by robotics or Artificial Intelligence

For the sake of simplicity lets call this ‘good work’. Now lets play a mind game. Let’s assume that a leader in a corporation acknowledges that the intangible asset of ‘good work’ is as valuable to an employee as the tangible asset of money. If this were the case, what would we expect to see happening within the corporation? Here are five ideas:

• We would expect jobs to be analysed with regards to the extent that they are composed of tasks that are interesting, developmental and non-routine. We could even imagine that these job characteristics are rated against a common currency – lets call this unit a ‘tang’.
• So when an employer is advertising a job, they are able to show both the financial assets the job is valued at (salary, bonus, stock options etc) and also its ‘tang’ assets (interest, developmental potential, non-routine)
• When an employee is deciding on whether to take a job, they can balance the tangible and intangible assets it creates. They can decide, for example, that they are prepared to take a higher ‘tang’ rated job at a certain point in their career, even if the salary is lower. Or indeed take a higher paid job whilst acknowledging that the ‘tang’ value is low.
• It could be that managers who are particularly skilled at designing jobs for their team that have a high ‘tang’ value are celebrated for this sculpting skill.
• We might expect that if the ‘tang’ value of a job falls below a certain level then the whole job has to be re-designed to increase the ‘tang value’ by adding tasks that are interesting, developmental or non-routine. This re-design could be initiated by the manager, or indeed by the worker who is performing the job and who is encouraged to broaden the scope of the job to envelope more ‘tang’ rich activities.

Right now it is still money that dominates the negotiated relationship between an employee and employer. Let’s widen the conversation to include an equally important asset – good work. Perhaps by understanding the value of work with as much finesse as we currently understand the value of reward systems, we can begin to give employees a better choice about the deal they want to strike.

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Beyond Our Nature - Insights from Davos 2015

Beyond Our Nature - Insights from Davos 2015

What will artificial intelligence do for 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 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.

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.