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PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE: GRATTON
Work is universal. But, how, why,where and when we work hasnever been so open to individualinterpretation. The certainties of the
past have been replaced by ambiguity,questions and the steady hum oftechnology. Now, in a groundbreakingresearch project covering 21 global
companies and more than 200executives, Lynda Gratton ismaking sense of the future of work.In this exclusive article she providesa preview of the real world of 21stcentury work.
You may be a Baby Boomer in your
50s with Gen Y children just joining
the workorce; an alumnus o a
business school, a 40-year-old Gen X
preparing or 30 more years o work,
with young Gen Z children; or an
MBA student thinking about the yearso work ahead o you.
Whatever your age, one o the most
crucial questions you ace is how the
FORCESSHAPINGTHE FUTUREOF WORK
uture o work will develop and the
impact on you and the organisations
o which you are a member. I you
are now aged 30, you can expect to
work or the next 40 years that
means in 2050 you will be a member
o the workorce. I you are 50, you
can expect to be actively employed or
another 20 years thats 2030. I you
have young children, they could be
working until 2070.
Work is, and always has been, one
o the most dening aspects o our
lives. It is where we meet our riends,
excite ourselves and eel at our most
creative and innovative. It can also be
where we can eel our most rustrated,
exasperated and taken or granted.
Work matters to us as individuals,
to our amily and riends and also
to the communities and societies in
which we live.
Many o the ways o working that
we have taken or granted or 20years are disappearing working
rom nine-to-ve, aligning with only
one company, spending time with
lynda grattoninvestigates:
tHe FUtUre
oF WorK
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PHOTO:LC
GR
IFFITHs
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amily, taking weekends o, working
with people we have known well
in oces we go to every day. And
whats coming in its place is much
less knowable and less understandable
almost too ragile to grasp.
Facing the future
Over the last two years, my mission
has been to understand how workand organisations will evolve. What
I wanted was not rm predictions,
since I know these are notoriously
unreliable, but rather a point o view,
a basic idea o what the hard acts o
the uture are, and a way o thinking
about the uture that has internal
cohesion. I wanted to discover,
with as much ne-grained detail as
possible, how the uture o work is
likely to evolve.
Why it is so important now, to
at least attempt to paint a realistic
picture o the uture, is that we can
no longer imagine the uture simply
by extrapolating rom the past. The
past six generations have experienced
the most rapid and proound change
mankind has experienced in its 5,000
years o recorded history. I the world
economy continues to grow at the
same pace as the last hal-century,
then by the time my children are the
age I am now in 2050 the world
will be seven times richer than it is
today, world population could be over
9 billion and average wealth will alsohave increased dramatically.
We live at a time when the schism
with the past is o the same magnitude
as that last seen in the late 18th
century. A schism o such magnitude
that work what we do, where we
do it, how we work and with whom will change, possibly unrecognisably in
our lietime. In the late 18th century,
the drivers o this change were the
development o coal and steam power.
This time around it is not the result
o a single orce, but rather the subtle
combination o ve orces that will
undamentally transorm much o what
we take or granted about work: the
needs o a low-carbon economy, rapid
advances in technology, increasing
globalisation, proound changes
in longevity and demography and
proound societal changes.
It is not just our day-to-day
working conditions and habits that will
change dramatically. What will also
change is our working consciousness,
just as the industrial age changed
the working consciousness o
our predecessors. The industrial
revolution introduced a mass market
or goods and with it a rewiring o the
human brain towards an increasing
desire or consumption and the
acquisition o wealth and property.
The question we ace now is howthe working consciousness o current
and uture employees will be urther
transormed in the age o technology
and globalisation we are entering.
What is inevitable is that, or
younger people like my two sons,
work will change dramatically and
those o us already in the workorce
will be employed in ways we can
hardly imagine.
The wise crowd
To better understand the uture owork, rom October 2009 to May
2010 I led a research consortium o
21 companies and over 200 executives
rom around the world. The major
business sectors were represented by
a wide array o rms, including Absa
(the South Arican bank), Nokia,
Nomura, Tata Consulting Services
(TCS), Shell, Thomson Reuters,
Novartis and Novo Nordisk, SAP,
BT and Singapores Ministry o
Manpower, as well as two not-or-
prot organisations, Save the Childrenand World Vision. My colleagues,
Dr Julia Goges-Cooke and Andreas
Voigt, also took part.
The consortium community
met initially in November 2009 atLondon Business School where we
looked closely at the hard acts o the
uture, then took the conversation
into their own companies. We wereable to work together virtually in an
elaborate shared portal and also to
discuss the emerging ideas in monthly
webinars and later in a series oworkshops in Europe and Asia. At the
same time, I tested out some o my
initial thoughts by writing a weekly
blog (www.lyndagrattonutureowork)
on which a wider communitycommented. It was these ideas,
insights and anxieties that became
stitched into storyline narratives andbrought depth to our conversations.
What excited the community was
nding answers to three questions:n How will external orces shape the
way my company and its people
develop over the coming decades?n How best can we prepare or these
developments to uture proothe company?
n What can we learn rom othersabout where to ocus our attention
and resources, what will be
tough, and what will be morestraightorward?
Working it out
How will these ve orces aect the
way we work in 2025, and what
does this mean or the choices andactions we should be taking now?
My research and conversations about
the uture o work have led me to
understand that the uture will beless about general skills and more
about in-depth mastery; less about
working as a competitive, isolated
individual and more about workingcollaboratively in a joined world; and
less about ocusing solely on a standard
o living and more on the quality
o experiences. Here are the ways I
believe these three shits will play outin our lives and the lives o others.
The shift to mastery I believe
that in the uture the means by which
individual value is created will shitrom having generalist ability to having
specialist ability and achieving serial
mastery. Why? Because i you remain
a generalist, there are thousands,perhaps even millions, o people who
can do the same work as you do
yet aster, cheaper and perhaps even
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01 Emerging markets are taking over02 The robots are real03 The new global jet set
01 02 03
TechnologicaldevelopmenTsTechnology will infuence the size
o the world population and lie
expectancy and will infuence our
working lives in other deeper and more
indirect ways the way we engagewith others, our views on morality and
our own human nature. You dont
have to be a supporter o technological
determinism to recognise that
technological capability (through its
complex interactions with individuals,
institutions, cultures and environment)
is a key determinant o the ground
rules within which the games o human
civilisation get played out.
By 2025, we can expect that
more than ve billion people will be
connected by mobile devices, the
Internet Cloud will deliver low-cost
computing services, an increasing
amount o work will be perormed by
robots and sel-created content will join
the digitalisation o books to create an
unprecedented amount o inormation
in the world knowledge net. We can
expect that, across the globe, billions
o cognitive assistants will be collecting
inormation, monitoring peoples
behaviour and taking actions rom
their preerences. This massive crowd
o computers is becoming increasingly
capable o learning and creating newknowledge entirely on its own and with
no human help.
globalisaTionThe combination o technology and
globalisation will have a proound
impact on the way we work in the
uture. While many o the new poles
o economic activity are in the Big
Six emerging economies (Brazil,China, India, Mexico, Russia and
South Korea), the economies o
next-wave locations such as Egypt,
Nigeria and Turkey are increasingly
important. These emerging economies
will increasingly add value through
innovation as well as low-cost
manuacturing. Greater numbers o
people will choose to move to the
mega-cities o the world, and new
talent pools will emerge in areas across
the globe where the population is
connected to the world knowledge net.
Much o the world will become joined
both in terms o trade in goods and
services, the mobility o labour, the
opening up o new talent pools and in
the extent o global connectivity.
Globalisation will bring
opportunities or talented and
energetic people to become part o
the world economy wherever they are
born. It will also increase the exclusion
o those who are not part o the global
market, either because they dont have
access to broadband or because they
have neither the talent nor the energyto compete.
Five FoRces
0201 WOne o the rst tasks o the researchwas to identiy the external orcesthat will undamentally change theway that work will be done by 2025.
W tr tt f rw ru:
lynda gRaTTon invesTigaTes:The FUTURe oF WoRK
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01 Older or longer02 Fathers are increasingly involved03 Wind power
030201
socieTalTRendsThe mental lie o human
beings has been transormed by
developments such as language,
literacy, urbanisation, division o
labour, industrialisation, science,
communications, transport and
media technology. These changes
will continue over the coming
years. By 2025, we can expect that
people will be more individualistic
and increasingly prepared to orgeliestyles based on their own needs
rather than societal expectations. At
the same time, we can expect trust
in business and business leaders to
continue to plummet.
I predict that, in 2025, many
people will live their lives alone or
in small amily groups and some
o these relationships will become
more virtual. It will increasingly be
the norm to work much o the time
rom home or in small community
hubs to avoid the carbon costs andgeneral wear and tear o lengthy
commutes. Most employable women
will work outside the home, so the
majority o households will have two
working members with conventional
households no longer the norm.
Younger men will have decided to
spend more time at home and to
take a more active part in caring or
their children. More people will work
as reelancers and neo-nomads,
expecting increasing autonomy and
reedom. As amilies become smaller
and more dislocated, riends (andwhat I have termed the regenerative
community) will play an increasing
role in individual happiness.
loW-caRbondevelopmenTsThe extraction and use o energy
have always ramed the way we
live and the way we work. Each
time a new, more complex energy-
consuming development takes place,
it increases the pace, fow and density
o human exchange and creates
more connectivity between people.
Our uses o energy will also rame
the way we work in the coming
decades. We can expect oil prices to risesubstantially as the developing world
uses more energy and the sources o oil
have become depleted and expensive
to extract. Carbon output will rise
steeply, particularly in China and India
with their rapidly developing urban
populations and manuacturing bases.
The world will have heated up, with
sea levels rising and climates changing.
Some governments will have introduced
a carbon tax, and the carbon ootprints
o individuals and companies will be
scrutinised and orced to reduce. Thiscould result in a rapid escalation o the
cost o moving goods across the globe
and a rapid reduction o commuting
and work-related travel. This will be
a signicant driver to virtual working
and home-based working.
While I have described these
orces separately, in reality these
ve trends will work together.
For example, the combination o
advances in technology and growing
globalisation will signicantly increase
the use o tele-presence, webinars
and other communal tools.
04 05
Five FoRces
03demogRaphicchangesThe new demography will reshape
our understanding and expectations
o work. In many ways, the coming
decades will be dened by the largest
demographic group the world has
ever seen the Baby Boomers. In
2010, they are in their 50s and 60s;
and by 2025 most will have let the
workorce, taking with them a huge
store o tacit knowledge and know-
how as well as, i some commentatorsare to be believed, much o the
wealth o the next generations.
The uture will also see
unprecedented increases in lie
expectancy. There is a strong
possibility that many o the healthy
children born in 2010 will live
more than 100 years, as will some
o those currently in their 20s.
This will undamentally bring into
question our current assumptions
about retirement, about the
employment o the over-65s andabout the provision o pensions.
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The uture will beless about generalskills and more about
in-depth mastery.
phase TWo oFThe FUTURe
The second phase o the research was launchedin October 2010 with companies rom all overthe world. You can ollow the progress on LyndaGrattons blog: www.lyndagrattonutureowork.com
You can also be part o the conversation about theuture o work by joining the communityat www.hotspotsutureowork.com
The research will ocus on
taking action around the our most
crucial themes that emerged in the
rst phase o the work:n How can executives support
the development o a talent pool
and leadership cadre which is
uture prooed?;n what are the means by which
organisations can build and support
the communities, networks and
ecosystems crucial or the uture?;n how can we create the teams and
collaborative working essential in an
increasingly virtual world?;n and what are the implications
or those who have to deliver the
uture o work in particular the
learning, organisational development
and human resource unctions?
better. In the uture, you will have to
dierentiate yoursel rom the crowd,
build depth and yet be prepared to
shit gears across the course o your
working lie. I believe that the perect
storm o the ve orces has created an
opportunity to shit rom the age o
mechanisation to the age o mastery.
In this new age, there is a possibility
or people to put their stamp on who
they are and what they choose to do.
However, this possibility carries withit the necessity to become more aware
o what is valuable and unique and to
crat credentials in a thoughtul and
energetic way. This means becoming
specialised in a variety o areas and
achieving mastery in them and building
and carrying valuable credentials
in a way rarely seen in the past.
The shift to connectivity
I believe that one o the paradoxes
o the uture will be that to succeed
one will need to stand out rom the
crowd while at the same time being
part o the crowd or, at least, the
wise crowd. So, you will need to both
stand out with your mastery and skills
and simultaneously become part o
a collection o other masters who
together create value. Otherwise you
will always be on your own, isolated
and competing with thousands o
others, with no possibility o the
leverage that the crowd brings.
In the past, success was achieved
through personal drive, ambition andcompetition. In the uture, it will be
achieved through the subtle but
high-value combination o mastery
and connectivity.
Thats because, in a uture
increasingly dened by innovation,
the capacity to combine and connect
know-how, competencies and networks
will be key. Its in this synthesis or
combination that real innovative
possibilities lie. So, whom you choose
to connect with, and to whom they
are connected, will be one o thedening aspects o uture working lie.
High-value networks will consist o a
combination o strong relationships
with a ew knowledgeable people
(what I call the Posse) and a larger
number o less-connected relationships
with a more extensive network (what
I call the Big Ideas Crowd). Your
high-value networks will connectyou with people who are similarly
specialised as well as those with very
dierent competencies and outlooks.
It is in the diversity o these broader
networks, the Big Ideas Crowd, that
the possibility o innovation lays.
The shift to quality of experiences
Finally, having conronted the paradox
o both being individually masterul
and yet joined with others, I believe
that there is an even more complex
shit. You, your riends and children
will need to think very hard about whatsort o working lie you want. Simply
opting or a high standard o living
is not going to do it. Why? Because
in the uture, quality o experiences
will trump quantity o consumptionevery time and words like happinessand regeneration will become the
touchstone o uture working lives.
The 19th-century industrialisation
o the Western world heralded the
move to cities and the breaking down
o traditional communities. In its
place came the nuclear amily, otenuprooted as ather moved to seek
work. So while the standard o living
throughout the developed countries
rose, oten the quality o lie hardly
shited. People may have been able
to enter the consumer society andconsume at quantity, but this did
not necessarily bring them quality
o experiences such as happiness
or contentment.
I believe there is an opportunity
over the coming decades to shape
work and lie in a manner thatenables people to reconnect with
what makes them happy and creates
a high quality o experience. The
breakdown o automated work, the
rise o home-based working and the
increase in the possibility o choiceprovide the oundation or a shit in
ocus away rom quantity consumed
as the only measure o success.
Challenges and opportunities
The uture workplace will create both
challenges and opportunities. Grasping
these opportunities will be crucial.
Some o these changes are inevitable
(or example, fexible working), so the
ocus is on making them work as soon
as possible. Other actions will be tricky
and will require the creation o new
practices in the way that companies are
building competencies around virtual
team working.
Perhaps those responses needing
the greatest ocus are those I call
the contested aspects o the uture,
workplace processes and procedures
that have not been ully tested, such
as the need or more democratic
processes and a ocus on experiences
rather than on standard o living. Such
new ways o working are going to
demand a level o trial and error in the
workplace that will prove challenging
to workers and managers alike. Yet, intomorrows brave new world o work, a
healthy dose o courage and optimism
will go a long way.
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01TRanspaRenTand aUThenTic
leadeRshipIn a uture world o transparencyand connectivity, leaders willbe looked upon to work in acollaborative manner. We canexpect their behaviours andactions to be closely scrutinised,so their authenticity will be key. Atthe same time, globalisation willcreate the need or more complexnetworks and or leaders to takethe initiative in engaging withglobal problems and challenges.
Leaders will increasingly becalled upon to be members
o a team, most o which will
02high-peRFoRmingviRTUal TeamsIncreasingly, work is perormedacross businesses, unctions andorganisations. As a consequenceo this cross-border working,teams oten work virtually,actually seeing each other onlyoccasionally. Our own work onthese teams shows that manyail as they become overwhelmedby the sheer complexity o theirtask. So its no surprise that theexecutives in our consortiumranked the capacity to manageand lead high-perorming virtualteams as crucial or the uture.
At SAP, working virtually insideand outside the company hasbecome the norm and hasbeen shown to create widernetworks and allow a morefexible working style. Executivesare using complex dialogueand decision-making tools andsocial-networking tools. At BT,virtual team working has beenenhanced with Telepresence,next generation high-denition
The impacT onorganisaTions
The uture o work will change not just or individuals butalso or the organisations o which they are members. Tounderstand the breadth and extent o these changes, werst identied the 20 areas we believe to be important orthe uture and then asked executives in the consortiumcompanies to rate those they believed to be most
critical or the uture. We also investigated where utureprooed examples existed areas in which memberso the consortium had already developed practices andprocesses that can provide insight and inspiration.
F r r t t rtt:
lynda gRaTTon invesTigaTes:The FUTURe oF WoRK
consist o a diverse groupo people, which will put anemphasis on their skills oinclusion. ThoughtWorks, abespoke sotware developmentcompany, has developed a set
o organisational tools: pairingdecision makers, holdingdemocratic elections or specicteams and setting up virtualnetworks. The philosophy behindthe practice is that leadershipis shared to improve decisionmaking and create balance.Pairing happens at all levels,rom the highest leadership level,to developers writing or testingsotware, to mentoring. Leadersare encouraged to be democraticand authentic through theprocess o election, in whichgroups are nominated and voted
or by their peers.
video conerencing. BT has 60studios around the world thatbring people together in multiplelocations. At Save the Children,the executive team is pioneering
new ways to build a collaborativeapproach across virtual teamsbrought together or emergenciesand development work. Theexecutive team believes that thisis a trend that will acceleratein the uture both in terms owhom they work with and howcollaborative work is perormed.Other companies are ocusingon how the competencies withinteams can be understoodand developed. At TataConsulting Services (TCS), acompetency development and
training tool (iCALMS) holds amaster dictionary o all rolesin TCS, with a descriptiono the accountabilities andcompetencies. This creates animportant global base rom whichto identiy the best candidate ora role as well as any knowledgegaps that training modulescan rapidly ll. It also creates astrong oundation or ongoinglearning to take place.
,,,,
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03valUable cRoss-bUsiness neTWoRKsand RelaTionshipsIncreasingly, the value o theorganisation will be held in itssocial capital, that is, the valueo the networks and relationshipsheld within businesses, acrossbusinesses and into the widercommunity and ecosystems.Building relationships acrossbusinesses will becomeincreasingly important in theuture as the driver o innovationwill require businesses to combineassets and resources in ever moreunusual and creative ways.
We saw a number o examples ohow organisations are breakingdown the barriers between
unctions and businesses andcreating relationships acrossthe company. At Nokia, orexample, the process o strategydevelopment has been opened
to many employees in order todevelop and gain commitmentto implementing the strategy.At Shell, the scenario planningprocess, with the recentrelease o the 2050 scenarios,creates a level o conversationand depth o knowledge thathas become crucial to therms long-term planning.
At the Danish pharmaceuticalcompany Novo Nordisk,social media plays a crucialrole in internal and externalcommunication. The key tools,
NovoTube, Novopedia andNovoIdeas, are designed toimprove collaboration andacilitate knowledge sharing.
Social media has also played akey role at SAP, where a serieso tools has been developed orbusiness networking, businessprocesses and business
decisions. These have enabledmore complex dialogue anddecision making than originalsocial networking tools.
Building valuable networks iscrucial to Nokia, where executiveslaunched a programme calledBooster in 2008 to encouragecross-unctional and cross-hierarchical working and toraise the capacity to acquireand use external resources. Theprogramme covered all 5,000employees o the business unitand started with a two-day ace-
to-ace workshop with 700 teamleaders, ollowed by involvemento the whole community throughonline social networking.
04valUableRelaTionshipsWiTh paRTneRs,consUmeRs andenTRepReneURsNetworks are not simply thosethat arise within the business.Increasingly, value will becreated through the relationshipsheld with those outside, bethey partners, consumers orentrepreneurial businesses. AtThomson Reuters, or example,strong networks with independentpeople across the world havebeen crucial to their success. Formany years, a network o highlyfexible independent journalists,called stringers, have workedon an ad hoc basis in order toensure that news around theworld is covered at minimum cost.Some work on a retainer, othersare hired or ad hoc projects. Thesystem has existed or decades
and works through strong trustedrelationships and reciprocalbenets. For Thomson Reuters,
the system provides global reach,fexibility, speed and tight controlover costs; the stringer gainsvaluable journalistic experience,increased international visibility,higher pay, the chance o ull-time employment, and careerdevelopment through working witha range o companies. Stringersare allowed to work or other newsnetworks as well as local media.
ARM, the world leader insemiconductor intellectual
property, is pioneering aninnovative organisational model an ecosystem intendedto capture the needs o endconsumers (thus providingmore targeted products) whilemaintaining a high degreeo specialisation. ARM is atthe centre o a coalition ocompanies, all using the sameunderlying technology. Thiscreates a wide range o productsrom which to select, so a mobilephone manuacturer can usethe ARM ecosystem to compare
across a range o chips producedby dierent companies, all usingARM research and development.
05Flexible WoRKingThe capacity to work fexibly wasseen by our consortium membersas key to the uture. This fexibility
is a growing competence orcompanies such as BT with itsFollow the Sun Project designedto hook up the UK and Caliorniain a continuous 24-hour operation.The project involved new workschedules and a twice-dailytransatlantic handover that hasbrought high levels o continuityand customer satisaction.
LYNDA [email protected]
Gratton is Proessor oManagement Practice atLondon Business School.
She is the author o a serieso bestselling books includingHot Spots, Glowand
Living Strategy.
oveRvieW
At Thomson Reuters, fexibleworking practices arewidespread, with employeesencouraged to work romhome whenever possible. Sucharrangements cover homeworking, part-time working,
job sharing and fexi hours.These help to meet the personalneeds o sta as well as thedemands o a company workingacross many time zones. Flexibleworking creates challenges orperormance management, andat Tata Consulting Services, anew system has been created toaccommodate workorce needs.
FOR MORE ONLYNDA GRATTONSEE PAGE 74
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