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WELCOME TO THE
WORKPLACE OF THE FUTURE
WHEN THINKING ABOUT YOUR CAREER NOWADAYS, you need to be aware that we are living through the most profound changes in the economy since the Industrial Revolution. Technology, globalization, and the accelerating pace of change have yielded chaotic markets, fierce competition, and unpredictable resource needs.
In the late 1980s, business leaders and managers began responding to these factors by seeking much greater organizational flexibility. Reengineering increased speed and efficiency with improved systems and technology. Before long, companies in every industry were redesigning almost everything about the way work gets done. Work systems, some of which had been in place for decades, were dismantled and refashioned to improve flexibility, efficiency, and effectiveness.
As businesses reinvented work processes, they also eliminated layers of management, making way for today’s fluid cross-trained teams, which tackle whatever work needs to be done whenever it needs to be done. Downsizing and restructuring made organizations leaner and more elastic by expanding their repertoire of staffing options; instead of having to rely solely on full-time, long-term employees, companies could also draw on temps, independent contractors, part-timers, and the like, and so staff up or down on an as-needed basis. That’s why the fastest growing forms of work in the last ten years have been temporary work, leased work, outsourced work, consulting, and small to midsize business entrepreneurship (fueled largely by the booms in temping, leasing, outsourcing, and consulting). Each of these forms of work lends flexibility to employment relationships.
In a relatively brief span of time, then, organizational response to economic change has virtually freed work from the confines of the old-fashioned job. It is no longer the norm for employees to go to work every day at the same company in the same building during the same hours to do the same tasks in the same position with the same responsibility in the same chain of command. Now the rule of thumb is, get the work done—whenever you can, wherever you can, however you can—whatever the work may be on any given day.
To compete in today’s high-tech, fast-paced, knowledgedriven global economy, business organizations need to be flexible more than anything else. Because of that, the nature of work has been fundamentally reshaped and the relationship between employers and employees radically altered forever.
THE OLD-FASHIONED CAREER PATH
Throughout much of the twentieth century, until these profound changes took hold, the path to success for the typical individual was quite clear: you hitched your wagon to the star of an established employer, paid your dues, and climbed the company ladder for decades until you retired with a gold watch. Although some people did achieve success in other ways, in the workplace of the past this path was the “default presumption.” It defined the social norm of success. And it was the path most people considered when thinking about their career possibilities.
In that workplace of the past, work was arranged in neat little packages. Why? Because this yielded what organizations needed: stability, continuity, and predictability, with longevity of employment serving as the solidifying force. You could expect your working life to be defined by a “job description” that would set boundaries around your tasks and responsibilities. It told you what you were supposed to do—and what was “not your job” and, therefore, not your problem. Most of your formal training occurred in school, before you entered the workforce. Once you got a job, you learned the specific things you needed to learn in order to do “your job.” You worked in the same building every day and answered to one boss, probably the next guy up the company ladder. You did what your boss told you to do for about eight hours a day (sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less) and then you went home for dinner.
These careers were linear. You started with an “entrylevel” job and moved along from one pay raise to the next, from one middle-management position to the next. If your boss got promoted, maybe you would get his job, and if you did get it, then you would probably keep it until he got promoted again and you could move up another rung of the ladder—and so on.
In that workplace, what mattered most was seniority. The longer you worked in a company, the more seniority you accumulated; and the more seniority you had, the more status, power, and salary you could expect. For those in the workforce of the past, it made a lot of sense to get a “good job” in a “good company” and stay put—pay the dues, climb the ladder, and become part of the club.
THE FOUR REALITIES SHAPING CHANGE
To see the future clearly, we need only look through the lens of these four realities:
1. Employers of every size in every industry must remain in a state of constant flux. Why? Because markets are chaotic (and will remain so) and therefore resource needs are unpredictable (and will remain so). To succeed in the new economy, organizations must be infinitely flexible.
2. Individuals must be able to fend for themselves. If established institutions must remain in a state of constant flux in order to survive, then individuals cannot rely on these institutions to be the anchors of their success and security. To survive and succeed, individuals must be selfreliant. That means you need to keep your options open at all times and be ready to adapt whenever necessary.
3. The information tidal wave grows every day, and there is no end in sight. Consequently, it is no longer possible to convince anybody that there is one way to think about or do anything. You and everybody else will be presented with nearly an infinite array of options at all times.
4. Immediacy continues to accelerate. Because the pace of change increases every day, the only relevant time frame is real time, right now. That means just-in-time is the new schedule for everything.
SEVEN FACTORS OF THE NEW ECONOMY
Here is a checklist of what’s going on in the workplace of the future:
1. Reengineering
To maximize available technology, companies are continually redesigning the way work gets done. Work systems are refashioned time and again to improve flexibility, efficiency, and effectiveness. This means that the way tasks and responsibilities are getting done today may be wholly different from the way they will be getting done tomorrow. Don’t dig in your heels; go with the constant change.
2. Restructuring
As organizations continually reinvent their work processes, they continually shuffle people around and assign more and more work to fluid crosstrained teams. Thus, even within organizations, people are in a state of constant motion. Even if you are assigned to a particular “department” or “team,” you must be prepared to be pulled away and thrown onto another team at a moment’s notice, and for only as long as you are needed.
3. Technology
Technology has shaped change throughout history, but today’s technological advances are so rapid and fundamental that they transform tasks and responsibilities on a regular basis. They also blur work’s traditional boundaries. Work that used to take a long time to do no longer does. Work that had to be done in a certain place no longer does. Work that required many people no longer does. Meanwhile, whole new categories of tasks and responsibilities routinely emerge that nobody knows how to do because they didn’t exist before the new technology. Be the first person to figure out the “what” and the “how” of brand-new tasks and responsibilities when they emerge.
4. Knowledge-Work
There is steadily less “low-skill” work to do in the new economy. Because of advances in technology and business processes, more and more work requires more and more skill and knowledge. Be aware, though, that knowledgework is not about what you do, but rather how you do it. To fit the definition of a knowledge-worker, you must leverage information, skill, and knowledge in every one of your tasks and responsibilities. That means two things: first, no matter where you work, no matter what you are doing, you must continually upgrade your skill and knowledge; second, in every task and responsibility, you have to identify the information resources and the skill and knowledge that you must leverage in order to make your work product more valuable.
5. Diversity
The workforce is becoming more and more diverse from every demographic angle, and the wide range of life experiences, perspectives, preferences, values, and styles of this diverse workforce is radically rewriting even the most basic expectations about ways of doing business. Don’t expect to think, feel, or behave in terms of one “dominant” point of view. To succeed, you must be open to and supportive of other people’s differences. You should also think about what makes you “different” from others and be proud of that and leverage that while also being sensitive to others.
6. Globalization
Technological advances in communication and transportation have removed one barrier after another to international trade and shared cultural influences. Multinational companies began blurring the boundaries decades ago. More recently, CNN brought a common news source to people at all ends of the globe. With the rise of the Internet, the doors have been blown off their hinges. Almost anyone today can buy from foreign suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, and wholesalers; sell to foreign companies and foreign consumers; tap into existing markets, open new markets, start up foreign ventures, and take over and reinvigorate existing business entities. If you’re not thinking global, you might as well hide under your desk.
7. The Virtual Workplace
Few people need to go to work in a particular building during a particular set of hours anymore. Because of technological advances, most people can work nearly anywhere and anytime as long as they have a place to “plug in.” Although working at a computer from a remote location is a solitary experience, such workers are not isolated but linked to a vast network of people and information through computer networks, the Internet, cell phones, and the like. In the virtual workplace, you may find yourself working alone most of the time, but you’ll have access to seemingly infinite resources all the time. And you’ll be able to reach practically anybody at any time, regardless of physical boundaries, and people will have access to you, as well.
IT’S ALL UP TO YOU
Employers today require flexible workers who are prepared to do whatever needs to be done. And that means continually upgrading skills, adapting to new conditions, assuming tasks and responsibilities in uncharted territory, working with one team today and another tomorrow, working eighty hours this week and twenty-five the next. No matter where you work, no matter what you do, don’t hand over responsibility for your career to anyone else. The only way to succeed in the workplace of the future is to take charge of your career and assume one hundred percent responsibility for your own success.