December 2006

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This is our personal note welcoming you to the December 2006 issue of Future of Work Agenda and setting our theme for the month. This month we complete our series titled "How Come Distributed Work is Still the Next Big Thing?" and our "rant" is a look back at the predictions we made a year ago (and how well – or poorly – we did), as well as a look ahead not to 2007 but all the way to 2016.

SCAN Health has joined the Future of Work corporate membership program. And Bruce Walton is our most recent individual/small business member.

This is Part Three of our series examining the business benefits and challenges that surround organizational moves towards more distributed patterns of work. In this final "installment" we offer our thoughts on how to promote distributed work in your own organization.

Every once in a while a really important book comes along that provides insightful guidance about the future of work. So although we first mentioned Workforce Crisis as a book well worth reading back in June, we are delighted to share with you this thoughtful review written by Margaret King.

This section provides you with brief summaries of several recent notes we've already posted on the Future of Work weblog. In each case we also include a live link to the original post on the blog. And we encourage you to become a regular reader of the blog, where we are posting notes, case studies, and links to other important websites on a regular basis.

We end each issue of Future of Work Agenda with a personal perspective - our chance to comment on issues and developments in the world of work that we find important and interesting. This is our "editorial" page, where we enjoy offering our opinions and predictions about what's happening (or should be happening) in the world of work and beyond.

From Jim and Charlie

Well, here we are in the early stages of the holiday season. How much stuffing did you transfer from that turkey to your own innards? We really don't want to go there; let's not forget that these holidays – all of them – are supposed to be about giving, and sharing, and helping those less fortunate than ourselves.

So in this issue we're serving up our own holiday fare, intended to give you lots of food for thought. We're sharing our ideas and perspectives, and we hope you'll share your thoughts and reactions right back.

We struggle continually to make this newsletter as interactive as we can, but it still feels, in all candor, pretty much like a one-way street. Not that we're upset with you, our dear readers, but rather that we'd like to find a way to engage in more genuine conversation with all of you.

We've been thinking a lot about interactive conversation lately, partly because we, along with our co-author Cory Williamson, are in the "final throes" of writing our next book (titled Corporate Agility, to be published by the American Management Association, and due in bookstores in May 2007).

Book "technology" is of course several centuries old, and about as one-way a communication medium as we can imagine. We document our learnings and interpretations in a manuscript and you get to read them on your own about six to twelve months later (but of course since they are our ideas, they'll be well worth reading regardless!).

So as soon as we can climb up out of the dungeon that authors always get trapped in (especially in the last two weeks before the manuscript has to be handed over to our jailor – er, editor) we're going to get aggressive about interactivity once again.

Given that desire, we're making an early New Year's Resolution right now to experiment with new collaborative technologies much more aggressively in 2007. In fact, with a small cadre of our Future of Work individual/small business members we're already in the process of developing a "living laboratory" where our community will be able try out a variety of these new "toys" to create personal experiences and expertise in distributed work.

We hope many of you will want to come along for the ride – once we have some sense of where we're going. We begin the journey with the absolute conviction that we (all of us) tend to underutilize the power of the technology that is sitting right there, right now, on our desktops.

We've been a bit negligent this month in keeping our Future of Work blog up to date, but we think that's one of our best vehicles for engaging with the larger community in a continuing, nearly real-time conversation about the issues and challenges surrounding the future of work. We hope you'll visit the blog often and contribute to our collaborative learning there.

Meanwhile, there's always this newsletter. Our feature article this month is the long-awaited (by us as well as by you) Part Three and concluding article in the series we began last September called "How Come Distributed Work is Still the Next Big Thing?" This time we offer our thoughts on what you and your organization can (and should) do to determine what kind of distributed work program will work for you – and what it will be worth to the bottom line. We hope you'll read all three parts together (Part One and Part Two were published in September and October respectively) and let us know what you think – or what questions we still haven't answered.

We are also pleased to bring you a thoughtful review of Workforce Crisis, an important book about the changing demographics of the workforce that was published earlier this year.

And as always, of course, we're also pleased to bring you our regular Announcements and the Best of the Blog section summarizing some of our most recent posts on the Future of Work blog. We continue to believe that you'll find ideas and information here that you just can't get anywhere else.

So, on to the rest of the newsletter. Enjoy! And please let us know what you think.

Announcements

SCAN Health Joins the Future of Work Corporate Program

We are very pleased to announce that Diane Coles, Director of Facilities for SCAN Health Plan, has joined the Future of Work corporate program.

SCAN Health Plan is a not-for-profit organization focused exclusively on helping to make life better for over 90,000 seniors in Southern California and Arizona. For more than a quarter of a century, SCAN has demonstrated a unique passion for finding innovative ways to enhance seniors' ability to manage their own health and continue to control how and where they live. SCAN is one of only four social HMOs in the United States offering a unique combination of in-home personal care services with comprehensive medical benefits that enable older adults to remain independent and avoid nursing home care.

In order to remain competitive, SCAN has developed an expansion plan into new territories. SCAN has had tremendous growth over the last three years, during which the customer base increased by 80% and staffing by 54%. As part of its 2010 strategic plan, SCAN is developing an Alternate Workplace Strategy to reduce costs, attract talented workers, and foster a creative, innovative, team-based environment. Many sales and health care staff already practice desk-sharing in satellite offices but not yet at the corporate headquarters facility.

SCAN is seeking to learn from experienced companies already practicing alternate workplace strategies. Diane and her colleagues are particularly interested in change management, technology solutions, benchmarking, and space / work style design.

Please join us in welcoming Diane to the Future of Work community.

Bruce Walton is our newest Future of Work small business member

Please join us also in welcoming Bruce Walton as an individual/small business member.

Bruce spent the last 11+ years at Watson Wyatt, a global HR and benefits consulting/outsourcing firm, as a senior consultant in the communication and technology practices. During his tenure at Watson Wyatt he helped his clients articulate and implement their self-service strategies – applying technology solutions to re-engineer and automate many of the repetitive HR tasks that are critical to a company's operation. In addition, he helped his clients define their service delivery strategies, evaluate and redesign their HR organizations and develop the communication and change management vehicles to support business transformation. Bruce's clients included Apple Computer, Oracle Corporation, Honeywell, Cisco Systems, Stanford University, and Centex Corporation.

Prior to Watson Wyatt, Bruce was a vice president at NETG-Spectrum, located in Bedford, Massachusetts, for over 10 years. During his tenure there he was responsible for the development and delivery of distance-learning / e-learning projects for a range of Fortune 500 clients, including IBM, Federal Express, and Allstate Insurance. Bruce began his career as a public school teacher. He has both a master's degree and a doctorate in education from Boston University.

Please free to contact Bruce directly at bwwalton@gmail.com if you want to utilize his many talents on any of your future of work projects, or just get better acquainted with him.

Future of Work Continues to Seek New Members

Future of Work offers several levels of membership that depend on your status and needs: Individual and Small Business, Corporate, and Implementation Partners. We also offer special discounts to nonprofit, educational, and public sector organizations.

These membership programs are described in more detail on the Future of Work website, or feel free to contact us directly for more information about fees and benefits.

All Future of Work members are now listed on the Future of Work website, in the About Us/Members section. We encourage all our readers to consider joining the community.

Please visit our website and apply for membership today.

Feature Article: How Come Distributed Work Is Still The Next Big Thing?

by Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham

This is the third article in a three-part series that addresses the question in the title: how come Distributed Work isn't being embraced to the degree many of us have thought it would be by now? We fully intended to address the question and answer it in one article. However, as we began writing it became apparent that we were tackling a Very Big Issue – one that reminds us of the 1990's quandary about collaborative software: why should anyone use it, what gets in the way of widespread use, and what can be done to promote it?

We believe the same three questions have to be asked – and answered – regarding Distributed Work. (1) What makes it compelling in the first place? (See Part One, which appeared here in September, for our views on why Distributed Work should be much more widespread than it is). (2) Why isn't it being embraced more quickly and more widely? (that's in Part Two, published in October) And (3) what can or should be done to promote its adoption?

In Part Three, below, we offer our thoughts on how to promote distributed work in your own organization. We stop short here of describing a full-blown methodology (though we do have one – contact us for details); rather, we want to focus on the questions you should be asking, and answering, to build the business case and generate executive understanding of why distributed work, or what is often called an alternative work program, should be part of your organizational strategy.

In Part One of this series we discussed the reasons why distributed work should be a Big Thing. We highlighted six benefits of distributed work:

1. Reducing basic workforce support costs;
2. Increasing workforce productivity;
3. Attracting and retaining talent;
4. Increasing organizational agility;
5. Reducing the business risk of disruption from terrorism or a natural disaster; and
6. Reducing traffic congestion, air pollution, and environmental impact more generally

When you think about it, there's your basic business case – just take those six factors and apply them to your own organization.

But of course it's never that simple. First you need to know what business challenges your organization is facing. What's important to your senior executives right now? Which of those six factors hold the most promise – the biggest bang – for your organization?

Once you are clear about your business priorities, then you can think seriously about whether a distributed work approach would help solve those problems, enable your strategy, or otherwise strengthen your position in the marketplace. It's absolutely essential to look at distributed work in the context of your business requirements.

Okay, so you've clarified what matters to the business and you believe personally that an a more distributed approach to work makes sense. What next?

In our experience, you should conduct three important analytic exercises, each one designed to deepen your understanding of how distributed work will affect the organization and its workforce. And each one addresses an important question that your senior executives will want answered:

1. What are the economic and organizational opportunities that a transformation to distributed work offers?
2. Which jobs, and which people, could be distributed?
3. Are we ready for change, and capable of achieving the changes necessary to move into a distributed work program?

Let's consider these questions one at a time.

What are the economic and organizational opportunities that a transformation to distributed work offers?

This is a critical question for any organization. Senior executives want to know – and certainly should demand to know – how this kind of transformation will affect the organization's operations, both financially and in terms of staffing levels, technology requirements, and HR programs and policies.

The challenge is that the kind of changes required to move successfully into a distributed work environment are complex and interdependent. There are often obvious savings in real estate and facilities costs, but those savings are typically offset at least partially by increased expenditures in technology, training, and other IT and HR costs. We've seen far too many distributed work programs derailed because no one had sorted out the second- and third-order budgetary and staffing consequences of the change.

Here again we've developed an analytic tool to help project all the potential financial consequences of the distributed work program. Not incidentally, our "ROI Calculator" also helps define the overall business case for the transformation.

The ROI Calculator is a decision support tool that enables management to consider and examine a wide variety of options, including changes in the number of employees who move into distributed work arrangements, the number of "touchdown' spaces provided in the corporate facilities, changes in support staff levels, investments in training programs, and so on. The tool even recognizes our long-time observation that once distributed workers settle into their new routines their productivity is typically about 15% higher than their "office-bound" colleagues.

Which jobs, and which people, could be distributed?

While the ROI Calculator can give you a good overall feeling for the business benefits of distributed work in your organization, it won't help you determine in any operational detail which jobs and which people would thrive in such a new work arrangement.

Furthermore, every organization will have a different "portfolio" of jobs, tasks, activities, and people who are right for distributed work. Many knowledge-based jobs can be moved into part-time or full-time distributed work environments because they involve:

• significant amounts of "heads-down" individual work;
• communication with others that is most frequently via telephone, email, or instant messaging;
• projects that include team members who are already remote;
• frequent travel to other locations, within the company, or with clients or service providers ;
• significant variety in work activities – moving back and forth between individual and group work, between data collection, analysis, and report writing.

Just as important as the dominant work activities is the preferred work style of the individuals doing those activities. Some people prefer to work more alone and without interruption, whereas others are more effective when they are in constant interaction with others. Some of us are naturally introverts, while some are extraverts who really crave being surrounded by others.

We have developed a Workforce Survey that helps to identify the work activity patterns that individual workers are currently following, as well as their preferred ways and places of working. We find it a useful and insightful component of a distributed work program, in that it not only provides you with important data about jobs and individual knowledge workers' preferences, but it also provides those surveyed with an opportunity to express their needs and their desires regarding their work environments – and that's an important aspect of engaging them in the work design effort.

Are we ready for change, and capable of achieving the changes necessary to move into a distributed work program?

As we suggested in Part Two, embracing and implementing distributed work amounts to a big and complex change in organizational systems, procedures, processes, culture, and management. It's not something to be undertaken casually.

No matter how compelling the case for distributed work may be for your organization, if you don't have the fundamental experience, skills, and leadership required to achieve the needed changes, you won't succeed. So we've also developed what we call the "Organizational Assessment System^TM," or OAS, to determine how prepared and capable the organization is for change.

The OAS is designed to provide decision makers with a reliable, quantifiable assessment of a work group's potential for successfully making a transition to a new way of working. Whatever the vision of the end state of an organizational change process is, you have to know:

1. How well is the direction of the workgroup articulated and communicated to the talent in the group?
2. How much human capital exists and how is it developed?
3. How well does the group deliver on its value proposition to its customers?
4. How close are its information systems to 'state of the practice'?
5. How well does it's planning and improvement process operate?
6. What is the availability of, and potential to provide, appropriate physical facilities to support emerging forms of work process?

Summary

If you can develop a proposal for a distributed work program that effectively addresses these three questions and provides your executives with "hard" data in each area, you will be well on your way to gaining executive approval and sponsorship for the program.

However, answering those questions is really just the beginning. Once the case has been made, and you have determined that the organization is capable of making the transition, then you've got a major planning and implementation task ahead of you. And of course there are plenty of speed bumps on the road to the future. But if you've done your homework and spread the word along the way, the journey shouldn't be too painful.

There's an Aikido principle that the best way to overcome resistance is to deflect it. We think that's a good strategy for building support for distributed work (or alternative work programs). Overcome the natural preference for the status quo by generating a desire for something new and better. Overcome tradition by building on it, not destroying things that work just because you've advocated doing something different. Lastly, overcome fear of the unknown by enabling executives, managers, and the broader workforce alike to help create their own future.

We'll close with just a few broad implementation lessons we've learned (often the hard way) in working with a number of organizations over the past several decades. Of course there's a long story behind each of these guidelines, but we'll leave those details for another time.

• Organizational readiness and capacity for change is a gating factor in distributed work programs. You just can't be too well-prepared for change.
• Convincing people of the business benefits is critical to success.
• Be clear and consistent in all your messaging.
• Publicize success stories for both employees and managers. Make new heroes of those who make distributed work work.
• Training and communication for all managers and employees (not just those directly affected) are essential components of an alternative work program
• Remember: cost recovery is related to speed of implementation.
• Plan to reinvest a portion of the initial savings during the first twelve months to fund the implementation effort.

If you are interested in pursuing this topic further, we can recommend several additional sources.

First, for a somewhat more detailed description of WDC's own analytic tools, please visit the "Products" page of our website, at http://www.thefutureofwork.net/what_products.html.

Second, for a lengthier and more conceptual look at distributed work, read our white paper "Understanding Distributed Work," also available on the website.

Finally, for a somewhat more formal discussion of how to develop a workplace strategy, see our article in the May 2004 issue of this newsletter, "Workplace Strategy: How Do You Do It?"

So there you are. This concludes our three-part series. All three are available from our newsletter archives as individual downloadable .pdf files. We're working on converting them into an integrated white paper, which will also be available as soon as we get the editing done.

As usual, your comments and reactions are more than welcome. As always, please send your thoughts to us at comments@thefutureofwork.net.

Bonus Book Review: Workforce Crisis

by Margaret King

Editors Note: Every once in a while a really important book comes along that provides insightful guidance about the future of work. We've long believed that demographics in general, and the aging of the workforce in particular, will have a far bigger impact on the future of work than most of us realize. And Jim had the privilege and pleasure of working closely with Ken Dychtwald, Tammy Erickson, and Bob Morrison in an earlier life. So although we first mentioned Workforce Crisis as a book well worth reading back in June, we are delighted to share with you this thoughtful review written by Margaret King.

Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent
by Ken Dychtwald, Tamara J. Erickson, and Robert Morison. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006.

"In the developed countries, the dominant factor in the next society will be something to which most people are only beginning to pay attention: the rapid growth in the older population and the rapid shrinking of the younger generation." – Peter F. Drucker

The impending workforce crisis is the outcome of three relentless facts: the sheer size of the baby boom (eighty million plus), increasing longevity (life expectancy heading into the 80s), and a declining birth rate (below replacement). The inescapable projection is a rapidly-aging population and workforce. But this is not only a crisis. Properly considered and framed, this problem is a great opportunity for business to benefit from the talents of the older worker. The question is how quickly management will be able to retool its operating assumptions in order to take stock and take advantage of these cultural issues for the benefit of business.

A future-vision orientation to these problems and opportunities means understanding where the workforce is now, what's happening to it, where it's heading, and what this means for strategy. This is more than trouble-shooting – it is preparing to take advantage of the age wave already well underway. Making the most of a world where the median age is 40 (and rising) means in effect creating a new world of work. The opportunities offered are many, but they require a rethinking of assumptions: both about the terms of employment and the mature employee.

Workforce Crisis is yet another in Ken Dychtwald's series on the aging of America that began with Age Wave in 1989 (link to 1989 paperback edition at Amazon.com). In that book, America's leading expert on aging illuminated the vast implications of the longer lifespan as focused on the still-largest cohort of Americans: the 80 million baby boomers.

A third of the population–those over 50, and the fastest-growing –are discovering that they have (if they want it) a second working life ahead of them. This is because so many will spend just as many years "unretired"––post-career––as they did on the job. In this latest foresighted study, the facts of an aging society are focused on issues of human potential. These include the economy, the brain drain, ethnic and gender diversity, skill and education shortages, and a general tightening of the talent supply. The impact of this age revolution will be wide-ranging as it drives social policy, lifestyle, health, and relationships. These will all have their effects at work, or in the "ergosphere"–my term for the dispersed time– and-space universe that defines the new workplace.

Dychtwald et al. take on this question by means of a systematic strategy that defines the demographics of the "mature" workforce: (55 and older), the young (under 35) and midcareer (35-54) cohorts. They identify the differences between these working generations: what motivates or de-motivates each, how they want to work be rewarded.

The authors clearly hold that the whole workforce picture must be understood in its past, present, and future dimensions in order to anticipate the situation coming straight at us – and not be caught unprepared. Chapter 12, "Meaningful Work and Engaged Workers," examines the driving force behind why we work – what drives people to give their best efforts to work that is engaging, enlightening, rewarding, and provides value. The correlation between work that can inspire passion and the successful business is very high. A workforce assessment is outlined to emphasize new segmentations: by age, generation, lifestage, and lifestyle. The approach starts and ends in an applied practice of understanding the needs and aspirations of the worker. An action guide at the end poses questions based on each chapter to assess needs and set goals and plans.

The outcome is the "employment deal" customized ("flexed up") to offer win-win terms for business and workers. Three chapters cover working arrangements, learning, and compensation and benefits. These domains include discussion of what "engaging work" is and the evolution of the employment deal over time to accommodate changing needs.

"Few large organizations are really preparing for this transformation of the workforce." This realization is the starting point of the issue. The leading effect will be the replacement of the coming shortages in skill and labor with older workers and the new demands under which to manage this new old workforce. The book sets out a strategic business plan (not just tactics and fixes) to show in detail how this can be done and more important, why, citing examples such as IBM's work/life flexibility, Hewlett-Packard's flextime, and AT&T's telework.

Using the three worker-age stages as a guideline. The authors address the myths and realities of the older worker, clarifying misconceptions about performance, dedication, and learning ability. The ability landscape to come will be considerably flattened, meaning that every age can accomplish virtually every job. If anything, older workers will be advantaged by virtue of experience and judgment. This renewable human resource (as Gen X and Y pour into the over-55 age stages) will be cycling through a new working stage: "unretirement" – one more likely to be spent on a third or fourth career as in leisure. Given the numbers who say they do not intend to leave the workforce at all – motivated by the money or the personal rewards – a ready-made supply is in production by the day as the 55-64 workforce grows over 50% by 2010. Others are already "rewiring," at 55 and earlier.

To lead this higher-median-age workforce, management is posed as a far more thoughtful proposition, involving foresight, cultural logic, and long-term strategies rather than simply quarter-to-quarter tactics in search of younger workers who can be molded. Going forward, the savvy manager will be connecting the dots between business success and population data, age psychology, the value set at each age stage, innovative logistics, information systems, and social outcomes.

The authors thus present business with a new management theory needed to engage and reward each cohort–with techniques to analyze, anticipate, and strategize to make the most of age-diverse employees, especially the "biggest untapped resource," older employees. Very far from becoming obsolete, this is the group in fact poised for recognition as most valuable players on the work team. The sooner business can recognize and master the reality of the age wave and its implications, the faster the mutual rewards can be realized.

Margaret J. King, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Cultural Studies & Analysis, a think-tank that provides intelligence on decision-making, culture, and behavior to business, government, and nonprofits.

Best of the Blog

Here's a small sampling of excerpts/lead-ins from our recent weblog posts. Please get in the habit of reading the Future of Work weblog regularly - bookmark it, or if you have an RSS news reader, subscribe to it. And please contribute as well. We're more than happy to reprint your stories, or to consider featuring you as a Guest Writer. We believe we're creating a unique knowledge base of what's going on out there today, and what's going to be going on tomorrow. If you want to learn about the future of work, our blog is the place to go (along with this very newsletter, of course). Just click on each headline below to visit the full original blog post.

Are US Spy Agencies Embracing Open Source? (November 1)

It's hard to imagine two approaches to management and knowledge generation more different than the so-called "open source" movement and the United States' intelligence gathering activities. . . .So it was with genuine interest that I read today in the Los Angeles Times that the US intelligence agencies are experimenting with a Wikipedia-like tool that will enable experts (and non-experts too) from many different agencies and corners of the world to contribute to a common knowledge base ("Spy agencies now share the Wikipedia way"). . . .

Another Published Article (November 8)

I was very pleased when Jennifer Sokolowsky recently asked me to write another thought piece for Capital Magazine (subscription only). Capital Magazine is a business publication aimed at senior executives in the Middle East.

This time around I chose to share our recent ideas and experiences related to what our friend Amy Zuckerman calls the "hidden economy" – the value that is being created almost invisibly by home-based entrepreneurs as well as by remote workers for large organizations who often also work out of home offices. . . .

In Our Humble Opinion: Reflections, Inflections, And Deflections

Commentary by Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware

It's Déjà vu all over again – again.

Whoa doggies, end of the year, already? Where in the Sam Hill did 2006 disappear to? Well, the boys are back from running around all over tarnation. Looks like some people actually read our November rant ("In Our Humble Opinion: It's Not About Real Estate") and did get out there and vote!

Since Maynard, Buford, and Cooter are, by nature, very humble, we wouldn't dare to suggest that their virtual presence had anything to do with the can of whoopass that got opened up in early November or thereabouts (and for those of you who don't have a clue what we're talkin' ‘bout, just think "thumping"). So, onward through the fog.

We had to write this rant kinda quickly because it's "beer hunting" season in some parts of the great outdoors (other folks call it "deer drinking," but either way you get the gist). Thanks to Cousin Phil for that observation. Buford and Maynard got all dressed up so no one could see them, got a snoot full of corn liquor, and went out into the woods with loaded firearms to shoot at anything that moves. Cooter, always the brightest bulb on the porch, went and hid under the barn ‘til Thanksgiving (he's actually smarter than we thought). Makes a soul wonder if humans have really evolved. But that's another rant.

So now (finally!) on to this month's actual commentary. We asked the crew for some reflections on 2006. They allowed that it's been one "hack of a ride." Confusion, indecision, stupidness, the whole can of trash. But overall it's just been one case after another of people gettin' tired of slogging through the same ol' BS. They didn't vote for the "R" or the "D," they voted for the "C"–Change. So, right from the gitgo, In Our humble Opinion (gottcha early this time) 2007 will be about a whole heckuva lot of change.

But actually we thought we'd start this holiday season by looking backwards to figure out what's coming. (ever heard of people who do that?). Sort of "Back to the Future," to coin a phrase. So what did we see back then in the good ol' days of 2006? And how well did we look ahead?

Last year about this time we peaked around the corner of time and told you the ice was cracking ("In Our Humble Opinion: Did You Hear the Ice Crack?"). That's the sound of a warning before a major shift (every spring the ice starts cracking – loudly – on rivers and lakes before it actually breaks up).

Well, guess what, Maynard, we got that one right. The stock market's at an all-time high; there's great big huge real estate investment trusts going private (who would ever have thunk that Sam Zell would cash it in; what's he know that we don't?); and, dare we say it, a shift from "Stay the course" to "Raise the ante" and "Hold 'em or fold 'em." My, oh my, as Granny would say, "Ain't we in a pickle now?" Now we're hardly in a position to comment directly on what's goin' on over there in Iraq, but then almost no one else seems to be either.

And then, back a year ago, in our irrational exuberance we went on to predict "The establishment of an international organization devoted to giving voice to the necessity of transforming the way people and organizations get their work done." Well, Cooter buried that one in the back yard with the dead pigeon (don't ask, it was one ugly night).

We flat out blew that one. No apology, no long whining explanation. Let's just say "Never look a gift horse in the mouth," but that one should have gone to the dentist first. (Full disclosure: we were the ones actively exploring that idea of a new professional association, but as we developed the idea it just didn't sit well with the folks who would've had to be its leaders and write the checks).

Okay, one for one so far. The next thing we said was "Communities will consciously re-work themselves to build social capital, create work/live environments that are human in scale, and provide frameworks and infrastructures to help people balance all aspects of their lives."

Bingo, dear hearts! We got that one so right it's scary. 2006 saw at least thirteen efforts head off in that direction – with federal funding, no less: literally millions of buckos backing it up (actually around $190 million, to be more or less exact). We'll keep you apprised of progress (probably in the March timeframe). But if only 10% of this national effort pays off we'll all be in tall cotton (see "In Our Humble Opinion: Wired for Innovation" for a bit of context about what's going on and the small part we're playing in a very big project in Western Michigan).

And lastly we went way out on a limb and predicted "The formation of a core leadership team of individuals devoted to separating themselves from the bonds of large formal organizations. There's only a 50% probability. . ."

The jury's still out on that one. But, Flash! Hold the presses. The November 9th edition of The Economist has a great story (subscription required to access online) about a Ms. Sara Horowitz, who founded the Freelancers Union in 2001 to provide benefits and aggregated purchasing power to freelancers (or, as Dan Pink calls them, "free agents"). At this point the Freelancers Union has "only" 37,000 members (actually we think that's a pretty impressive number) and is confined to New York State. But what a start. We'll be following this one very closely. Could be a catalyst for much bigger things to come.

Well anyway, we see fits and starts in various places, but there is still no central organizing force, save this example. We may have jumped the gun on that, and maybe we should have put it in the 2008 time frame. But you know us, we're always ahead of the curve (not always a good thing). Our enthusiasm gets in our way sometimes.

That puts us two for three and a hold on one more pre-dickshun. So, let's say 2.5 out of 4. We're batting .625. Not too bad, really. That's better than Maynard got on his election machine mechanics course.

So, now what in tarnation is up for 2007 (and just where is tarnation, anyway?)?

First off, we're hanging tight on the national-level organization of independent, non-affiliated worker bees. We might just have to make this happen ourselves, but the thought of us having to sit down and "'splainify" reality to guvment types severely upsets our digestive tracks (and trust us, you do not want a more detailed description).

(Here's a brief translation for those of you who aren't used to our folksy ways and idiopathic speech – we think that's short for "idiot pathology": We just may have to take a more aggressive leadership role here in promoting the formation of a new association of "free agents" and small businesses in order to promote stuff like health care, portable pensions, and other things that small businesses want but can't get on their own – sort of a national buying co-op. This could be a case of following Alan Kay's dictum that the best way to predict the future is to create it yourself – kinda like what Sara Horowitz did with the Freelancers Union)

So you think you know where we're going with this? Wrong-a-mundo. Here's a 90-degree turn on predictions for next year (you can decide for yourself if it's a left turn or a right turn).

We recently bumped into some new buddies and fellow futurists over in merry ‘ol England (you know, the land that launched the first immigrants to North America, a nice little country that used to have a sustainable environment, where community mattered and life was peaceful. Okay, okay, we'll shut up; that's yet another rant for another time).

Those folks have just turned out some cool ideas about the future of work, so we'll hitchhike on their insights for the time being. Full credit for these scenarios goes to the Henley Centre Headlight Vision for Orange UK ad to the Orange Future Enterprise Coalition web forum that brought this work to our attention (http://www.orangecoalition.com/).

Our friends (at least until now) see four possibilities worth thinking hard about (we're reproducing these scenarios essentially verbatim from the Orange UK report, which is titled "The Way to Work"):

Scenario 1: Disciples of the Cloud

It is 2016, and the far-reaching, ultra-mobility of data and employees predicted ten years previously has not emerged. On the contrary: an economic downturn, environmental concerns and inward looking trade policy – including a return to enforcement of some borders within the EU and a notable anti-globalization mentality – have led to reinvestment in static places of work, where employees gather during shared hours. Individuals and organizations alike have lost their enthusiasm for flexible working and working in isolation. In "Disciples of the Cloud," geography, place, and the simultaneity of working time matter more than ever. The dominant business model is central ownership and management of information, with power concentrated in a head office. Information technology is drawn upon to create and preserve this structure, and legal frameworks have not changed enough in the past ten years to cope with open source innovations.

Scenario 2: Electronic Cottages

It is 2016 and the preceding years have seen the cost of personal transportation rise dramatically through a combination of green taxation and high oil prices. Combined with the increasing availability and decreasing cost of communications technology, these developments have helped to make decentralized work both attractive and practical.

In some ways the nature of work is reminiscent of the pre-industrial world and its cottage industries; by this we mean that the notion of the "workplace" as somewhere people gather and work alongside one another has shrunk away. Instead, people have workspaces within their homes, serviced by computers and rapid network connectivity.

While most people are in a conventional sense employed by companies, employers have found the cost of maintaining expensive city centre offices too much, and a lack of public transport and road gridlock has, in any case, made such places too difficult to get to every day. In an economy increasingly dominated by knowledge-based industries, retail and the service sector, more and more businesses are finding this mode of operation attractive.

Scenario 3: Replicants

It is 2016 and the work of organizations has become even more global. In contrast to previous generations, the dominant model is "open source/distributed." In the preceding decade organizations have responded to the fast pace of change and need for constant innovation by becoming less centrally managed and more flexible. More and more what were formally considered to be core functions such as R&D and innovations have been spun off or outsourced to specialists.

Recent reforms to intellectual property (IP) and corporate law in response to the changes in business practice have facilitated the coming of age of complex and shared – rather than proprietary – business networks. Knowledge is increasingly pooled, leaving people much freer to replicate and adapt IP for their own uses.

It is now common for individuals to become participants in, rather than employees of, a business network. They are able to choose the level at which, and the way in which, they interact with organizations. Many individuals choose simply to be users of networks: for a fee, users are able to access facilities and connect with customers, functioning much in the way that eBay did in previous years. Alternatively, one can become a contributor in return for privileged access and an elevated reputation. The system of contribution has become more complex, and participants have begun to form networks around particular areas of expertise. High-level decisions are taken by privileged groups of individuals on a peer-to-peer basis.

Scenario 4: Mutual Worlds

It is 2016. The combination of online mapping services, social networking, and complexity-based management systems has given fresh energy to the development of a traditional form of business organization that has previously been written off: the rise of the mutually networked world. In essence technology has created new types of connection between people, services, and their physical or geographical surroundings.

The strengthening of localized economies has been driven by the increasing expense of long distance transport and rising pride in localized culture, especially around food, drink, and highly skilled crafts. In manufacturing, flexibility and speed have become more important than pure cost and economies of scale. In many areas micro-manufacturing geared towards the production of more "bespoke" (note: that's "customized" for those of us on the left side of the Atlantic pond) or specialized products has become prevalent.

Sophisticated software and systems once only available to large companies are increasingly easy to manage and accessible to independent or small scale operators. What these systems do is allow many smaller market players to function with similar levels of efficiency and reach as large companies while also enabling greater dynamism.

(Note that these scenarios are set in 2016, not 2007. We'll come back in a month or so with some shorter-term ideas about what just ahead in the road.)

Again, our thanks to the folks at the Henley Centre HeadlightVision for Orange UK and to the Orange Future Enterprise Coalition web forum (http://www.orangecoalition.com/) that brought this work to our attention. These scenarios are their work and we're sure they will be interested in your reaction. Visit their website for more detail; again, the full report is available at:

http://www.orangecoalition.com/app/webroot/files/whitepapers/thewaytowork_ofecreport.pdf

So, what do we predict? Well, hold on there, we're not sayin' yet. We've got our own opinions (remember that having opinions is part of our core identity) but actually right now we want to hear what you think. Write and let us know (this is where we try our darndest to make this a conversation, not a broadcast).

Okay, okay, here's a little hint. In Our Humble Opinion (twice in one month!) we've got three humongous problems here in the ol' US of A: Education; Environment; and Energy. Now which of those four scenarios suggests a collaborative solution to those issues? That's where we're putting our buckos.

Happy holidays. No wait a minute, Merry Christmas! Happy Chanukah! Feliz Navidad! Matunda Ya Kwanzaa! or whatever you say to your dear ones at this special time of year. See ya' next year.

Please direct your comments to comments@thefutureofwork.net. We'd love to publish your reactions and suggestions. And thanks for listening.

This issue of Future of Work Agenda was produced by Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham of the Work Design Collaborative. We encourage your comments, suggestions, and submission of materials for possible future publication. Please contact us at:

Charlie Grantham, charlie@thefutureofwork.net, +1 928 771 9138
Jim Ware, jim@thefutureofwork.net, +1 510 558 1434

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