The Future of Work Agenda

Well, Happy New Year – we think. At the moment, as we pull together our first issue of 2006, it feels a bit more like Halloween than the beginning of a new year. We hope our rantings and ravings this month don’t scare the daylights out of you.

The truth is, we’re more than a little concerned about the future – more than we’ve ever been. This issue is filled with discussions about major social and psychological "turnings" – a fancy word for "crisis." And we add some advice about how to ensure business continuity in the face of natural – and manmade – disasters. We don’t want to be arm-flappers, but we do want all of you – our dear readers – to be prepared for the worst. Meaning uncertainty, chaos, breakdown of infrastructure, and a whole lotta shakin’ going on.

So we’ll try to start things off on a calmer, more optimistic note. Remember that the Chinese word for "crisis" translates as "dangerous opportunity." So we’d like to focus on the "opportunity" half of that equation. Uncertainty can of course be threatening to the established order. But it also creates wonderful conditions for rebirth, for innovation, and for new growth.

So please read our feature article, "As the New Year Dawns," and our rant, "Stop Digging!" with an open mind and a fresh perspective. What opportunities for entrepreneurship, for innovation, and for new beginnings can you find in our words of – we hope – wisdom?

A major source of our concern, and hope at the same time, is the book The Fourth Turning, written in way back in 1997 by William Strauss and Neil Howe and reviewed here by Charlie. We’ve cut back on writing reviews this year, but we included this one because we consider it "must reading." You simply can’t approach 2006 without an understanding of the long-term, major changes about to hit all of us in our collective face.

And as always, of course, we’re pleased to bring you our regular Announcements and Best of the Blog sections. We continue to believe that you’ll find some 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

Charlie’s Going to Florida

The Summit is a premier executive conference sponsored each year by IEDC for economic development leaders around the country. Attendance is limited to those holding a current economic development certification and those in the position of Chief Executive or Chief Operating Officer of a public or private economic development organization.

New Book on Relocation

Daniel Bloom, SCRP, has written a history of the relocation industry, Just Get Me There. The book goes from the very early days of the industry in the 1950s to the present. Divided into four parts, the book covers the role of real estate relocation departments, the evolution of relocation policies, and the trends that will dictate whether the industry survives until 2020.

The 264-page book is published by GOM Publishing at $26.95 for the hardcover edition and $14.95 for the paperback. For details, contact GOM Publishing at http://www.gompublishing.com, or Daniel Bloom & Associates, Inc., at 727-581-6216.

New Book on Managing Knowledge Workers

Jonathon Spira, founder and CEO of Basex, has just written Managing the Knowledge Workforce (Mercury Business Press), an excellent overview of the challenges of knowledge management – both the people and the technical issues.

Jonathon is an accomplished executive and analyst who knows as much about technology in the workplace as anyone. To quote from the back cover: "Let’s face it – turning on technology is easy, turning on the knowledge worker is not (Sandeep Manchandra, CIO at Marsh & McLennan)."

Feature Article: As The New Year Dawns

We’ve included a review of the landmark book The Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neil Howe, in this issue (below) as a means of emphasizing the need we all have these days to focus on – and cope with – discontinuous change. 2005 included several events and global experiences that illustrate the need to think not only "outside the box," but indeed entirely outside our normal frames of reference.

And the major "normal" psychological frame of reference we hang onto (often for dear life) is that change proceeds in a predictable, orderly, and even linear fashion. In contrast, the two of us believe the stage has been set for very significant disruptive, and very nonlinear, change in the way we work during 2006.

That’s dangerous – but imperative – thinking from a business perspective. But let’s reflect a bit on 2005 before we move into 2006. The tsunami, hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, the Pakistan earthquake, and the potpourri of never-ending international conflicts – all were unexpected events that had (and continue to have) devastating effects on local communities and ripple effects throughout the economies all over the world. Closer to home, we see more events on the horizon that, while not totally unexpected, have the potential to produce the kinds of all-encompassing discontinuous change in our very culture and civilization predicted by Strauss and Howe in The Fourth Turning.

But first let’s remind ourselves a little bit about systems theory and major change. Over the last decade of so, disruptive change has become a central topic of discussion in the business literature. For example:

"Four near-certain, highly visible indicators of impending change in industry structure can be pinpointed." - Innovation and Entrepreneurship, by Peter Drucker, HarperBusiness, 1993.

"Radical changes create new businesses and transform or destroy existing ones." Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation; James Utterback, Harvard Business School Press,1996.

"Discontinuous change, because it shatters the framework of the existing organization and scrambles the internal patterns of informal relationships, presents its own very special set of issues for leaders of change." Champions of Change, David Nadler; Jossey-Bass,1998.

And finally: "An understanding of complex adaptive systems will give business leaders what is missing from much of management practice today-a broader perspective on their world." Shaping the Adaptive Organization; William Fulmer, Amacom, 2000.

And our message is this: these types of changes go well beyond their impacts in transforming business organizations; they deeply affect how we, as humans, coordinate, cooperate, and collaborate in the way we work and interact with each other.

We believe the coming social, economic, and technological changes will transform radically, and actively disrupt, the business of work. Indeed, the very industrial conception of "work" will change, creating entirely new economic relationships between people and organizations.

In fact, these disruptions aren’t somewhere out there in 2006 and beyond; they’re already happening, all around us, every day.

So now here’s what we see happening already. Environmental changes like global warming aside, there are many harbingers of significant systemic change not just looming on the horizon, but at our very feet today. We’ve written about many of them in these columns before, and the dawn of the New Year seems a fitting place to bring some of these ideas into clearer focus.

There are three broad Big Changes that we want to emphasize as we look ahead to 2006.

First and foremost, the industrial model of how we create social capital (or intellectual capital, if you must) is broken. Simply put, the talent and knowledge that society needs to address modern problems is not being created and nurtured at the rate required for economic sustainability. Our institutions of learning (at all levels) are failing; and it’s only a matter of time (albeit a short one, we suspect) before they crumble.

Second, institutions in support of global order appear to be malfunctioning. Environmental protection, disaster recovery, disease control, human rights, trade, and conflict resolution just don’t work anymore. Who was Time Magazine's 2005 person(s) of the year? It wasn’t the International Red Cross delivering aid to tsunami and hurricane victims; it wasn’t the United Nations resolving the Middle Eastern political conflicts; it wasn’t anyone helping the Pakistani’s recover from the that horrible earthquake; it wasn’t the World Trade Organization resolving trade imbalances; nor was it some enormous oil company achieving a breakthrough in energy production.

No, the "person of the year" was a rock star and two wealthy U.S. entrepreneurs (Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates) who have chosen to take on global-level programs aimed at improving health care, education, and opportunity for the poor.

When you see individuals rather than institutions stepping up to these global challenges, and actually making a difference, you know something isn’t working.

Thirdly, energy. Perhaps nowhere else is the potential for disruptive change greater. The cost of raw energy in the United States increased by more than 50% and, in some places, by almost 100%, within weeks of the hurricanes that briefly incapacitated 70% of domestic production capacity. We were close to an economic meltdown, if not quite there yet.

Our hope is that the mini-energy crisis of 2005, while not of the proportions of the gasoline shortages of the 1970’s in the United States, will sensitize our politicians to begin serious deliberations (we are hopeless optimists) about investing in renewable energy sources, public transportation, and (just a little self-interest here) telecommuting and distributed work programs. Our fear is that both politicians and the public at large have such short memories that as fuel prices descend back to "normal" levels the interest in genuine reform will fade back into the woodwork, as it has done so many times in the past.

Just fast forward to another, and similar, "crisis" sometime in the next year or two, magnify the impact by an order of magnitude, and you’ll have a really disruptive change on your hands. Of course, the deeper root cause of our inability to cope with this particular challenge comes from a combination of the other two forces shaping broad-scale change that we noted above (e.g., educational system breakdowns and geopolitical institutional inadequacies).

And now for our 2006 action agenda. Truly disruptive change is, unfortunately, a little too much like a tsunami, a hurricane, or an earthquake. You can’t "fight" Mother Nature, but you can’t ignore her either. You can, however, be well-prepared; and you can look beyond the catastrophe for longer-term solutions.

So we recommend that you focus on two core ideas to prepare yourself, and your business, for disruptive change: (1) prepare for unforeseen events (yes, easier said than done, but nevertheless doable); and, (2) remember that social capital is the key to sustainability.

Prepare for Unforeseen Events

The greatest threats to your business today lie outside your control. That’s simply a reality that you have to accept. External influences – be they financial, social, or regulatory – very often cannot be anticipated. One of your biggest challenges is to create an organization that is solid yet flexible enough to withstand the external influences you cannot control.

The best way to build that kind of foundation is to understand the basic psychology that underlies the onset of these external events. You need dedicated resources in your organization to anticipate, evaluate, and plan for the unforeseen.

The best technique we know for "anticipating the unforeseen" is scenario planning. Much has been written elsewhere about scenario planning; the best source we know is Peter Schwartz’s excellent book, The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World (link is to description on Amazon.com).

But of course, once you’ve created several meaningful scenarios of possible futures, the next question is what to do about them; in our experience the best thing to do is to borrow from the sports world and develop a "playbook" that includes a number of alternative "plays" for each possible scenario. Just like a football or basketball team, you can devise some plausible actions for each scenario, actually rehearse them, and then be prepared to execute them when a given scenario actually rears its ugly (or beautiful) head (there we go mixing metaphors again; it’s a professional disease).

Social Capital as the Key to Sustainability

We believe that, to survive, businesses must evolve toward greater degrees of sociability and civility in their dealings with people (including customers and employees I in particular, but also public officials and other affected stakeholders).

Driving the need for this evolution is the creation, capture, and re-investment of social capital. Social capital accrues to companies that foster an improved quality of life in their locales and actively practice a philosophy of creating work environments that are conducive to creativity and personal growth for those who contribute to the organization’s intellectual capital and market value. Developing a work environment that actually attracts, and helps retain, talented individuals and effective teams is, we believe, the only viable way to create a sustainable, profitable business.

And In Summary

As this New Year begins we see tremendous potential for disruptive change in the business environment. In the words of our colleagues William Strauss and Neil Howe, our entire civilization is entering a "Fourth Turning."

We believe in our guts that the old models – of education; of environmental control and response; and of energy production and use – are failing; and their failures will lead us towards massive social, economic, and personal change whether we want to go there or not. Strategically, the organizations that survive these changes will be those that prepare now for unforeseen events and foster a culture that understands social capital as the key to sustainability.

Please, we beg of you, make doing just that your New Year’s Resolutions for 2006.

Please direct your comments to comments@thefutureofwork.net. We’d love to publish your reactions and suggestions.

Book Review: The Fourth Turning, By William Strauss And Neil Howe

Yes, this book was first published in 1997, and you might think it's a bit dated, since so much has happened in the last eight years. But in fact I believe it is even more relevant today than when it was first written.

You can follow the development of the book's major thesis and track comments on the authors' dedicated website at http://www.fourthturning.com/. Their basic thesis is that significant, discontinuous changes are about to take place in the United States, and – more importantly – that those changes are part of much larger cycles; a pattern they call the "Fourth Turning." But certain "trigger" events become the catalysts for major shifts in people's psychology.

But let's step back a bit in time and review the events of September 11th in New York City, Washington, DC, and rural Pennsylvania that shocked us out of our psychological sleep. We woke up and didn't like what we saw. The psychology of ever optimistic, up-beat, open, friendly Americans changed forever. Our unspoken beliefs about the invincibility of the United States, our moral primacy on the planet, and our own physical safety went by the boards that clear fall morning. We came face-to-face with the ugly truth: American citizens, and American businesses, were vulnerable to physical threats from external forces.

Writing back in 1997, Strauss and Howe contended that by 2005, give or take a year, we will begin experiencing an upheaval in the United States rivaling the social changes of the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II.

"Around the year 2005, this country's mood will change sharply—marking the end of today's era of individualism and civic drift and ushering in an urgent new era of community and civic commitment. Over the next two decades, America will pass through a political and social upheaval on par with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the New Deal and World War II. It will threaten the nation and pose a major risk of war, yet also offer an opportunity to elevate ourselves to a new level of civilization."

The Fourth Turning?

So, have we reached a Fourth Turning in this cycle of change? Clearly those events in 2001, so close in time, changed our psychology. Strauss and Howe postulate a theory of rhythms and cycles grouped into four "turnings." Each turning is approximately the length of a long human life, roughly 80 to 100 years, and is characterized by specific psychological attributes:

Have we entered the Fourth Turning that Neil and Howe predicted? Or are a few radical individuals, fearful of their own loss of power, fostering a false sense of crisis around what is actually just another horrible set of events?

Only time will tell. But in the meantime we are all gradually realizing that our mental map of "normal" is all wrong. There was no normal. The years 1998, 1999, and 2000 were gross distortions in and of themselves. They were times of explosive growth fueled by imagination. But what has happened to business? Commerce?

I believe we have been observing a definite shift toward serious consideration of the distributed workplace. Consider this statement in an article by Amy Harmon called "Breaking Up the Central Office: Staffs Make a Virtue of Necessity" that appeared in the New York Times on October 29, 2001, just six weeks after the tragedy:

"The current confluence of crisis and technology appears to be prompting a reassessment of old thinking about the way big organizations should organize people. These days, with businesses reconsidering the desirability of everything from opening mail to clustering people in urban centers, many companies are taking a closer look at the so-called distributed workplace — and studying the handful of corporations that have chosen to adopt it."

All of this highlights the need for plans to deal with the increased uncertainty in our business world. Moving towards a spatially-dispersed environment is a good first step in the face of terrorist threats of bombings, catastrophic disruption of basic services, and bioterrorism. But there should also be a psychological, community-based component to any disaster recovery plans. How your employees remain connected socially and psychologically is just as important as knowing you have a physical backup to your data centers and that operations can continue in other locations.

As we have seen elsewhere, the most critical business assets today are your human and intellectual capital. The events of September 11th simply heightened our awareness that we have to protect those assets just as much as we protect our physical structures, our financial systems, and our information.

These tragedies, however horrible, unknowable, and unforeseen, have brought home one very basic psychological point: we are vulnerable. We woke up and found out we can't exist outside of, or separately from, all the events going on in the broader world. In one flash, Chechnya, Palestine, and the Philippines were brought into America's Main Street – and they will never again go away.

We believe that, as Strauss and Howe predicted, our society has entered an era of a Fourth Turning. It has perhaps been spurred on and even accelerated by tragic events, but it is nonetheless a product of natural psychological cycles. The events simply focus our attention.

The Fourth Turning is available from Amazon.com (we have no financial interest in sales of this or any other book we review).

Bonus Article: The Future Of Work And Business Continuity

This article is reprinted, with slight updates and enhancements, from a piece we first published in 2003, shortly after the United States first invaded Iraq at a time when we were all very sensitive about possible terrorist attacks and violence. Today, as we lurch into 2006, we're still concerned about terrorism but even more aware of how disruptive natural disasters can be. So it seemed appropriate to rebroadcast these ideas and suggestions.

Many organizations today are struggling to maintain a sense of normalcy in their basic working arrangements. Over the past several years there has been a seemingly endless string of unexpected disruptions – September 11, the anthrax scares, the Washington sniper attacks, tsunami's, hurricanes, earthquakes, and now the possibility of a widespread flu epidemic. In each case, business activities have been (or are likely to be) interrupted as workers were (or might be) either unable or unwilling to commute to their normal office workplaces.

In our view, the need to move entire operations to alternative sites, to disperse a workforce, or to restrict access to corporate facilities for any reason is essentially a distributed work program. However, less than 20% of American businesses have formal distributed work programs in place. Yet every business may have to shift immediately to a new mode of working in order to continue business operations when a major disruption occurs. Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security can require companies to restrict workforce travel or move to an alternate site within eighteen hours in the event of an Orange-level security alert.

However, it can take as long as eighteen months to develop, plan, test, and execute an effective corporate-wide alternative work program. If you haven't already done your homework and developed a contingency plan, you are likely to find it extremely difficult and costly to react effectively to an emergency situation.

How Should You Respond to a Threat?

We've been helping corporations and government agencies design, develop, assess, and implement these kinds of programs since 1989. We offer the following boiled-down, basic advice about what you and your organization can do to comply with an increased alert status, to prepare for unusual conditions, or to react to a disaster – natural or otherwise.

Here is a checklist of ten specific questions to ask that will help you prepare to work in a distributed mode as part of a business continuity plan:

Do you have a list of all your co-workers' (or subordinates') phone numbers (especially cell phones), email addresses, FAX numbers?
Suggestion: Keep the list with you at all times.

Have you backed up all work-related data to several computers?
Hint: don't rely on central servers for access. If possible, put all your key data on a CD and keep it with you. Prepare a backup CD at least once a week if your critical data changes that frequently.

Do you have specific plans to communicate with your supervisor or subordinates once a day at a scheduled time, either by email or by phone?

Do you have plans to communicate with your co-workers twice a day?

Do you have a contingency plan for face-to-face meetings with local co-workers once a week in public places such as restaurants, libraries, or bookstores?
It's a good way to stay connected especially right after a major disaster.

Have you identified at least three such locations located outside central business districts and agreed on the locations with your co-workers?

Have you made copies of all your critical reference materials, customer records, and work files – and transferred them to your home workspace?

Have you obtained, and tested, a personal email account (using an ISP that is completely separated from your business) and communicated your address to your co-workers?

Are you prepared to stay away from your central office for up to fifteen workdays if necessary?

Have you made arrangements within your work group for someone to act as a central communication hub in case direct peer-to-peer communications fail?
This "central hub" should be someone that everyone else can contact one way or another to "check in." It's important just to know that everyone is safe and sound, let alone how you're going to work together going forward.

We certainly hope you won't have to move suddenly into a distributed work environment as a response to terrorist threats or other sudden emergencies. But, if needed, these ten simple actions can help you and your colleagues make the most of a difficult situation. At a minimum, we recommend reprinting this list and distributing it to your entire workforce (with an appropriate cover note that avoids creating unnecessary fear and anxiety).

Best of the Blog

Here's a sampling of brief excerpts from our December 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.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Only a Day Away (December 12)

This post begins with some commentary on the prospect of big and unpredictable change in 2006, and proceeds describe scenario planning as one of the only means of thinking about uncertain futures.

As we approach another year end and another "new beginning," it's become increasingly obvious to us that the only thing we really know about 2006 is that it's going to be a year of Big Change.

Strategic Planning "By the Book" (December 12)

Earlier we discussed Scenario Planning as a way to anticipate a range of possible futures ("Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Only a Day Away"). We believe that in today's dynamic and uncertain economy scenarios are just about the only way to think constructively about the future. …

But once you have developed several plausible scenarios, what can you do with them? Having several different but equally credible views of how the future may unfold can be even more overwhelming that having no idea at all.

The "playbook" is such an approach, and we know several organizations that are using playbooks to develop multiple possible strategic moves. …

What is the Future of Health Insurance at Work? (December 18)

…. an article in today's New York Times about what "could be" in the future of health care ("Health Care for All, Just a (Big) Step Away") got us to asking another "Why Not?" question.

The core theme of the article is the undeniable fact that U.S. corporations get a huge tax break for the money they spend on employee health care. The article estimates that corporate health insurance premiums cost the federal government about $130 billion (yes, that's a "B") in lost tax revenues each year. …It amounts to a whopping, virtually unrecognized government subsidy for all those employees of large corporations who are now getting relatively low-cost health insurance.

Understanding the "New World Economy" and Its Implications for U.S. Competitiveness (December 19)

When I was scanning the New York Times on Sunday for new developments in the business world, … I [almost] completely missed Matt Bai's … profound commentary in the Sunday Magazine about the "New World Economy."

Bai uses General Motors and WalMart as the poster kids of the old and the new. …

In Our Humble Opinion: Stop Digging!

OK, jeez, by the time you get to this final part of the newsletter you're thinking, "Wow, are we in deep doo-doo or what?" "Or what" would be the short answer. Throw me a rope or something, bubba. Cousin Zeke thinks we should look to Mel Brooks for inspiration on this one. Flash to the campfire scene in "Blazing Saddles." If you can remember that you've got the picture.

The world is turning over. We don't really think we're the latest incarnation of Chicken Little but we do believe in our hears and souls that major (and we do mean "major") changes are headed our way.

Oh my, what to do? There's a fine line between being prepared for the future and paranoia. Hang in there, take a deep breath, and step away from the Prozac, at least for the moment. The first thing to do in preparing for the future is to stop digging. That is, stop doing things the way you've been doing them. The only salvation is Innovation (In-o-vay, what, shun? There you go again Maynard, usin' those big words).

Our rant this month comes straight from the mouth of Yogi Berra: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Well, we're here at the fork of "Walk" and "Don't walk'." So take the fork. And that leads to (yes, here it comes again) I-N-N-O-V-A-T-I-O-N.

That means you have to create new ways of doing things – like, uh, work. And different business models, which is conslutant (very deliberate misspelling there) talk for how to make money. And, and, and, for making new and different things people will pay you for.

We recently read an article on how one Asian white goods firm created a fridge that keeps the Korean delicacy of kimchee separated from other foods. Now that innovation is one step away from smell-o-vision (for those of you uninformed and protected gourmets out there, there's a rather strong odor associated with kimchee). Full disclosure: Charlie makes his own kimchee and Ellen makes him store it out on the deck just up-wind from the javelina trail.

Just how in the heck did they do that? More importantly, why? Well, probably 'cause some product developer's spousal unit told hubby, "That stuff you like so much stinks up the whole kitchen; why don't you figure out how to isolate that un-godly stench and protect the rest of our food."

Well, motivation comes from many places. Never look a gift horse in the mouth (as we say out here in the West), but sometimes you should take the horse to the dentist (hold up the laugh card here: that's a joke).

To get slightly serious for a moment, no matter how difficult that is: Innovation comes from a combination of motivation (the little missus in our example), creative thought, and a process to make it happen over and over again. In our world, creativity is an individual thing, while innovation is an organizational process that takes a creative idea and turns it into something that produces value.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (or the rant, as is the case here) we want to rattle on some more about the necessity of creating processes that make continuous innovation a part of your organization's DNA. That, we think – and In Our humble Opinion (you knew we were going to say it, didn't you?) – is the key to long-term sustainability in an increasingly uncertain world. If you don't know what's coming, you need to have a way to be ready for anything and everything.

That's the Law of Requisite Variety working (here we go being academic for a minute; there really is an important academic theory behind all this, believe it or not). What the hell is the Law of Requisite Variety? Think of it this way. You've agreed to make a salad for dinner, but nobody will tell you what kind they want. Off you go on the family mule to the grocery store, where someone will call you on the cell phone and tell you what kind of salad to make. So if you're smart (and that's a hell of an assumption in today's world) you go to the store with the biggest selection of lettuce and stand by. PS: if it ain't clear yet, the bigger the selection of lettuce you have available, the larger the requisite variety of actions you can take once you get the phone call.

So let's re-cap. The ship is about to hit the sand because of ominous discontinuous change in the business environment (here we go piling on the metaphors again; please stop us before we hurt someone). You need different thingies to sell, different ways to get them into your customers' hands and a different way to extract money from their bank accounts. So you need to focus on innovation as a key strategy in building a sustainable business. Ah, but it's not that simple.

You also need a system to detect on-coming and unforeseen opportunities (the Korean housewife; the fabled guy at 3M who needed a "sort-of" sticky thingie to mark the Church hymnal without hurting the pages, and created Post-It notes almost by mistake); a pool of highly talented, free-thinking people; deep contact with all kinds of weird possibilities (the produce market); and a process to make it happen again and again. Tall order. But if you're following our logic (if not, go back to page one and start over), and you want to survive in the big bad world of 2006, you have no choice.

OK, OK, that's our rant. Innovation and creativity is the only way out the hole that's about to be created by disruptive change across the globe. The really tough part is that you have to make continuous innovation become a discipline within your organization. Got it? Be very disciplined about not doing the same thing over and over again. Don't think about that; it's sort of existential. Just do it.

So we've told you what you need to do and now you are out there in "Don't have a clue" land whining. So what is it exactly, again, you need to do? It's really simple: just put down your shovel, stop digging that hole, and call us, for Pete's sake. Ah, now you see: we don't just dream this stuff up, we actually think we know something about that innovation thing. That's why we rant so much. We'd like to believe we're the two-by-four that just got your attention.

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:

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This Month's Headlines

From Jim and Charlie

Announcements

Feature Article: As The New Year Dawns

Book Review: The Fourth Turning, By William Strauss And Neil Howe

Bonus Article: The Future Of Work And Business Continuity

Best of the Blog

In Our Humble Opinion: Stop Digging!

From Jim and Charlie

Announcements

Charlie’s Going to Florida

New Book on Relocation

New Book on Managing Knowledge Workers

Feature Article: As The New Year Dawns

Prepare for Unforeseen Events

Social Capital as the Key to Sustainability

And In Summary

Book Review: The Fourth Turning, By William Strauss And Neil Howe

The Fourth Turning?

Bonus Article: The Future Of Work And Business Continuity

How Should You Respond to a Threat?

Best of the Blog

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Only a Day Away (December 12)

Strategic Planning "By the Book" (December 12)

What is the Future of Health Insurance at Work? (December 18)

Understanding the "New World Economy" and Its Implications for U.S. Competitiveness (December 19)

In Our Humble Opinion: Stop Digging!