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This Month's HeadlinesClick on any Headline to go to the full story. From Jim and CharlieThis is our personal note welcoming you to the January 2008 issue of Future of Work Agenda and setting our theme for the month. This month we put 2007 behind us as we look ahead with optimism (and, we hope, some insight) to 2008 and well beyond. News and Announcements from the World of WorkWe are exceptionally pleased that Corporate Agility has been recognized as one of the 30 best business books of 2007. And we'll be doing a presentation based on the book for the Orange County Chapter of IFMA in February. Feature Article: What Will Tomorrow Bring?We were recently asked by CoreNet Global to join a group of far-thinking futurists as part of the association's new Workplace Community initiative. As members of the "Future Trends" working group we've been asked to look at how the workplace (and workplace management challenges) will evolve over the next five to seven years. So here's our thoughts on five key questions about the future. Best of the BlogThis 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. In Our Humble Opinion: Investing in TomorrowWe 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. |
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From Jim and CharlieHappy New Year! We've both taken some time off and caught up on important things like family, friends, and sleep during the holidays, and now we're tan (not!), rested and ready to roll. Jim got in some decent skiing in the Sierra, while Charlie and his wife spent time in Costa Rica (which, unfortunately, wasn't as restful as he'd expected - but that's another whole story). Now we're back, going at full speed and looking forward to an exciting and productive year. As you may recall, our December issue was a bit of a downer, with some gloomy economic forecasts for 2008 and a rather negative take on the state of our "culture" and social health and wellbeing. Well, without denying any of that, we're now feeling a bit more upbeat and optimistic. The year ahead looks challenging, and no one is going to have an easy time succeeding, but we at least have a number of very promising initiatives getting started, and we're convinced the longer-term outlook for the future of work is very bright indeed. We're kicking off this year with a feature article ("What Will the Future Bring?") that we think, modestly, shows us at our best - exploring the future of work. It's actually our way of "rehearsing" for a conversation we're having on January 10 with Frank Becker of Cornell University, Frank Duffy of DEGW Architects, and Bill Porter of MIT. The conversation is being convened and moderated by Chris Hood of Hewlett Packard on behalf of CoreNet Global. It's all part of CoreNet's new Workplace Community initiative; our little group is focused on "Future Trends." Our charter is to explore what the workplace is going to be like in five to seven years. The nice thing about that task, of course, is that by the time you know whether we're right or wrong we'll all be doing all kinds of other things. It's one of the job benefits of being a futurist. The January 10 conversation isn't public, but it is being videotaped for future distribution to CoreNet members. And what makes it really interesting is that on January 10 Charlie and I will be Palo Alto, California; Frank Becker, Bill Porter, and Chris Hood will be in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Frank Duffy will be in London . We'll be using HP's HALO videoconferencing system to "meet" and in essence to demonstrate one very clear aspect of the future of work: it's going to be a whole lot more distributed than it is today. Let us know your reactions to our prep notes for the January 10 conversation. And if you're real quick about sending us your comments you may even affect the conversation itself, which will take place about four days after you receive this newsletter. This month's editorial (or "rant," as we call it), "In Our Humble Opinion: Investing in Tomorrow," is a positive call for thinking about infrastructure (both public and private) in a broader, more constructive way than most communities do today. We call for an end to hunkering down and just hoping the bad times (and the bad guys) will just go away. It's time to remember Peter Drucker's observation that "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." In other words, our future is what we make of it, and with some thoughtful investments we can certainly construct a more hopeful and more productive future. It's not easy, but it is our choice to make. And as always, of course, we're also pleased to bring you the Best of the Blog section summarizing our most recent posts on the Future of Work blog. We continue to believe that you'll find ideas and information here and on the blog that you just can't get anywhere else. Finally, don't forget to check out our monthly Announcements. We're really excited that Corporate Agility, our most recent book, has been named one of the 30 best business books of 2007. That's incredibly gratifying and gives us the strength and courage to push forward, continuing our quest to understand the deeper issues in the future of work. As usual, your comments and reactions are more than welcome. And as always, please send your thoughts to us at comments@thefutureofwork.net.
Announcements and News from the World of WorkCorporate Agility named one of the 30 Best Business Books of 2007Just before the holiday break we received an exciting letter from Rebecca Clement, publisher of Soundview Executive Book Summaries, a firm that, as you might guess, produces and distributes brief book summaries to subscribers. The letter began this way:
Needless to say, we're thrilled by this recognition. Corporate Agility (link is to the book's own website) is continuing to sell at a respectable level at Amazon.com, Borders, and Barnes and Noble, as well as at other websites and bookstores around the country. And we are continuing to get requests to speak about the book in front of a wide variety of professional associations and other groups. Speaking of which . . . Jim and Charlie to present "Corporate Agility" at IFMA Orange County on February 6Future of Work member Diane Coles, Director of Facilities at SCAN Health Plan in Long Beach and President of the IFMA Orange County Chapter, has invited us to speak about the research that produced our book Corporate Agility. We'll be there on the evening of February 6. More details next month.
Feature Article: What Will Tomorrow Bring?by Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware And just around the corner, we see . . . We were recently asked by CoreNet Global to join a group of far-thinking futurists as part of the association's new Workplace Community initiative. As part of the "Future Trends" working group we've been asked to look at how the workplace (and workplace management challenges) will evolve over the next five to seven years. In the spirit of full disclosure, we have been volunteering our time in a number of CoreNet programs and initiatives for over five years. We've also written several articles that have appeared in CoreNet's executive publication The Leader. See "Demographics and the Changing Nature of Work" (May, 2004 - PDF), "Location Strategies: Where Do You Need to Be?" (July, 2006 - PDF) and "Closing the Talent Gap: Companies and Communities Team Up" - the most recent one having been the cover article for the September/October 2007 issue). Thus we are two of five experts who have been asked to pontificate on the "state of the future" as it will impact the corporate real estate profession, its operations, and the ultimate tenants of all those commercial real estate investments. The others in our esteemed group are Frank Becker of Cornell University, Bill Porter of MIT, and Frank Duffy of DEGW Architects. The results of the conversation the five of us are having will be made available to CoreNet members in the near future. The five of us will come together (virtually) in early January to engage in a distributed conversation emanating from three diverse locations: London, Boston, and Palo Alto. We are very grateful to Chris Hood of Hewlett Packard, who has arranged for us to use HP's powerful HALO video conferencing system. Our conversation will be videotaped, edited, and distributed to interested CoreNet members. Hey, you might even see us on YouTube by the Spring time. However, we thought it might be interesting to involve all of you out there in this exploration of the future of the workplace. So, here we go. We'll be brave enough to share our initial ideas with you, but in return we hope you'll push back and extend our thinking. Remember, these thoughts and ideas are in "first draft," as we're fond of saying. They are not fully formed and remain subject to much revision as we benefit from others' thinking. Who knows, maybe there's some important facts and data we haven't seen yet. Here in digest form are our respective answer to several key questions we've posed to all the members of our working group (note: we've kept our individual responses to each question separate in the interest of keeping the conversation fresh and avoiding premature closure). 1. What do you consider the two most important "forces" driving towards significant change in the future of work and the workplace?Charlie:Well, without a doubt energy costs are the major force at work. And it's not just the cost of moving people around (which I think is close to ridiculous); it's also the energy cost embedded in every product. Right now it costs more to move a tomato from California to Arizona than to grow the tomato itself. Extend that thinking and there is a big added cost coming at us. And we haven't even started to measure the negative impact. I think large employers aren't very far away from paying a "tax" (or impact fee, whatever) to offset the pollution their employees create by coming to and from work. Technology can never be denied as an influencer of where and when we work. This giant growing web of connectivity actually expands the workplace. Just three years ago I couldn't get cell service, or broadband access, on a mountain top in rural Arizona. Today I have a choice of three providers. Work anywhere, anytime has become a reality in North America! This trend will continue and speed up in developing areas. I think firms will invest in technology before they invest in physical infrastructure like roads and light rail. The world will not only become flatter, but bigger (and smaller at the same time). The last major force I see is social. Quite simply, demographics and shifting psychologies combine to totally re-define the contract between people and a source of income. I don't think we can underestimate this one. People (or employees) just don't see themselves working "for" someone else anymore. That's perhaps a subtle change, but it's also profound. It's like we are watching serfdom disappear; and look what that social change did to where, when, and who was doing the work. I'm fond of saying "Watch Hollywood and you'll see the future of people/company relationships." A writers guild says, "Hey, wait a minute," and an entire industry shuts down for a month. What would that look like in the banking industry? Jim:I vote for demographics and global climate change as the two forces that will have the most powerful impact on the future of work. The demographic trends are clear, and becoming widely recognized. Over the next seven to ten years more than 75 million Baby Boomers will reach age 65. While not all of them are currently employed, the impact on the workforce of this "event" will obviously be dramatic. And I'm personally convinced that the majority of those boomers will not "go quietly into the night" of traditional retirement. Instead, they will be seeking a different kind of work experience (part-time, more "at-home" work, a different mix of current income and benefits, more freedom and personal control over when, where, and how they get their assignments completed). Because there are nowhere near enough workers in the next age bracket to replace those Boomers, organizations will be under enormous pressure to accommodate the wants and needs of both the Boomers themselves and those of the smaller cohort (the forty- and fifty-somethings) coming along behind them. And the other force that I expect to have a major impact on work and the workplace is global warming. We're going to see significant changes in public policy and commercial practice in response to the growing evidence that we (all of us) must reduce our energy consumption and our production of greenhouse gasses. But I'm not talking just about green buildings, though LEED certification for new buildings will certainly become not only desirable, but most likely mandatory. Don't forget that the greenest building is the one that doesn't get built (or is torn down for being too "ungreen"). And as desirable as high-mileage vehicles may be, the most energy-efficient car is the one that sits in the garage all day, unused. My prediction is a simple one: we're going to see a fundamental transformation in commuting patterns as well as a very basic rethinking of what "corporate" offices are for. To be more tangible, I expect an increasing amount of work to be conducted either out of home offices (a two-second commute, to paraphrase the title of an excellent book on Virtual Assistants by our friends Chris Durst and Michael Haaren), or from local shared work facilities that people can walk or bike to (or, at worst, drive a mile or two to). Our society simply can't afford to support millions of people commuting into center cities, or even suburban office parks, in large, 3000-pound vehicles throwing tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. 2. What are the most significant forces for the status quo? (that is, what will slow down change?)Charlie:The embedded, or sunk, costs of existing real estate portfolios. These are long-term fixed assets that can't quickly be moved to a variable cost. You have to pay for it whether or not you use it, so why change? I think the United States (if not the World) has an excess of about 40% in commercial real estate assets. I believe that after we have a minor recession in 2008, future growth will be in eating up this excess capacity. Investing in new commercial construction in most markets is folly. The whole tenant/landlord/owner/investor relationship does not reflect today's distributed work reality. The impediment to change is long-term leases. If businesses could ever figure out how to break that impasse, change would happen more quickly. Second is organizational inertia, or role re-definition. The old industrial model of skill sets is a real barrier; competencies and compensation (both real and psychic) are hard to change. Unfortunately, most people still derive a great deal of status and power from their employment position. As long as that holds true change will be resisted. It's inertia from large, established organizations that slows things down. The little guys (where most innovation occurs, by the way) don't have this problem. Even Google is going to have to face up to this one sooner or later. Jim:That's easy: the familiarity and even comfort of current work habits, no matter how "crazy" and irrational they are in today's world; and the fears of middle managers who don't know how to manage a distributed workforce made up of relatively independent, in-short-supply professionals. The vision I've got of "what could be" is so radically different from today's most common workplace management practices that I doubt even enlightened executives will embrace it without a lot of soul-searching and ROI analysis. And even then the scale and scope of the changes required to implement a genuine 21st century workplace are so great that I expect we'll see many more failures of nerve than we will examples of successful leadership. Change is tough, even when it makes both sense and dollars. And the biggest change of all will have to be the willingness of first-line managers to trust that their subordinates can do good work even when no one is looking over their shoulders. Managerial resistance to distributed work, and to self-reliant employees, is the single most important challenge we face in our day-to-day client work. 3. What will the workplace look like in 5-10 years? Think both micro and macro - workstations, interiors, etc, as well as what kinds of buildings we'll be using, and where they'll be located.Charlie:In five years we will see a decrease in centralized office space by 50% of today's footprint. In ten years the footprint will be down by 75% from today's level. Buildings that aren't "green" will simply be torn down. We have already seen this happening all the way from California, where old strip malls are obliterated, to rural America where blocks of early 20th-century construction are being bulldozed. Look for more of this kind of thing. Those old large structures aren't effective (given technology) and now they aren't efficient either. They will start to go away. At the micro-level, in five years we will see total portability of technology. Desks won't be needed to hold up phones; walls won't be needed to plug things into. This vision implies a total re-design of interiors. Start thinking about village centers; social squares. Storage gone; walls gone; electric outlets gone. I kind of like the workplace "arena" model right now. Think of large open spaces (like a hockey rink) that can be re-formed, partitioned, and re-designed on a whim. That's going to take a radical new look at "tenant improvements." In ten years, if you want the vision look at the space station. Look at the interior of the space shuttle. We are already pushing the limits to "distributed work" to the outer reaches of our solar system. This trend will increase. Functionality will triumph over aesthetics for the next two decades. Life support will be a base requirement. Just think about how you would design the workspace if it were going to be on Mars. Looking at some existing far-out places, like Antarctica, would be instructive. Jim:I've tipped my hand on this one already. We're going to see plenty of smaller "green" buildings, located much closer to where people live. More than that, however, I think we'll see the interior spaces of those buildings being used in very different ways. We're fond of pointing out that corporate facilities are becoming more and more like town halls or community centers. They're the places where employees congregate when they need to be with their colleagues - for group meetings, project team work, workshops and seminars, and social gatherings. Sure, there will still be some individual workspaces, but I bet most of them will be touchdown spots, not private places where you hang your coat in the morning and pick it up on the way home. 4. How will rising costs of gasoline and attention to global climate change affect commuting patterns and corporate travel?Charlie:When gasoline hits $6 bucks a gallon in the United State and double that in China and Europe, travel "to work" will decrease by 50%. More and more "work" will move to communities within reach of local transit. I've said this before, but it deserves emphasis. Global climate change will result in "taxes" (or, if you prefer, environmental user fees) being imposed on companies. The cost of business goes up 15%-25% to reflect the environmental impact. In addition, look for radical change in business processes. Do different workers really need to be in the same place at the same time? Corporate travel won't go away, but you will really have to make the business case to justify it. Three trips a year to Asia will be down to one. Corporate travel used to be seen as a perk; it was viewed as glamorous. Perhaps that made sense in the days of the Titanic, but not on a Boeing 737 with a twenty-minute turn around time. Bottom line: it costs too much to move people around without a real reason for being in close proximity. Travel three days (one out, one in, one for work) for a routine staff meeting that isn't well facilitated? Not anymore. Jim:Again, I sort of answered this one way back at the beginning. We certainly aren't there yet, but when the price of gasoline hits $5-$6 a gallon and it costs close to $100 to fill up a gas tank, I think we'll see a major revolt against five-days a week commuting. People just aren't going to be willing to commute 500-700 miles a week anymore, even in fuel-efficient hybrids. Sure, there's some mass transportation, and I'm sure more people will be using it (it might even be deemed part of a city's infrastructure, like roads, and be made free so people would actual use it). I've seen how reliance on mass transit in large cities like New York and Chicago can literally change people's work habits - defining the beginning and end of the work day, for example. It might even get ugly as social pressure builds on individuals to stop pouring CO2 and other gasses into the atmosphere. I think we'll get to a point where people will explicitly ask each other, do we really need to get into our cars (or trains and planes) just to get together face-to-face? And I suspect that it won't be long before we're even hearing about the immorality of carbon-based commuting (especially in automobiles moving only one person at a time) from the pulpits of our churches and synagogues (as well from the "bully pulpit of our political leaders). We don't have to "go" to work to go to work; our motto for the last several years has been "Move bits, not butts." But it's going to take some dramatic changes in public policy and infrastructure funding to make to make it happens. 5. What "wild cards" could completely surprise and disrupt our visions of the future of work?Charlie:Technological discovery (and engineering proof) of an extremely low-cost, micro-sized power source. Hydrogen fuel cells weighing ounces and generating multiple kilowatts of power. Actually that isn't so wild. The futurist in me says we'll see it within ten years. But the wild part would be within three years. There are some experimental solar cell production technologies right now that could reduce the effective cost of solar electricity to $.99/kilowatt in final testing. Do we really need the power company? Global enforceable legislation that partitions the type of work (and production) to different parts of the planet. Manufacturing in Asia; agriculture in Africa; low-end knowledge work in South America and high-end knowledge work in North America and Europe. This is happening already, but isn't legislated. If communities can see themselves as centers of excellence for certain types of work (like symbolic computing or medical software), why can't entire countries? A lot of this will be subtly directed by public policy that dictates investment in technologies, curricula development, and subsidies to specific industries. But what if we formalized these kinds of policies at a national level? Of course, the cynic in me says; "they don't have enough brains to do that." Maybe not Cesar Chavez, but what about Putin? Invasion from outer space. Colonization of earth by advanced species that are vastly superior culturally and technologically. Okay, okay, I know this one is really far out, but play with it for awhile. There is absolutely nothing rational about this one; it's purely emotional, even primordial. What happens when the white man discovers (and invades) the Amazon rainforest? What impact did Europeans have on American (that's South, Central and North) culture and ways of life? Kick that up a notch or two and maybe you can see what I mean. Jim:What would happen if local or state governments started imposing strict (i.e., meaningful) carbon emissions standards? What if telecommuting was mandated - say, 50% of any company's employees must telecommute 2-3 days a week? Or, from a completely different perspective, what if someone invents a really effective 3-D videoconferencing capability - and it's available at low cost over "normal" broadband communications channels? Would that make web commuting easier, or more common? Duh. Or, to come from an entirely different direction, what if we stumble into a worldwide recession that makes 1929 look good? Suppose China and Japan demand repayment of the United States' debt obligations, and refuse to accept dollars? If world trade were to grind to a halt, what would happen to all our visions of "location-neutral" work? Here's a really wild one. What if we discover that all the electromagnetic waves that make possible television, radio, WiFi, cell phones, and microwave communications turn out to be highly dangerous to human beings? How would our civilization survive if we couldn't use any over-the-air broadcast technologies? And here's a final one (at least for now). What if the federal government prohibits employers from offering group life and health insurance and provides some form of universal health care to all US citizens? I believe we might see an incredible and unprecedented shift in employment from large organizations to smaller ones and to self-employment. Our own research suggests that health insurance and pension benefits (which have already all but disappeared) are the primary - if not the only - reason that millions of workers are staying with their current employers. Think of the productivity improvements that might be unleashed if people felt "free" to find work that they're good at and enjoy! ConclusionOkay, so there you are. You may agree, disagree, or be totally skeptical. What have we missed? Where are we off base? As always, we invite your comments and input. If we get enough feedback we'll compile your comments and let everyone know what themes emerge, submerge, or vanish into the mists of time. And we'll "steal" what we like for our upcoming CoreNet conversation too (just kidding - if you send us something really provocative we'll be sure you get appropriate credit). Remember the old saying: if you steal ideas from one person, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many people, it's research. And we're nothing if not researchers. Send us your comments, challenges, and "atta-boys" to comments@thefutureofwork.net. We look forward to learning from you!
Best of the BlogHere'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. Will the Future of Work Include a "New Deal"? (December 12)....[H]ere's my latest rediscovery - an article by Matt Bai that appeared in the New York Times Magazine back in November ("Home-Office Politics - Why Americans who work for themselves deserve a New Deal").... The Increasing Importance of Distributed Work (December 15)I just became aware of a study of "web commuting" recently conducted (and published) by Citrix .... the just-completed study ... found that fully "23 percent of American workers and 41 percent of small business owners regularly work from home or another offsite location." New Insights into Distributed Work (December 17)There's an extremely interesting and insightful interview with our good friend Amy Zuckerman on CNN.com today. It's called "Uncovering the world of 'hidden tech'." If you are at all interested in the evolving nature of work (and in particular distributed and home-based work), I strongly encourage you to read it....
In Our Humble Opinion: Investing in TomorrowCommentary by Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware Trends: And how they can change Well, after last month's rant we gave the boyz some time off. They high-tailed it for places unknown to avoid the backlash of being so Rumsfeldian (makes it sound profound, don't it?) in their view of the near-term future. Just to raise your blood pressure a tad they took the position that 2008 is going to be the pits-and we really don't know just how bad that could be. As Mr. Rumsfeld (we don't him well enough to call him "Rummy") himself would say, "There are things we don't know we don't know." So we return once more to our "Dear Abby" style of ranting in an effort to give you a break - and even a little slightly warped humor. Hit the "brain idle" mode button for a change and just relax. This train o' thought got started when a writer called and asked us, "What do you guys smell in the wind out there?" You might think of that question as "pre-trend" kind of thing (that writer actually thinks we know somethin'). After some deep thinking (at least as deep as we're capable of), we came up with three things that (In Our Humble Opinion - slipped it in early this month) are the meta-forces that will most directly impact the way we (all of us) will work in the coming year. Not that the impact will be limited to 2008, but that's when we prognosticate these three forces will pop into out popular consciousness. Sort of the "ta-daaa" moment (that's what we call a "tipping point"). Here we go. The Politics of Fear has dominated the culture of the United States since 2000. We're pretty sure that 2008 will see it fade away and be replaced with a cultural ethos of "possibility" and, yes, perhaps even hope. Fear is basic, primordial, and non-rational (notice we didn't say "irrational," as some would have us believe). Somewhere in our evolutionary history fear became a survival instinct, and it has worked, for both good and bad. Politicians have long realized this basic element of human nature; fear motivates people to hide, run, cover up, and be suspicious, and it destroys trust. People are easy to control when they are scared (duh, ever wonder why politicians glommed onto fear as a source of power?) Perhaps the best analysis of this phenomenon is The Political Brain by Drew Westen. It's an excellent read. In brief, Westen submits that emotion rules political behavior (and thinking) more so than does rationality. Further, the dominant emotional state of late has been fear: fear brought on by the events of 9/11, economic uncertainty, and a growing tendency to blame problems on some "different" ethnic group or "foreign" population. This development really isn't anything new; the same themes have been played by all manner of governments, coached in numerous philosophies over the years. But Westen and his colleagues have stated it succinctly and backed up their analysis with plenty of current examples. And, as it turns out, there is even emerging clinical evidence that people with vastly different political views have distinctly different patterns of brain activity at the neural logical level (see Tom Friedman's New York Times column from November 11, 2007, for more) That just nails it; we've known that guy next door has been nuts all along. Seriously, what we "smell" happening is that people will only stay scared for so long and then they take positive action to relieve the stress. Back on the savanna, they stopped running long enough to realize the lion had wandered off so they could get back to gathering up food and building shelter. So that where we think we are in 2008. Time to pull up the boot straps and get on with it. This turning of psychology seems to travel in 60-80 year cycles and we (the two of) think we (all of us) are overdue for a change. The practical implication of this is a shift from "protection" to "exploration." We'll have more on this topic in the coming months. What would a Department of Creativity look like? What would happen if education replaced defense as the national priority? Lots of questions to be asked that have been lost for nigh unto eight years (draw your own conclusion on that time frame). This next one is half fun and half serious. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was created a couple years ago in response to the rise of the "intelligent design" school of thought opposing theories of evolution. Succinctly:
Holy Pastafarians! Were our souls touched by a noodle-y appendage? Were there meatballs (they would be modern day politicians we suppose) embedded in this primordial soup? See this clip on YouTube.com for more insight. So why all the hullabaloo? All humor aside, the launching of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (CoFSM) sort of signals the end of "political correctness" to us. In Our Humble Opinion, we (all of us, again) have gone way over the edge. Valentine's Day is "Friends Day"? A pug ugly dog is a "cosmetically challenged canine"? We could go on and on, but you get the point. CoFSM just points out to anyone with a brain the ridiculous nature of public discourse these days. There are obviously a lot of people out there with inordinate amounts of time and nothing useful to do (case in point: your humble writers over the holidays). It's hard to judge just who is on the ridiculous side of this argument - the noodleholics or the intelligent design types. The level of public discourse has reached a new height (or was that depth?). The CoFSM visits us as a reincarnation of an earlier effort to challenge conventional thinking called the Church of the Subgenus (seriously!). Praise the Reverend Bob Dobbs and his universal quest for "slack." As in "Could you cut me some slack here?" And here's another shot across the bow of the pirate ships in the culture wars. The next time you find yourself involved in a heated debate on social justice or public policy, reach back and grab some of the ideology of spagnostics. Your beliefs are just as "unfalsifiable" as the next person. We applaud those who seek to point how just stupid and self-righteous people can be. Jargon, jargon everywhere, nor a drop of reality anywhere. Could CoFSM be 2008's version of Religion 2.0? Hmmm, so much to ponder on a cold winter evening. Enjoy the videos (and the hot toddy that helps you makes sense of it all). Okay, back to the sublime from the ridiculous. Once again, here's another whiff in the wind. We see a crack in the foundation of the workplace. Look at infrastructure - or the lack thereof. A bridge falls down over here; a dike is breached over there. Education is in shambles; there's a distinct lack of talent to run business. We see these things popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm. This "theme" is hard to describe because much of it lies hidden beneath miles of concrete and asphalt. But let's step back and ask, "Why is this issue important anyway?" Briefly, the argument goes like this: wealth in the future will be created by (and controlled by - back to that fear thing) knowledge workers, or the "creative class" in Richard Florida's parlance. Although we far prefer Dan Pink's definitions of a new "conceptual age," this new "thoughtforce" (as opposed to workforce) is highly mobile and chooses to live and invest in communities with a high quality of life and a manageable cost of living. These factors are in turn highly correlated with what urban planners label "infrastructure." Of course there are two basic types of infrastructure - physical and social. We are speaking here primarily about the physical kind; we'll leave the social infrastructure issues to a later article. Transportation systems, water, sewage treatment, air quality, electricity, and telecommunications are the major components of our national physical infrastructure. Our logic says that communities with good, up to date, infrastructures will tend to attract more of the thinking force and the money those folks bring with them. And as we look around this vast country of ours we see too many communities with a crumbling public infrastructure, a lack of investment to maintain and repair it, and - worst of all - an almost total lack concern about the decay. Ergo, the thinkingforce will move elsewhere. This whole theme was brought home recently in a visit to a purported paradise within a short flight time from the continental United States. It was where we had thought all the talent would go. It was where we thought the well-educated knowledge workers seeking to escape decaying urban ghettos in the United States would go. Well, it has a nice marketing pitch, but the facts don't support the projected influx of Dan Pink's conceptual-age talent pool. The infrastructure isn't there. Transportation is barely beyond where the US system was in the early 20th century (that's over 100 years ago, folks). Broadband telecom is spotty at best; electricity is available once in a while, and hot water in residences a distinct luxury. The list goes on, the point being that the infrastructure in "paradise" might support a nascent tourist industry; but it is truly not sustainable into the 21st century as the global economy shifts its basis for wealth creation. Now, back to the United States. Here's the real surprise. According to the Urban Land Institute the United States, which made massive investments in the second half of the 20th century, is also woefully lacking in what it needs to move forward. "When it comes to infrastructure, America is more of a follower and no longer a world leader: ". . .The United States is on the cusp of a crisis" Even more specifically: The findings from the ULI study included (quoted from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 9, 2007):
Our Humble Opinion, once again, is that investments have to be made here in the United States on a massive scale. Doable? Of course; others are doing it. Many European countries have responded to their similar challenges by privatization of key infrastructures, while other countries are spending up to ten times as much of their GNP on infrastructure as we do here in the United States. It's a political decision, not a base economic one. If we just want things to stay the same as they've been, we (as citizens) will have to make some serious changes. Perhaps we need to invest in development instead of fear, and perhaps also just a tad in humor, poking a little fun at our foibles, our fears, and our short-sighted idiocy. 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 To subscribe to Future of Work Agenda, register on our web site. Please pass this newsletter on to other interested individuals and encourage them to subscribe as well. The newsletter is free, and will remain free as long as possible. To end your subscription, send a message to newsletter@thefutureofwork.net and write Unsubscribe in the Subject line. For republication rights, contact Jim Ware at jim@thefutureofwork.net.
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