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April 1, 2008

The Work Design Collaborative is very pleased to announce today that we are transferring the membership component of Future of Work to Executive Networks (EN), a San Francisco-based firm that owns and operates almost a dozen similar professional groups. Within Executive Networks our group will be known as the Workplace Innovation and Performance Network, or WIPN.

Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware will continue to lead WIPN as Executive Directors; however, our role will shift from total management and operation of the group to thought leadership and group facilitation. Executive Networks will provide us with much-needed "back office" administrative support and business development capabilities that go way beyond what we have been able to do ourselves.

Our goals in this transition are simple: First, we want to free ourselves up to spend more time on leading-edge research about the future of work; second, we want to grow the group's membership so we can provide more leverage and generate more meaningful collaborative research; and third, we want to take advantage of the much larger network of practitioner resources that are part of the Executive Networks "family."

We also fully intend to continue our own Future of Work research and education programs, independently of, but completely in parallel with, supporting the new Workplace Innovation and Performance Network.

Executive Networks has formed and operated peer professional network groups for over 25 years, primarily in the human resource management field. EN is a leader in Human Resource, Learning and Talent forums for senior executives from hundreds of the world's leading companies and organizations. More than half of Fortune Magazine's Global Most Admired Companies are members of one or more of EN's peer network groups.

Mike Dulworth, CEO of Executive Networks, is a long-time friend and former colleague of Jim's; we've known each other for close to ten years and worked closely together at The Concours Group. Mike is also a thought leader and author in his own right; he recently published The Connect Effect, an insightful book about the power of personal and professional networking (link is to order information at Amazon.com).

We are absolutely delighted about this new alliance, and look forward to providing the WIPN member companies with significantly increased value as the group grows and connects with Executive Network's other members over time.

We encourage you to become more familiar with Executive Networks by visiting the firm's website. Please direct any inquiries about Executive Networks to us, or to Mike Dulworth at Executive Networks.

September 28, 2007

We're just discovered that the cover story in the September/October issue of CoreNet's The Leader magazine is none other than the one we submitted earlier this summer, "Closing The Talent Gap: Companies and Communities Team Up."

You can read the article online by clicking here (once the magazine cover comes up, click on the cover where the title of the article appears), or download a pdf version.

The article is a good summary of one our most important messages: companies are facing a severe talent shortage over the next five years, while communities are also struggling to attract talent. Our article suggests some core ideas for collaboration between organizations and communities.

August 16, 2007

We are exceptionally pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of our long-awaited (at least by us) new book, Corporate Agility.

The book is due in bookstores in mid-September, but you can pre-order it right now from Amazon.com (or click on the image above), BarnesandNoble.com, or directly from the American Management Association (our publisher).

For more information about the book and a note about it's background and why we wrote it, please go to our book page.

Or you can go directly to the book's own website, at http://www.corporateagilitybook.com, where we've included a bit more about the book, some reviews, and some background on the author team.

November 29, 2006

Charlie Grantham was quoted in the November issue of Fast Company, in a brief story about "Home Away from Home." The article focused on what we at the Work Design Collaborative and Future of Work call "Third Places." For additional commentary, please see our weblog post "More 'Third Places' Stories"

November 15, 2006

The November 2006 issue of Capital Magazine (available online only to paid subscribers) featured an article by Jim Ware titled "The Next-Generation Economy." Capital Magazine is a business-oriented publication centered in Dubai. While the magazine is available only to paid subscribers, you can access a pdf file of the article by clicking here.

Photo provided by Neal Zimmerman, author of "At Work At Home"