The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here. Lynda Gratton

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СКАЧАТЬ awareness of the damaging effects of climate change, and the initial successes of creative and efficient experiments and practices in infrastructural development, play key roles. Productive processes and lifestyle choices are quickly emulated by others on a national and regional scale. As more and more people come to accept the threats that a high-carbon economy poses to their environment and livelihood, pressure on governments, including those of developing countries, increases investment in emission-reduction projects. Emissions trading schemes offer incentives for the establishment of low-carbon ventures, while giving more traditional sectors the opportunity to adjust.

      In this scenario, the Blueprints established by these multiple actors quickly create a culture of sustainability, helping to fuel a more effective international consensus. In turn, this consensus mitigates the inefficiencies and uncertainties that might otherwise continue to undermine a disintegrated, bottom-up approach. In order to stay at the forefront of innovation, many technologically developed countries bring about an era of brave policy-making that incentivises the creation of new and efficient infrastructural foundations. This establishes the emergence of new and innovative firms that become global leaders in exportable carbon management technologies and systems. Meanwhile, China and India commit to various international frameworks that guarantee technology transfer and secure an energy-efficient future. In rural areas of Africa, cheap and efficient wind turbines and solar panels ensure cost-effective access to energy and help make electric transport increasingly viable. Energy prices, though initially reflecting the cost of infrastructural reorganisation, remain affordable in the long run and continue to fall as wind and solar technology become more efficient.

      These two scenarios, Scramble and Blueprint, are not polar extremes – neither is unrealistic. Yet they do differ substantially. The first is one of denial and competition, while the second is of acknowledgement and cooperation. Both inevitably confront the hard truths of climate change without sacrificing economic growth. These are the three pieces of the energy force that will have the most profound implications on the future of work.

      1. Energy prices increase: Over the coming decades the easily available energy resources of the world will be depleted. At the same time, countries such as China and India will increase their resource requirements significantly. One of the most immediate impacts of the rising cost of resources will be that the movement of goods and transportation of people will have to be significantly reduced.

      2. Environmental catastrophes displace people: the correlation between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature increases was already causing concern by 2010. By this time, changes had begun to occur in the many ecosystems of the world, sea levels began rising, wind patterns had changed and heat waves and droughts had become more prevalent.

      3. A culture of sustainability begins to emerge: one of the implications of the dwindling of easily accessed energy resources could be a renewed interest in sustainability and widespread adoption of more energy-efficient ways of living, with a brake on vicarious consumption. These cultures of sustainability could have a profound impact on the way that work gets done.

      As we consider the dark and bright impact energy resources will have on the future of work, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the negative. However, as we will discover, it is possible to cast the task ahead in a positive light, one that can rejuvenate faltering economies, promote greater equality and foster innovation. It could constitute, to some extent at least, an energy revolution that echoes that of the late 1800s, with the culture of sustainability having as much impact as the engineering culture had on Victorian Britain. It is possible that the collaborative spirit will influence business ventures and government policy, creating greater transparency and integration even beyond the energy sector. There are already clues to these scenarios in the other forces. The technology force implies 5 billion people connected with each other, creating a ‘cognitive surplus’ that could well become the momentum and energy behind the grassroots-led initiative of the Blueprint scenario. What’s more, as the demographic force shows, the generation who will be leading the world in 2025 – Gen Y – are extremely aware of the energy and environmental challenges they are faced with. Perhaps more than any other generation before, they are capable of creating the cooperative and empathic skills that will be so crucial for the emergence of the Blueprint scenario.

      Crafting your own working future

      You have now taken a glance at the 32 pieces that make up the five forces that will shape the coming decades of your work life. Now the task is to begin to work with these pieces to craft the story of your own future of work, and from this begin to create a deeper understanding of your options and choices.

      As you look at these pieces the challenge is to make them your own and from them to craft your own story. Just as my mother worked with her fabric pieces to craft her quilts, so you need to go through a process of filtering and selection. Right from the beginning, there will be some pieces you will want to discard, others that will surprise you and you’ll want to know more about, and some you will fall in love with and want to understand more to make your own. Then, once you have initially sorted the pieces, you will want to look for patterns and begin to create a deeper structure that resonates with your own context and values. These are the actions you will want to take with the pieces:

      * Discard: one of the most important aspects of creating a beautiful quilt is to know what to leave out. The same is true with crafting your own story about the future. As you look back on each of the pieces about the future, there will be some that you can immediately discard. It may be that you don’t agree with the data, or that you know it’s not going to be important to you, or that it is something that you cannot imagine resonating with your picture of the future. Feel free to discard as many of these pieces as you wish.

      * Embroider: as you looked through the pieces, there will be some that intrigued you and created a sense of wanting to know more. As we take a closer look at the stories of the future, you will see that I provide more detail for each of the pieces and also have highlighted references and resources that you may find interesting.

      * Discover and collect: as you begin to put these ideas together and look at them in a more holistic way, you may decide that there are bits completely missing that I have failed to find in my own quest. I’ve had this feeling with my own fabric collection. I can recall that for years I wanted to see the silks of Varanasi, which are legendary in their luminosity and beauty but which required a trip to the upper banks of the Ganges to find them. It took me years to actually make the trip – but as soon as I did my first priority was to take a closer look at the fabrics. I am sure that as you take a closer look at the pieces I have collected, there will be some that are missing and that you will want to devote energy to finding. That’s wonderful – but do come to www.theshiftbylyndagratton.com to post what you have discovered – I’d love to take a closer look at what you have found.

      * Sort: I have presented the pieces to you in the simplest of categories, by the impact they have on the five forces. But as you look closer you may find that for you there are other ways of categorising these pieces. For example, you may want to sort them in terms of how much you find them personally intriguing, or the extent to which they will impact on your own future, or by the way they will impact on the region of the world in which you live.

      * Look for patterns: in a sense this is the most creative aspect of making a quilt. You have discarded the fragments that don’t fit, embroidered those that you value highly, and sorted them in categories beyond the most obvious. Now is the time to stand back and see if you can find an emerging pattern. The challenge with these pieces about the future is to find a pattern that makes sense to you, and resonates with how you believe your future will emerge. It’s only at this stage that you can move into the next phase of working out the shifts you will need to take to ensure that you have future-proofed your work and career.

      You may recall that this was the task I set the members of the Future СКАЧАТЬ