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

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СКАЧАТЬ specifically to take the pieces and to construct a day in the life of someone working in 2025. Many of these initial storylines were negative. They reflected the anxiety and concern people felt as they thought about the forces. As you will see, the major themes to emerge from this initial task were themes of fragmentation, isolation and exclusion. It is these themes we will next explore in more detail. After presenting these storylines, I will then describe in more detail the specific pieces that seem to play a contributing factor in the creation of the storylines.

      Once the negative, default storylines had been created, we went back to the original pieces with the task of re-sorting them to create more positive storylines – what I have called the Crafted Future. These show how the pieces from the five forces can also create work for the future, a future that has co-creation, social participation, micro-entrepreneurship and creative lives at its centre.

      As you begin to think through your own future of work, do download the Future of Work Workbook I have created for you – it’s available at my website, www.theshiftbylyndagratton.com, where you will also find a series of short videos in which I describe the forces and trends in a little more detail. By the way, whilst you are there do sign up for the monthly newsletter to stay in touch with developments.

      PART II

      The Dark Side of the Default Future

      It is the subtle and unique combination of the many aspects of the five forces that will create the context in which your future working life is lived. For some it could be that technology is the crucial driver, while for others it could be demography or globalisation. However, for most of us it will not be a single force but rather the combination of these forces that creates our context. To understand the many combinations these forces can take, the members of the research consortium created storylines of people working in 2025. Of course these storylines are fictitious. However, by thinking through the intersections and relationships between the forces, these possible scenarios are revealed. We can really begin to imagine how people will live their working lives in 2025.

      There is the storyline of Jill, whose frantic and fragmented life reveals how the technology and globalisation forces have created a 24/7 joined-up world that leaves her with little time to concentrate, observe and think, or even to play.

      There are Rohan and Amon, on the face of it both successful professionals living in Mumbai and Cairo. But scratch beneath the surface and their minute-by-minute living reveals a life devoid of easy companionship, with little by way of family ties. They are caught in the intersections of a world that is simultaneously becoming increasingly urban, where energy costs have moved relationships to the virtual, and where family ties and ebbing trust have left them isolated and lonely.

      In the USA we find Briana, with little by way of skills or ambition, joining the poor who can be found in any city around the world. Hers is a working life shaped by continuous economic bubbles and crashes, and she is the victim of the relentless replacement of semi-skilled jobs by technology. She has also seen austerity grip the West, and the rise of the underclass trapped in ageing cities.

      It is through the experiences of these characters that we can truly understand how the five forces will shape our future, and how they will interact, influence and create momentum. Through the eyes of our future workers we can see the paradoxes they face, the choices they make and the troubles and anxieties they experience. Like theirs, our own future working lives will have dark and light aspects depending on our context and choices.

      However, these are not uniformly dark lives – working lives rarely are. Rohan, for example, is a highly competent surgeon in Mumbai and has achieved mastery at the core of his work, and Jill has a group of friends, which I will call the ‘Posse’, that brings her enormous pleasure. What’s important about these stories from the future is that they illustrate an aspect of a working life that is missing or unbalanced. It is by considering these imbalances that we can draw a thread from the past to identify their pathway, and to the future to describe their outcomes.

      As you think about each of these stories, I urge you to reflect on these questions:

      * Have you noticed any of these future phenomena in your own working life – are they already resonating with you?

      * Do they sound plausible for others in the future, and what are the drivers behind these phenomena?

      * What would these mean to your working life and the lives of others?

      The final question addresses the issue of choices and consequence, of assumptions and shifting assumptions. It ties directly with the three future-proofed shifts I believe will be crucial in creating meaningful work in the future. For example, the shift from the shallow generalist to something much more masterful and skilled – which in a sense is what sits at the heart of Briana’s story. Or the shift from isolation to connectivity – which is a choice that Rohan and Amon have failed to make. Or indeed the shift from the voracious consumer that is the basis of Jill’s life to a more balanced life in which meaning and experiences play a more central role.

      These are four stories that illustrate what we might think of as the Default Future. That’s the future which emerges when the tough decisions are ignored. If, as you read these stories, you find them chilling, then they simply serve to illustrate how crucial it is to think hard about how work life will emerge, and to be prepared to question some deeply held assumptions, and make some tough shifts.

      Chapter 2

       Fragmentation: A Three-Minute World

      Jill’s story

      It is 6.00 a.m. on a cold morning in London in January 2025 and Jill is awakened to the sound of the alarm. As soon as her eyes begin to focus, her attention is grabbed by the 300 messages that flash up on her wall screen. During the night, colleagues, friends, current employers and our future employers from across the world are keen to share their ideas with her, check information and ask her opinion on pressing issues. Getting out of bed, as her eyes become accustomed to the dawn light, the first hologram call comes in. Over the next ten minutes Jill works with her avatar, as it is needed for a meeting across the globe that will begin in two hours’ time and will require broad directions.

      By 7.00 Jill is connected to her cognitive assistant that has created the timetable for her day and made the preparations for the teleconferencing and video-presence connections she will need. Her first conference call is to her colleagues in the Beijing office who are keen to link up with her, and so the next 30 minutes is spent in a conference call with the team. As she listens to their voices over the telephone she is able to work on another 30 messages – thank goodness for the mute button! The next 50 minutes are spent still in her bedroom taking another quick look at the nighttime messages, briefing her avatar and working on a project that is key to the group.

      By 10.00, still in her pyjamas, Jill snatches a quick bite of breakfast, holds back on the demands from her colleagues for yet more feedback from them, and logs on to her worksite to see if any new work has come in overnight.

      The next hour is spent on conference calls to clients, negotiating a couple of deals and agreeing delivery times. She has the final call with Mumbai before they go offline. They are using the recently developed hologram technology to project themselves, and Jill is pleased with the clarity of the representations. It is 10.30 and her team in Boston are awake and keen to ask her opinion about a particular deal they have put together: it involves linking with the Shanghai team so she agrees to brief her Chinese colleagues the following morning.

      By 11.00 Jill is ready to take the train into the office hub that has been built about 10 miles away. This hub is used by any employee of the company who lives in the vicinity and provides an opportunity for people to work together in an office environment. СКАЧАТЬ