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

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СКАЧАТЬ is slightly odd in a book about the future to be often casting a glimpse back to the past. Of course there are books that are resolutely future focused. However, I believe that if we want to increase our ability to understand the future of work we also have to glimpse back to the past. Taking a historical perspective can be useful in both creating a sense of momentum and velocity, and also providing a view of historical precedence. This is important for, as we have seen, there are clues to the future of work in both the first Industrial Revolution of the 1870s and indeed in the changes in production that occurred around the 1930s. It also seems to me that knowing a little about the past can serve to bring deeper insight into the future. This is particularly the case when we come to think about societal trends, including family structures and consumerism.

      Understanding the broad context

      Over the following 32 pieces you will see that I range far from the confined space of work itself. We will take a look at how we have lived and might live in the future, our family structures, our modes of consumption, oil prices and institutional trust. I have chosen to take this broad brush because it is clear to me that work cannot be seen without acknowledging the broader context. Work takes place in the context of families, expectations and hopes; it takes place within the context of the community and in the context of economic and political structures.

      As I put these pieces together I am reminded again of my mother’s quilt-making. Over the years she collected scraps of material from many sources and then one day would sit down and work out a pattern from the pieces. I have to admit that one of the reasons the earlier metaphor of my mother’s fabrics and the quilts appeals to me so much is that, although I am not a maker of quilts, I am a collector of fabrics. Almost any trip I go on, I come back with tiny snippets of embroidery from Seoul or swathes of silk from Mumbai, or woven grasses from Tanzania. I even have a small woven Aboriginal basket made from pine needles. I’ve always patched together information in the same way. I like to travel and talk to people, and every year I make a point of visiting Asia, Africa and America.

      Being a business professor is a huge advantage in this endeavour since I’m not trying to sell my ideas as I might in consulting, and I am not hiding my views as I might if I was an executive in a multinational company. I find that people tend to talk with me openly, sharing their hopes and confiding their fears. And, of course, perhaps the biggest advantage in being a professor is that I have the luxury that few have of extended periods of time to think and write. This has been crucial because, as you will discover, while this is an incredibly exciting journey, it is also very complex and it is only with time and reflection that I have been able to take a perspective and view of these pieces.

      To help you find you own way through this maze of information, I have assembled the pieces of hard facts about the future under five broad headings: Technology; Globalisation; Demography and Longevity; Society; and Energy Resources. The truth is that these are rather superficial ways of categorising and the reality is that they can be re-sorted in many other ways. But it strikes me that this is a good place to start.

      I have then created for each of these broad areas about five to eight smaller pieces. Each of these pieces has some kind of internal consistency and tells a story on its own: a story, for example, about how the West is ageing, or how the developing countries are becoming powerhouses of innovation, or how the population of the world is moving from the countryside to the city. I’ve chosen each of these pieces because I believe they could be important to your future, your children’s future or the future of your community. It is up to you to decide what to do with the 32 pieces as you craft your personal point of view about the future.

      So, let’s take a closer look at the five broad forces that will shape the future of work, and the more detailed pieces that create a deeper understanding.

      The force of technology

      Technology has always played a key role in framing work and what happens in working lives. When we fast-forward to our working lives in 2025 and even out to 2050, we can only do so by knowing something about how technologies will develop in the near term – and by taking a guess at the possibilities for the long term.

      Technology has been one of the main drivers of the long-term economic growth of countries; it has influenced the size of the world population, the life expectancy of the population and the education possibilities. Technological changes will continue to transform the everyday nature of our work and the way we communicate. Technology will also influence working lives in other deeper and more indirect ways – the way people engage with each other, their expectations of their colleagues, and even their views on morality and human nature. You don’t have to be an out-and-out supporter of technological determinism to recognise that technological capability – through its complex interactions with people, institutions, cultures and environment – is a key determinant of the ground rules within which the games of human civilisation get played out.¹

      That’s not to say, of course, that the experiences of technology of those living in 2025 will be similar across the world. There have been, and no doubt will continue to be, large variations and fluctuations in the deployment of technology. That’s because technological developments do not happen in isolation but instead are dependent on context – be that cultural, economic or the values of people. What’s more, the deployment of any particular aspect of technology is not inevitable and will not necessarily follow a particular growth pattern. It could be that some technological developments will create revolutions in work while others will be a slower and steadier trickle of invention. It may be that in the future, as there has been in the past, there will be important inflexion points at which technologies divide and history will take either path with quite different results.

      The Cloud, the technology net that creates the means by which people across the world can access resources, is a case in point. Technologically it will be feasible within the next decade for anyone with access to the Cloud around the world to access the World Wide Web and all the enormous information held in it. However, it could be that in certain countries and regions and at certain times, issues about security and access will severely limit the deployment of the Cloud. However, in spite of these likely variations in deployment, the impact of different growth patterns across the world, and contextual variations, what is clear is that technological developments will continue on a broad front.

      For those of us on a journey to understand the future, the question is what might we expect this broad front to be – and how will it impact on day-to-day working lives in 2025 and beyond? Here are the ten pieces about technology that we will see played out in the storylines that follow.

      1. Technological capability increases exponentially: one of the key drivers of technological development has been the rapid and continuous fall in the cost of computing. We can expect this to continue and it will make increasingly complex technology available in relatively inexpensive handheld devices.

      2. Five billion become connected: this capability will be combined with billions of people across the world becoming connected. This will take place in both the megacities of the world and rural areas. The extent of this connectivity will create the possibility of a ‘global consciousness’ that has never before been seen.

      3. The Cloud becomes ubiquitous: rapidly developing technology will create a global infrastructure upon which are available services, applications and resources. This will allow anyone with a computer or handheld device to ‘rent’ these on a minute-by-minute basis. This has enormous potential to bring sophisticated technology to every corner of the world.

      4. Continuous productivity gains: technology has boosted productivity from the mid-1990s onwards, and we can expect these productivity gains to continue with the possibility of advanced communications at near-zero cost. Interestingly, in this second wave of productivity the emphasis will be less on technology and more on organisational СКАЧАТЬ