Posts Tagged ‘future of work’
My Manifesto
My BHAG
“I am young, I am British, and I love my career.”
That, is my BHAG – my big hairy audacious goal.
What is your BHAG?
If you are here, you are probably interested in that possibility of a startlingly lovable and enjoyable career. So welcome!
- If you are young, we would like to hear your stories.
- If you are British, we would like to hear about exciting opportunities that don’t get attention from the mainstream media.
- If you have thoughts on careers to die for, we want to know!
Who am I?
I am a work psychologist. I am not young, and I am not 100% British.
I have had an interesting career doing work I love – helping people coordinate their careers with the careers of other people.
I did career guidance & coaching. I’ve computerized HR departments. I’ve facilitated strategic planning for turnarounds. I’ve provided redundancy counselling. I’ve mediated pay negotiations. I’ve selected pilots and army officers. I’ve selected apprentices and executive directors for the C-suite.
All this is the glue of large hierarchical organizations. These are the systems behind the traffic lights that allow us to flow through a large organization without bashing into each other. These are the systems you only notice when they go wrong. Like Victorian children, good psychologists are seen and not heard.
Where am I going?
Work has changed though. The financial crisis is shining a spotlight on changes that have been coming for a long time. The changes were partly the cause of the crisis as well, but only because they were ignored by business leaders who didn’t understand them or willfully ignored them
Young people of today will have very different careers from my generation. Opportunities will be different.
Knowledge work & Science
#1 We know, for example, that most work in the west is knowledge-based or service oriented. More importantly, we are on the brink of massive discoveries in the all of the sciences. TED talks give us a leisurely and enjoyable way to keep up to date. Because science is where the future lies, if you have the opportunity for a scientific education, take it!
International & Languages
#2 The world has got smaller. Young people travel readily. You will also work across borders more. You will take assignments across borders and work with people all over the world using the internet. China, India, Russian and Brazil are the the countries of the future. Learn a second language! This is no time to live in mono-lingual world!
Networked Economy & Social Media
#3 The internet changes more than our scope. Facebook and Twitter may seem like play-things but they represent an important social innovation – the power to talk directly to each other. As internet thinker, Clay Shirky, says: Group action just got easier. Suddenly, large organizations are not as powerful as they once were. This is a shock to people whose career was tied up in conquering and commanding a large organization. The collapse of the newspapers and broadcast media is all over the news as I write. Importantly, younger people who grew up with Facebook, Spotify and other platforms expect direct, egalitarian interaction. They are ready for new types of organizations and they will move smoothly into the organizations that displace the old powerful hierarchies. Play on social media. Get used to it!
Positive Psychology & Personal Portfolios
#4 The world has also become more respectful of the individual. As “bosses” become less relevant, so too does the Victorian notion that one person knows best. We no longer have shape ourselves in someone else’s mould. We are free to ask: what do we love to do and who wants to do it with us? Whether it is to sail around the world alone or make a new scientific discovery, we have to ask ourselves what it will take to do what we want to do. We have to take ownership of our dreams and have the courage to invest in what we believe is worthwhile. This brings responsibility as well as opportunity and the freedom, and requires skills that few of us developed in the past. We have to learn to manage ourselves and bring supporters and collaborators around us. This is true for the magnificently talented and the ordinary, the scientist and the artist, the crafts person and the sales person. Writing an engaging story is your job now! Don’t wait for someone to write it for you!
Networked Business & New Business Models
#5 And we have new ‘technologies’ blossoming in this atmosphere. Boeing is trying to build aeroplanes by making the fuselage in one place and the wings in other and bolting together the big pieces like so many pieces of Lego. Mining companies are throwing open their geological records and asking the public to find the veins of gold that they missed. We come to care about design and the experience of the user. We like to make activities playful and sociable and fun. Where obedience might have been the currency of work in days gone by, today the currency is fun. He or she who creates fun wins!
How do work & organizational psychologists contribute to these changes?
For individuals, we have a clear role in helping each one of us take charge of our dreams and to take the first rather scary steps of gathering people around us. For this, we use positive psychology and interventions like gratitude diaries. We also freely put poetry and stories to work and and encourage people to organize their stories as an epic tale using the Hero’s Journey.
When we talk about groups and organizations we are less articulate. We will bring forward many of the techniques of the past. We’ll also study the work of internet watchers like Clay Shirky. We’ll study the work of contemporary anthropologists like David Logan on Tribes.
But then we are on our own trying to figure out what new organizations will look like. What traffic lights will be needed to aid the smooth flow of people through the organization? How will we design the systems that deliver traffic lights that go on and of at the right times?
This blog
This blog is a chronicle of my thinking in that direction. It is a patchwork. In the spirit of the age, I don’t try to produce a finished product. I just write every day making notes about what I hear on the radio and read on the web. I note. I connect. And I sort. Eventually, I understand.
What a work & organizational psychologist does for you
When I understand, then I can explain. And when I can explain, then I can deliver the services needed by individual performers and the managers who help them coordinate.
When they have an issue, I help them resolve it quickly with
a) A clear model to organize the questions
b) Vicarious self-efficacy through the stories of other people at a similar junction
c) Continued social support by sticking with them till they are done.
So, to work!
What are the issues of working in the 21st century? Who is taking a playful approach to their work? Where are they? And how can pursue the work we love?
Do leave comments. Only 10% of readers comment. Wouldn’t it be great if the British internet were different and 20% or 30% of people felt free to add their voice to the debate?
Jo Jordan
Olney, England
2 May 2010
Entrepreneur, leader, space creator
The great desk tidy continues. Professional organizational designers will instantly recognize what I am going to describe as Level 2 or C Band in Paterson parlance.
Understanding what is needed when
Let’s imagine a mechanic. He, and increasingly she, has served an apprenticeship, gone to college, and worked on lots of cars under the supervision of experienced mechanics.
A car arrives. They look at it. The learn of symptoms from the driver. They make some investigations in a manner that any other trained mechanic would recognize as methodical (or haphazard). They take action.
From time-to-time though, the bundle of symptoms is out-of-pattern. It may be a rare case that they haven’t encountered before It may be a complicated case where feedback to the basic tests they carry out is obscured and muddies the decision making process. The case may be complicated by factors not really to do with the car itself. Spare parts might be short or the car might be needed in less time than the mechanics need to do everything as well as they would like.
When the job becomes complicated, a more experienced colleague steps in “reads the situation” and explains the priorities to the skilled but inexperienced worker. Now that they are oriented again to a set of tasks that they know how to do, they can pick up the task from there.
In time, of course, they become experienced themselves and mentor others.
Directing traffic
In an organization, the role of the experienced worker is sometimes played by a controller who cannot do the job themselves. The archtypical example is the Air Traffic Controller, who prioritizes aircraft and coordinates them with each other and resources on the ground. The controller is not the aircraft Captain’s boss. But does give orders of a kind.
The intersections of networks
In networked industries, the role of the controller is likely to become more common. They may have rudimentary grasp of the skills they coordinate – they may have the equivalent of a light aircraft license, they could join in firefighting in elementary roles, they can do elementary electronics – but they are specialized in control. They have the mindset to concentrate on what is in front of them for long periods. They have good mental maps which they keep up-to-date. They are important enough for psychologists to study them in depth. Indeed many of the advances in applied cognitive psychology have come from studying air traffic controllers.
And so it will be with “managers” of the future. Though that term has developed so many connotations that we may have to drop it.
We will have people skilled at managing “space” where people come together to get things done.
People in this line of work will probably start early. We will see them organizing conventional clubs at school, working online and developing mental models about how to create cooperative spaces in a networked world.
Five competences for space creators in our networked world
As I am on a great clean up of my paper world, I want to write down five competences that the “space creators” of the 21st century will have.
#1 What needs to be done
#2 Emotional energy to connect
#3 Form a collective umbrella
#4 Delegate tasks to protect the collective
#5 Keep commitments to positive emotional space
Sort of abstract but it follows a logic to be: what needs to be done, why are we bothered and how or why would this be our priority, what is the space that we need to work together, what are the important tasks to maintain this space and who will do them, are we having fun here?
How do we learn these skills? A post for another day, I think. First, any comment on the competences?
Facets of business psychology
Being a business psychologist can be giddy-making. Well, that is our job. To have the giddy-experience so other people don’t have to.
Industrial or work psychology
When we want to improve productivity, we ask “what is the best way of doing this work?” Whether you do it or whether I do it, what is the best way (and when we get sophisticated, what is the error range and variance)?
Personnel psychology
When we want to choose someone to do the job, who will find it easiest to do the job?
Organizational psychology
What is the best way of organizing the work so that we can all get along with the minimum of emotional friction?
The thinking behind business psychology
The answers to these question do not necessarily contradict each other but the thought process behind them is contradicting.
Work psychology assumes we are all the same and can learn easily. Personnel psychology assumes we are all different and our differences are hard to change. Work & personnel psychology looks at what we do as individuals and organizational psychology might ask us to sacrifice efficiency for the sake of the group.
Who’s right and who is wrong? No one. Each question offers a slightly different perspective. And that is giddy-making. What we are good at is separating the questions and asking them one at a time so that we don’t end up with a confused, useless mess. That is what we are trained to do and we train for a long time – 5 years.
Modern questions in business psychology
Our giddy life doesn’t stop with the 3 traditional questions, though.
Old management theory assumed that change was slow, that there was a ‘best way’, that people were happy with the social and political relationships suffered and enjoyed by their forefathers, and that someone, somewhere knew what to do and how to do it and that the world would be sufficiently obliging to wait while they decided what to do and told everyone in the organization.
We know now that the world is not like that.
Work psychology
Laying out work for others to do while we decide is so, so, last century and bankrupt motor corp, we should be shot for suggesting it.
We’ve known for I don’t know how long in the military, and at least 40 years in psychology, that we should set a goal that is appropriate for a person’s skill level, give them the resources, free access to incoming feedback, and let them get on with it.
People cannot function with our constant back-seating driving. And the world will not wait for an organization that is that slow. It might seem like it will wait but that is probably because of some artificial barrier to entry. Best to see how much that barrier costs and how long that will be sustained. More under organizational.
Personnel psychology
Much of the work we do in personnel psychology is for really large organizations, like armies, where gathering “objective” information and allocating people on a “best fi”t model makes sense. We introduce efficiencies for everyone.
In smaller organizations, we are expensive ,and frankly managers don’t listen. Why is it that? This is an organizational psychology issue not a personnel psychology issue. So let’s move on.
Organizational psychology
Getting along in an organization is about human relations and “passing the ball” without dropping it. Management and organizational theory comes into play along with a raft of other issues, including politics.
The biggest issue in organizational psychology is “what is in it for me?” When managers are insecure, they will look for people who will protect their interests.
In big organizations, it is our job to reassure the managers and put the brakes on their worst self-interested excesses. We flag up artificial barriers to entry that are maintained at huge financial and moral cost (e.g. apartheid in South Africa and excessive privilege like doctor’s payments in the US). We put in procedures to balance managerial interest with organizational interest, in pay, for example, and in the selection of people who are good for the organization and not simply good for the manager.
We provide stability, in other words. Sometimes we even introduce a generative, healthy upward spiral. Though world events in the last two years show clearly that preventing a destructive tail spin would be a pretty good outcome.
We have to include people. Honorably. Allowing a core group to take over is very, very destructive.
Future organizations
Having said that. What is the future of large organizations?
We are much more likely to move towards a system of local modularization in which smaller companies cooperate to complete specific contracts as the aerospace industry did with the Boeing 787. Our business will change accordingly.
My predictions for the future of business psychology
This is how I see our profession moving.
Work psychology
In depth understanding of the work of an industry and the critical factors affecting productivity and learning in each sub-sector. We will become a mirror to the industry.
Personnel psychology
Continue to show people the limits of occupations. To give an obvious example, if I am a sprinter I’ll run the sprints not the marathon, and so on.
Beyond this well developed technology that needs to be updated to keep us informed about the limits of new professions, we might possibly change our focus to understanding careers over a lifetime: how do we develop a narrative that sustains us over the rapid changes in industry structures that we are likely to see over 50 years of our working life?
I think developmental psychology might become more important than personnel psychology and understanding business might become more important that the brute horsepower of “intelligence”.
Organizational psychology
The biggest change will be the nature of organizational life and the work that we are called upon to do. Companies will become smaller and more specialized and a new beast will emerge. Akin to entrepreneurial and holding companies, and replete with negotiation-minded supply chain specialists, these new organizations will create the projects and organizational conditions that set the boundary conditions for specialists to work together to be creative.
Specifically, it is my best guess, at March 2010, that these new organizations will analyse the markets and flag up what markets want, host discussions between relevant suppliers and arrange consortium funding, and carry the market risk themselves, though conceivably they may make innovative arrangements on the demand side too.
Further, some firms will specialize in backing up the market “seers” with infrastructure to allow global cooperation – firms like Cisco and firms specializing in virtual law and financing.
And then we will have people doing their stuff. The producers. Who are doing what they love and who morph and develop as they respond to the market. Hmm, I think there may be a role for people who develop the industry, much like the aerospace industry in the UK.
These aren’t my ideas. The first three strands were developed by Hagel & Brown, now of Deloittes.
My advice to young business psychologists
In not so brief words, that’s where I see us going. My advice to young psychologists is
1. Pick an industry that you love and understand how it is developing and changing and the skills needed within it.
2. Learn more developmental psychology and narrative counselling than psychometrics. Testing is a mature field. Little is happening there.
3. Think whether you want to serve producers, coordinators or entrepreneurs. Maybe try all three out. Maybe in you industry you have to do all three. Or, maybe you should specialize.
You need to map the ecology of your industry, see where your heart is, and join the people you love to serve.
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Emergence
I am tidying up and I glanced through a notebook from 2 years ago. I was utterly fascinated by ‘emergence’, the phenomenon where a flock of birds, for example, emerges from simple behaviour of birds. With three very simple rules – join the flock, keep up and keep a respectable “stopping distance” – birds individually, and probably without thought, create a flock that looks as if someone did think it up.
Emergence, business & management
We are fascinated with “emergence” in a business context because a naturally-forming flock undermines the idea of the all knowing and ominiscent leader. The planning, leading, organizing & controlling management theory of Fayol goes ‘for a loop’.
At first, I was puzzled that university departments hadn’t taken up this idea more vigorouosly, and more practically.
Including emergence in the theory of management
Two years on, I’ve found my thinking has drifted. Yes, it is certainly true that the role of managers is probably exaggerated (with their pay). But the project of changing management is unnecessary. Overmanaged firms will self-destruct, possibly at great cost to themselves and others, simply because managers have to be paid for and management that is not necessary simply makes a firm unweildy, inefficient and unprofitable.
The real issue is where our better understanding of organization is emerging in business. The best example that is written up is the motorcycle industry of China. The best example where an industry is trying to use similar processes is the aerospace industry in UK and the production of the Boeing 787.
Moving along to understanding emergence in business
The challenge now is to understand the variations of self-organizing networks.
I think, perhaps, the basic principle is that emergence, by definition, is not willed.
- We can prevent it happening.
- We can illustrate the principle.
But in real life, the probably the best we can do is create conditions for it to happen. What are those conditions?
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And after Toyota we have ?
The time has come when management is making one its momentus periodic shifts in thought. The textbooks might take a little time to catch up. Most university textbooks don’t do Toyota yet. And after all, as we all know, Toyota is passed its zenith. But as ever, the world moves on, and we learn from engine-makers and manufacturers.
This time it is Chinese motorcycles. How do they make them quite so cheap?
Chinese process networks & local modularization
I have been looking for good references to understand the phenonmenon of “local modularization”. At last, I have found a good paper the motor cycle industry in Chongqing where this practice emerged. It is a pdf document presented at Davos 2006 by Hagel & Brown who are now part of Deloittes.
Working tips for finding work that will still be here in 10 years’ time
As ever, I’ve made a working checklist for my own good. I imagine it might have been superceded by know, though. 3 years is a long time in today’s management practice.
Think supply chain not assembly line
The key to this thinking is ‘supply chain’ not the assembly line. Now there are specialized master’s degrees in supply chain & logistics. It is a serious business. I have a very amateur take of what we can learn generally about where business is going but this is what I make of it.
#1 Pull vs push
Look for networks where people are asking you to do things. Avoid networks and people are trying to ‘push’ services and products (spam you in other words). You are looking for networks that are based on people putting up their hands and calling “I need . .” You can go back to them saying “I can do X at this price.” Then neither you nor them have to say “Please buy . . .” and waste time and money on marketing. I haven’t seen any writing, other than a reference that I’ve listed below, on how networks make the change from push to pull. Please tell me if you have!
#2 Change the game to give you and your partner permanent competitive advantage
Outsource strategically rather than tactically. That is, form an alliance that changes the game. Don’t just buy in finished goods. A strategic alliance
- Shares the goal setting with the outsourcing partner.
- Expands the pie.
- Deepens capability (and know how)
- Is a long term relationship.
When you are calling for assistance, begin with the long term relationship. Have a discussion about your long term goal. The British aerospace industry have a cracking questionnaire on the questions to ask. It’s worth a look.
#3 Talk long term but go with whomever delivers
At the same time, be loosely coupled. Don’t try to specify the entire process or lock people in. It’s a scary thought at first but every person and every supplier is redundant. That is the natue of pull systems. Utterly redundant.
This feature may seem sem to contradict the second point and this is how the contradiction is resolved. A long term relationship comes from discussing the long term goal. In the past, one person specified the goal and others had to fall in in lockstep. Now long term goals are jointly agreed but if a partner doesn’t deliver, the network simply closes over, just like the internet, and moves on. The ‘self-healing’ of networks, ruthless as it is, is the biggest guarantee of quality (and also a worry for people who study exploitation).
#4 Go for good company rather than total dominance
Choose networks where you are one specialist link in a network rather than a dominant player. You don’t need to dominate the network; you need a good network. And good networks are full of people at the top of their game where the network, not just the members, gets better every day.
The British aerospace industy even have a programme to switch the whole industry over to strategically thought out relationships which though not quite pull, go in that direction. I can imagine this point worrying people. Certainly I would like to see work on how we protect ourselves from people who do try to dominate the network.
Moving from old styles of business to new
Hagel and Brown also gave me this checklist for managing our futures strategically. It might be sufficient to answer my two unanswered questions. How do we make the shift and how do we protect ourselves from ‘powerful pirates’?
- Where can we see the future? Where shall we post lookouts?
- Where can we do things differently with other people? Where can we work on innovative solutions?
- Where can we push the limits of organizational practice?
- Where is the “edge” or “boundary” that meets the outside world and informs the core?
- What sustains relationships?
- Where are we getting better and getting better faster?
- Which industries are unbundling and what is the patten? In 2006, Hagel & Brown forsaw businesses unbundling into infrastructure management, product innovation & commercialization, and customer relations.
I need to explore Hagel and Brown’s work more, on their own site and Deloitte’s. These lists are pretty rough but hopefully you’ll find these two lists useful in some way. Comments?
We can turn a plane on a dime
The 787 flew ~ at last ~ 2.5 years late.
The 787 was put together with a 20 page specification and takes 3 days to assemble parts from around the world rather than 40 days to assemble the plan manufactured on site.
We can turn a plane on a dime. And if we can manufacture a plane in a global network of local modules, then we can make anything.
Is modularizing work a good thing ~ for us?
Harvard Business Review blog are awed and skeptical in equal measure.
- They are sure the world will copy the “lego” model.
- They are sure that Chinese firms will give Boeing a run for their money.
I too, am sure that Chinese firms will Boeing a run for their money. They will give all of us a run for our money. What interests me is who will win the race, and how this new race will change the future of work.
Key skills in the future of workn
Clearly there are key skills in this new form of work
- Clicking the “lego” parts together
- Negotiating the specification of the parts and adjusting for inevitable “drift” as parts are made
- The credibility to organize the network of suppliers, customers and capital.
It strikes me that clicking the parts together is not key. Managing networks is the key. A firm can be judged by the size of the global network that it can organize and manage profitably.
Welcome to 2010 and the race to networking skills and managing global networks of local manufacturing modules!
Career decisions for young and old
I do a lot of career coaching. I talk to youngsters of all ability ranges. I talk to MBA student making career changes after a flying start in management. I talk to people who’ve been unlucky enough to lose their jobs and who looking for an echo career.
Are easy when we know what we want
What all these people have in common ~ those who are happy to get work at the minimum wage and those negotiating banker-size bonuses ~ is that they will not get what they want until they decide what they want.
And tracks are laid out for us by someone else
Many of us ~ particularly the talented, able and lucky ~ go through life on a set of rails. We go from one school to another, on tracks laid down by other people, and decision making has amounted to no more than “this” or “that”. Both are good and we chose on the basis of the frills ~ which perks were more to our taste.
When the tracks are gone, we have to lay them for selves
Then one day, shock and horror, the tracks are gone. We will have to lay them down ourselves. Suddenly, we realize that we are “institutionalized”. We haven’t being make decisions for ourselves. We are capable of rolling down pre-laid tracks without thought, but we are totally incapable of laying the tracks.
Smashing Magazine has a very comprehensive list for finding work
It’s a steep learning curve. Today Smashing Magazine has a list of “do’s” for free lancers. These “do’s” are the basis for job searches as well. Print them and rate your progress at getting them right.
The trouble is that step one is deciding what you want!
I can tell you right now which steps you will find hard ~ deciding which sector you want to work in and finding out about the companies. That’s the equivalent of laying the tracks. That is the part that you’ve never done before because you always took for granted that the tracks were there.
How to lay your own tracks
- Print out the article from Smashing Magazine
- Get a shoebox or box of similar size
- Keep your envelopes from junk mail
- Take envelopes of one color or size and every day find a website relevant to the industry that enchants you. Read and take notes.
- Take envelopes of another color or size and every day find a firm in your industry that sparks your curiosity. Read and take notes.
- Every month sort through. Keep the ten best firms and make notes on questions you want to answer about the industry.
- Also sort through and look at the people you would love to meet and learn a little about them
I can be sure that in 1-2 months of doing a little work every night, the industry will come alive. Smashing Magazine’s list will begin to be easy. Indeed, I strongly recommend that you start a blog. Get a Posterous account, which is easy to manage, and start “Expeditions into the Publishing Industry”, or whatever. In time you will be an acclaimed expert ~ and you will have got there by the first step that you took today.
Stop daydreaming about step 53 ~ take the 1st step
Indeed, if you don’t take the first step, if you keep telling me about step 7 or step 10 or step 53, then I know you are not serious. Step 1: print out Smashing Magazine’s article. Step Two get a shoebox. Step Three get a junk mail envelope and make your first notes.
And sigh with relief that you live in days of the internet!
And stop whinging! This is easy in the days of the internet. Just 10 years ago, this was almost impossible to do!
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