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PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE: GRATTON

Work is universal. But, how, why,where and when we work hasnever been so open to individualinterpretation. The certainties of the

past have been replaced by ambiguity,questions and the steady hum oftechnology. Now, in a groundbreakingresearch project covering 21 global

companies and more than 200executives, Lynda Gratton ismaking sense of the future of work.In this exclusive article she providesa preview of the real world of 21stcentury work.

You may be a Baby Boomer in your50s with Gen Y children just joiningthe workforce; an alumnus of abusiness school, a 40-year-old Gen Xpreparing for 30 more years of work,with young Gen Z children; or an

MBA student thinking about the yearsof work ahead of you.

Whatever your age, one of the mostcrucial questions you face is how the

FORCESSHAPINGTHE FUTUREOF WORK

future of work will develop and theimpact on you and the organisationsof which you are a member. If youare now aged 30, you can expect towork for the next 40 years — thatmeans in 2050 you will be a memberof the workforce. If you are 50, youcan expect to be actively employed foranother 20 years — that’s 2030. If youhave young children, they could beworking until 2070.

Work is, and always has been, oneof the most defining aspects of ourlives. It is where we meet our friends,excite ourselves and feel at our mostcreative and innovative. It can also bewhere we can feel our most frustrated,exasperated and taken for granted.Work matters — to us as individuals,to our family and friends and alsoto the communities and societies inwhich we live.

Many of the ways of working that

we have taken for granted for 20years are disappearing — workingfrom nine-to-five, aligning with onlyone company, spending time with

LYNDA GRATTONINVESTIGATES:

THE FUTURE

OF WORK

16 BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW Q3 – 2010

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P H O T O : L C G R

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17Q3 – 2010 BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW

THE FUTURE OF WORK



family, taking weekends off, workingwith people we have known wellin offices we go to every day. Andwhat’s coming in its place is muchless knowable and less understandable — almost too fragile to grasp.

Facing the future

Over the last two years, my mission

has been to understand how workand organisations will evolve. WhatI wanted was not firm predictions,since I know these are notoriouslyunreliable, but rather a point of view,a basic idea of what the hard facts ofthe future are, and a way of thinkingabout the future that has internalcohesion. I wanted to discover,with as much fine-grained detail aspossible, how the future of work islikely to evolve.

Why it is so important now, toat least attempt to paint a realisticpicture of the future, is that we canno longer imagine the future simplyby extrapolating from the past. Thepast six generations have experiencedthe most rapid and profound changemankind has experienced in its 5,000years of recorded history. If the worldeconomy continues to grow at thesame pace as the last half-century,then by the time my children are theage I am now — in 2050 — the worldwill be seven times richer than it istoday, world population could be over

9 billion and average wealth will alsohave increased dramatically.

We live at a time when the schismwith the past is of the same magnitude

as that last seen in the late 18th

century. A schism of such magnitude

that work — what we do, where we

do it, how we work and with whom —will change, possibly unrecognisably in

our lifetime. In the late 18th century,

the drivers of this change were the

development of coal and steam power.

This time around it is not the result

of a single force, but rather the subtle

combination of five forces that will

fundamentally transform much of what

we take for granted about work: the

needs of a low-carbon economy, rapid

advances in technology, increasing

globalisation, profound changes

in longevity and demography and

profound societal changes.

It is not just our day-to-day

working conditions and habits that will

change dramatically. What will also

change is our working consciousness,

just as the industrial age changed

the working consciousness of

our predecessors. The industrial

revolution introduced a mass market

for goods and with it a rewiring of the

human brain towards an increasing

desire for consumption and the

acquisition of wealth and property.

The question we face now is howthe working consciousness of current

and future employees will be further

transformed in the age of technology

and globalisation we are entering.

What is inevitable is that, for

younger people like my two sons,

work will change dramatically — and

those of us already in the workforce

will be employed in ways we can

hardly imagine.

The wise crowd

To better understand the future ofwork, from October 2009 to May

2010 I led a research consortium of

21 companies and over 200 executives

from around the world. The major

business sectors were represented by

a wide array of firms, including Absa

(the South African bank), Nokia,

Nomura, Tata Consulting Services

(TCS), Shell, Thomson Reuters,

Novartis and Novo Nordisk, SAP,

BT and Singapore’s Ministry of

Manpower, as well as two not-for-

profit organisations, Save the Childrenand World Vision. My colleagues,

Dr Julia Goges-Cooke and Andreas

Voigt, also took part.

The consortium communitymet initially in November 2009 atLondon Business School where welooked closely at the hard facts of thefuture, then took the conversationinto their own companies. We wereable to work together virtually in anelaborate shared portal and also todiscuss the emerging ideas in monthlywebinars — and later in a series ofworkshops in Europe and Asia. At thesame time, I tested out some of myinitial thoughts by writing a weeklyblog (www.lyndagrattonfutureofwork)on which a wider communitycommented. It was these ideas,insights and anxieties that became

stitched into storyline narratives andbrought depth to our conversations.

What excited the community wasfinding answers to three questions:n How will external forces shape the

way my company and its peopledevelop over the coming decades?

n How best can we prepare for thesedevelopments to ‘future proof’the company?

n What can we learn from othersabout where to focus our attentionand resources, what will be

tough, and what will be morestraightforward?

Working it out

How will these five forces affect theway we work in 2025, and whatdoes this mean for the choices andactions we should be taking now?My research and conversations aboutthe future of work have led me tounderstand that the future will beless about general skills and moreabout in-depth mastery; less aboutworking as a competitive, isolatedindividual and more about workingcollaboratively in a joined world; andless about focusing solely on a standardof living and more on the qualityof experiences. Here are the ways Ibelieve these three shifts will play outin our lives and the lives of others.

The shift to mastery I believethat in the future the means by whichindividual value is created will shiftfrom having generalist ability to havingspecialist ability and achieving serialmastery. Why? Because if you remain

a generalist, there are thousands,perhaps even millions, of people whocan do the same work as you do —yet faster, cheaper and perhaps even

“Work is, and alwayshas been, one of themost defining aspectsof our lives. It is wherewe meet friends, exciteourselves and feel atour most creative andinnovative. It can alsobe where we can feelour most frustrated,exasperated and taken

for granted.”


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01 Emerging markets are taking over02 The robots are real03 The new global jet set

01 02 03

TECHNOLOGICALDEVELOPMENTSTechnology will influence the sizeof the world population and lifeexpectancy and will influence ourworking lives in other deeper and more

indirect ways — the way we engagewith others, our views on morality andour own human nature. You don’thave to be a supporter of technologicaldeterminism to recognise thattechnological capability (through itscomplex interactions with individuals,institutions, cultures and environment)is a key determinant of the groundrules within which the games of humancivilisation get played out.

By 2025, we can expect thatmore than five billion people will beconnected by mobile devices, theInternet ‘Cloud’ will deliver low-costcomputing services, an increasingamount of work will be performed byrobots and self-created content will jointhe digitalisation of books to create anunprecedented amount of informationin the world knowledge net. We canexpect that, across the globe, billionsof cognitive assistants will be collectinginformation, monitoring people’sbehaviour and taking actions fromtheir preferences. This massive crowdof computers is becoming increasingly

capable of learning and creating newknowledge entirely on its own and withno human help.

GLOBALISATIONThe combination of technology andglobalisation will have a profoundimpact on the way we work in thefuture. While many of the new polesof economic activity are in the Big

Six emerging economies (Brazil,China, India, Mexico, Russia andSouth Korea), the economies ofnext-wave locations such as Egypt,Nigeria and Turkey are increasinglyimportant. These emerging economieswill increasingly add value throughinnovation as well as low-costmanufacturing. Greater numbers ofpeople will choose to move to themega-cities of the world, and newtalent pools will emerge in areas acrossthe globe where the population isconnected to the world knowledge net.Much of the world will become joined — both in terms of trade in goods andservices, the mobility of labour, theopening up of new talent pools and inthe extent of global connectivity.

Globalisation will bringopportunities for talented andenergetic people to become part ofthe world economy wherever they areborn. It will also increase the exclusionof those who are not part of the globalmarket, either because they don’t haveaccess to broadband or because they

have neither the talent nor the energyto compete.

FIVE FORCES

0201 WOne of the first tasks of the researchwas to identify the external forcesthat will fundamentally change theway that work will be done by 2025.

We determined that five forceswill be crucial:

LYNDA GRATTON INVESTIGATES:THE FUTURE OF WORK


THE FUTURE OF WORK



01 Older for longer02 Fathers are increasingly involved03 Wind power

030201

SOCIETALTRENDSThe mental life of humanbeings has been transformed bydevelopments such as language,literacy, urbanisation, division oflabour, industrialisation, science,communications, transport andmedia technology. These changeswill continue over the comingyears. By 2025, we can expect thatpeople will be more individualistic

and increasingly prepared to forgelifestyles based on their own needsrather than societal expectations. Atthe same time, we can expect trustin business and business leaders tocontinue to plummet.

I predict that, in 2025, manypeople will live their lives alone orin small family groups and someof these relationships will becomemore virtual. It will increasingly bethe norm to work much of the timefrom home or in small community

hubs to avoid the carbon costs andgeneral wear and tear of lengthycommutes. Most employable womenwill work outside the home, so themajority of households will have twoworking members with conventionalhouseholds no longer the norm.Younger men will have decided tospend more time at home and totake a more active part in caring fortheir children. More people will workas freelancers and ‘neo-nomads’,expecting increasing autonomy andfreedom. As families become smaller

and more dislocated, friends (andwhat I have termed the ‘regenerativecommunity’) will play an increasingrole in individual happiness.

LOW-CARBONDEVELOPMENTSThe extraction and use of energyhave always framed the way welive and the way we work. Eachtime a new, more complex energy-consuming development takes place,it increases the pace, flow and densityof human exchange and createsmore connectivity between people.

Our uses of energy will also framethe way we work in the coming

decades. We can expect oil prices to risesubstantially as the developing worlduses more energy and the sources of oilhave become depleted and expensiveto extract. Carbon output will risesteeply, particularly in China and Indiawith their rapidly developing urbanpopulations and manufacturing bases.

The world will have heated up, withsea levels rising and climates changing.Some governments will have introduceda carbon tax, and the carbon footprintsof individuals and companies will be

scrutinised and forced to reduce. Thiscould result in a rapid escalation of thecost of moving goods across the globeand a rapid reduction of commutingand work-related travel. This will bea significant driver to virtual workingand home-based working.

While I have described theseforces separately, in reality thesefive trends will work together.For example, the combination ofadvances in technology and growingglobalisation will significantly increasethe use of tele-presence, webinars

and other communal tools.

04 05

FIVE FORCES

03DEMOGRAPHICCHANGES The new demography will reshapeour understanding and expectationsof work. In many ways, the comingdecades will be defined by the largestdemographic group the world hasever seen — the Baby Boomers. In2010, they are in their 50s and 60s;and by 2025 most will have left theworkforce, taking with them a hugestore of tacit knowledge and know-

how as well as, if some commentatorsare to be believed, much of thewealth of the next generations.

The future will also seeunprecedented increases in lifeexpectancy. There is a strongpossibility that many of the healthychildren born in 2010 will livemore than 100 years, as will someof those currently in their 20s.

This will fundamentally bring intoquestion our current assumptionsabout retirement, about the

employment of the over-65s andabout the provision of pensions.


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“The future will beless about generalskills and more about

in-depth mastery.”

PHASE TWO OFTHE FUTURE

The second phase of the research was launchedin October 2010 with companies from all overthe world. You can follow the progress on LyndaGratton’s blog: www.lyndagrattonfutureofwork.com

You can also be part of the conversation about thefuture of work by joining the communityat www.hotspotsfutureofwork.com

The research will focus ontaking action around the four mostcrucial themes that emerged in thefirst phase of the work:n How can executives support

the development of a talent pooland leadership cadre which isfuture proofed?;

n what are the means by whichorganisations can build and supportthe communities, networks andecosystems crucial for the future?;

n how can we create the teams andcollaborative working essential in anincreasingly virtual world?;

n and what are the implicationsfor those who have to deliver thefuture of work – in particular thelearning, organisational development

and human resource functions?

better. In the future, you will have to

differentiate yourself from the crowd,

build depth and yet be prepared to

shift gears across the course of your

working life. I believe that the perfect

storm of the five forces has created an

opportunity to shift from the age of

mechanisation to the age of mastery.

In this new age, there is a possibility

for people to put their stamp on who

they are and what they choose to do.

However, this possibility carries withit the necessity to become more aware

of what is valuable and unique and to

craft credentials in a thoughtful and

energetic way. This means becoming

specialised in a variety of areas and

achieving mastery in them and building

and carrying valuable credentials

in a way rarely seen in the past.

The shift to connectivity

I believe that one of the paradoxes

of the future will be that to succeed

one will need to stand out from the

crowd while at the same time being

part of the crowd or, at least, the

wise crowd. So, you will need to both

stand out with your mastery and skills

and simultaneously become part of

a collection of other masters who

together create value. Otherwise you

will always be on your own, isolated

and competing with thousands of

others, with no possibility of the

leverage that the crowd brings.

In the past, success was achieved

through personal drive, ambition andcompetition. In the future, it will be

achieved through the subtle but

high-value combination of mastery

and connectivity.

That’s because, in a future

increasingly defined by innovation,

the capacity to combine and connect

know-how, competencies and networks

will be key. It’s in this synthesis or

combination that real innovative

possibilities lie. So, whom you choose

to connect with, and to whom they

are connected, will be one of thedefining aspects of future working life.

High-value networks will consist of a

combination of strong relationships

with a few knowledgeable people(what I call ‘the Posse’) and a largernumber of less-connected relationshipswith a more extensive network (whatI call ‘the Big Ideas Crowd’). Yourhigh-value networks will connectyou with people who are similarlyspecialised as well as those with verydifferent competencies and outlooks.It is in the diversity of these broadernetworks, the Big Ideas Crowd, that

the possibility of innovation lays.

The shift to quality of experiences

Finally, having confronted the paradoxof both being individually masterfuland yet joined with others, I believethat there is an even more complexshift. You, your friends and childrenwill need to think very hard about whatsort of working life you want. Simplyopting for a high standard of livingis not going to do it. Why? Becausein the future, quality of experiences

will trump quantity of consumptionevery time and words like ‘happiness’and ‘regeneration’ will become thetouchstone of future working lives.

The 19th-century industrialisationof the Western world heralded themove to cities and the breaking downof traditional communities. In itsplace came the nuclear family, oftenuprooted as father moved to seekwork. So while the standard of livingthroughout the developed countriesrose, often the quality of life hardlyshifted. People may have been ableto enter the consumer society andconsume at quantity, but this didnot necessarily bring them qualityof experiences such as happinessor contentment.

I believe there is an opportunityover the coming decades to shapework and life in a manner thatenables people to reconnect withwhat makes them happy and createsa high quality of experience. Thebreakdown of automated work, therise of home-based working and the

increase in the possibility of choiceprovide the foundation for a shift infocus away from quantity consumedas the only measure of success.

Challenges and opportunities

The future workplace will create bothchallenges and opportunities. Graspingthese opportunities will be crucial.Some of these changes are inevitable(for example, flexible working), so thefocus is on making them work as soonas possible. Other actions will be trickyand will require the creation of newpractices in the way that companies arebuilding competencies around virtualteam working.

Perhaps those responses needingthe greatest focus are those I callthe ‘contested’ aspects of the future,workplace processes and proceduresthat have not been fully tested, suchas the need for more democraticprocesses and a focus on experiencesrather than on standard of living. Suchnew ways of working are going todemand a level of trial and error in theworkplace that will prove challenging

to workers and managers alike. Yet, intomorrow’s brave new world of work, ahealthy dose of courage and optimismwill go a long way.


THE FUTURE OF WORK



01TRANSPARENTAND AUTHENTIC

LEADERSHIP In a future world of transparencyand connectivity, leaders willbe looked upon to work in acollaborative manner. We canexpect their behaviours andactions to be closely scrutinised,so their authenticity will be key. Atthe same time, globalisation willcreate the need for more complexnetworks and for leaders to takethe initiative in engaging withglobal problems and challenges.

Leaders will increasingly becalled upon to be members

of a team, most of which will

02HIGH-PERFORMINGVIRTUAL TEAMS Increasingly, work is performedacross businesses, functions andorganisations. As a consequenceof this cross-border working,teams often work virtually,actually seeing each other onlyoccasionally. Our own work onthese teams shows that manyfail as they become overwhelmedby the sheer complexity of theirtask. So it’s no surprise that theexecutives in our consortiumranked the capacity to manageand lead high-performing virtualteams as crucial for the future.

At SAP, working virtually insideand outside the company hasbecome the norm and hasbeen shown to create widernetworks and allow a moreflexible working style. Executivesare using complex dialogueand decision-making tools andsocial-networking tools. At BT,virtual team working has beenenhanced with Telepresence,next generation high-definition

THE IMPACT ONORGANISATIONS

The future of work will change not just for individuals butalso for the organisations of which they are members. Tounderstand the breadth and extent of these changes, wefirst identified the 20 areas we believe to be important forthe future and then asked executives in the consortiumcompanies to rate those they believed to be most

critical for the future. We also investigated where ‘futureproofed’ examples existed — areas in which membersof the consortium had already developed practices andprocesses that can provide insight and inspiration.

Five areas emerged as the most important:

LYNDA GRATTON INVESTIGATES:THE FUTURE OF WORK

consist of a diverse groupof people, which will put anemphasis on their skills ofinclusion. ThoughtWorks, abespoke software developmentcompany, has developed a set

of organisational tools: pairingdecision makers, holdingdemocratic elections for specificteams and setting up virtualnetworks. The philosophy behindthe practice is that leadershipis shared to improve decisionmaking and create balance.Pairing happens at all levels,from the highest leadership level,to developers writing or testingsoftware, to mentoring. Leadersare encouraged to be democraticand authentic through theprocess of election, in whichgroups are nominated and voted

for by their peers.

video conferencing. BT has 60studios around the world thatbring people together in multiplelocations. At Save the Children,the executive team is pioneering

new ways to build a collaborativeapproach across virtual teamsbrought together for emergenciesand development work. Theexecutive team believes that thisis a trend that will acceleratein the future both in terms ofwhom they work with and howcollaborative work is performed. Other companies are focusingon how the competencies withinteams can be understoodand developed. At TataConsulting Services (TCS), acompetency development and

training tool (iCALMS) holds amaster dictionary of all rolesin TCS, with a descriptionof the accountabilities andcompetencies. This creates animportant global base from whichto identify the best candidate fora role as well as any knowledgegaps that training modulescan rapidly fill. It also creates astrong foundation for ongoinglearning to take place.

,,,,


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03VALUABLE CROSS-BUSINESS NETWORKSAND RELATIONSHIPSIncreasingly, the value of theorganisation will be held in its‘social capital’, that is, the valueof the networks and relationshipsheld within businesses, acrossbusinesses and into the widercommunity and ecosystems.Building relationships acrossbusinesses will becomeincreasingly important in thefuture as the driver of innovationwill require businesses to combineassets and resources in ever moreunusual and creative ways.

We saw a number of examples ofhow organisations are breakingdown the barriers between

functions and businesses andcreating relationships acrossthe company. At Nokia, forexample, the process of strategydevelopment has been opened

to many employees in order todevelop and gain commitmentto implementing the strategy.At Shell, the scenario planningprocess, with the recentrelease of the 2050 scenarios,creates a level of conversationand depth of knowledge thathas become crucial to thefirm’s long-term planning.

At the Danish pharmaceuticalcompany Novo Nordisk,social media plays a crucialrole in internal and externalcommunication. The key tools,

NovoTube, Novopedia andNovoIdeas, are designed toimprove collaboration andfacilitate knowledge sharing.

Social media has also played akey role at SAP, where a seriesof tools has been developed forbusiness networking, businessprocesses and business

decisions. These have enabledmore complex dialogue anddecision making than originalsocial networking tools.

Building valuable networks iscrucial to Nokia, where executiveslaunched a programme called‘Booster’ in 2008 to encouragecross-functional and cross-hierarchical working and toraise the capacity to acquireand use external resources. Theprogramme covered all 5,000employees of the business unitand started with a two-day face-

to-face workshop with 700 teamleaders, followed by involvementof the whole community throughonline social networking.

04VALUABLERELATIONSHIPSWITH PARTNERS,CONSUMERS ANDENTREPRENEURS Networks are not simply thosethat arise within the business.Increasingly, value will becreated through the relationshipsheld with those outside, bethey partners, consumers orentrepreneurial businesses. AtThomson Reuters, for example,strong networks with independentpeople across the world havebeen crucial to their success. Formany years, a network of highlyflexible independent journalists,called ‘stringers’, have workedon an ad hoc basis in order toensure that news around theworld is covered at minimum cost.Some work on a retainer, othersare hired for ad hoc projects. Thesystem has existed for decades

and works through strong trustedrelationships and reciprocalbenefits. For Thomson Reuters,

the system provides global reach,flexibility, speed and tight controlover costs; the stringer gainsvaluable journalistic experience,increased international visibility,higher pay, the chance of full-time employment, and careerdevelopment through working witha range of companies. Stringersare allowed to work for other newsnetworks as well as local media.

ARM, the world leader insemiconductor intellectual

property, is pioneering aninnovative organisational model— an ‘ecosystem’ — intendedto capture the needs of endconsumers (thus providingmore targeted products) whilemaintaining a high degreeof specialisation. ARM is atthe centre of a coalition ofcompanies, all using the sameunderlying technology. Thiscreates a wide range of productsfrom which to select, so a mobilephone manufacturer can usethe ARM ecosystem to compare

across a range of chips producedby different companies, all usingARM research and development.

05FLEXIBLE WORKING The capacity to work flexibly wasseen by our consortium membersas key to the future. This flexibility

is a growing competence forcompanies such as BT with its‘Follow the Sun Project’ designedto hook up the UK and Californiain a continuous 24-hour operation.The project involved new workschedules and a twice-dailytransatlantic handover that hasbrought high levels of continuityand customer satisfaction.

LYNDA [email protected]

Gratton is Professor ofManagement Practice atLondon Business School.

She is the author of a seriesof bestselling books includingHot Spots , Glow and

Living Strategy .

OVERVIEW

At Thomson Reuters, flexibleworking practices arewidespread, with employeesencouraged to work fromhome whenever possible. Sucharrangements cover homeworking, part-time working,

job sharing and flexi hours.These help to meet the personalneeds of staff as well as thedemands of a company workingacross many time zones. Flexibleworking creates challenges forperformance management, andat Tata Consulting Services, anew system has been created toaccommodate workforce needs.

FOR MORE ONLYNDA GRATTONSEE PAGE 74


THE FUTURE OF WORK

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