December 2005

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This is our personal note welcoming you to the December 2005 issue of Future of Work Agenda and setting our theme for the month. This month we're struggling with a kind of malaise and angst that seems to have taken hold of workers and executives alike. There are no easy answers, but we think we have at least the beginnings of an explanation.

We've got lots going on. WDC is in the news again - in several places. We were quoted in an article about distributed work appearing in the December 12 issue of Business Week (on the newsstands Monday, December 5). We were actually featured in Training and Development Magazine in November. And we'll be appearing on a panel at the IEDC Leadership Summit in January. Plus we've developed a new Discovery Workshop, aimed at helping launch Business Community Centers.

Last month we described what it takes for a community to successfully host a Business Community Center^tm. This month we recommend using a similar analytic approach to assessing the potential for commercial enterprises to make the transition from a "traditional" manner of operating to a more "distributed" organizational model.

Every once in a while we like to share some ideas or practices that we've come across - information we think you'll find interesting and maybe even provocative. This month's notes come from a fascinating conversation we had recently with a senior business executive and a really smart author and independent thinker.

This section provides you with quick summaries of several recent notes we've already posted on the Future of Work weblog. In each case we also include a live link to the original post on the blog. And we encourage you to become a regular reader of the blog, where we are posting notes, case studies, and links to other important websites almost every day.

We end each issue of Future of Work Agenda with a personal perspective - our chance to comment on issues and developments in the world of work that we find important and interesting. This is our "editorial" page, where we enjoy offering our opinions and predictions about what's happening (or should be happening) in the world of work.

From Jim and Charlie

As we put this edition of our fabled newsletter to bed, we're just coming off a quiet Thanksgiving holiday weekend - and gearing up for the full-blast end-of-year shopping season. The early reports are of long lines and even fights over the latest electronic toys at bargain basement prices.

More importantly (for us, anyway), the two of us spent several hours over the last couple of weeks talking with Michelle Conlin, a journalist with Business Week. The results of our conversation appear in the December 12 issue of BW, on the newsstands December 5. Needless to say, we're very pleased to see the growing interest in distributed work, to say nothing of the article's featuring several of our Future of Work members' experiences (and highlighting our concept of a Business Community Center^tm).

We do hope, however, that in the midst of all this feasting and shopping we'll all remember the less fortunate among us - not only in our own neighborhoods and cities, but all around the world. And especially in those bleak places where any future - of life, let alone work - is just about impossible to imagine.

We don't really want to begin the holiday season in a doom-and-gloom mood, but in fact our commentary in this issue is a bit solemn. It's been stimulated in part by a highly energetic yet sobering conference call that we had a few weeks ago with some good friends and very smart executives.

The overarching theme that emerged from our conversation was a renewed sense that something is happening out there - but we don't know exactly what. You'll read some of our thoughts about why we think the world has gotten a little weird in our twin thought pieces below (Notes from the Field and In Our Humble Opinion). But we're really interested in your views and would love to launch an extended conversation about the future throughout our extended community. Please read the articles below and then send us your personal thoughts via comments@thefutureofwork.net.

In January we plan to celebrate the new year with a whole new set of predictions and prognostications about the future of work. And for inspiration we're going to write a new review of a book we consider downright apocryphal: The Fourth Turning, by William Straus and Neil Howe (see http://www.fourthturning.com/ for a look at what it's all about). We'll have a lot more to say about all this next month, and will include a suggested reading list for those of you who care to delve more deeply into the nature of discontinuities and major social change.

Anyway, that's sort of what's behind our musings this month. Like all of you, we're trying to make sense out of some disconcerting experiences, some feelings of being "out of control," and some very real anxieties about the future. We hope you'll find our thoughts helpful, and we sure as heck would welcome hearing from you. Conversation and dialogue is the best - and perhaps the only - kind of sense-making.

Now, on a more positive note, we hope you'll also enjoy our lead article, How's Your Organizational Health?, in which Charlie lays out a structured, data-based approach to determining whether your organization is ready, willing, and able to undergo dramatic change (our focus is on changing away from traditional ways of working towards more distributed models, but the approach has much broader applicability). In light of our perspective that, like it not, we may all be in for a Really Big Change, a health check-up may be just what your organization needs right now.

Then you'll be able to read about our multiple reactions and insights growing out of that conversation we mentioned above, first in Jim's Notes from the Field, and then in our regular rant, In Our Humble Opinion. There's a little bit of overlap between those two pieces, but we thought we'd bring you into the conversation rather than try to edit it down to one tight set of comments.

And as always, of course, we're pleased to bring you our regular Announcements and Best of the Blog sections. We continue to believe that you'll find some ideas and information here that you just can't get anywhere else.

So, on to the rest of the newsletter. Enjoy! And please let us know what you think.

Announcements

WDC In the News - Again

WDC is in the news again. We are very pleased that our work and our ideas are mentioned in "The Easiest Commute of All," an article by Michelle Conlin appearing in the current (December 12) issue of Business Week. Michelle also highlighted distributed work experiences at Future of Work members Forest City Covington, Agilent Technologies, IBM, and Boeing. If you have a BW subscription you can access the story online by clicking here; otherwise you'll have to rush out and buy a print copy before we grab them all up.

We were also featured recently in an article in ASTD's Training and Development Magazine. Written by Eva Kaplan-Leiserson, the article is titled "Gas Prices Drive Telecommuting" and draws heavily on our April 2005 Future of Work Agenda article "What Will a World of $5 gas Be Like?"

For a downloadable pdf version of the Training and Development Magazine article, click here (copyright by ASTD; reprinted by special permission). It's a provocative look at how rising gasoline prices are beginning to have a serious impact on individual workers' thinking about where to live and work.

We're Going to Florida in January

We're very pleased to announce that Charlie will be appearing on a panel at the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) Leadership Summit being held in St. Petersburg, Florida, January 21-24 (Jim will also be in attendance at the Summit). The invitation came about because of our 2004 article on "The Future of Work and Economic Development."

The Summit is a premier executive conference sponsored each year by IEDC for economic development leaders around the country. Attendance is limited to those holding a current economic development certification and those in the position of Chief Executive or Chief Operating Officer of a public or private economic development organization.

Business Community Center^tm Update

We've been engaged by the Planning Commission of the Village of LaGrange, Illinois, to conduct a Discovery Workshop aimed at determining the feasibility of developing a Business Community Center^tm in downtown Lagrange (a commuter suburb about 20 miles southwest of Chicago). We're in the process of preparing for the workshop, which will be held in mid-January.

Special thanks to LaGrange residents and Future of Work members Dan Cooke (recently of Agilent Technologies, now with Jones Lang LaSalle) and David McCarty (with the Chicago Design Network) for inviting us to conduct the Workshop.

We'd love to have a similar discussion with other local community leaders. We're convinced that Business Community Centers^tm offer a significant opportunity to increase the attractiveness (and thus property values) of many suburban and exurban communities around the country.

Please contact us to arrange for a Discovery Workshop in your community. And read more about the BCC concept in this article from the September newsletter: "Business Community Centers as Third Places."

Feature Article: How's Your Organizational Health?

By Charlie Grantham

Last month we described what it takes for a community to successfully host a Business Community Center^tm. This month we recommend using a similar analytic approach to assessing the potential for a large, formal organization to make a transition from a "traditional" manner of operating to a more "distributed" organizational model.

We won't go into the theoretical background about how we came to develop this approach. But those of you who are so inclined can find additional background information about this approach in both Consumer Evolution and Communities of Commerce, by none other than yours truly (Editor's Note: you can Google either of those titles to find locations for purchasing them). Suffice to say, this system of analysis has been under development for several years, and we have amassed a significant benchmarking database behind it to ensure its reliability.

But first, what is the approach we're advocating? We call it the "Organizational Analysis System^sm" (OAS), and it is designed to provide decision-makers with a reliable, quantifiable assessment of a work group or entire organization's potential for making a successful transition to a new way of working. Whatever the vision of the end state of an organizational change process is, we have to know:

1. How well is the direction of the workgroup articulated, and communicated to the talent in the group?
2. How much human capital exists? How is it developed?
3. How well does the group delivers on its value proposition to its customers?
4. How close are the group's information systems to "state of the practice"?
5. How well do the group's planning and improvement processes operate?
6. What is the availability, and potential to provide, appropriate physical facilities to support emerging forms of work?

Here's a bit more detailed description of each of these factors and underlying assumptions:

Direction: This scale is a reflection of an organization's mission, vision, and purpose, and its ability to infuse those themes across the organization. The underlying assumption is that the more clearly this direction is defined and understood, the higher the chance of success a company has in orchestrating change.

Human Capital: This scale provides a direct measure of an organization's social capital. There is a direct correlation between a firm's social capital and its ability to innovate and become sustainable over time. The underlying assumption is that the amount of social capital already existing in an organization (and the greater its investment in creating even more) is a harbinger of the organization's ability to innovate continuously, to change, and to become sustainable in the emerging information culture.

Customer Service: This scale reflects an organization's connection to its customers. The underlying assumption is that the more closely a firm is connected to, understands the needs of, and is emotionally attached to, its customers, the more effective it is at spotting emerging trends, correcting process deficiencies, and changing strategy to meet the evolving needs of those customers.

Information Systems: This scale is a reflection of an organization's ability to use advanced information and communications technology. The underlying assumption is that the investment in, and reliance on, and use of continuously advancing telecommunication and computer technologies facilitates a firm's ability to change quickly and uniformly.

Planning: This scale measures an organization's ability to anticipate change and respond to environmental or external pressures. The underlying assumption is that a higher degree of sensitivity to, and connection with, external events, trends, and pressures enables a firm to change organizationally well ahead of its competitors who aren't so well attuned.

Facilities: This scale is a measure of an organization's ability to plan for, utilize, and continuously modify its use of a portfolio of physical facilities to support the work activities of its talent pool. The underlying assumption is that a wider variety and greater flexibility of design will be required to support the workforce of the future, as compared to today's common practices.

Answers to these structural questions facilitate the decision process and allow for priority allocation of assets to enhance the chance of success in the transition. Our research shows that, in 95% of the cases, workgroups that score more than one standard deviation below national norms on three or more of the five core factors fail to make a successful transition to a new work state.

We also use the OAS to help identify possible corrective, or preventative, actions that an organization can take to prepare itself for successful change.

For example, if an organization scores relatively low on the customer service scale we would advise that some investment be made in that area prior to embarking on an alternative workplace strategy program, or any significant organizational change effort, for that matter.

As an added feature the OAS has been validated to produce three sub-scales of intellectual capital: human, structural, and customer capital. These scales are then used as measures of work force analytics to balance current capability with future capacity for change.

For example, a company with a high score on the sub-scale of human capital, but with a low score on structural capital, would be quite capable of performing well in the current environment (capability) but may not be able to transition to new business environments (capacity).

Examples of these types of situations abound. Think of either General Motors or the telecommunications industry of the 1990's as examples of organizations that were successful in a current but relatively stable environment - but found it difficult to cope with systemic change. On the other hand, a business may have tremendous capacity potential for the future, but operates rather poorly in everyday execution; think start ups. Where would you invest your money? The OAS has helped a number of investors make these kinds of tough decisions.

So, how does it work? Administration of the OAS requires approximately two hours of a workgroup leader's time to participate in a structured interview with one of the project staff. We may also need an additional hour of telephone conversation with others in the organization to obtain data not immediately available to the group leader. It is a relatively easy and painless process.

As with any analytic procedure, more tests may be required in areas that we initially find to be sub-par. Describing those tests at a meaningful level of detail is a bit beyond the scope of this article (and our editor's patience), but we would be happy to discuss them with anyone who is interested in learning more about the OAS.

In essence, we are recommending the same principle we laid out last month about how to decide where to invest your money: use a data-based analytic method, not speculation or intuition.

We believe the OAS provides an important decision-making platform for business leaders. Think of it this way. If you wanted to run a marathon, you would probably consult with a sports physician first to make sure your major systems (i.e., respiratory, orthopedics, cardiovascular) were in adequate shape for you to make the run. And we have little doubt your physician or trainer would advise you to enter into a rigorous training program to bring those systems into line with the demands a marathon would make on your body. Alternatively, ask airline pilots what kind of pre-flight check routines they run. Would you want to get on a plane where no one checked the fuel level or the electrical systems before take-off?

Similarly, would you commit to a multi-million dollar effort to improve your company's ability to compete in the new world without a check-up? Or a "training" program? We don't think so.

There's a somewhat more formal description of the OAS (and our other diagnostic tools) available on our website, at: http://www.thefutureofwork.net/what_products.html. And we'd love to talk to you about applying it to your organization.

Please direct your comments to comments@thefutureofwork.net. We'd love to publish your reactions and suggestions. And thanks for listening.

Notes From The Field: Something's Happening Here

A Report by Jim Ware

Imagine for a moment that you're the newly-appointed CEO of a Fortune 500 company. You're standing at a podium in the company cafeteria, dressed in your brand-new $1500 Brooks Brothers suit. You're holding your first open meeting with your new company's employees.

You've just delivered a few opening remarks about how pleased you are to have joined the organization, and how much you're looking forward to working with everyone. Now you turn to the staff with a smile and say, "So, what's on your minds? What can I tell you about myself and my vision for the company?"

And the first question (from a 30-something kid in khakis and a sweater) is:

"What makes you worth a million and a half a year when I'm only getting paid $50,000?"

Welcome to the executive suite.

That scene actually took place recently. Charlie and I heard the story from a good friend and colleague who was there, but who shall remain nameless for rather obvious reasons (it's not just the New York Times that needs anonymous sources). He didn't ask the CEO that question himself, but he did ask us, "What's going on? Everyone I talk to and work with these days seems restless, frustrated, on edge. While I share some of that young guy's feelings, I'm appalled that he was rude enough to ask it like that."

We were taken aback too, but mostly we were surprised that the kid had the cojones to stand up to the CEO like that - not that he was angry about the pay differential, but that he was so upset that he was so willing to "tell it like it is" - or at least how it is to him.

But as we thought about it, this isn't just another case of the younger generation not knowing the "rules" or not being polite enough to stay quiet. We're convinced there's something much, much deeper going on.

Consider for a moment several other recent events that also reflect unease, discomfort, frustration, angst, and even anger, about 21st century life (maybe Jimmy Carter's famous comment about "malaise" was 25 years too soon).

Start with the most recent heated debates in the U.S. Congress (in both houses) about the Iraq war. They're striking mostly for their outright hostility and complete lack of civility than they are for any progress they've generated in creating understanding of what's going on or consensus about what to do. It looks to us like people on both sides of the aisle are incredibly angry about a situation they can't seem to resolve and are just taking it out on each other.

Then consider the difficulty a middle manager we know was having completing performance reviews for several of his subordinates. They're all part of a global team focused on infrastructure productivity improvement, and he can't figure out how to isolate their individual contributions. As he put it, "None of them can claim to have produced any savings on their own, but the team as a whole has taken out over $2 million in costs over the last six months. I just can't sort out who did what."

I think our world (both at work and everywhere else) has gotten so complex and interconnected that a whole lot of folks (just about all of us, in fact) are feeling powerless, unable to have any impact on anything that matters to them, and ready to pull out, hunker down, and focus on their own lives - often to the exclusion of the world around them.

Our friend who told us about the attack on his new CEO mentioned that he feels like the folks up north of the Arctic Circle who get edgier and edgier every spring as they wait to hear the sound of thawing ice cracking on the rivers and in the bays. That's a very important event because it signals that spring is coming, but they don't really know when it's going to happen (see In Our Humble Opinion, below, for more of why that's an important insight).

The waiting for something they can't control creates a lot of anxiety. They get nervous because they can't get started on their spring chores until the ice breaks up, so they often take it out on each other - being cranky, short-tempered, and even (believe it or not) turning to certain forms of liquid refreshment to quench their thirst and help them tolerate the uncertainty.

Well, we think the whole world is going through that kind of uncertainty right now. We're waiting for the ice to break. The "game" has changed, but we don't know why. And more importantly, we don't know the rules for new game, or how to succeed at it. That's a tough place to be, and we're all getting edgier and edgier about it.

Wherever we turn, things aren't going right, and it feels like we can't do much about it. The weather has gone crazy (tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes - when do the locusts arrive?). Energy prices are completely unpredictable. We feel threatened by the possibilities of terrorism, we can't seem to get on track in the Middle East, and major companies are declaring bankruptcy almost every day (if General Motors goes under, what company can we count on?). Health care costs are skyrocketing, the federal deficit is exploding, the stock market (and therefore everyone's 401K) seems to be going nowhere, and there's practically no job certainty anywhere any more.

And on top of that, the kind of work that many of us do has gotten more and more abstract, with less and less connection to tangible, measurable results. At the same time, we're more dependent on others than ever before. We work in teams (or as part of extended value chains) with colleagues we've never met (and who often don't speak the same language or live on the same continent). And we're doing everything in less and less predictable ways. We move around a lot, no two days follow the same pattern, we often don't see our boss or teammates for days or weeks at a time, and we can't be sure the damn computer will work today like it did yesterday (and if it doesn't we've lost control once again).

No wonder we're so anxious.

So what do anxious folks do who can't figure out what or who to blame? They strike out at authority figures. They challenge their leaders. They "retreat" to their families and their local communities. They hunker down. They look for alternative sources of comfort and for strong leaders who they hope will make sense of it all.

As we talk to corporate folks around the country and continue our quest to understand how to construct positive organizational change (in spite of it all, we're still optimists), we're thinking of constructing a "Near-death Index" as an adjunct to the Organizational Assessment System^tm described in this month's lead article (above).

What's a Near-Death Index? Truth is, we haven't actually invented one, but if we did it would be an indicator of just how close to complete collapse an organization (or a society) is. Because, like it or not, that seems to be what it takes to become open to genuine, meaningful change - to put aside old habits and assumptions and embrace transformational change as the only way to survive. As someone once said, "There's nothing like facing hanging in the morning to focus one's mind."

The really sobering thought that keeps us awake all too many nights is that we're starting to think our whole society may be in the throes of a near-death experience (at least we hope it's only a near death).

Yet, we remain optimists. If it really does take near-death to drive Big Change, then maybe - just maybe - we're on the brink of something important and positive. We sure as hell hope so! One thing we do know for sure: this isn't a time to predict the future by extrapolating trends.

This is a time of major discontinuity, and for imagining the unimaginable. We need to develop totally new scenarios for the future of work (and of life outside of work). We believe that when the ice finally does break we're going to find that it's completely rebuilt the shore line - and we just might discover we're on a whole new continent.

Best of the Blog

Here's a sampling of brief excerpts from our November weblog posts. Please get in the habit of reading the Future of Work weblog regularly - bookmark it, or if you have an RSS news reader, subscribe to it. And please contribute as well. We're more than happy to reprint your stories, or to consider featuring you as a Guest Writer. We believe we're creating a unique knowledge base of what's going on out there today, and what's going to be going on tomorrow. If you want to learn about the future of work, our blog is the place to go (along with this very newsletter, of course). Just click on each headline below to visit the full original blog post.

Listen to the Future of Work on NPR (November 7)

We're pleased that this week our friend, colleague, and Future of Work member Nancy Napier (she's a Professor of Management at Boise State University) is focusing on the future of work in her daily "Idaho Business Matters" segments on Boise State's NPR outlet.

A Quick Overview of Business Community Centers (November 8)

For those of you who find our lengthy articles and words of wisdom too lengthy, take a minute (just one) to listen to Nancy Napier's "Idaho Business Matters" for Wednesday, November 9 (yes, that's tomorrow, but it's on the web already). She's recorded a terrific one-minute podcast overview of our Business Community Center concept….

Are You a Geographic Arbitrageur? (November 10)

Anne Bednarz's latest "Telework Beat" column alerted me to a fascinating thought piece in last week's Forbes Magazine (150 Places to Live Rich) by Publisher Rich Karlgaard. The idea is really pretty simple, but profound in its implications. In this 21st-century economy you just might be able to have it all: a great place to live, a decent, well-paying "big city" job, and an exciting, stimulating work career. How? By becoming a "geographic arbitrageur."

What the Hell is Productivity, Anyway? (November 13)

I've been struggling the last couple of weeks to develop a white paper on measuring the productivity of office work - mostly so we can sort out whether there's a viable business case for moving into distributed work environments. It's an important question, and one that many of us who have wrestled with workforce productivity over the years still consider the "Holy Grail."

A Special Tribute to Peter Drucker (November 14)

This blog post was stimulated by the recent passing of the greatest management mind of all time, in our humble opinion. Jim had the honor and pleasure of meeting and working with Peter on several different occasions; this note includes some very personal stories about a very great man.

Another Update on Wireless Philadelphia (November 23)

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that we've been following municipal WiFi initiatives in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and elsewhere. We believe passionately that citywide WiFi (or WiMax) access is going to be a reality everywhere someday, so we've been particularly interested in how the early efforts to "unwire" major cities are going. So it was particularly fortunate when my wife alerted me to a report on Wireless Philadelphia that was on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer last night.

In Our Humble Opinion: Did You Hear The Ice Crack?

Commentary by Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware

Before we start our speechifying this time we want to wish everyone a joyous holiday season, along with peace and serenity in the coming New Year (not that we want too much or anything). That said, here we go.

Well, this is the end-of-the-year rambling rant. Perhaps it's a little disconnected; but being disconnected is actually what this rant is all about. However, we promise some predictions for next year at the end. Just bear with us for a moment or two.

For those of you who self-medicate your super egos by reading our drivel every month, we'd like to introduce you to a new character. You're already familiar with our forever asleep-at-the-wheel Maynard, and his buddy Earl (Pitts) who frequent this column on an irregular basis. This month we introduce another of our so-called friends and able assistants: Cooter, the virtual trend-sniffing blue tick hound.

Cooter was trained at the Hometown Security Administration to smell a rat a mile away and to detect political spam in a nanosecond. He has also attempted (notice we didn't say "completed") advanced work at the Forever Everywhere Maladjusted Anxiety University (good ol' FEMA U) where they said he was "doin' a heck of a job."

So, at the suggestion of some of our close friends and associates (actually more like drinking buddies), we turned ol' Cooter loose on the borderlands of the future of work.

So Cooter's been out there sniffing around the piles of dysfunctional industrial business models, pawing through stacks of busted entrepreneurial dreams, and turning over decaying political bromides; and, lo and behold, he discovered where that nasty odor was coming from. Cooter spotted a very large puddle of diffuse angst. Yep, right there under our noses is a growing pool of nastiness, lack of civility, and downright ugliness.

What we have here is a failure to know where we're going. Now, this isn't just the business world we're talking about. Cooter has tracked that puddle back into just about every nook and cranny of our lives: education (which we've stomped on before); governance of our civil (yeah, right, just watch CSPAN sometime if you don't believe it); society; and the even the less secular aspects of our community.

So, what's the point? Back at the ranch, or igloo as it were, we're waiting for the ice to crack. Huh? Well, there's this tale they tell way up North that very late in the winter the natives start to get a little nervous about the coming of spring. They've had about as much of the cold, nasty, icky winter as they can take, and they desperately want spring to come and bring new life to the planet. Since they haven't got ol' Cooter around (by the way, he hates cold weather; it's a lack of fur thing), how will they know when the change is coming? Email note? IM from God? iPod download? Don't think so. They hear the ice crack (see Jim's Report from the Field, above, for a somewhat more rational description of this ice-cracking thing).

Cooter's discovery of this global diffuse pool of angst is the sound of ice cracking in the world of work. Unfortunately, Cooter isn't well trained in metaphysics, so we had to consult with our other buddies down at the barbershop (okay, ladies, the hairdresser) to discover the deeper meaning here. From worker bees wondering why the bosses get 100 times more moola than they do (again, see Jim's report for more on that), to people trying to figure out how oil companies make billions (yes Maynard, that's with a "B") and can't find money to invest in growing capacity, to spiritual seekers being disillusioned with the business of salvation (their words not ours, folks) we (that's all of us, the global "We") have reached a point where the ice has cracked.

The status quo won't work anymore; business as usual is a pathetic denial tactic. The time for change has arrived. And good ol' Cooter sniffed it out. The angst has reached a point of intolerance. So, just like the folks who've found their lives unbearable and begin a journey of change, we think (here it comes), In Our Humble Opinion…that 2006 is going to bring some Big Changes.

And you have the nerve to ask, "Just what would those changes be?"

We're totally not qualified to delve into the psychological, political, and geo-economic changes that are descending upon us because we don't get invited to Davos and the Oracle has stopped speaking (sit down and shut up Larry!!!), so we'll stick to what we know: organizations.

We believe 2006 will see:

• The establishment of an international organization devoted to giving voice to the necessity of transforming the way people and organizations get their work done. Ding, dong, the old industrial model of organizing for economic endeavor is dead. We see a 90% probability here.
• Communities consciously re-working themselves to build social capital, create work/live environments that are human in scale, and provide frameworks and infrastructures to help people balance all aspects of their lives. 70% probability here, because we still keep finding people in positions of leadership (Note: they are not necessarily leaders, but that's another rant) who fight change in any way, shape, and form they can.
• Formation of a core leadership team of individuals devoted to separating themselves from the bonds of large formal organizations. Do the history and look back at what happened to the movie industry in the early 1930's. There's only a 50% probability here, because we haven't seen evidence (yet) that a large number of professionals is willing to give up part of their identity in the interest of forming a larger whole (including a willingness to put some bucks behind the talk).

Well, there you have it, In Our Humble Opinion. We have to go now because Cooter just got out of his virtual backyard and is headed East toward Washington, DC, with his sniffer going full bore. Lord only knows what he'll drag out of the swamp on the Potomac.

And special thanks to our friends in Texas and New York for the inspiration for this rant (you know who you are, but we promise not to tell).

Please direct your comments to comments@thefutureofwork.net. We'd love to publish your reactions and suggestions. And thanks for listening.

This issue of Future of Work Agenda was produced by Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham of the Work Design Collaborative. We encourage your comments, suggestions, and submission of materials for possible future publication. Please contact us at:

Charlie Grantham, charlie@thefutureofwork.net, +1 928 771 9138
Jim Ware, jim@thefutureofwork.net, +1 510 558 1434

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