July 2005

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This is our personal note welcoming you to the July 2005 issue of Future of Work Agenda and setting our theme for the month. This has turned into a highly eclectic issue, but if there is a common theme it is frustration with current reality in the world of work. You'll hear it in our voices, in Paula Bartholome's feature article, and in some of the research notes as well. But the best way out of frustration is action, and we've got a lot of that underway as well.

We are extremely pleased to announce that Boeing has just committed to join Future of Work. And we're also pleased to tell you about the launch of two new weblogs that are both focused on the changing nature of work. Jim is co-authoring FutureTense, and our friend and Future of Work member Toni Kistner is authoring FanningOut. Finally, Future of Work continues to seek new members.

Author Paula Bartholome has conducted a small, unscientific survey for the last two years that has left her with questions begging for answers. These questions offer an opportunity to clarify some steps that organizations can take to improve the environment in which their employees find themselves every day. And by so doing, organizations can increase the likelihood that their employees can at least occasionally have "hard fun" at work.

In our continuing efforts to make this newsletter relevant and valuable, we ask each of you to share your views of the newsletter and what you'd like to see in it going forward. Please complete our five-minute online survey today. We'll be back in September with the results.

This was a much-awaited book. But, frankly, we were disappointed. We still think it's a worthwhile read, but the message could have been better communicated in article format instead of a 300-page tome. Undoubtedly you know that we are great fans of Professor Florida and his work; he truly has been doing groundbreaking work. Perhaps this time the hype exceeded the reality....

This section appears from time to time, as we come across (or write ourselves) new perspectives on what is actually happening (or may happen) in the word of work. Keep in mind that most of these notes have already appeared on our Future of Work weblog.

In one form or another, the future of work is already here. This occasional collection of stories provides you with notes from all over the world - stories about what's happening somewhere today that provides clues to what will be happening everywhere tomorrow.

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

Believe it or not, it's July already. And we're having a midsummer night's dream about what our Future of Work community could become. And it's definitely not a nightmare!

Especially when we just got word last week that Boeing has committed to become a corporate member of Future of Work. That's not a dream at all, and we're very pleased.

We are, however, taking a long summer nap (figuratively speaking of course). As is our tradition, we won't publish this newsletter in August, so we'll see you in September with all kinds of new thoughts, crazy ideas, and ongoing questions about the future of work.

But back to our dream: to be blunt, we are moving more and more of our daily effort towards making the future of work come alive today. We've written about the future, pondered it, and harangued our friends about it, for more years than the two of us care to remember. And we'll keep doing that. But we've become convinced that the only way to help create the future is to start living it out more completely here and now.

So what does that mean? First, our research efforts are increasingly focused on surveys and diagnostic tools that help our member firms and clients act today to transform their current workplaces into more productive environments that help them attract and retain the creative talent they so desperately need.

But our focus isn't just on creating and applying management tools to inform decisions about corporate work environments. We're also moving aggressively to help local communities design and build out new kinds of work environments. We call them Business Community Centers^tm, and we're devoting an increasing amount of our time and energy to seeing our dream of shared workplace facilities and vibrant business communities become reality.

We'll be writing more about our plans and current efforts in the coming months; stay tuned for some interesting times ahead.

Now, as far as this issue goes, we've got a real potpourri of treats for you. Our feature article this month, Questions Begging for Answers, is by Paula Bartholome, an independent organizational advisor and observer who wants to share some interesting data she's collected recently about workplace environments. Her concern, which we share, is that the level of civil discourse and harmony between individuals and organizations seems to be declining, and at an alarming rate.

Charlie reviews Richard Florida's new book, The Flight of the Creative Class, and finds it somewhat wanting. It's about an important topic, but the book is not as instructive as we had hoped it would be. The United States clearly needs to invest more time and energy figuring out how make this country a more attractive place to live and work, especially for the highly creative folks who make a real difference to our economic success.

And please be sure to read In Our Humble Opinion, our monthly rant. It will tell you exactly why we're moving more and more towards building work environments ourselves, rather than just watching others do it and then knocking them after the fact.

The plain and simple truth is that our rants don't seem to be getting through to the folks we're trying to influence. We've got a very specific vision of the future, but most of the people who are designing and building today's workplaces and office furniture just don't seem to hear our message about the changing nature of work. So we're getting ready to turn those midsummer dreams of ours into real, physical workplaces on our own (with a little help from our friends).

One way you can help us make things better is by responding to our annual newsletter reader survey. Please tell us what you like - and dislike - about this little publishing venture. Please take five minutes to help us ratchet the newsletter up still another notch.

And of course we've also got a number of important Announcements for you, as well as a solid collection of Research Notes and The Future is Already Here - It Just Isn't Evenly Distributed.

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

- Jim Ware and Charlie Gratham

Announcements

Boeing Joins Future of Work

We are extremely pleased to announce that Boeing has just committed to become a Future of Work corporate member, bringing our corporate community up to eleven organizations (see About Us/Members on the Future of Work website for a complete listing of all corporate members).

Boeing's representatives will be Richard Stewart, manager of Boeing's Virtual Office Program, and Jeffrey Hobbs, Program Manager. The two of them are looking forward to joining our other corporate members at the Fall Members Roundtable meeting being hosted by Herman Miller in September.

Please join us in welcoming Dick and Jeff into the Future of Work community. For information on how your company can become a corporate member, please contact us at any time.

Check out Toni Kistner's new Weblog, "Fanning Out"

We are pleased to announce - and welcome - the launch of a new and important newsletter focused on Distributed Work - Toni Kistner's "Fanning Out."

Toni is not only a good friend and an active member of our Future of Work community, but she's also a long-time observer and critic of the telecommuting/distributed work scene. For the last umpty-ump years Toni has written a weekly column for Network World called "Telework Beat." Now she's made a personal and professional commitment to work at a deeper, more significant, level to help promote the emerging world of distributed work - a far broader and more important perspective on the changing nature of work than her former beat.

And check out the new Corante Blog, "FutureTense"

We're very pleased to have been invited to join a select group of futurists who are contributing to "FutureTense," a brand-new weblog published by Corante (www.corante.com/futuretense).

Jim just posted his first several notes on the Corante blog. We encourage you to take a look at his opening post, "The Future Is Already Here, It Just Isn't Evenly Distributed" (that's such a great tag line that we use it all the time).

Our friend and colleague Elizabeth Albrycht is editing FutureTense, whose other authors include Dave Desforges of Sun Microsystems, Jim McGee of Huron Consulting, and Regina Miller of HR's Brand New Experience.

HR Strategy Summit in September

Jason Averbook, CEO and founder of Knowledge Infusion, invites all Future of Work Agenda readers to attend the HR Strategy Summit.

Knowledge Infusion is co-hosting the inaugural HR Strategy Summit at the HR.com Employers of Excellence Conference in Arizona, Sept 25-27.

Join us to hear from thought leaders, experts, and HR executives in a variety of industries including:

• Jack in the Box
• Premera Blue Cross
• Countrywide Insurance
• Wells Fargo
• Coldstone Creamery

This forum will give HR professionals a portfolio of the latest concepts and methods for maximizing the value of their workforce.

See the full agenda and register at: www.hr.com/hrstrategysummit

Future of Work Program Actively Seeks Individual and Small Business Members

Future of Work now offers several levels of membership that depend on your status and needs: Individual and Small Business, Corporate, and Implementation Partners. We also offer special discounts to nonprofit, educational, and public sector organizations.

These membership programs are described in more detail on the Future of Work website, or feel free to contact us directly for more information about fees and benefits.

All individual members of our community are now listed on the Future of Work website, in the About Us/Members section. We encourage all our readers to consider joining the community. And to see our members as a powerful resource standing ready to assist you in transitioning to the future.

Please visit our website at www.thefutureofwork.net and apply for membership today.

The Feature Article: Questions Begging for Answers

By Paula Bartholome

Paula Bartholome describes herself as Corporate Jester and Founding Principal of Parallax. Her mission is to explore the collective wisdom about creating and sustaining environments that promote creativity, demonstrate energy, and serve as a source of growth for organizations and the people in them - henceforth known as "hard fun" workplaces.

I've conducted a small, unscientific survey for the last two years that has left me with questions that are begging for answers. These questions offer an opportunity to clarify some steps that organizations can take to improve the environment in which their employees find themselves every day. And by so doing, organizations can increase the likelihood that their employees can at least occasionally have "hard fun" at work.

"Hard fun" is a term I use to mean engaged employees who are gaining satisfaction by addressing challenges in pursuit of organizational goals. These employees' interests are aligned (at least in part) with the organization's goals, and the environment supports their work rather than frustrating it. To learn more about this concept, visit the "Hard Fun" community at www.communitelligence.com

Now, let me share with you what has piqued my curiosity...

Here are the responses to three common questions asked in both years:

	In the last six months has your work environment:	2004	2003
	Become more open and communicative?	33.8%	32.9%
	Become less open and communicative?	18.3%	24.7%
	Stayed about the same in terms of openness and communication?	45.1%	42.5%
	Don't know	2.8%	0

	In your workplace do you believe that employees are considered an important source of ideas and organizational success:	2004	2003
	Consistently	22.9%	30.1%
	Usually	34.3	31.5
	Sometimes	35.7	26.0
	Infrequently	7.1	12.3

	If you could change one thing to improve your immediate work environment what would it be:	2004	2003
	Increase staff	7.8%	11.8%
	Decrease bureaucracy/barriers	15.6%	10.3%
	Communicate more/better	17.2%	33.8%
	Improve physical surroundings	25.0%	8.8%
	Improve technology	3.1%	4.4%
	Increase civility/value employees	21.9%	11.8%
	Other	4.7%	17.6%

This is admittedly a small picture of a much larger world. However, it is a real world for the people who responded. The categories described above were developed to slot the open-ended answers from the survey. I may have misread some responses, but most were very clear.

Some observations:

• There was a decrease in the number of people saying that their workplace had become less open and communicative. Hopefully that is a move in the right direction.
• At the same time there was a decrease in the number of people who felt that their employers recognized employees as creative and contributing to the organization's success. This is not a good sign in terms of "hard fun".
• The third question showed an increase in incidents of incivility or de-valuing employees. When combined with the increase in the number of people saying their organization didn't see employees as key to the organization's success, I see this data as a potential red flag. It is also possibly an indicator of the stress, time pressure, and impact of downsizing that so many people have said is rampant in their organizations. More communication in an environment like that isn't necessarily welcome.

Digging just a bit deeper into the answers, we found that in workplaces that are becoming more open and communicative, 75% of the time they are also places that consistently or usually value employees' creativity and contributions.

Unfortunately, in environments that experienced a decrease in openness and communicativeness, the opposite is true. Nearly 70% of respondents indicated that they were recognized only infrequently for their creativity or contributions. This is definitely not the way to move toward a high-performance environment and could also be leading to more incivility and stress as well as fewer opportunities for "hard fun."

Now to some of the questions that are buzzing around in my head...

• What comprises incivility? Is it the same in organizations of all sizes and all types? Does the definition differ within organizations by job, by location, by gender?
• At what point and in what ways does incivility impact organizational performance? Turnover is a known problem, as is avoidance. Are there other less visible impacts?
• Is there a direct link between physical surroundings and increases or decreases in incivility?
• Are organizations aware of internal incivility and are they addressing it successfully?

With as much as 70% of a company's market value now estimated to reside in human capital (read more about this statistic in the Drake Business Review), issues such as these seem to be strong candidates for enabling or hindering both immediate and longer-term organizational performance. From my perspective, they are important questions that are begging for answers.

Reader Survey

We believe that it's very important every once in a while to step back and assess how we're doing, and what we could do either differently or better to make this newsletter more valuable to you, our treasured readers and members of our extended community.

So, as we get ready for our traditional August break in the publishing cycle, we want to ask for your help in rethinking the newsletter from the ground up.

Are we covering the right topics? Do we cover them adequately? What could we do differently, to make the newsletter - and more fundamentally, our knowledge base and network relationships - more valuable to you? Would a shorter, more frequent newsletter be easier to absorb? Should we rely more on our blog for "current affairs" and focus the newsletter on more serious, more extended thought pieces? Could we create more ways to link you with other members of the community?

Those are the questions we're asking ourselves - and we're asking you too. We welcome thoughtful emails directed to comments@thefutureofwork.net, but we also would really value your quick responses to a simple little online survey we've constructed at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=932291172868

Please take 5 minutes right now, click on that link, and tell us what you think - and what you want. The only way we can make the newsletter sing is for you to tell us what songs you want to hear. Do it now - and we'll report the results in September. Thanks!

Book Review: "The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent"

by Richard Florida (Harper Business, 2005)

Reviewed by Charlie Grantham

This was a much-awaited book. But, frankly, we were disappointed. We still think it's a worthwhile read, but the message could have been better communicated in article format instead of a 300-page tome. Undoubtedly you know that we are great fans of Professor Florida and his work; he truly has been doing groundbreaking work. Perhaps this time the hype exceeded the reality, but let me explain.

Simply put, Florida spends far too much time defending himself against the critics of his previous book, The Rise of the Creative Class. Those of us who have followed that discussion already know the points, counter-points, diatribes, and not so thinly-veiled political agendas. It's hard to rebuff Florida's basic position that the United States is losing its competitive advantage in a world where intellectual talent and creativity are the primary value drivers. Others disagree that it's an important issue. Healthy debate is to be valued in academia and the public policy arena. But enough is enough. Let's move on.

I hoped that's what would happen with the publication of this book. Well, Florida has certainly pushed the thinking envelope forward. The competition for talent is no longer just a phenomenon limited to the United States. Today the "race for talent" is truly global. Why should talented film makers live in Los Angeles, when the really cool stuff is happening in Prague and Wellington, New Zealand? We all know the picture. The educational system in the United States is crumbling, 9/11 paranoia has grown into a full-blown nonsensical bureaucracy, and - simply put - the US brand just doesn't attract creative people anymore.

Okay, we get it.

Just as some people talk beyond the sale, Florida has written beyond the point. The last chapter of the book, which purports to offer solutions to this conundrum, reads like a second year graduate student's "Introduction to public policy" paper. Perhaps the time just isn't right for concrete proposals.

What Florida fails to do is offer a call for action akin to the Great Society programs, or the post-World War II plans for massive economic development. We all know its needed; just ask any corporate human resources person who can't fill the critical jobs here in the United States, because of either a lack of the needed talent or a cost of living that is far too expensive.

The point is well-taken, and the wake-up alarm has sounded. Two months ago the headlines read that the venerable IBM was laying off thousands of workers in Europe (the United States got its hit a few years back). Then the week of June 19 opened with headlines indicating that IBM is hiring 14000 workers in India. You don't have to go much deeper than that to realize that Florida is dead on. I just wish he had done it without apologizing again, over and over, to his critics (stiff upper lip, ol' chap) and said what needed to be said in 25 pages or less.

In spite of my concerns, I still think you should pick up this book and keep it around. But it certainly didn't live up to The Rise of the Creative Class, Florida's original chart-buster.

The Flight of the Creative Class is available online from Amazon.com.

Research Notes

Managing the "New" Workforce

David Batstone posted a provocative note ("What Younger Workers Really Want") on the challenges of managing younger workers on the Worthwhile Magazine blog recently.

Here's his opening comment:

"Managers frequently vent to me their frustration with a new generation entering the workforce. A hospital director in the Midwest put it this way: "I give my young workers instructions how to complete a task, and they have no qualms telling me that they don't want to do it that way."

Clearly there are important generational differences in workers' values, expectations, and interpersonal style. The world-class expert on how to manage the younger generation workers is Rebecca Ryan, founder and CEO of Next Generation Consulting, a good friend, a member of our Future of Work community, and also a Worthwhile blogger compatriot of Batstone's.

But we believe Batstone's recommendations for managers of younger folks should actually be applied to the entire workforce. When you get down to it, it's just good basic management.

In fact, our friends (and Future of Work members) at Spherion have been conducting research for years now on what they call "emergent workers." These are folks with new values of independence and an expectation that they will change jobs, change professions, and change where they live multiple times during their careers. Emergent workers expect to manage their own careers, and they don't expect much from employers except an opportunity to perform.

But here's the key: emergent worker values are showing up in every age bracket. This is not just a "Gen X" phenomenon. And the proportion of the entire workforce with emergent values is growing by leaps and bounds.

The first Spherion survey, conducted in 1997, found that about 20% of the workforce had these emergent values. In the most recent study, published last year, that had grown to 31%. But when you add in what Spherion calls "Migrating" workers who are moving towards emergent values, the total of nontraditional workers in 2003 was almost 80%. There just aren't many "traditional" workers left.

The Future of Work Is Already Here

Note: Each of these brief notes has already appeared been posted on the Future of Work weblog. We encourage you to visit our blog regularly for more current updates on the future of work. And the material in this part of the newsletter is only fraction of what we publish on the blog.

Mass Collaboration

There's an important and very intriguing story in the June 20 issue of Business Week. It's called "The Power of Us" and is the cover story for the week.

It's all about mass collaboration - thousands of people communicating and collaborating over the Net to create new products, express opinions about just about anything and everything - and help companies create new products, improve existing ones, and learn how to co-create with their customers.

The "hot" word in the Net world these days seems to be "peer production" and it's being applied to the stock market, newspaper editorials, product development, recruiting, and even basic research.

The Business Week story says it far better than we can. Get a copy, or read it online if you have access (unfortunately, the online version is restricted to BW subscribers. If you can't find the article anywhere else, send Jim a note at jim@thefutureofwork.net and he'll try to help.

This is big stuff - we urge you to get the article by hook or by crook (that's just an expression - don't do anything illegal)

The Digital Dimension

We are reprinting this very intriguing note from Future of Work member Neal Zimmerman. It first appeared on our Future of Work Forum bulletin board, which is now, unfortunately, more or less defunct, or at least in long-term hibernation. But Neal's perspective, now about six months old (but still completely current), is well worth reading. We wanted to give it a wider audience and hope you will find it worth commenting on.

The first World Conference on the Future of Work, which convened in San Francisco last spring [that's Spring 2004], produced a lot of stimulating conversation and generated more questions than answers. There was consensus among participants that we're witnessing - as well as personally experiencing - a sea change in the world of work, ushered in by relatively recent breakthroughs in technology. But we were unable to establish the basic tenets of our group purpose, a so-called "Declaration of Interdependence." It appeared that even the word "work" had different meanings for many of us.

The recent leap in computerized technology has in many cases eliminated material production workers, and simultaneously enabled the remaining ones to become more "productive" or efficient. In contrast, the same burst in technology has increased both the number and diversity of ideational workers [editorial note: Neal uses that term to refer to knowledge workers whose jobs are wrapped up with creating, processing, interpreting, and acting on, ideas].

And, it has dramatically altered how, where, when, and with whom they collaborate to generate ideas.

The key transitional shift for the ideational worker is that ideas now reside in a new dimension - a digital dimension - where they can be shared, modified, improved, and in some cases even implemented, at lighting speed, globally interconnected, any time, any place.

The new digital dimension - the "DIDI" - is not just faster and more efficient. It is a fundamentally different thing, more like a parallel universe, within which our journey into the future of work has already begun. It is hard for many us to absorb- especially those of us who grew to adulthood before the advent of the digital dimension - that to varying degrees, we have taken up residence there. Recognition of the digital dimension as a place should help us to identify the pathways, boundaries and landmarks of its new and unfamiliar landscape.

Comments? Reactions? Please send them to comments@thefutureofwork.net and we'll print them in our next issue.

In Our Humble Opinion: In Praise of Thinking Different

Commentary by Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware

"And they're all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same." (Pete Seeger)

Seeger was of course referring to suburbia and all those look-alike houses up and down those look-alike streets (we understand the song was actually based on Daly City, south of San Francisco. And the description sure fits).

Anyway, that's the feeling we had as we toured the 11 floors of Chicago's Merchandise Mart a few weeks ago at NeoCon, the annual lollapalooza sponsored by the office furniture industry (and no, it's not a convention of right-wing zealots - we wouldn't have been anywhere near Chicago if it had been).

Floor after floor of chairs, tables, workstations, filing cabinets. Different colors, sure. Different styles, sure. Different materials (wood, plastic, aluminum, steel), sure. But different functionality? Different feel? No way! If you want gravy on this biscuit, run down to Ikea right quick.

It all looked just the same. What we really can't understand is that everyone we talked to (and we did chat with lots of folks, both supporters and critics) said, "Hey, this industry is shrinking big time and we're still locked into a corporate distribution model." Hey, Buford, wake up, what's the point?

Come on, folks! How many different colored fabrics can you use to cover the same old chair frame trying to make it look it different? How many differently shaped curves can you put on a desktop to hide the fact that it's still a desktop? How many different sizes and shapes of file cabinets can you create? How does a new color, a new shape, one more leg on the executive chair, add value?

Is this what design has come to? We just read a wonderful story about truly creative design in the best-seller Blink (by Malcolm Gladwell, and subtitled "How to Think Without Thinking" - well worth reading, even if we haven't reviewed it for you - but we'll get to that sometime soon).

Gladwell's story describes how our friend (and Future of Work member) Bill Dowell shepherded Herman Miller's Aeron chair through its early design and development and right on up to its runaway success, in spite of mountains of formal market research evidence that prospective customers didn't like it and wouldn't buy it.

That may be hard to believe today, but it's true - early on, no one liked the Aeron chair. Turns out their initial impressions made them uncomfortable. They reported that it was "ugly" and didn't fit in (of course, they also admitted it was pretty comfortable). Go figure; no one wants to be out in front: just be a bobble head and you'll keep the checks coming in.

On further study Dowell and his colleagues discovered that what customers were really saying was, "it's different." Gladwell used this story to highlight the fact that first impressions, while often incredibly powerful and accurate, are not always useful. (The trick, of course, is to know when to go with your gut, and when to push past it). And kudos to Bill and his colleagues for thinking different, and for sticking to their guns.

But we digress, as we often do.

Doesn't anyone have a truly new and different vision of how an office could be arranged and configured to stimulate creativity, innovation, and productivity? What if we thought about offices the way we think about homes? Would you want to live in a home with five living rooms, or ten kitchens? Of course not - you aren't that weird (at least we hope not).

So how come we design and inhabit offices that are essentially one 10x10-foot plan, repeated over and over and over? We humbly submit it's because people not only can not think out of the box, they definitely can't think beyond the cube, or, goodness forbid, out of the office.

At NeoCon we somehow got the impression we were all standing around in a surreal 1910 kind of place comparing all the different shapes and sizes of buggy whips. Where's the Henry Ford dude we need to shake up this industry?

Why not design and outfit offices like we design and outfit our homes? Different spaces for different activities. Hey, there's an idea Mildred. And guess what? Some people don't want dining rooms anymore. Hmmm, what's a big conference room really for, anyway?

With all due credit to Steve Jobs, let's think different. We've written before about the fact that we need different kinds of spaces to do different kinds of work - we won't kick that dog again. Now it's time to get real about office space.

First, we (all of us, together) need a whole lot less of it. In fact, as we toured NeoCon, all we could think of was that we were witnessing hundreds of firms all competing to furnish the Titanic. We're convinced the market for "traditional" office furniture is not only shrinking, but actually about to sink like a stone (or like a very large, overly designed cruise ship). The iceberg is right out there in front of us, folks (now we just know we're going get lots of cards and letters from the commercial real estate broker types for that crack. Well, bring it on dudes).

Again, to quote ourselves (we like to do that - and we wish more of you would too), the future of work will reward creativity and innovation, so how about designing and furnishing workplaces that actually encourage thinking different?

Jim is currently reading a fascinating book about creativity (it's called The Medici Effect; look for a review in the not too distant future). The really simple but incredibly important message in that book is that creativity and innovation take place at intersections - the physical (and virtual) places where people and with very different backgrounds, experiences, values, and views come together.

It's the combination of really different ideas (and different disciplines) that fosters breakthroughs.

So how about designing offices that bring people together instead of keeping them apart? And while we're in full rant mode, just what is an "office" anyway? How about creating spaces that signal it's not only all right to think different, it's absolutely necessary. How about setting up playrooms, cafe's, libraries, art galleries, movie theaters, gardens, living rooms, even kitchens (where we could cook up all kinds of things) - all in what we now call offices.

And speaking of kitchens, In Our Humble Opinion, we're hungry for new thinking about office design and office furniture (that was pretty subtle, wasn't it?). When are you architects and designers going to step up to the plate (oops, that's a baseball plate, not a dinner plate - we're mixing metaphors shamelessly once again) and give the rest of us what we want? Hello out there, your cell phone is ringing; answer the damn thing!! And start thinking different.

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

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