October 2005

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This Month's Headlines

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This is our personal note welcoming you to the October 2005 issue of Future of Work Agenda and setting our theme for the month. This month we're continuing our focus on the changing economies of local communities. Both our Feature Article and the Bonus Article highlight the emergence of distributed workers and free agents operating in "stealth mode."

We are pleased to welcome Forest City Covington as our newest Future of Work corporate member. We're also deep into our research for the new Distributed Work Industry Association. And we have a number of public presentations on the calendar. We hope to see many of you at one or more of them.

Lately we've been paying a lot of attention to how local communities are coping with the new information-based global economy. The "new rules" for success are creating significant opportunities (and threats) not only for business organizations but for local communities and the governing bodies that run them. What makes it really interesting is that the key to success is virtually invisible.

This short note was sent to us by Doreen Fisher, founder of Rainbow Outsourcing, a virtual assistant firm based in Garland, Texas, that focuses on the strengths and unique talents of its virtual workers.

We've heard from several readers this month, with very provocative things to say about ideas and issues they read about here in the recent past....

This new section replaces and combines "The Future is Already Here" and "Research Notes," two of our more popular regular sections. Here we provide several quick summaries of 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. It's that currency of real-world examples that you are clearly looking for, and here's where you'll find it.

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

Are we getting old and tired, or what? Time continues to sneak past us. And our calendars are filling up almost in spite of ourselves. We've had a very full September, but October is looking absolutely frightening. But as they say, it beats the alternative, and we've got some really exciting opportunities and ventures on our plate.

But this note is about our October newsletter, which we hope you will enjoy (and let us know if you don't). Our feature article this month ("Understanding the Hidden Economy") shines a spotlight on what we've begun to realize may be the least understood aspect of the "new economy" – the thousands of folks operating small businesses out of home offices that local officials haven't got a clue about.

Although we've been aware of – and actually promoting – the birth of free agency and home-based businesses for years, the "aha" for us came from a recent conversation with our latest Future of Work member, Mark Lautman of Forest City Covington. Mark helped us realize the enormous economic impact that all these "hidden" businesses have on their local communities – economically, socially, and even technically.

The simple fact is that all those hidden businesses are generating millions of dollars in local income that is virtually invisible. It all comes in electronically in response to the services that those businesses export from the local area. And we're very aware that someday the local officials are going to wake up and figure out how to levy taxes of one kind or another.

While we aren't eager to pay more taxes ourselves, and we know none of you are either, we also want to see those local communities thrive and succeed, and there just may be a reckoning someday as they realize how much the commercial tax base has transformed from large-company manufacturing to small-company information-based services.

Anyway, please read the article (and the Bonus Article – "Layoff: Devastation or Opportunity?" – a first-person perspective on the transition to becoming a free agent) and send us your comments and suggestions.

And as usual, we've also got several important Announcements for you, as well as some provocative Reader Comments. This month we broke out of our sometimes limited perspective on the world of work and included a first-person account of Katrina relief efforts from our Future of Work member and colleague Catherine Adams Lee. We hope you will find Catherine's story as full of human interest as we did.

And of course it wouldn't be a newsletter without a rant (we call it "In Our Humble Opinion" to make it sound more professional). This month we pick up on the feature article by asking why real estate professionals and economic developers can't all get along with each other and get something done for all those devastated communities in the Gulf region. Read it – please. We think it's really, really important to all of our futures that we stop talking and start doing.

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

Announcements

Forest City Joins Future of Work

The Work Design Collaborative is very pleased to announce that Forest City Covington recently committed to join the Future of Work program as a Corporate Member. Mark Lautman, Director of Business Development for Forest City's Mesa Del Sol Project in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is the executive sponsor.

Forest City Covington is a joint venture of Forest City Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE:FCEA) and Covington Capital of Aspen, Colorado, a private investment firm. Forest City Enterprises is a leading commercial and residential property developer with major projects throughout the United States, including the redevelopment of the Stapleton Airport property in Denver, Colorado.

Please join us in welcoming Forest City and Mark to our growing community.

Distributed Work Industry Association Research is Underway

As we announced last month WDC has received a grant from the Gaines Family Foundation to create a new industry and professional association, tentatively called the "Distributed Work Industry Association" (DWIA). Our project is well underway, and we are actively interviewing industry experts and leading practitioners to gain their perspectives on what the new association should focus on and how it should be structured to be most successful.

In making the grant, Jerry Gaines, Trustee of the Gaines Family Foundation, commented, "Our Foundation wants to encourage corporations and individuals to rethink where, when, and how work takes place. We believe companies can reap enormous cost savings by embracing more distributed ways of working. And working from home - or close to home in a satellite office - can have a highly positive impact on families and communities."

Anyone interested in contributing to this effort should contact Charlie Grantham at charlie@thefutureofwork.net or Jim Ware at jim@thefutureofwork.net.

Upcoming Public Presentations

We (Charlie and Jim) have several scheduled public appearances over the next several months:

Jim Ware will be leading a discussion on "The Changing Nature of Work" for the Detroit, Michigan, Chapter of CoreNet Global in West Bloomfield, Michigan, on October 13.

WDC will be leading a panel discussion at the CoreNet Global Summit (October 23-26) in Las Vegas, Nevada, on the connection between corporate real estate and community economic development. Participating with Charlie and Jim on the panel, which will be moderated by Mark Gorman of Nortel, will be Mark Lautman and Hank Price of Forest City Enterprises and Gary Tonjes, President of the Albuquerque, New Mexico, Economic Development Council.

Charlie Grantham will be leading a discussion about Business Community Centers at the NAIOP (National Association of Industrial and Office Properties) Industry Trends Task Force meeting, October 18 in Hollywood, Florida (preceding the NAIOP Annual Conference).

Charlie Grantham has also been invited to lead a symposium for real estate professionals sponsored by the University of Cincinnati's College of Business in early November. Note: this presentation is actually a dress rehearsal for a two-part series on the business implications of the future of work that we hope to be offering for CEU credit later this year.

Feature Article: Understanding the Hidden Economy

By Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware

Lately we've been paying a lot of attention to how local communities are coping with the new information-based global economy. The "new rules" for success are creating significant opportunities (and threats) not only for business organizations but for local communities and the governing bodies that run them.

We've written about many of these shifts fairly frequently over the past couple of years (see "Business Community Centers as Third Places," "The Future of Work and Economic Development," and "We Need a Department of Social Capital," for example), but recently we've become much more aware of the impact of the so-called "new economy" on these local communities.

Think about the following hypothetical scenario: Anytown USA has suffered significantly over the past decade as several mid-sized manufacturing operations closed their doors (either for good, or to relocate south of the border). The population is shrinking, and the folks who are left are having a tough time making ends meet. To make matters worse, the reduced tax base means the schools have had to make severe budget cuts, and even the "big box" retailers on the outskirts of town are hurting. There doesn't seem to be much reason for optimism.

Anytown is located in a wonderful valley, with nearby summer hiking, swimming, and fishing as well as winter skiing, and it has always been a popular place to live, but now its future feels pretty bleak.

Then something strange and unexpected happens. Without any planning on the town fathers' part, the population begins to grow again. There are more young families in the neighborhoods and more kids in the schools. The grocery stores and the local shopping centers are experiencing sales growth again. Yet there are virtually no new businesses in town. While retail tax revenues are rising, property taxes haven't grown much at all.

What's going on? In a word (or two), Anytown is benefiting from what our friend and colleague Amy Zuckerman calls the "hidden economy" (see her Hidden-Tech website for details).

Those young families moving into Anytown are predominantly Internet-savvy professionals who have set up home offices and are fully employed as software engineers, call-center specialists, marketing consultants, technical writers, lawyers, accountants, and virtual assistants (see "Layoff: Devastation or Opportunity?" below). But their employers aren't located in Anytown; they are based all over the country (and even outside the United States).

Anytown is a perfect example of what an information-based economy is like. You can't really see the work that's being done every day; and it doesn't take a freight train or a UPS truck to export the finished "product." The "hidden economy" is generating work and wealth without any visible impact on the community – no traffic congestion, no air pollution, no ugly industrial buildings along the railroad tracks. Unfortunately, however, this "new economy" usually doesn't bring much in the way of additional property taxes for the local government, since the "invisible" work being done in all those home offices is also pretty well-hidden from the tax rolls. Sure, these good citizens and breadwinners are paying all their federal and state taxes, but the local folks hardly know they're there.

What makes all this interesting – and important – is that these "free agents," entrepreneurs, and remote employees of large organizations based elsewhere are essentially "exporting" their services outside the local economy – thereby importing income that they then spend locally on food, clothing, toys for their kids, home improvements, recreation, restaurants, and all the other necessities of life.

It's powerful operating model that is beginning to turn our economy upside down. As we've written elsewhere, much of the population growth in the United States these days is occurring in what the census bureau now calls "micropolises": smaller cities and regional areas with populations between 50,000 and 100,000. High-speed broadband Internet access puts those smaller communities right on a par with the New Yorks, Chicagos, LAs, Dublins, and Bangalores of the world.

And for many professionals (not all, but a growing number of them), these micropolises are much more attractive places to live and work and raise their families than the big, older cities that have dominated our economy for the last century (there are rebirths going on in many urban neighborhoods as well, but our focus here is on the smaller towns and cities).

Our little story of Anytown describes a community that simply "lucked out" because of some attractive living conditions (recreation, decent schools, low housing costs). But the real message here is that local officials and economic development specialists can actually drive this kind of rebirth with some thoughtful planning and appropriate decisions that make their community more attractive to knowledge workers.

When we work with folks in communities like Anytown we encourage them to look at a number of critical factors that increase their attractiveness to the creative class:

• high-quality local schools, including a local community college or a branch of a state university;
• the existence of a true "downtown" area that's easy to walk to and includes a good mix of restaurants, business services (accountants, office supplies, computer stores, print shops, mailing services, and so on), and retail stores;
• support for the arts and cultural activities;
• good recreational opportunities; and
• the willingness of local public officials and business leaders to collaborate in creating and maintaining a desirable place to live and work.

Our work often involves conducting market research studies to estimate the size of the "hidden economy" along with feasibility studies to explore the possibility of forming a Business Community Center^tm to support the small businesses and remote workers whose success is so critical to the local economy (see our September 2005 article, "Business Community Centers as Third Places" for more about this new business concept).

Insanity has often been defined as doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. We think it's time for local officials to stop chasing the old industrial model of offering incentives to bring blue collar jobs to town. That's crazy in today's economy; it's time to recognize that there's a new path to economic viability.

That path is called the Information Economy, and it's a marvelous opportunity for local economic development. But it clearly requires you to rethink just about all of your assumptions about what drives economic growth. It's not jobs per se, it's creating a community that is so attractive to well-educated knowledge workers that they'll come, settle down, and bring their work with them. They'll then begin exporting their services while they import their income to your town. This is truly a case of "If you build it, they will come."

When you really think about it, it's a pretty simple equation. But it's a new kind of math.

Bonus Article: Devastation or Opportunity?

by Doreen Fisher, Rainbow Outsourcing

This short note was sent to us by Doreen Fisher, founder of Rainbow Outsourcing, a virtual assistant firm based in Garland, Texas that focuses on the strengths and unique talents of its virtual workers (Doreen is a good friend and colleague of Future of Work member Candace Fitzpatrick, who introduced us to her).

I have recently had a shift in my interpretation of corporate layoffs. In the past, I would have perceived a layoff of thousands of employees as a devastating event. Today, I see it as opportunity: an opportunity for both employees and employers.

The Employee. Employees displaced by corporate downsizing now have the opportunity to become liberated workers – virtual workers. With a computer and a phone line one can work from anywhere. There is immense freedom in this: freedom from daily job commute (with the soaring price of fuel, this is highly significant), freedom from spending time and energy getting ready for work (have you ever worked in your pajamas?), freedom to be with your family, freedom from the confines of a cubicle or constricting office, freedom to find a workspace that promotes creativity, rather than inhibits it…are you visualizing it?

It gets bigger. As an independent I have the freedom to take on projects that interest me and utilize my talents and skills. I have the freedom to choose my clients – and this is big. As a liberated worker, I am a partner with my clients, not an employee. I have the ability to choose whether I work extended hours – no employer has control over my time. Could I lose a client because I refuse to work until 11:00 p.m. at night? Sure, but do I want a client that fails to respect my time?

The Employer. Corporate downsizing is an obvious effort to reduce costs – which it does, but it also reduces productivity. Downsized corporations are now in danger of overtaxing their remaining employees and losing customers from failures to meet demand.

So…in a short time, those companies now seek to retrieve the workers that were released to their own devices. Rather then rehire, why not outsource? There are a host of highly-skilled, educated, and experienced individuals who are now seeking work -- but from a different setting. Corporations can now draw on workers from distant locations, utilizing their own resources. Corporate no longer has to maintain the office space to house them, the computers to facilitate their work, internet connections, phone lines, amenities, benefits, taxes, etc. They do have to pay more per hour for the liberated worker, but they will only be paying for the time spent on the job. Employers no longer have to pay these outsourced workers for time spent "finding something to do", talking with co-workers, making personal phone calls, personal internet use, and so on. They only pay for the productive contractor…and more productive they will be.

Liberated workers are highly accountable for their work product. No longer is there the safety net of being an "employee," working under salary, and hiding behind coworkers. As liberated workers, we have to be accountable for our own work product. We keep track of the time spent on projects for billing purposes; and in order to be profitable we must be proficient in what we do. Hence the benefit of finding liberated workers who are working within their specific talents and strengths.

And corporations can pick and choose the liberated workers they use on specific tasks rather than spending extensive funds training employees on how to eliminate their weaknesses. Instead, they can focus on finding someone who already has the specific skills they need.

Companies tell me that finding good, conscientious employees is increasingly difficult. Employees tell me that companies no longer care about their employees. Perhaps the environment is all that needs to change. Telecommuting is indeed liberating – on both sides.

Editor's Note: We recently read a very compelling how-to book on the subject of virtual assistants – and we commend it highly. Check out The Two-Second Commute by Michael Haaren and Christine Durst. It's a wonderful source of ideas and best practices, whether you are a virtual assistant yourself, looking to hire one, or just want to understand what is going on.

Reader Response

A First-Person Account of Disaster Recovery

The following note from Future of Work member Catherine Adams Lee is a bit out of our "sweet spot," but it is such a compelling first-person account of the disaster recovery efforts in the Gulf states that we wanted to share it with all our readers. We know that the hardest part of the effort still lies ahead – rebuilding the communities, the homes, the lives, and the careers of the hundreds of thousands of people who were so violently uprooted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Our hats are off to Catherine for her deep and unselfish commitment to provide help where it is so desperately needed.

I have just returned from one of the most unbelievable experiences in my life – volunteering with the American Red Cross in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for Hurricane Katrina. My humble words cannot adequately express the huge outpouring of care, consideration, and kindness I saw there.

Statistically, the magnitude of the operation is unprecedented in the United States. To date, the Red Cross has utilized 163,000 volunteers and staff, opened 902 shelters, and served 13.7 million hot meals. Volunteers have come from every one of our 50 states and beyond. I personally met people from as far away as Fairbanks, Alaska; Whistler, Canada; and Puerto Rico.

Upon arrival, I and another woman were asked to become staff shelter managers. We started up and ran a makeshift sleeping facility for approximately 100 Red Cross volunteers, crammed into second floor Sunday School classrooms of a local church. We were pulled out of the registration line at 2:30 p.m. and asked to have the place up and running in three hours. Right on schedule the volunteers and the cots for them to sleep on arrived simultaneously. Showers were in the high school locker rooms four blocks away, available after hours only. So we made do, created schedules, and organized car pools. But the shelter rooms were air conditioned, had bathrooms that worked, and a "hospitality" room that was well stocked by church volunteers with snacks and earplugs against snoring.

Without the help and generosity of the church volunteers and the people of Baton Rouge, we could not have accomplished this alone. They selflessly gave food, clothing, towels, toiletries, laundry service, space, and all utilities for free. But most of all they gave us their time, tolerance, compassion, and patience as thousands of people, both Red Cross and evacuees, bloated their town to over twice its population, grew morning commute times from 15 minutes to well over an hour, and taxed all the city services.

This scenario was repeated again and again for the volunteers and those who had to leave their homes alike, leaving no one in the entire area untouched by this disaster, physically or emotionally.

The stories I heard and encountered are many and varied – from the mother who placed her dead baby in the arms of an ARC volunteer to the staff shelter manager who was able to connect an evacuated family with a newly refurbished house in her hometown.

From it all I return with a renewed understanding and sense of hope that Americans can and will be there for each other in times of great need. Thank you to all who help, including anyone who donates to the Red Cross. The whole is made greater by the sum of its parts – every little bit counts and is important.

In the coming weeks I will be writing more about the Katrina effort, including observations of the role technology played during the disaster. Please feel free to send your thoughts or comments and, most of all, share your stories to:

catherine@cognitivebusinesspractices.com.

I will try to publish as many as I can on my web site, as my small part in documenting the living history of this disaster.

Gratefully – Catherine Adams Lee

Reflections on Introducing Change in the Facilities/Furniture Design Industry

This very thoughtful letter from Laurie Aznavoorian was triggered by our rant back in July ("In Praise of Thinking Different") about what we saw as incredible lack of creativity and leadership on the part of the office furniture industry when we visited the 2005 NeoCon show at Chicago's Merchandise Mart (and once again, for those of you who aren't familiar with NeoCon, it has nothing to do with politics!)

Now boys.

First off let me say that there are plenty of bad designers out there who are more than comfortable with the status quo, and I by no means wish to defend them. Nor do I wish to defend the big furniture makers who I believe could do much more in contributing to research that could help to make progressive environments be adopted by the mainstream business community. That being said, there is more to this than thinking the designers and furniture manufacturers are slackers

A few things for you to consider:

Complacency or status quo solutions happen for a variety of different reasons As designers we can sometimes affect this and at other times we are powerless. One contributing factor, which will seem like an excuse or low hanging fruit, is project fees. I would argue that low project budgets are not what drives status quo solutions, but not allowing fees and, more importantly, time for designers to think is the real culprit. A bigger issue is around clients who do not accept that their workplace is a business tool, and therefore will not contribute leadership energy to championing change. When embarking on change in the workplace in particular it is critical that a person in power lead the charge. Rightly or wrongly, many people tie their status or worth to their work environment; it becomes a symbol of their success. Often this is not something that people will admit, so it takes a good deal of coddling to get to the real issues.

Having the opportunity to educate clients to the power that space can have on human behaviors, company culture, and the achievement of business objectives is a luxury we often are not allowed. In order to create the value I am describing here, it is critical that a designer know a company quite intimately, and understand its business objectives, brand, and culture. This takes time and must involve leadership.

It has been my experience that it is very rare to have a client who understands the importance of the environment, will commit the time to develop a strategy, will allow us to have a bit of time with the business's leaders to develop accommodation objectives, and will spend the time and money creating a communication or change management program to ensure their people embrace the changes.

Most companies do not have the kind of courage it takes to do something different. They are scared that if they go out on a limb and create a unique work environment they will rock the boat too much. Often facility managers are looking to mitigate risk and are after a smooth running project rather than something that is off into unknown territory. Companies have a great fear in involving people such as IT, Marketing, and Human Resources to the table to debate the environment and it is [only] through this kind of holistic approach that we will drive innovation in workplace design.

The strategy you mention of providing a variety of places for people to work and enabling them to move between these spots with appropriate technology is not a new idea. Every day I go out there and fight that fight, attempt to enlighten my clients to the impact their space can have on their business, how they can empower and engage their people. More often than not it falls on deaf ears.

Currently I am working with the Australian Government Solicitor. It is a legal practice that is part private and part government. Their leases are expiring in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, and Canberra so they have done the right thing and are taking the time to consider where their business is going, what their competition is doing, what is happening in their industry, their brand, their culture, and their work practice. I have spent the past few months going between cities conducting workshops with the top leaders of this organization. They want to change. [Recently] I delivered a brief to them that outlined the type of space they would need to support their aspirations. It was one that was similar to what you have described with an acknowledgement that these guys are lawyers (not the most progressive lot) and are office-based.

To create this [proposed] environment each lawyer will need to buy into significantly smaller offices, offices that are not on the windows, and a workplace that takes approximately 4 to 5 meters square more space than the typical legal fit-out per lawyer. They will be spending approximately $400/meter rent, so for an accommodation that has 160 lawyers they will need 640m2 more space to create their dream environment, which would cost them $256,000 per year. Over a twelve-year lease term that is a bit over three million dollars. It is a lot of money – and that talks in the boardroom

The truth is that when you go off to NeoCon, the [furniture manufacturers] are servicing clients who may have 900 payroll guys who never leave the office, and never alter what they do.

It is those clients who do not want to change, who are not courageous enough to do so, and that is who the manufacturers are catering to. I am not saying that I support it, I don't think it is a good thing, and given the drive for creativity and innovation to remain competitive it will no doubt have frightening consequences in terms of the US's place in the global market. Nevertheless, there is more to it than simple apathy.

Best of the Blog

This new section replaces our "Future is Already Here" and "Research Notes," which in the past have been the place where we reported on real-world stories and research that points the way to the world of tomorrow. Our Future of Work weblog now reports those kinds of stories almost daily, so from now on we'll include a summary here in the newsletter of the best or most intriguing stories from the blog since the last newsletter.

Please get in the habit of reading the blog 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 to visit the original blog post.

Ain't Got No Vacation (September 4)

There's a very readable, somewhat poignant article in the Labor Day weekend Sunday New York Times by Daniel Gross ("For the Self-Employed, Labor Doesn't Take a Holiday"). It's about life for the self-employed. And it's not all smooth sailing (that's for all you wage slaves out there toiling away in big-company bureaucracies who think we "free agents" are just living in paradise - but who are enjoying this three-day weekend with a paid day off).

The Changing Nature of Work: Globalization (September 5)

The latest in our series of discussions on the factors driving change in the nature of work. This one describes the way globalization is driving organizations to cut costs to the bone, outsource, and turn to contract labor rather than full-time employees. It also highlights the challenges management faces in managing highly diverse globally distributed teams.

Work Design Collaborative Announces Launch of Distributed Work Industry Association (September 6)

This is the full press release about our current project to frame and help launch a new industry association focused on distributed work. We actively encourage you to contact us if you are interested in contributing to our research and initial plans.

Possibilities, Plausibilities, and Probabilities (September 16)

One of the genuine highlights of our just-completed Future of Work Members' Roundtable was a morning when we focused on future scenarios. The Herman Miller Future Insight Team took us through three compelling (but very different) stories of the future.

The focus of the exercise was on thinking about the possibilities, plausibilities, and probabilities of what the world could/might/will look like in 2012. We can't really report the details of the three scenarios (they're proprietary to Herman Miller), but the experience got us to thinking a lot about how we think about, try to predict, and at least imagine, the future…

Human Capital Management Issues (September 17)

The T+D blog, authored by Eva Kaplan-Leiserson, alerted us to an important recent survey by SHRM (The Society for Human Resource Management) that highlighted the human capital management issues of concern to senior HR executives. What's particularly interesting is how those issues have changed from a year ago.

In Our Humble Opinion: Finding the Silver Lining in All Those Clouds

Commentary by Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware

This month's topic is about why corporate real estate people and their brethren, economic development folk, ought to be talking to one another.

But first, a brief pause in remembrance of those who lost their lives, livelihoods, and all manner of worldly goods in the wake of the hurricane disasters. Our hearts go out to them, and we hope that in some small way our incessant calls to action, pleadings, and general irritability about people failing to move proactively into the future will be heard. Perhaps our ramblings and rantings can help mitigate something like that from ever happening again in the United States.

OK, now that Mother Nature has walked up behind us and slapped us with her equivalent of a 2X4, maybe we ought to listen. Lesson number one: don't put everything in one place that's dangerous. As Charlie's old first sergeant used to say, "That's right boys, ya'll get in one place and a grenade will get all of ya." Something worth remembering.

Lesson number two: there's a lot of real smart, courageous, good people in places we've never even heard of, let alone can pronounce. Full disclosure: Charlie used to live in Houma, Louisiana, where he discovered the heart and soul of Cajun country.

Lesson number three: you can't predict the future, so you really do need to be ready for all kinds of possibilities. Those crazy ladies Katrina and Rita were the ultimate "wild card" – those low probability events that if (when) they happen have enormous consequences.

Now let's throw in the stupid factor. There are things going on in the rest of the world that will transform the landscape of the future environment as radically as Katrina and Rita rearranged the landscape of the Gulf Coast.

Say what? Yes siree, folks a Category 5 "storm" is headed your way right this very minute (that's an analogy – don't start evacuating your home town just yet). Just take a glance at the latest issue of Business 2.0. (OK, OK, we aren't the only ones who work this futures beat.) Trend 1: "White collar workers begin to organize" (p. 82). Why? Because there's a shortage of them (say maybe 8 million by 2007).

So where does this fit with corporate real estate and economic development? Funny you should ask; we were just getting to that.

Try this test. Ask any senior commercial real estate executive in the Gulf region today if maybe, just maybe, they're re-thinking where they're going put things when they re-build. We bet they're going "Whew, we can't let that happen again." And ask the economic development folks the same thing. Disasters can make for strange bedfellows (correction: disasters make it obvious which of us should have been bedfellows all along)

Hello, we've now got us a gen-u-wine chance to have a conversation that should have started years ago. It goes something like this.

"Geez, corporate America needs more smart, reliable employees."

"Hmm, but they don't want to live in nasty old, congested, expensive metropolitan areas where our nice new buildings are."

Small towns and rural areas are saying, "Hey, lookee over here, we've got those people right here; and more and more are moving in every day."

So, here's our rant (finally!).

Why in Sam Hill aren't these demand and supply "geniuses" (geniae?) talking to each other? We will (in our usual irreverent spirit) offer a speculation. They aren't talking because that would mean that each group couldn't do business as usual, and they would need to get out of their respective comfort zones. Well, Katrina and Rita definitely pushed the economic development types out there. Now let's see what happens next.

Look, we've said this before: the work has got to move to where the talent is, not the other way ‘round. After World War II, folks up and moved to the Northern United States, where the factories were. During the dust bowl days they moved to California, where the fertile soil was. It's not the same game anymore, people; it's moving in reverse. When people move back to New Orleans and Biloxi we don't think they'll want another big box retail job at a buck seven fifty an hour. No, they're going to want the same chance at one of those well-paying knowledge worker jobs that a lot of people in India and China already have. Bring it home!

So, who are going to be the winners and losers? The losers quite clearly will be those on both sides of the labor equation who think they can putter along in the same old way. Forget it; it won't work anymore.

The winners? The creative types who can get ahead of the curve and say, "Where is the talent?" and "I need to make my company go there." And local officials who can stand up and say, "How can we make our community a magnet for talent?"

So right now there's a golden opportunity staring us in the face: a chance to rebuild a devastated area into the image we all want for the future – the future of our children and those that will follow them. The really Big Question is, can we as a country of entrepreneurs and innovators pull it off before them Big Ol' Bureaucrats grab hold of the federal cash register and dole it out to all their friends in the name of "helping our neighbors"?

So, how we gonna do it? (Get ready; here comes the free advertisement.) We (WDC, in the form of Charlie and Jim) are going to start on October 25th in Las Vegas, Nevada, by hosting a panel at the fall CoreNet Global Summit.

Our conversation is called "Economic Development Implications of Corporate Real Estate Management" and will star the dynamic duo (in that full-blast mode that you have come to know and love), along with several special mystery guests from both sides of the aisle, as they say. Hint: check out the Announcements above to find out who we talked into joining us on stage).

That's our call to action to get this long-overdue conversation going. What're you gonna do, Herbie?

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
Jim Ware, jim@thefutureofwork.net

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