The groundswell of change is leading to some seismic shifts in the next five particularly for leadership, jobs won’t change much but the emphasis in your company will:

1. There will always be indispensible people required, except you’ll need a lot more in your company tomorrow. These people will be ‘world class,’ passionate, fully engaged, online, followed, creative, leaders, organising discussion groups via Linkedin, people orientated, trusting, respectful and have high expectations.

2. There will always be reliable people unless you motivate them more intrinsically. They get paid to turn up, love silos and blame cultures. Low engagement, low communication, follow the rules, have conservative expectations. Believe in authority, hide creativity, follow but are not followed. They won’t blow your mind but will deliver a great days work to their job description.

3. There will always be low paid people. High turnover, little or low motivation, low in respect. They rock up and then go home with some shuffling in between. Expectations will be low.

You are what you do and what impact you have. In the future our businesses will need to be full of the number ones because its that distinctive element that will make us competitive as our products become increasingly much the same. The future business Seth Godin says “consists of well organised linchpins doing their thing in concert, creating more value than any factory could.”

Word provided by Scott Gould – www.scottgould.me

If you help, what I contribute will be better. Value, in the future for a lot of people, will be whether and how they participate in the businesses we run. They will be particularly motivated by group effort. Participation has almost become risk free because the cost of failure has dropped so we can mass innovate. The tools are there and the hierarchy removed to allow us to all to really take part.

Humans have always had a desire to make meaningful contributions. We lost that. Businesses deliberately organised themselves to control the participating. However, the case studies of Wikipedia and Linux have altered how close the horizon is. Participation is changing the way companies use resources and it’s bridged the gap between the amateur and professional. Amateurs are collecting data on behalf of wildlife trusts, we can transmit news items to the media, and astronomers are listening for other life forms for governments.

The passive consumer is evaporating. We want to participate in the generation of new products and services. We no longer want to just wait for it down the line to be delivered. Charles Leadbeater talks about “mass production to mass innovation.” He has missed a process or two out of the equation. It’s more like this:

Mass production – Mass participation – Mass collaboration – Mass innovation

It’s just a thought. As companies we have misunderstood that it’s the non-financial, intrinsic factors that motivate people like participation more than the financial ones. We are always talking about the difficulties of getting customers and employees to understand what we do and the advantages of our product. Perhaps we should take a leaf out of Benjamin Franklin’s thoughts “Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I might remember, involve me and I will understand.” Powerful stuff. Maybe participation gets rid of that communication problem we have been having?

We have no excuses anymore. All business can allow its customers and employees to participate. I’m not talking about amateurs doing brain surgery, not a great idea, I agree. But I am talking about using the social tools we have now to enable the impossible to be achieved. If we involve people in the process, they take ownership. From that they will easily become part of our community, which is where we need them to be in the future.

The world of work has changed dramatically in the last 18 months. Things we did in times of excess will be redundant. Expect sabbaticals to reinvent themselves. In the future these won’t be self indulgent trips to far flung places in the world for a couple of months.

Talented people will still get sabbaticals, but instead they’ll be thrown into a three month project with a supplier, customer, competitor, university or some other collaborative event. Their job to change things, shift the pace, find something interesting, learn and unlearn!

Word provided by Robert Pickstone - www.robertpickstone.com

The only reason we need to be adaptable is because we are moving to mass innovation. It’s critical because no two clients, projects or people are alike. As change perpetually gains momentum and things happen quicker, we will need business models and people that adapt seamlessly to new environments.

We now as individuals, organisations’ and communities have to display chameleon like qualities. Perhaps we will need to change our attitude to business significantly in order to become more adaptive? Adaptability will demand that we understand how our business is going to transform itself from a current to future state as we try to build specific things under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

It will specifically involve solving problems creatively and adapting to dynamic changing environments. Dealing with uncertain work conditions where people have to adapt to novel situations. From that we must continuously learn so we can keep up with the rapid pace of technological advancement and cultural changes this will bring. We are going to have to attain interpersonal adaptability, being able to produce incredible outcomes in fluid work environments with a project led business. Whether we like it or not cultural adaptability, we live and work in a globalised world. We will become one tribe and we will have to learn how to perform well in different cultures, surrounded by people who do things different to us.

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative. “ HG Wells. Some of us will have to be able to work well in uncomfortable and strange climates. Adaptability is no longer an emphasis on just technology and processes but about people and processes coming together through technology.

Innovation comes from freedom to find, not from obeying someone else’s orders. Future talent will demand autonomy and this goes past the simple solutions of the past such as empowerment and being allowed to use initiative. For those that are really talented, will not relinquish their abilities in a career limiting move and hide behind a subordinate role being told what to do.

In the future you will pay people based on their value, on their financial and non financial contribution to your business, not whether they rocked up and worked a 60 hour week. Work is changing. Its become more challenging, more sophisticated, more time pressured, more collaborative, more engaging, more equal, more technological and less reliant on control, command and power. Companies are having to change their decision making processes, their reward structures and abandon their heirarchy.

It means opening up. It is becoming increasing less productive to make decisions in isolation, since in the future, it will require so many different specialists from niche areas to support those problem solving solutions. Its a blinding flash of the obvious but a group of people, almost always, will have more knowledge and expertise than any individual. Future success will depend on leaders being able to pull together and engage the talents of a cross functional nature from inside and outside the organisation.

This type of working increases opportunities to add value but they will bring about significant changes in business infrastructure including, co ordinating people on and off the payroll as well as co creating products.

As employees (I can almost remember being one) we were focused on the elements of our job that involved the least risk taking. Not many of us are prepared to stick our heads above the parapet. As managers, we emphasise compliance, create procedures to try and control people. Invent organisational charts that not only mean sod all, but tell people who they are supposed to talk to. We pinch our peoples ideas, we reinforce the silos we have evolved even in small businesses and try and measure performance based on a system that focuses on extrinsic motivation rather than intrinsic motivation.

Then we complain like mad because our staff are not showing initiative, we have to make all the decisions for fear of mistakes. Teams don’t integrate, people only perform what is required and we’ve systemised, de sensitized employees so they don’t feel anymore. We couldn’t have frustrated them more if we had tried by honing in on the wrong things.

Concentrate on letting your people express themselves fully, allow them the freedom to take risk and make mistakes. Build cross functional teams to solve problems and remove silos. Facilitate rather than control. Measure the things that really matter to that person like being valued, working on meaningful projects and making a big bloomin’ difference to their work, their customers or colleagues. You can’t control the best people only influence their ability to develop some of your most important initiatives.

We all have a tendency to spend enormous amounts of time on the wrong things we think make us competitive. Our product, the way the store looks, how we market, what marketing messages we communicate, how we look. And, when we are really scraping the barrel, our price. Okay some of these things are important, but not to the exclusion of what will really make us competitive in the future. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place?

In fact, the most predominant, fundamental, important, radical, distinguishing factor that makes you competitive is your people. They control costs, implement procedures, deliver customer service, develop new products, conduct research, find new ways of doing stuff and get things done.

We, on many occasions, fail to look at competitiveness correctly, realising that sometimes, we have it the wrong way round. Stop adding things to your product/service and start creating value for your people. Comprehend that 2010 will be about relationships (see last blog). They will be your worthy asset. Products come and go, relationships must not, they cost too much to replace.

Over the Xmas period I’m writing an eBook considering how business is changing including the fundamental shifts we are experiencing and, also the key things we possibly need to get back to. It will cover between 50 and 100 words all supplied by my colleagues, clients, followers, connections and fans. Although, I may throw a few into the mix.

I’m hoping to provide an overview of some critical factors that will influence the future of work and business. Some of you have been kind enough already to provide some interesting topics such as; value, adaption, substance, competition, talent, time and feel.

It would be great if you could join in! I’ll reference you in the book and provide a hyperlink to your website or blog. Hopefully, I can provide some thought provoking ideas and thoughts with a bit of humility too. Can’t wait for the conversation to start once it’s published in February/March 2010.

If you want to contribute a word or two, please just make a comment on this blog, direct message me on www.twitter.com/annholman or, email me at ann@annholman.co.uk

Thanks!

If you run a business, department or division, your role is about to change, big time! Your ego better go and bury itself comfortable cos’ it’s going to be spending a long time there. As a manager you have huge responsibilities. Those self absorbed, selfish, controlling vain days are over. They may have been suitable for a functional state of management but they no longer endear you to a world that has suddenly realised that it’s about relationships. Behaviour will have to change.

Perhaps, business is moving from the ego status to the self actualisation role as in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Your new accountabilities will not be based soley on financial performance or achievements based on numbers. It will centre on:

1. Developing relationships that are mutually beneficial.

2. Developing differentiation, even if it is unfortunately based on price.

3. Creating a common purpose that is authentic, makes a difference and has meaning to people.

4. Building trust and credibility.

However, enabling people to feel valued is going to be your most significant contribution. Financial performance? That’s just the result of getting the stuff above right, we’ve just always managed it the wrong way round!

Just a quickie post today but hopefully a thought provoking one! Wouldn’t it be interesting if we looked at our business, department, division, even ourselves and asked these questions:

1. What if we encouraged our market to be driven by need rather than huge profits?

2. What if we stopped ’selling’ our products and started ’selling’ our people?

3. What if we removed all of the contradictions we have have in our business? Well some of them anyway.

4. What if our business plan was about evolving our company rather than it doing the same old, same old?

It would be intriguing content for a team meeting and brainstorm session. The answers would be even more enthralling!