Connect to Work

1 COMMENTS
May 20th, 2013

Last week I wrote about one of the key themes that I believe are going to make up the future work, I encourage you to read that post titled: The Future of Work is About Customized Work.  There are several of these themes that I’m going to be exploring in the near future and the next one is “Connect to Work.”  The traditional view of working  sees an employee waking up around 6:30 am, having their morning breakfast and then commuting anywhere from  30 mins to over 1.5 hours to get to work.  The employee gets to their office around 8 or 9 am and usually leaves around 6 pm.  This is what it used to mean to “work” or better yet “to GO TO work.”

What does it mean to connect to work?

The notion of having to go to work is dying, in fact for some it’s already dead.  Work doesn’t have to be done at an office anymore.  The only thing that most of us need is an internet connection that allows us to connect to the people and information we need to get our jobs done.  This is what it means to “connect to work.”  The many collaborative platforms out there are making this possible and what is particularly fascinating is the transition towards mobile work!  We can now access virtually all of the same people, files, conversations, tasks, and other types of information on our mobile devices that we can on our computers.  The power of these mobile devices that we carry around in our pockets is, for lack of a better word, awesome and it’s enabling and empowering a new type of employee, the future employee.

Connecting to work means that you can have access to everything and anything you need whether you are at a cafe, in an airplane, in a cab, or sitting somewhere on the beach.  You don’t have to go to work, work now comes to you.

This shift is forcing organizations to rethink some of the core assumptions that were made during the creation of these institutions, for example, do we now need offices or a central headquarters for our company?

I’m seeing more and more organizations implementing flexible work policies and our recent survey on the future of work (which you can still take and share!) is already revealing some very telling results on this which I will be sharing soon.  The giant elephant in the room is that we (including mangers and executives) all know that we have the ability and the capacity to enable this type of work to happen and we all inherently know that it is beneficial to do so.  It’s a virtually palpable shift that we can’t deny when looking at the future of work.

I’ll be exploring this theme in much more detail in the future but for now I just wanted to introduce it and I’m sure many of you are already quite aware of it.

The future of work is “connecting to work.”

 

COMMENT

The Future of Work is Customized Work

1 COMMENTS
May 16th, 2013

The typical career path for an employee starts in an entry level position in a particular department wherein the employee needs to then ascend the corporate ladder and move up the proverbial food chain to a more senior level role.  Most of the time the employee ends up stuck in a particular department or a particular role but occasionally some horizontal pivots are possible.  This is a type of pre-determined work because essentially the career path of the employee is set out for them once they join the company.  If they get hired in the marketing department then they will typically stay in that area.  It’s akin to set-up marriages which used to be common many years ago in some countries.  Before the child was even old enough to know what marriage was they were already paired up with someone.  Thankfully in most parts of the world this custom is now no longer being practiced but we run our companies in much the same fashion.  This is how it has been for many years inside of organizations and it’s starting to change.  The future of work is about customized work.

What is customized work?

Customized work is exactly what it sounds like.  It’s the ability of an individual employee to shape their career path within an organization and allows them to navigate to the roles they are best at and most passionate about.  Employees no longer need to focus on ascending the corporate ladder, they are now building their corporate ladder.

There are two things making this possible within organizations.  The first is technology in the form of collaboration platforms that allow employees to share their ideas and passions while becoming leaders in areas of their choosing.  The second is the changing behaviors we are starting to see in management around following from the front.  We still have a long way to go before this notion of customized work becomes pervasive within organizations but we are certainly moving towards that direction.

We are all still collectively learning what this is going to look like and how exactly it’s going to take shape but it’s a fascinating journey for organizations to be embarking upon and I’ll be doing my best to explore much more around the future of work and collaboration.  Stay tuned as I’ll be exploring several key themes around this!

COMMENT TAGS: customized work, enterprise collaboration, following from the front, future of work

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2 COMMENTS
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1 COMMENTS
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2 COMMENTS
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2 COMMENTS
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Some still believe that the whole point of investing in enterprise collaboration tools and strategies is simply to replace existing systems that organizations are currently using such as Sharepoint and/or email.  Let me be clear that it is about far more than that.  At the core; we are talking about the future of work.  Technology [...]

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