#FutureWork – a Series of Imperfect Essays

This week i’m sharing a short series of imperfect essays exploring aspects of the evolution of work, and the Organisations that it takes place within.

Specifically, i am not trying to make this a coherent and congruent view: there may be inconsistencies and disagreement between the views. I am using this as a space for ideas, and fragments of thought that may take root, or blow away in the breeze.

The initial pieces will explore the organising principles of work, and in particular i will try to challenge my own established frames of ‘how things just are’. My aim is to keep these disparate essays in a short and common format, intending to create spaces for conversation more so than ‘answers’.

Initial ideas i will explore include the following:

Management into Marketplace – we come from a place where managers, within hierarchies, organise and allocate resources (human, intellectual, and material) to achieve known mechanisms of production. The evolution will be into the Organisation as a marketplace, where leaders may bid for teams, where self organising teams or Guilds will own their own development and where productivity may be more creative, but also more consensual, with rewards negotiated according to success or urgency.

Qualifications into Capability – exploring an Organisation that values evidenced capability (defined at the application of diverse skills to effect productive means) above formal qualification or specific job role.

Office into Ecosystem – work as defined by a formal place, evolves into many social places where work is realised as an outcome. This will see the transformation of our built environment, a general distribution of labour, a wealth of richly networked third spaces, and the emergence of self organising specialist units of labour that contract into multiple organisations, including education and healthcare.

Separation into Curation – this piece will take a more holistic view about how ‘work’ evolves from something we do, into a central part of who we are, but but that the nature of engagement shifts into a structure that is curated on an individual basis. ‘Work’ in this context will become a series of connected communities and capabilities that we move between over time. Boundaries will be less formal, and the nature of engagement more fluid. ‘Work’ defined by a formal view of separate domains evolves into ‘capability’ as curated by leaders or individuals

Codification into Co-Creation – the idea that the Organisation itself is formally defined as something you join, evolves into the idea of the Organisation as a belief system where everyone has a voice and chooses to believe. Purpose becomes more fluid, accountable, and co-created.

Contract into Fairness – the idea that your primary alignment to an Organisation is legal, evolves into the idea that the primary engagement is based upon fairness (both to you, and to broader society). Notions of social accountability and social justice become core recruitment enablers, and accountability of the organisation leads to a focus on nett contribution to local culture, rather than global unification or homogeneity.

Centralisation into Virtualisation – the idea that we bring people, materials, ideas etc together centrally devolves into connected networks of capability and arms length production. This piece considers specific skills and capabilities, and the mechanisms by which they are learnt.

Money into Mobility – a far future view of an Organisation beyond money, where opportunity and a blockchain based reputation economy takes prominence.