It has been speculated recently that technology has significantly contributed to the restructuring of labor markets. Today’s Computerworld ran the following article that reinforces this perspective (read it here: More Jobs Vanish: IT's Gains Are Real People's Losses).

The question now is: what next? If organizations are focusing on efficiency, does that reduce their capacity for innovation, their ability to adapt? Do they get too locked into current methods? Do they no longer have the human capital potential to sense change? Do networks of relationships replace existing labor models? Do they outsource sensing and intelligence?

There are many questions that we need to answer if we are indeed facing a jobless recovery. All of those people represent the innovation potential of the nation. If they aren’t employed, they won’t be the position turn transform their ideas into action – they will loose and organizations will loose as well. What business models will emerge that will unleash the entrepreneurial potential of a workforce displaced by technology? Will it be a socialist redistribution of wealth or a new form of capitalism that derives value from smaller, more sustainable structures? Will corporate welfare replace state welfare to keep people associated with particular brands? Individual businesses?

On the other hand, will we see the growth of entirely new industries that provide a home for today’s displaced workers?

The policy makers in Washington, in the EU, across the world need to faciliate the reshaping of markets within a framework that aligns to their strategic goals. If we are moving toward sustainable knowledge economies, those policy frameworks will need to create the measurements that communicate movement and put success into a strategic perspective. Policy will also need to prepare the workforce through education to upskill. IT is only replacing the next level of the mundane. The future of the economy needs people willing to take risks that will redefine products and services for the decades to come. For many of us, those who employ us today didn’t exist 25 or 30 or 40 years ago. Proof that worrying about bringing back yesterday’s jobs is a non-productive endeavor in and of itself.

I like the idea of UnManagement as outlined in this article. Organizations need to look at emergent models that allow them to adapt organically. The more organizations attempt to control their suppliers, their employees and the perceptions of their customers using industrial age methods, the more those stakeholders will swoop behind to out maneuver them, challenging market dominance and inciting business continuity concerns. Time to let the edges of your organization meet the edges of other organizations, in a blessed, non-experimental way. When you empower people you will find they bring back new forms of dividends, many you may not be expecting, all of which will help your organization not only adapt, but grow (yes, even if some of your worst trust nightmares are realized, you will still learn and grow).

Read more here:

UnManagement unleashes creativity - Salt Lake Tribune

For many workers, the idea of increasing performance means working more hours, or seeing jobs eliminated as technology replaces people. Many technology jobs shift to the creator of the technology, but where the displacement happens, that offers  little comfort. In the U.S. right now, we have a serious issue with employees feeling under appreciated and overworked.  August U.S. Labor Department reports showed productivity up 6.4%.  Labor costs dropped 5.8%. Today unemployment reached 9.7%.

Businesses see themselves through the lens and the language of the society in which they exist. In the U.S., the overwhelming influence of industrial age thinking forces an undo "factory" perspective on everything we do. From education to healthcare, we concentrate on productivity and efficiency. Productivity is touted as the growth engine of the economy, and that may well be true in an industrial-based economy. In a knowledge economy, a sustainable economy, the yardstick of productivity may be too narrow, too myopic. What if growth ceases to be the goal? How do we measure success then?

In education, do we ask questions about matriculation percentages, about the number of students a single educator can handle or do we ask questions about how prepared students are for being strong contributors to society and the workforce. Do standardized tests seek entrepreneurial spirit, concern for the environment or an belief in civic duty?

If we continue to drive productivity as the overwhelming metric for wealth creation, then we will find our workforce continue to feel squeezed, especially as US goods and services wane in an industrial-based world. Our cost structures must equalize for equal work, not something we want to hear. We will have a society that is measured in one way and perhaps being asked to behave in another. The way we measure and reward will presage the winning hand.

If we reinvent value, however, and understand how to measure the impact of innovation, how to monetize sustainability, then we will do what we have done in the past: redefine the problem, and hopefully, bring our workforce along with us to not just a less stressful place, but a legitimately better place because sustainable work, for instance, will be part of the design.

Tweeting, texting render avid users 'present yet absent'.  Enjoy the read!

A lot has been written about keeping a workforce engaged. A workforce suffering from survivor’s guilt. A workforce waiting for the next shoe to drop. Jack and Suzy Welch, suggest,, in BusinessWeek (here) that employers will need candor, innovation and the excitement of a startup is good advice, but will be hard for most to meet. I’m guessing that many individuals will become more entrepreneurial, some will check out and others will just make do. The last two categories may return to the workforce, but they will have little trust, and may be less engaged. Organizations that want to succeed in the post recession era will need to not only heed the advice of the Welches, but also come to see their human capital (people!) as a strategic asset worthy of discussion when it comes to what differentiates them in the market.

In our world driven by talk of efficiency and productivity, keeping people who cost money when the business models don’t support it may seem wise, but we seldom question the business model, we just execute the staff reductions. It is time we look at the business models too. Sue Oliver, writing in Workforce (June 12, 2009 - not yet posted) discusses several ways organizations can innovate with their people, rather than without them. Job sharing, moving to part-time, being transparent about what is coming (telling them why ahead of time and giving them a voice in what happens if a contract doesn’t come in, or a big customer pulls out). Those are a start, but we need to think more deeply about what drives innovation, what keeps customers coming back, what helps other employees engage and what actually makes a plan, a project or a task execute well within the organization. The answer to all of those is a combination of people, product and process – all of them, however, start with people, and when networks breakdown during layoffs, the organization suffers much more than simple brain drain. Brain drain becomes a meaningless throw away term. The structure of the firm changes when people leave. Social connections become lost. Confidences and communications become frayed. Edges of the organization lose their sharpness, they blur as they scramble to replace what is lost, and all of that increases friction, further degrading moral and reinforcing disengagement.

If you are a manager, or a CXO, think hard about your organization’s strategy going forward. Know that strategy is about market differentiation. Survival isn’t strategic, and you’re right, you can’t be strategic if you don’t survive, but think hard about other options for top talent before letting those people go. Recessions do require that managers look critically at operations, and bloated, misaligned and ill-fitting people or processes or products do nobody any good. Not the firm, not the customer and not the individual. But be thoughtful and reflective, explore beyond what people do to what they know and who they know and assess that strategic value as well. If we want an engaged workforce, it starts with management being engaged in an authentic way. You want your workforce to stay, then act like it and make sure you tell them, tell them why and tell them what they mean to the organization, not platitudes, but clear connections between what they do, what they know and who they know, and what that means to the organization.

That isn’t the headline. This is:

Weak Human Resource Is Botswana's Undoing - World Bank

(read more here)

but it is the embedded message. Africa needs to broadly drive to education access and reform. Many African nations could easily adopt the latest techniques in education as they have no burden of deep labor union entrenchment or old infrastructure.

The article pivots on the following:

The researchers add that higher education and training need to address labour market needs. Together with other high performing African economies such as Mauritius, Namibia and Tunisia, Botswana will benefit from having greater flexibility in the labour market, they say. "However, such flexibility needs to preserve the social contract that helps those countries avoid violence, crime and endemic corruption."

Africa can be poised to change perceptions and lead change, but it needs to invest in education at the lowest level to ensure that individuals and nations have the human capital capabilities required to compete effectively.

Well, perhaps wonder no more. Its the openness of your office, at least that is a contributor according to a new report. As the future progresses, either negotiate for a door or ask to work from home (and negotiate for a door with your family).

Read more at PSnews: Door slammed on open plan offices

  Referenced from http://www.esotropiart.com/blog

BTW,

Listening to the Future is back on the Amazon Industrial, Management and Leadership best seller list (at #72 for now). Keep it going! Thanks!

And special thanks to the IIIP’s Michael LoBue for the first review at Amazon. Please feel free to write your own.

I know it's hard to talk about a move away from nationalism during an election season, but we need to do that in order to create a reasonable dialog.  I remain worried that the Obama campaign keeps talking about bringing back industrial age jobs to the America. Let's get series Barack. Most people don't want low wage jobs back in America, and many aren't willing to embrace the need for lifelong learning that will kick them into high earning brackets. It's a hard conversation to have with America, but its an honest one.

America cannot afford to become protectionist. It can only afford to become more competitive. We need to concentrate on community colleges not for two year degrees, but as the very model of lifelong learning, allowing people to entry and reenter as often as necessary. That behavior is already happening, but the perception remains that 2 year institutions are transitions to vocations or places to shore up skills before attending a four year institution. The Obama campaign needs to retreat from the promises of bringing jobs home, and protecting American industries to helping American industries become competitive by renewing pre-competitive research and fostering more associations to form that can do that work so individual companies don't reap all of the benefits.

Lawrence Krauss is worried about the brain drain taking place in America and other industrialized countries (See: Science is losing out to the allure of Wall Street in NewScientist). I'm not worried, about Wall Street or industry, because I'm a globalist. Big companies will do just fine because they can afford to tap the global talent pool. What America needs to worry about is being a talent pool worthy of being tapped. This isn't about being nationalistic it is about being perceived as a environment conducive to creativity and innovation - to execution focused individuals and productivity. It is about the character of the workforce and creating an environment in which they will invent and excel. The American work ethic, our creativity, is or was the envy of the world, which means we have exported our own challenges, and that is a good thing. We have raised the level of wealth around the world, and now we need to kick it up a notch. And that doesn't just mean American being home to all of the smart people. It also, and I think this is often overlooked, means being home to the smartest consumers on the market. Our willingness to buy and our easy boredom forces invention. Even if not all of that invention happens here, we continue to drive much of the consumer economy (though China is working on that too).

Sure, it would be great to have the best scientists in the world, but the best science is already not about nations. The International Space Station (did you catch the name) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are international by nature. We need to not only teach science, but cooperation, collaboration and negotiation. America will prosper much better as part of the great networked economy. If Obama is truly a man for this moment in history as Bill Clinton said last week, then he needs to be a man of the networked economy, not just the text message communication era. And the economy, if it is the economy stupid, is a much more complex thing that most of the American electorate wants to realize. I get politics. I've run campaigns and I know you need to get elected before you can do anything, but I just don't see this very of reality in either campaign, and any level, and that worries me that the next four years, at least as far as our leadership in the global economy goes, may well be more of the same, or something different, but no less useful or effective than current policy.

The Millennials want to spend time with friends and family, and more of them are choosing to stay out of the workforce. The Boomers didn't come back after the last downturn.

Good for society or bad?  Good for children, bad for taxes.

KUOW's The Conversation discussed the topic today at length. I encourage you to listen to the subtleties of the discussion.

Read more here:

The discussion about merit pay or pay for performance for educators is circulating again, as it should. I am on both sides. Here's why.

First, I am on the side of the teachers because to have a completely subjective merits system is worse than meaningless.

I'm for merit pay, because it makes sense that better teacher's are paid more, and that others have the chance to learn by example within a system that recognizes superior performance.

What's the problem. The problem is we don't have a system that defines performance to the point it is meaningful. We measure student performance on narrow topics within narrow time frames. A teacher's performance may not even be able to be determined until the students move on to the next grade and the preparation for the future can be determined. We need to think more holistically about measurement, and we need knowledge economy level scale to bring this ancient art into the 21st century.

Hear more here on The Conversation from KUOW.org

As it says on NPR's Morning Edition site:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer saved the world and the sanity of NPR's Jamie Tarabay while she was in Baghdad. Tarabay explores why she needed the slayer during her time in Iraq.

Hear it here

This piece is a great lesson in how pop culture really influences people's lives, even helping give them a connection to hope in the most uncomfortable of circumstances.

And over at Salon, they are reporting on a Buffy the Vampire Slayer academic, Lynne Edwards, a leading Buffy scholar.  Read about it here.

We often belittle people for liking television. In the 1500s and 1600s people were belittled, or worse, if they like attending the play houses. Shakespeare and Marlowe were little more that sitcom and soap opera hacks to their academics of the time. Television was the literature of the 20th Century. The only problem I see with that statement is the 21st Century may suffer not from frivolity, but from a lack of center. Books gave way to television and television is giving way to the web - unfortunately for those 30 years from now looking for college courses to teach about their youthful influences, much of what they read will have turned into all zeros, unable to be found, perhaps even unable to be viewed if it still exists. What will the legacy of the Web really be - history written to our eyes like wisps of bitmapped skywriting slowly de-rezing, eventually irretrievable, remembered failingly and inaccurately only by those who directly experienced the moment?

Excuse me, but the Hell Mouth is calling...

US News and World Report ran a Q&A by Susan Jacoby, the author of The Age of American Unreason (read the US News article here). And we should be embarrassed. I travel all over the world, and as much as I study the world, I always feel ignorant. I am not proud of it. Many of my fellow Americans, according to Ms. Jacoby are not only nonplused by their ignorance, but they are righteously proud of it.

I do a lot of work in the area of workforce development. This analysis is disheartening. I work with very well meaning people trying to find work for Americans - it is hard to imagine a competitive workforce when the workforce goes out of its way to be non-competitive at the most highly competitive of areas: knowledge. How can we imagine (well, I guess if you don't think about your place in the world you don't need to imagine) keeping other countries at bay in any field, when you can't even point to them on a map.

We have a tendency toward magic in America. A Harris Interactive poll done in 2005 said 73 percent of Americans believed in miracles (read it here). I guess if you believe in miracles, when you really need to know where Iraq is, a supernatural being will guide you there - hopefully not in the bay of a CH-46 Sea Knight troop carrier where the manifestation of the miracle is a fellow soldier pointing down from a open door toward the waiting ground below.

Today I had a meeting with a customer and was challenged several times by my finding about the Millennials that go back to the gestation of this blog. The basic challenge was that of youth. High turnover rates among young people, it was argued, was just a symptom of youth - as were observations about work/life balance and the willingness to give up pay and benefits to keep a balance.

My personal interpretation of everything I have read, and everything I have experienced and researched personally is that the Millennials are a break point in observations about generations as a result of global connectivity. This is the first generation to share a type of consciousness that goes well beyond empathy, to deep relationships among its members fostered by social networking, instant messaging, texting, shared editing, etc. Rather than read about others, the Millennials connect with the others, and in many cases, have found that the others look very similar to those they see in the mirror every morning.

Prejudices have broken down, appreciation for diversity has increased, and all of these perceptions and attitudes are leading to new work behaviors - namely, a distrust of institutions and a reliance on new structures, such as social networks, and the relationships they embody, combined with a stalwart self-reliance.

It is, indeed, too easy to generalize, and personality traits (ala Jung) play into individual behaviors, as does economic status, but by and large, I have found the Millennials to be highly unified and very different in their relationship to work when compared to the Baby Boom or Generation X.

I make no value judgement on if the Millennials are good or bad for the workforce, for innovation, for productivity, than previous generations. I do make the assertion that they are different, and that given the size of this generation, organizations need to seriously understand them, and understand how to leverage their unique technical capabilities, as well as their work ethic, however it may manifest itself in a given situation. Assumptions about the workplace, from annual reviews to the idea of entry level jobs may be on the way out as Millennials assert themselves in the workplace. I think they will bring refreshing changes - the largest of which will be an acceptance of change as a way of life.

If the workforce is not striving toward a status quo of some sort, the question is, what are they striving for? - and to me, at this point in the generation transition, that remains a profound question that has no answer. I do know it is going to be a different end state than the one expected by their predecessors.

In the February 29, 2008 The Week's workplace they recapped a Wall Street Journal article about career portfolios (read it here). More people, it reports, are managing their careers in two tracks. It is hard to say which is more professional the poet/futurist - musician/accountant but suffice it to say, that people are opting to no longer be defined by their employment, their employer, or their role within an organization.

On one hand, this is very positive for the people living in Daniel Pink's future documented in A Whole New Mind. What it means, however, is thrusting even those not ready for that future, into that future, because the career profiles of people become more complicated. In Pink's world, you want to find guitar playing software engineers, or oil painting strategists. That combination of skills makes for an integrated view of the world - and a more adaptable employee. But testing for that in the recruiting process is new. It isn't just finding the hobbies section of a resume and looking for guitar player. An indicator perhaps that this recruit is interested in more than fulfilling a routine, but it doesn't suggest any particular level or deep connection to alternative models of thought. It may mean simply that mom and dad bought some lessons twenty years ago.

The multiple career thing, on the other hand, is about a deep commitment. As many of you know, this is my "professional" blog vs. my poetry blog. My poetry blog is not professional simply because I don't have a model for earning money from poetry. I spend plenty of time writing, revising, sending out poetry to magazines - etc. All very professional activity, just with a low economic turn. That thinking model, however, is critical to my paying job, because by tapping into my poetic side, I am willing, as I often say, to visit places my colleagues dare not venture - and the trip there, and the return to the business world is informative and insightful - and might just lead to innovation - and the ability to avoid risks others don't see - or to take advantage of new opportunities.

People who maintain these dual track careers create a way for organizations to see a holistic view of the person. Unfortunately, in age of scan and recruit, we may miss these extra long resumes full of irrelevancies because recruiters to look for what is relevant - and resume writers are taught to focus on the skills people are looking for, to have different resumes that market them in different ways. This argues for something different, it argues for the willingness to see the whole person, to push off efficiency in order to be effective. Not everything is about doing a job faster and cheaper - real value often comes from doing something well - and when it comes to recruiting, if we want to fight the overwhelming propensity of young people to find ways to reinforce their already very tenuous affiliation with their employers, then the employers need to think about their recruiting, and the way they on-board and later treat people. Employers need to radically engage their employees if they want them to radically engage in their work.

The millennial generation craves ways to leverage the diversity they see in the market place of ideas. They want to be challenged and they want to be appreciated. Both reasonable requests that organizations need to place at the forefront of corporate values.

Congratulations to my friend and colleague Rob Salkowitz on the publication of Generation Blend, new from Wiley.  You can find the book at Amazon here. Keep up with the book's progress and Rob's latest insights at generationblend.com.

As a poet, I think of comedians as the real poets of today, in terms of their popular impact. Yesterday Jeff Dunham was in Seattle for a concert, and he was absolutely hilarious. What comedy and poetry have in common is that ability to make connections that other people don't make. A lot of poetry is very funny, and some comedy is more contemplative than hilarious, but in terms of how the mind works, and how comedians work on people with language, I believe them to be kindred spirits.

If you haven't seen Jeff before, then enjoy this YouTube compilation.

The most heartening moment, which came across sincere even though it has probably happened dozens of times, was when Jeff did his encore with character Bubba J, his good ol' southern boy. Jeff claimed not to remember the jokes, but since we had already seen what we paid for, he went on to apologize for his need to read the jokes (Bubba wasn't part of the regular show he claim). Well, the audience helped out on every line. It was clear that Jeff was surrounded by fans who had embraced him and is characters - and they audience started chanting every punch line - Bubba said at one point it sounded like some kind of surreal church of Bubba J.

Well, enjoy Jeff and other comedians and when you do, think about what they do to your brain, to your perception of the world, and then think about Shakespeare or Whitman or Ibsen or Tennessee Williams. When I look past the form I see the same pleasure for language, the same revelry in humankind and the same joy is stating insight in a unique and innovative way.

For more on Jeff Dunham, see www.jeffdunham.com.

I agree completely with the analysis from a recent AP story Engineers Learning People Skills, Too. It makes perfect sense that engineers, in a collaborative environment, need to understand the soft skills required to negotiate boundaries, mediate conflicts  and drive consensus. My question is, are we putting the management frameworks in place so engineers, or anyone else for that matter, being told to be more people oriented, understand what they get out of it, and how success is measured?

Is the desired outcome better designs? Better communication with customers? Better integration with the call center? More equitability in the taking of credit for collaborative work? Further reach into the global talent pool? Higher retention?  All of the above.

Well, for most engineers, they wouldn't know how to start measuring success along those dimensions, and have probably never had such a conversation expert perhaps at some annual ritual of management prodding to expand their intellectual horizons. Because the results of that conversation weren't really measured, the conversation proved superfluous.  More products. Better products. Less recalls. Lower costs. Got it boss, I understand that stuff.

So my challenge to Berkeley and MIT is to not just help engineers how to better integrate with organizations, but to help organizations learn how to better integrate their diverse workforces. How will an engineer know he is going a good job in the future? When he gets invited out to beer night with sales or accounting, or when he had a breakthrough product that took him off the grid for a month, sustained only by Pizza and Jolt? You tell me.

One of the top stories on msnbc today was :1 in 10 U.S. high schools is a 'dropout factory' (read it here). That is the kind of headline every PR wonk in Silicon Valley aspires to, but not one that public school should ever want run again.

But there is a problem. We haven't reinvented education. The biggest issue, and that starts, not with pedagogy, but with strategy and measurement. Are schools measured by the number of degrees the confer, or by the ability of their graduates to contribute to the workforce in an effective way, and to be an engaged and informed electorate.

No child left behind is leaving children behind because it emphasizes only certain aspects of education. We don't have a test for "well-roundedness." Until we do, then a test as a means of understand the outcome of an education process is helpful, but it is one input. And we have to be careful about systematic application of measurement in schools because we are dealing with many aspects of a student's life the defy equations. The traditional method of "preponderance of evidence" may still be the best method of student assessment, but it is not without problems, because no standard yardstick applies, and the system can easily be gamed.

But this article is about people not gaming the system. It is an article about leaving the system. And the points to more endemic flaws, flaws not just in measurement, but in engagement, in style, in approach, in environment. The UK, as I posted earlier, is replacing all secondary schools with buildings that reflect the philosophy of new education: the are designing education principles into the buildings, principles that reflect the networked, time-shifted world their students live in. If we want American schools to stop loosing students, let along become competitive at the global level, then we need to create engaging environments that are relevant at the student level, the community level and the global work level.

And we have to start with students. We have to start with environments of respect and shared learning. I am well aware of classroom control issues and discipline problems, even violence, but I am also aware that educators and educational institutions that go out of their way to engage, and distract toward learning, those students who might otherwise seem disenfranchised, do occasionally make inroads.

But to be fair, this is not just an institution or government problem, it is a citizen problem. Drop out rates come from pull on both sides. If the school can't pull toward education, and the community is pulling against it, or at least, not pushing toward it, the institutions can't succeed in a broad way, regardless of their local innovations.

If we want to stop drop outs, we need to create communities that want the same things from the institutions that I stated above: good citizens and good workers. The schools than then fight to become what they need to be, but they need the incentive from an electorate willing to prioritize, in a real way, the education of children. Unfortunately, this is a tough cycle, as a lack of education becomes the norm, the push toward education becomes secondary, even tertiary, to many other things - and the cycle continues.

One suggestion for schools: get out of the school. People learn everywhere. Don't have the community come to you, go to the community. The world is no longer place based, their is no reason for education to be place based. People will have a harder time dropping out of a system that doesn't have anyplace to drop out of. Think about it.

Slate's Dr. Sydney Spiesel was on NPR's day-to-day discussing the recent FDA recommendation (read it here in ScienceDaily) that people taking the blood thinner Coumadin (or the generic warfarin) would benefit from genetic tests, providing physicians with better insight as to dosage. This tricky drug has huge efficacy issues based on how quickly patients internal systems eliminate it.

You can hear the interview here.

The reason I am blogging about this? For the last several years I have been discussing the customization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the need to increase the information component at the point of delivery. In other words, this first step by the FDA on one drug, is the beginning of a movement that may end with the neighborhood pharmacist checking models of your genetics against models for all of the drugs you are taking (as specialization continues in medicine, he or she may be the only one with full visibility into what you are ingesting). Those models could simulate the interactions with essentially, a model of you.

The anticoagulant medication warfarin as represented by 3Dchem.com

This is very different work than the work being performed today at the local pharmacy (though, I believe, it is the aspiration of many pharmacists). The work is much more information intensive, which will mean both a need for higher math and science skills initiatively, followed by a decline in need for those skills in the field as software captures the capabilities in complex parameter driven systems that can give more traditional pharmacists these insights. Both tracks will happen in parallel, and the outcome, no matter the timing, will be new jobs in software, biochemistry and field pharmacy. And of course, probably some innovative law suits that will require new litigation specialities as well.