The Future of Information Work

I saw a recent report that teenage unemployment was edging over 27%. First, I am wondering with US High School graduation rates nationally at under 70% (http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=23) why parents or schools are encouraging students to work. I believe wholeheartedly in experience, but not at the expense of education. Current BLS data (http://www.bls.gov/emp/emptab7.htm) indicates that unemployment is related to educational attainment.

So here’s an idea. Let’s pay kids to stay in school. Give them a bonus for graduation. For children, learning is their job. I see how stressed my kids are with school and the balancing act they do to incorporate work, even part-time. So if the government wants to stimulate the economy, rather than pushing green jobs or housing starts, why don’t they just pays kids to stay in school. Estimates suggest teens spend about $178 billion of their own money and influence about a quarter of that number of their parent’s money. So in this down economy, as we are attempting new ways to stimulate spending, let’s stimulate minds as well. Most teens won’t save, they will spend, and they will buy the kinds of things that help retail and services. Paying the nearly 3M (see 233) seniors this year for graduating would be a great start to their college and vocational careers, whatever those careers may be, and it would be but a rounding error on the money spent that has offered poor traction, and certainly less traceability.

When you have a set of key performance indicators, you have to make sure they are still valid for the current performance you really want to achieve. The problem with America’s economic recovery is that we don’t know what we want, not in Washington, and not on Main Street. Well, we do know one thing. We want jobs. What we don’t know is what kind. Housing starts will put people back to work. Back to work consuming things, taking down trees, expanding footprints where we might be spend those resources refurbishing older areas to create more sustainable areas out of underinvested neighborhoods. It will put people back to work earning low wages. It will ripple, but not enough. But that isn’t all. Housing starts is pure consumer. There is very little knowledge economy in housing starts. It is a backward indicator looking to re-establish the pre-recession, pre-internet economy. In the knowledge economy, perhaps we want to look at school starts, or matriculation rates of high school students. Let’s harp on keeping kids in school, which is a better way to drive economic success than having low wage workers build houses for increasingly fewer high wage earners. (hear some old school thinking here at Marketplace Is gov't aid nearing its limits?)

My stimulus plan would focus on reinventing the community college system to become the life-long learning center of the nation. Expand programs, qualify more instructors, expand charters and increase available funds for scholarships and improve facilities. Building schools requires drywall experts and painters too, but they can hang out after work and take a class on nursing or radiology or history or literature. They can earn certificates in leadership or management or network topologies. As we reinvent the economy, fund the method for people who need to reinvent themselves.

We need to decide what we want to be as a nation. Do we want to bring back bobby pin manufacturing from China, or do we want to export our talent, the next generation of ideas. The Whitehouse is talking green tech, but I am becoming convinced their metrics are wrong. They are about buying stuff:  wind mills and caulk and new insulated windows for existing homes -- not transforming the economy into a 21st Century model of sustainability, at all levels (environment, jobs, energy). If we want to be the leaders of the free world, then we need to lead forward, not backward. I know this sounds like an Obama campaign speech, but he’s starting to forget what he said. And during the campaign, all one can do it talk. Now it’s about implementation, not rhetoric. Let’s actually create some new metrics that attach to a vision for America, and then track our way forward, and stop looking to the indicators of the past to see if we have rebooted the status quo.

In this New Scientist interview with Second Life creator Philip Rosedale, he provides a glimpse at his philosophy and ambitions (see Philip Rosedale: The web needs to be more lifelike).

I find one particular quote revealing…

Do we need virtual police and courts to deal with the growth of virtual crime?

Formalised virtual courts will emerge as a result of common law and collective behaviour. I think big groups will band together and set up their own courts to decide whether to let people enter their property. Being restricted by the judgement of one's peers will have material, social and economic consequences and, therefore, the force of law.

My answer to the question above is that the laws of Second Life should be an extension of the laws and codes that already exist. They may deviate, they may augment, they may even disregard, but to suggest that Second Life ethics and codes will emerge from collective will of its residents is historically naive. History starts with a framework of context to ensure the survivability of those within its confines. Moral judgments can be made about motivations, execution or the design itself, but in all cases, the framework is an extension of existing codes, used either as models, or reacted against. As the inventor of Second Life, I would suggest that Mr. Rosedale assert some Linden ethics into his world, or encourage others to do so. If he doesn’t, he will likely find history repeating itself in another way: having the morals, the ethics and the frameworks of others asserted on his creation, at that point the experiment becomes something else, something less, something more mundane.

And Phil, you might want to consider my usually advice on predictions like “I think the total GDP of virtual worlds will catch up with real-world GDP over the next 20 to 30 years.”  I know you may think that, but many variables come into play. Better say “we aspire to” to be a bit more intellectually honest.

IT has value. No doubt. What is uncertain is how that value is realized. In a new article by Joe McKendrick on a ZDNET Blog (Why IT can't seem to deliver measurable productivity), the topic once again finds the light of day. It is time we put a magnifying glass on it and start a fire, not just expose it occasionally. Without a solid economic model for the knowledge economy we will continue to yearn for what we do not have, and under value what we do, because we don’t have a language for accurately describing either.

Thought leadership is the most misunderstood element of marketing. Most organizations do it, but because its returns are not easily measured, it is given short shrift by those focused on more near term marketing deliverables.

Here are a few reasons you should consider thought leadership an integral part of a marketing program:

• Establishes a clear voice that should not waver at the whim of the market. Advertising and product/service messages are tightly tied to competitive pressures, and therefore may lack consistency against larger organizational goals. Thought leadership can act as the deep meme of established context. When a customer asks what an organization is all about, you want them to connect to the thought leadership, not to the current advertising. Customers see through current actions as ways to drive transactions. Regardless of how effective they may be, they don’t establish a long term relationship. Some marketers believe that thought leadership can reduce spending on conventional advertising because the relationship keeps the customer close, and it take less effort for them to upgrade, or buy the next thing if they are already predisposed to do so because of the trust in the relationship.
• Thought leadership attaches the company to a larger idea, and thus, to a context for WHY it is doing what it is doing. Thought leadership helps customers understand the motivation of the company. And because thought leadership is reflective of deeply held beliefs, it reinforces, or establishes, market positions. Several years ago at the Giga Information Group we were all given white buttons with SO WHAT? written in black. The words were surrounded by a circle of red with the mark through it. Giga didn’t want customers to ask “So What?” Everything an analyst firm does is thought leadership, but the principle applies to product and service companies as well. If customers are asking, “So What?” you aren’t connecting with them at the right level. You can’t reason a way to an emotional connection. Thought leadership needs to appeal to the head and to the heart, the later is another often missed point in industry collateral. Thought leadership isn’t entirely about the firm sounding smart, it is about building a connection to the customer as to why working with your firm makes sense for them, intellectually and emotionally. One of the best ways to get an emotional connection is to give something away that the customer can own, an insight into the world that makes him or her feel smarter. That credit will accrue to the firm that offers the gift, and the dividends will pay later.
• Organizations and opaque. Those who work in them everyday think customers have the same view of a firm that they do. Absolutely not. Customers don’t have first hand experience, and they DO receive a lot of inputs from other sources. Even with the best market research no firm ever knows what customers really think of them. Thought leadership can help reveal how a firm thinks, how it solves problems, how it deals with people. How firms work internally informs customer opinion about how they will be dealt with…how well they will be listened to, how forthright negotiations. Thought leadership can help create a more trusted relationship through its transparency. If a firm is opaque, customers will feel distanced and disconnected. If a firm reveals its thinking, and how customer fit into that thinking, it is much more likely to create a more intimate customer experience.
• Inspire customers to take a journey with you. Thought leadership can also help spark the imagination of customers by revealing a firm’s aspirations. Long term relationships aren’t build on products or services, they are build on relationships, of which a product or service is a point in time. Take the customer to the next place, unveil the future, if only through hints and glimpses. Customers want to know that what they see isn’t all there is, and just saying there is more isn’t the same as showing them that their is more. Thought leadership should also be a dialog, a learning experience. Don’t just show, but sit back and listen once the aspiration has been revealed. The future hasn’t happened yet, so the glimpse ahead is also a way of garnering feedback, a way of taking input on the next version of the thought leadership conversation. A video or a prototype to a customer is a real thing to provide feedback against. Don’t be too overly connected to the product or service, but do make sure the meme shines through. Unless you are starting an entirely new business in the bright Blue Ocean, then the thought leadership vision you show should reflect that clear voice, just projected out into the future.

True thought leadership is secured by patience. Sure, people want to sell things today in order to drive revenue. Customers know that and expect it. What they don’t expect is the firm that shows patience with the relationship. The firm that holds a seminar without making a pitch at the end. The 30 minute conversation that helps a customer through a problem, perhaps unrelated to the product or service. Thought leadership isn’t about whitepapers or videos, blogs or tweets. Those are just channels. Thought leadership is about thoughtful leadership, it is about using those channels to convey value without a transaction hanging on every word – it about action that reinforce the thought leadership message, Don’t create a thought leadership message just to create something provoking to the market. That isn’t thought leadership. True thought leadership exposes the inner working and beliefs of an organization, and that places a burden of responsibility on the firm that undertakes thought leadership to act in accordance with its messages. To do thought leadership well, an organization needs to be mature enough to act in a way that reflects its market presence and market position – and to understand that the intent behind thought leadership messages are promises to the market that need to be kept.

You may not know that I draw as well as write. Thought you might enjoy this brief video that includes a few of my sketches.

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 have said it many times here. Sustainability requires a new view of economics. The following quote brings home a stark contrast between the business world in which most of us spent our careers.

“I had a conversation with Sir Richard Branson (about this). He said it used to be the case if you looked after your employees and made a profit then you had a good business. His comment was that (this model) actually describes a criminal syndicate but it doesn't describe modern business. Modern business has to be rooted in ethics – ethics of our society and our environment. Modern business is so powerful that unless they're rooted in those they become destructive. We're just emerging from a culture of business that was potentially destructive.”

Debra Black, The forecast: Warmer, with a chance of survival, thestar.com

It will take time and leadership to reinvent our industrial age culture. It has started, but we need to make a continuous investment to see it through.

Read Write Web ran an article (Google's Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years) which include the following summary of prognostications. My comments are indented from main topics.

Which may be true, but it will only matter to people who speak Chinese. Discovering relevant relationships in content that surface actionable insights will be key. If I were CEO of Google I would be worried a bit about this because making sense of the world’s information will require cross-links between languages, and very very good translation. The stuff the really matters really needs to be right, so having an accurate view of text across languages, as well as an understanding of cultural context and nuance, will be critical if this matters beyond the speakers of Chinese. Choose your dialect.

That is one view. It is not the only view. A major cyber-terror attack could actually reduce the amount of cloud influence and drive people back to a more myopic and insular view of information. Other information distrust events may cause the same behavior.

Moore’s law is about raw power not application. If we don’t start thinking about distributed and parallel computing models all of that raw CPU-power will go to waste. The key word in Schmidt’s sentence is “capable” which doesn’t mean “realized.”

Yes, but there will be new business models on the web as media attempts to figure out what it means. When all the pipes are big and all the media high resolution, we will need to invent new ways to differentiate.

Perhaps. But will it be corporate and personal, or will it be generative and interactive. Will the video be more game-like, more dream-like, less watch and more play.

Great, but if information is a commodity, making sense won’t be. The winner will be the company that goes from finding things to helping individuals make sense of what they find, and what it related to it that they didn’t know to ask for.

Duh. In ten years, I doubt that Twitter or Facebook will matter. They will either really matter, as in, they will be a platform around which our worlds revolve, or they will be a Wikipedia entry we all edit fondly with our recollections of posts past.

See real-time comment above. It isn’t about ranking,its about sense-making, which is a completely different business model. What, me worry?

There is another version where trust erodes and we return to vetted information. There may be so much user-generated content that we become overwhelmed with the uselessness of it all and even the entertainment value wanes. People desire to re-establish trust, and new models of trust will emerge, and with them, new sources of trusted content.

Forecasts should always be couched in the context in which they exist, with clear caveats. Not having seen the entire presentation, I can’t say if Schmidt did this or not – but all good forecasters should. If your going to talk about the future, prove that you thought about it robustly and understand the variables and the uncertainties in play. As I say at the top of this blog, you can’t be wrong today, but over the course of time, you run the risk of being wrong much more often than right, so thinking deeply, understanding context and the interplay of uncertainty is crucial to creating strategic plans that are meaningfully informed.

Writer Mike Holderness reinforced my call for a new economic language in the current New Scientist. Read his article here.

His pull quote:

“An alternative economic index will have immense power to drive policy.”

The fall of the dollar may well reshape the world economic landscape. Those who see only one future with a powerful dollar may be surprised when the world’s appetite for our economy wanes. Morici advocates strong regulation of the banking system – he also suggests that the language of economics deepens the chaos --, as in booking profits that don’t exist except in metaphor. You need to read this interview  (Peter Morici: Behind the Dollar’s Dog Days) with Maria Bartiromo and then start doing your own research, and your own reflection, on what a world with a weaker dollar may look, or how we avoid such a future. Both are still possible, but the time to act is growing short.

Peter Morici from BusinessWeek article

To manage risk, we need to recognize it first.

Well, praise for cost-cutting probably isn’t misplaced, but it may not be understood all that well. When a company cuts costs to drive efficiency in operations, the cost reduction can often be a good thing. Many companies, in times of plenty, grow beyond the edges of what should be comfortable. But those operational cost cutting measures may not serve so well when it comes to innovation and customer relationships. Deflecting a customer account to a new account manager can create a relationship reset. Cutting customer facing employees may also reduce corporate learning. The reduction in inputs reduces the combinations and permutations of ideas.

So when BusinessWeek looks for upbeat forecasts (read more here) they may be right. Cost cutting is being praised, but that is because investors are short sighted. Organizations need long-term investments to stay nimble. It isn’t just about getting out of one’s own way, its about having the limbs, the heart and the brains to navigate change. Cut too deeply and you run the risk of disabling the capacity to adapt. The cost-cutting of today may not look so good six months from now unless it is combined with investments that keep the capacity for change alive.

The cloud is intriguing. I’ve already lived through the private cloud. 30 years ago when timesharing companies let me run manufacturing and sales remotely. It wasn’t as elegant as it is now, but it worked. And then came lower cost minicomputers and eventually PCs. As we all know, PCs changed everything, and they may well change everything again, but not if we let the cloud-only rhetoric go on without challenge.

The current edition of the Economist (Oct 17th-23rd 2009) ran an article on the coming cloud-computing wars (read it here). This article doesn’t take the longer view of technology. The cloud is not binary. The PC’s time has not passed. Why? Distributed computing. If you look at the power of PCs they have gone up dramatically and turning them into dumb clients for smart clouds is a waste of resources. Any client software that uses cloud services (think searching clip art of servers with Microsoft Word as a very basic example). Along with timesharing, I also worked on early distributed computing applications, including a Hughes Aircraft project on distributed manufacturing where intelligent controllers on factory floors negotiated with each other to replan factory when a machine broke down or a part didn’t show up.

PCs provided individual control over data, but even better, they provided local processing power. That local processing power has now been distributed into phones, media players and cameras – but not in an intelligent way. Those devices are mostly very dumb clients to the PC or the clouds. They are getting smarter, but all of this computing should not just end with devices as end points to cloud agendas. The power of the PC was to let people set their agenda. With distributed computing, individual PCs could act as nodes on an integrated network where problems could be solved faster and more creatively than if they were tackled by the cloud alone. But because development efforts are being split between legacy clients and the cloud, this huge area of distributed computing isn’t really being explored effectively.

Complex modeling of economics, science or physical objects is often accomplished using proprietary distributed computing (think rendering farms for animated movies and video games, weather forecasts). But that collective problem solving hasn’t been democratized to making sense of the information on my computer or your computer. It’s great that we have wonderful animated features coming out of Hollywood.  But I would like to see my computer be part of a network that makes it smarter every time I turn it on. It can’t do that by itself as effectively as it can using all of the processing power available, and the cloud can’t do it without the intimacy of data on my phone and my PC. To take knowledge work to the next level we need to turn our admiration for social computing on to our machines and let them get social. If we can crowd source the next great marketing idea, perhaps our PCs can figure out what they need to know before the next meeting – before we ask for it. I’m not convinced the cloud will get me there alone. I like having something that is mine act as my agent, and I want it to bring its friends along for the insight.

Off to the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas. See you there!

http://www.mssharepointconference.com/Pages/default.aspx

For up-to-the-minute observations about the future of work and the factors that influence it, follow me on Twitter @dwrasmus1.