Dec. / Jan. 2005 / 2006

A world without jobs

Published in the Ark Group magazine "Inside Knowledge" December / January 2005 / 2006
By Verna Allee

A few weeks ago I was in a small gathering of HR Vice Presidents engaged in exploring the future of talent. The session kicked off with a series of video interviews asking people of all ages what kind of job they would like to have in the future. It suddenly struck me that this is completely the wrong question. The idea of “job” was born with the industrial revolution. What if our future is a world where there were no “jobs” in the traditional sense?

In year 2000 in an interview with Fast Company Peter Drucker predicted that “the corporation as we know it will not survive the next twenty-five years. Legally and financially yes, but not structurally and not economically.” His prediction is a reminder that we just made up the whole idea of the corporation – and jobs - primarily as a legal and financial convenience. So if our old organizational structures are not serving us, we are perfectly free to create new ones!

We have only to look to the natural pattern of organizations – the network - to see new possibilities. Traditional organizational structures are fragmented into small business units, functions and jobs to gain greater control and local efficiency. However, when viewed from the perspective of whole system flexibility or as a network, these structures are cumbersome, slow and ineffective. In today’s more complex environment people must be more adaptable and skilled enough to be effective in many different types of situations. Yet jobs are still defined as if they are simply a list of tasks with simple outputs.

But we play many different roles that often require very different types of outputs. For example, the leadership team of a customer contact center serves several distinctly different networks: They act as knowledge providers to customers, as analysts of trends for the strategic decisions network, as advisors to production, and as planning partners for design and development. Yet the primary role of providing knowledge to the customer is often the only role that is seen, appreciated – and funded!

To be more effective people need to move away from traditional ways of talking about work as a “job” and begin to define the roles that they play in different networks. One person or group can play many roles or they may choose to play only one role. But not being clear leads to confusion, work overload and missed opportunities to provide and gain value.

Once the real roles and networks are defined it becomes much simpler to manage the key value creating interactions with those in other roles. Value interactions involve both the contractual business activities and intangible value exchanges of knowledge, benefits and supports. Intangible interactions build enduring relationships where people can readily work through issues renegotiate deliverables, yet these are too frequently not considered when it comes to allocating responsibilities. We can only be successful when we have clearly defined the networks, our roles and the real value we provide.