Microsoft and PopTech have created an eight part video series that describes how the world of work is changing, in both the company workplace and the global workplace.
The videos present these eight core themes:
- Digital technology and an abundance of information are causing profound changes in the way people work.
- To be competitive, companies are shifting from a focus on “efficiency of process” to a focus on “effectiveness of outcomes.”
- Companies are being more responsive to the decision-making and information needs of employees.
- Employees are more interconnected and, therefore, more interested in a collective response to business issues.
- Leaders are developing adaptive organizations that depend on collaboration and trust.
- Human contact matters; therefore, workplaces are being designed to increase collaboration.
- Workplaces are being designed to accommodate a wide variety of spaces that fit the range of workers’ needs.
- Automation is eliminating jobs but also providing an opportunity to create new, more creative jobs.
The 23 notable speakers in this video series emphasize that continuous learning must be a part of this new workplace that is local and global. They say that we don’t know what tomorrow will bring so we need to continually learn how to adapt to whatever comes at us and whatever we seek to change. And given this rapid transformation and increasingly networked world, adaptability is key. Stanley McChrystal says it this way:
…when you combine the two, speed and interconnectedness, suddenly you have this unpredictability, so you don’t know what tomorrow will be like, you don’t know what next week, and you certainly don’t know next year is like…so you’ve got to have adaptability to respond to changing conditions so organically, it has to be in the DNA of the organization so that it doesn’t have to come from top down directives that says, “now we are going to produce a new version of this”. Instead, it allows the organization to learn, adjust, and adapt automatically.