Work Organization: The 5 Major Challenges to Overcome
15 February 2013
Read by 2070 persons
Work organization constantly adapts to societal changes. Sandra Enlart and Olivier Charbonnier, founders of an innovation and prospective laboratory, outline the main challenges companies face in their book "What will work look like tomorrow?".
Challenge #1: Adapt, Cope
Part of tomorrow's work will no longer resemble what we know today. As we have seen, these profound changes will not be homogeneous and will not affect all professional sectors at the same time or in the same way. But we hypothesize that the impact of technologies will be irreversible and will lead to the emergence of a different relationship with work. From there, other organizational forms will appear to align with individuals, but also with different production methods. Not considering them, not recognizing them, not seeking to understand them, is to risk at best suffering them, at worst becoming marginalized. The good news is that the emergences we have described in the first part of this work signal an awareness that, even if it sometimes takes the form of clumsy fumbling or constraints that must be dealt with, remains proof that companies are searching, experimenting and ultimately transforming themselves slowly. However, they have not always grasped the extent of the ongoing changes and, above all, the speed at which they are taking place in a world where certain regions of the planet and certain social categories are already well advanced and where hyper-connectivity gives an exponential dimension to these transformations.
Challenge #2: Promote, Support, Encourage
We believe that these changes hold the seeds of new sources of value creation. The mechanisms on which this dynamic will rely and the resulting goods and services are still largely to be invented. But the experiments we have been observing for several years (Palomar5 in Berlin, Le Camping in Paris, the organization of performances in 48 to 72-hour formats in San Francisco, Casablanca, Tokyo, etc., the FabLabs that are spreading all over the planet...) show each time that it is possible to produce new goods and services differently, with clear market value. Provided that we invest, show some audacity and trust ourselves. In fact, companies would benefit from engaging more than they do in innovative projects "to see" and thus better understand from within what is happening, to promote awareness-raising actions that go beyond traditional meeting rooms to invest in curiosity cabinets, conversation salons and other open spaces that are springing up here and there, to provide their support, however modest, to innovative projects carried by their employees or actors who gravitate within their spheres. Immersion, experimentation, incubation, involvement, they still have the means to fertilize this nascent soil; it would be a shame if they were too slow before their investment capacities dried up.
Challenge #3: Regulate, Open, Assist
The evolution of work also raises the question of equity in access to these forms of work. How, indeed, can we avoid future jobs being reserved for those who have lived with technology since childhood, for those who have access to each new generation of tools as soon as they arrive, and for those who can afford the latest, more efficient versions that are closer to professional needs? Because even if technologies are becoming increasingly natural for current generations, there are also real dividing lines in the speed of access to developments. Following the "right pace" of changes in this universe requires a cost both financially and in terms of skills to be acquired. Being aware of what will appear on the market and being able to access it is not given to everyone today. And it will increasingly be a criterion for professional selection whether or not one has this access. How then, tomorrow, to give a more or less equal chance to everyone? How to ensure that the appropriation of technologies becomes part of basic education? How to think about society so that it is able to guarantee access to technologies for the maximum number of people? We cannot afford to create digital illiterates any more than we could with the alphabet! The school bears a great responsibility here in preparing for these changes. It will have to strike a balance between essential classic teachings guaranteeing the acquisition of fundamentals and renewed pedagogical approaches in terms of both content and form. And to organize itself so that our children find in school a stimulating and fulfilling echo to the e-bush paths they are already taking.
Challenge #4: Discuss, Dialogue, Confront
Another challenge is that of critical thinking. The place that new technologies are taking in work raises societal questions that deserve to be much more widely debated, from a very young age. We are of course thinking about the issues of surveillance (traceability, geolocation, intrusions of all kinds...), of "brain time" that we are fighting over in all four corners of the planet, of mental saturation, of the protection of our privacy, of the right to be forgotten... But developing a critical eye, taking a step back and gaining perspective requires projecting oneself and getting out of the Manichean vision that still too often surrounds these changes. These debates already exist to some extent, but they are still limited to circles of initiates and a few dedicated institutions whose scope remains modest. Companies still largely avoid them... when they are aware of them. Politicians are engaging in them in small steps, most often individually and without much ambition in the light of the place they give them in the programs they support.
Challenge #5: Integrate, Articulate, Connect
The social, economic and political spheres are moving at different paces, with positional gaps that can sometimes be dizzying. Of course, this is a classic phenomenon in changing environments. Systems do not all have the same flexibility, the different components that structure a society are not all impacted in the same way or at the same pace, the challenges, resources and constraints are not the same from one world to another. And the porosity that we have described at different points in this work suggests that adjustments are already underway. But the friction between these three spheres generates costs that should not be underestimated: the credibility crisis of the political sphere with respect to society, leading to disengagement or extremism of all kinds that we know, the feeling of exhaustion in juggling between a family unit that never stops recomposing itself and organizations that are still struggling to adapt to the now singular rhythms of each individual, difficult arbitration and regulation between the political and economic spheres against a backdrop of globalization in the making... Beyond work, these changes concern society as a whole and the way in which it will organize itself to prepare individuals for change, maintaining the social cohesion necessary for trust. In other words, this means that work-related questions are also political questions. It would be naive to think of one without the other. For new forms of work to develop, the social and legal environment must make them possible. And vice versa!
Sandra Enlart and Olivier Charbonnier.
Lesechos.fr
Posted online February 15, 2013.
Challenge #1: Adapt, Cope
Part of tomorrow's work will no longer resemble what we know today. As we have seen, these profound changes will not be homogeneous and will not affect all professional sectors at the same time or in the same way. But we hypothesize that the impact of technologies will be irreversible and will lead to the emergence of a different relationship with work. From there, other organizational forms will appear to align with individuals, but also with different production methods. Not considering them, not recognizing them, not seeking to understand them, is to risk at best suffering them, at worst becoming marginalized. The good news is that the emergences we have described in the first part of this work signal an awareness that, even if it sometimes takes the form of clumsy fumbling or constraints that must be dealt with, remains proof that companies are searching, experimenting and ultimately transforming themselves slowly. However, they have not always grasped the extent of the ongoing changes and, above all, the speed at which they are taking place in a world where certain regions of the planet and certain social categories are already well advanced and where hyper-connectivity gives an exponential dimension to these transformations.
Challenge #2: Promote, Support, Encourage
We believe that these changes hold the seeds of new sources of value creation. The mechanisms on which this dynamic will rely and the resulting goods and services are still largely to be invented. But the experiments we have been observing for several years (Palomar5 in Berlin, Le Camping in Paris, the organization of performances in 48 to 72-hour formats in San Francisco, Casablanca, Tokyo, etc., the FabLabs that are spreading all over the planet...) show each time that it is possible to produce new goods and services differently, with clear market value. Provided that we invest, show some audacity and trust ourselves. In fact, companies would benefit from engaging more than they do in innovative projects "to see" and thus better understand from within what is happening, to promote awareness-raising actions that go beyond traditional meeting rooms to invest in curiosity cabinets, conversation salons and other open spaces that are springing up here and there, to provide their support, however modest, to innovative projects carried by their employees or actors who gravitate within their spheres. Immersion, experimentation, incubation, involvement, they still have the means to fertilize this nascent soil; it would be a shame if they were too slow before their investment capacities dried up.
Challenge #3: Regulate, Open, Assist
The evolution of work also raises the question of equity in access to these forms of work. How, indeed, can we avoid future jobs being reserved for those who have lived with technology since childhood, for those who have access to each new generation of tools as soon as they arrive, and for those who can afford the latest, more efficient versions that are closer to professional needs? Because even if technologies are becoming increasingly natural for current generations, there are also real dividing lines in the speed of access to developments. Following the "right pace" of changes in this universe requires a cost both financially and in terms of skills to be acquired. Being aware of what will appear on the market and being able to access it is not given to everyone today. And it will increasingly be a criterion for professional selection whether or not one has this access. How then, tomorrow, to give a more or less equal chance to everyone? How to ensure that the appropriation of technologies becomes part of basic education? How to think about society so that it is able to guarantee access to technologies for the maximum number of people? We cannot afford to create digital illiterates any more than we could with the alphabet! The school bears a great responsibility here in preparing for these changes. It will have to strike a balance between essential classic teachings guaranteeing the acquisition of fundamentals and renewed pedagogical approaches in terms of both content and form. And to organize itself so that our children find in school a stimulating and fulfilling echo to the e-bush paths they are already taking.
Challenge #4: Discuss, Dialogue, Confront
Another challenge is that of critical thinking. The place that new technologies are taking in work raises societal questions that deserve to be much more widely debated, from a very young age. We are of course thinking about the issues of surveillance (traceability, geolocation, intrusions of all kinds...), of "brain time" that we are fighting over in all four corners of the planet, of mental saturation, of the protection of our privacy, of the right to be forgotten... But developing a critical eye, taking a step back and gaining perspective requires projecting oneself and getting out of the Manichean vision that still too often surrounds these changes. These debates already exist to some extent, but they are still limited to circles of initiates and a few dedicated institutions whose scope remains modest. Companies still largely avoid them... when they are aware of them. Politicians are engaging in them in small steps, most often individually and without much ambition in the light of the place they give them in the programs they support.
Challenge #5: Integrate, Articulate, Connect
The social, economic and political spheres are moving at different paces, with positional gaps that can sometimes be dizzying. Of course, this is a classic phenomenon in changing environments. Systems do not all have the same flexibility, the different components that structure a society are not all impacted in the same way or at the same pace, the challenges, resources and constraints are not the same from one world to another. And the porosity that we have described at different points in this work suggests that adjustments are already underway. But the friction between these three spheres generates costs that should not be underestimated: the credibility crisis of the political sphere with respect to society, leading to disengagement or extremism of all kinds that we know, the feeling of exhaustion in juggling between a family unit that never stops recomposing itself and organizations that are still struggling to adapt to the now singular rhythms of each individual, difficult arbitration and regulation between the political and economic spheres against a backdrop of globalization in the making... Beyond work, these changes concern society as a whole and the way in which it will organize itself to prepare individuals for change, maintaining the social cohesion necessary for trust. In other words, this means that work-related questions are also political questions. It would be naive to think of one without the other. For new forms of work to develop, the social and legal environment must make them possible. And vice versa!
Sandra Enlart and Olivier Charbonnier.
Lesechos.fr
Posted online February 15, 2013.
