"It is not the strongest of the species that
survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the
most adaptable to change."
— Charles Darwin
The corporate world is rapidly
changing. The acceleration of all things—as we enter the realm of intelligent
infrastructure, mobile technology, and smart automation—offers tremendous
pressure for companies to change the way they do business. Thanks to some great
dudes for making it happen.
The once mighty hierarchical
organizational structure is being run to the ground. The market is being
pounded by constant product and service innovation. The hyper-innovative
industry is getting smarter and smarter. Virtual office set-up, fast fashion
craze, instant business model implementation, and the increasing reliance on
multitasking ability are just among the new realities for business. Only those
who have the ability to align themselves to high-velocity future trends can
survive the new corporate rat race.
Multiple careers
Expect today’s workforce to be
completely different in terms of how they view careers. According to Rudolf
Melik, author of "The Rise of the Project Workforce: Managing People and
Projects in a Flat World", a book that provides a comprehensive reference
for enterprises that are making the shift to a service-based and project-based
structure, “[The younger generation of workforce] fully expect a career path
that will allow for multiple different jobs and careers throughout their
lifetime, simply to avoid the boredom and tedium that comes with routine. They
want to be provided with a regular stream of new projects and varied
assignments and responsibilities.”
This paradigm shift is easy to
understand because these are the generation who've seen their parents
right-sized, outsourced, re-engineered, and transformed, said Melik in his
book. “[These younger generation of workforce] come to embrace the reality that
there are no guarantees, nothing is long term, and that much of their success
will come from their ability to constantly reinvent themselves,” added Melik.
According to trends and innovation expert Jim Carroll in his write-up “Don’t
Mess with My Powder, Dude!”, his surveys showed that more than 50 percent of American kids now believe that self-employment
is more secure than a full-time job.
In addition, Melik views today’s
employees as “fiercely collaborative and extremely team oriented.” These
ultramodern employees define themselves by what they like to do, not by what
they do for a living. Melik points out that these employees don’t subscribe to
the concept of a corporate work philosophy that says you have to come to a
certain location every day to do things.
Virtual office
“The concept of nine-to-five will
have just absolutely disappeared. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to become a
nation of home offices, but I think there will be a lot more choices that
people will be making as to where and how and when they’re going to be doing
the work and what constitutes the organization,” according to Gyle Konotopetz
in his write-up the “Futurist eyes next-generation work trends” published
online in Business Edge.
Today’s generation of workers prefer
to work on a per project or contract basis, rather than full time. They don’t
give a damn whether they have an office or not (although, the concept of SOHO
or small office, home office, and hoteling are designed specifically for them).
They’ve got their smart phones, tablets, or laptops to communicate and do
stuffs. They have their webcams and are always online; thus, they can work
anywhere and can collaborate with anybody around the globe.
“I think they’re just going to shake
up the concept of the workplace to a huge degree. The reason that hasn’t
happened is because of simple boomer resistance to change,” Gyle said. In
addition, Gyle has predicted that broad changes can be seen in the corporate
structure 10 to 15 years from now as the baby boomers, who have been very
resistant to change, will eventually be out of the workplace.
Flat organization
For some time now, the predominant
workplace trend has been to go flat—giving rank-and-file workers direct access
to top management and even the company president. It is an organizational
structure in which middle-management functions have been eliminated. It
shortens the time to achieve decisions, and at the same time, brings the
decision makers close to the “dudes” and innovators.
In the book “The Art of
Possibility”, the conductor Benjamin Zander describes the flat organizational
structure as “leading from any chair”. According to Zander, the system has
produced many of the most innovative products and services that people use
these days. There is a problem, however, of leadership gap—the traditional
route to leadership has been shortened. Also, there are chances of loose
control because there are too many subordinates under one manager.
In
the web article of Scott McDowell “Why Flat Organizations Don't Create Great
Leaders (& What To Do About It)”, he proposed that effective management can
be achieved by cultivating leadership in the flat organization, i.e., hiring
someone with a strong drive and execution, rewarding leadership,
institutionalizing mentorship, among others. By encouraging autonomy and
self-direction, a flat organizational structure strives to tap into employees’
creative talents and to solve problems by collaboration.
Less
aggressive companies opt to establish communication hubs—like the so-called brown bag and town hall meetings—that would serve as a venue for top executives to reach out and talk to
rank-and-file employees.
Smart casual
Smart casual is a loosely defined
dress code that is casual, yet smart. It is a multi-purpose outfit that is
acceptable for formal occasions, dating, or casual social gatherings. Oxford
Dictionaries define it as "neat, conventional, yet relatively informal in
style, especially as worn to conform to a particular dress code.”
Global men's fashion business Topman
emphasizes the flexibility of smart casual by stating that an individual's
personality and comfort level of clothing choice defines the dress code. On the
other hand, women’s magazine Fashion Central defines a woman's smart casual
from an employment perspective by emphasizing the importance of understanding
the workplace's environment and culture.
Smart casual outfit can include a
mixture of jeans, chinos, blazers, sweaters, dress shirts, or a pair of decent
sneakers or leather shoes.
In Japan, the Cool Biz dress code,
which is part of the austerity campaign launched by the Ministry of the
Environment (MOE) in the summer of 2005 as a means to help reduce the use of
air conditioning to save on electricity consumption, advises workers to wear
trousers made from materials that breathe and absorb moisture. Additionally,
workers are encouraged to wear short-sleeved shirts without suits or neckties.
Speaking of suit and tie, Virgin
Group founder Richard Branson regarded the suit and the necktie as having no
place in today’s corporate world. In an interview published in a column at
leading business magazine Entrepreneur,
Branson believes that suit and necktie don't serve any practical purpose and
office workers have been complaining about how uncomfortable they are for
generations. The workers feel like they’re putting nooses around their necks
every day. Branson further said that the suit and tie is an anachronism; there
is no viable argument why gentlemen should wear ties. For Branson, a sweater
and corduroy trousers are his standard business attire.
Aside
from Branson, U.S. president Barrack Obama, U.K. prime minister Tony Blair,
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, among
others, are frequently appearing in public without necktie.
The author of “The Smart Creative's
Guide to Dressing for Work” Dr. Christian Jarrett said in his article that
clothes affect people’s mindset and alter how they feel about themselves. Dr.
Jarrett cited a US research published in 2007 by saying that employees
described themselves as feeling more productive, trustworthy, and authoritative
when they wore a business suit at work, but more friendly when wearing casual
clothes. Voila! If that is the case, then wearing smart casual could bring the
best of both worlds in smart dressing.
Flexible schedule
The Boston College Center for Work
& Family conducted a two-year research in collaboration with six large U.S.
companies: Amway Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Honeywell, Kraft
Foods, Lucent Technologies, and Motorola Inc. The research project is aimed at
assessing the impact of workplace flexibility.
Results from this study of 1,353 employees and 151 managers suggest
that, in most cases, greater workplace flexibility is a win-win situation for
both companies and the individuals they employ.
Accordingly, workers who are given
opportunities to do their job more flexibly are more dedicated and productive,
are more satisfied with their jobs, and are better able to manage their lives
outside of work. On the other hand, companies that allow flexibility in the
workplace (e.g., flextime schedule, telecommute arrangement, on-call basis,
etc.) are finding that their commitment is paying off as manifested by
increased in productivity, better quality of work, and lower employee turn over
rate.
Employees
using daily flextime are more likely to say that this flexibility has a
positive impact on their productivity, quality of work, and their plans to stay
with the company. For individuals, the findings are equally exciting. Employees
working flexibly are more satisfied with their jobs, more satisfied with their
lives, and experience better work-life balance.
Way forward
More and more corporate executives
are coming to realize that it’s time to throw out the old ways and try some
things that are new. Those who are slow to react will be having a hard time to
catch up in the new corporate rat race. Those who are unwilling to take good
and calculated risks will be facing more uncertainties. Those who are afraid to
embrace changes in the workplace and marketplace will just be expediting its
corporate extinction.
They have learned that
the way forward is not by relying upon their company's solid foundation and
traditional way of doing business. They have realized that to deal with the
high-velocity future, they must do away with their unyielding, slow-to-respond
corporate norms, but instead introduce some new policies to make their
companies attuned to the times.
Running one’s business
in this fast-paced world is as important as managing the affairs of today's
“agile” workforce, who is sometimes temporary, always transient, part-time in
nature, tech-savvy, and multi-skilled in background. The increasing
specialization of knowledge, rapid career evolution, relentless market and
business change, and globalization have led to an ever-growing reliance on
project-based “workforce for hire.”
In the keynote speech
made by global management guru and leading futurist Jim Carroll for the Monster
Government Solutions Human Capital Management Conference in 2010 in Washington,
D.C., he mentioned the shift from continuity to flexibility and the importance
of attraction, not retention in the workplace. Carroll said that the depth of
the baby boomer skills exodus is of such a degree that there's a need for a lot
of flexible work policies in order to retain them, but at the same time, there
is a need to play into the unique career attitudes of the younger generation.
He further believes that lifestyle, not loyalty is what made workers happy and
contented at work.
Welcome to the era of corporate dudes.
REFERENCES:
Branson, R. (2012). Richard Branson on Office Ties and the Company Dress
Code. Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223670#ixzz2W3Xi25Aq
Carroll. J. (2012). Trending in 2012: What’s to Come in the Year to
Come? Retrieved from
http://www.jimcarroll.com/2012/12/trending-in-2013-whats-to-come-in-the-year-to-come/#.UbkfzpyeQa8
Jarrett, C. (n.d.) The Smart Creative's Guide To Dressing for Work.
Retrieved from http://99u.com/articles/14510/the-smart-creatives-guide-to-dressing-for-work
Konotopetz, G. (2006). Futurist eyes next-generation work trends.
Retrieved from
http://www.businessedge.ca/archives/article.cfm/futurist-eyes-next-generation-work-trends-13793
Melik, R. (2007). The Rise of the Project Workforce: Managing People and
Projects in a Flat World. Retrieved from
http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Project-Workforce-Managing-Projects/dp/047012430X
Coursera - Writing II: Rhetorical Composing
Ohio State University
Assignment X: Revising Rhetorically
By Ludwig Ritchel A. Kalambacal
23 June 2013
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