Work Will be Witnessing 10 Changes

Gartner Says the World of Work Will Witness 10 Changes During the Next 10 Years

The world of today is dramatically different from 20 years ago and with the lines between work and non-work already badly frayed, Gartner, Inc. predicts that the nature of work will witness 10 key changes through 2020. Organizations will need to plan for increasingly chaotic environments that are out of their direct control, and adaptation must involve adjusting to all 10 of the trends.

Work will become less routine, characterized by increased volatility, hyperconnectedness, ‘swarming’ and more,” said Tom Austin, vice president and Gartner fellow. By 2015, 40 percent or more of an organization’s work will be ‘non-routine’, up from 25 percent in 2010. “People will swarm more often and work solo less. They’ll work with others with whom they have few links, and teams will include people outside the control of the organization,” he added. “In addition, simulation, visualization and unification technologies, working across yottabytes of data per second, will demand an emphasis on new perceptual skills.

De-routinization of Work

Work Swarms

Weak Links

Working With the Collective

Work Sketch-Ups

Spontaneous Work

Simulation and Experimentation

Pattern Sensitivity

Hyper connected

I think Austin makes some excellent points in the article and I encourage you to read it in its entirety. When, I sit back an observe this structure it is very similar to many of the agile practices that have been developed in the Lean Software Development field. Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Though these practices were a result of improvement in a knowledge based field, they are starting to be applied in other areas such as Marketing, Supply Chain and even Hardware Development. One of the difficulties people have in grasping this concept is that it is more about flow and speed of the overall process versus efficiencies.

The article is a definite read and raises some interesting concepts for all of us to consider.