Читать книгу The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here - Lynda Gratton, Линда Граттон - Страница 10

It is the subtle and unique combination of the many aspects of the five forces that will create the context in which your future working life is lived. For some it could be that technology is the crucial driver, while for others it could be demography or globalisation. However, for most of us it will not be a single force but rather the combination of these forces that creates our context. To understand the many combinations these forces can take, the members of the research consortium created storylines of people working in 2025. Of course these storylines are fictitious. However, by thinking through the intersections and relationships between the forces, these possible scenarios are revealed. We can really begin to imagine how people will live their working lives in 2025.

There is the storyline of Jill, whose frantic and fragmented life reveals how the technology and globalisation forces have created a 24/7 joined-up world that leaves her with little time to concentrate, observe and think, or even to play.

There are Rohan and Amon, on the face of it both successful professionals living in Mumbai and Cairo. But scratch beneath the surface and their minute-by-minute living reveals a life devoid of easy companionship, with little by way of family ties. They are caught in the intersections of a world that is simultaneously becoming increasingly urban, where energy costs have moved relationships to the virtual, and where family ties and ebbing trust have left them isolated and lonely.

In the USA we find Briana, with little by way of skills or ambition, joining the poor who can be found in any city around the world. Hers is a working life shaped by continuous economic bubbles and crashes, and she is the victim of the relentless replacement of semi-skilled jobs by technology. She has also seen austerity grip the West, and the rise of the underclass trapped in ageing cities.

It is through the experiences of these characters that we can truly understand how the five forces will shape our future, and how they will interact, influence and create momentum. Through the eyes of our future workers we can see the paradoxes they face, the choices they make and the troubles and anxieties they experience. Like theirs, our own future working lives will have dark and light aspects depending on our context and choices.

However, these are not uniformly dark lives – working lives rarely are. Rohan, for example, is a highly competent surgeon in Mumbai and has achieved mastery at the core of his work, and Jill has a group of friends, which I will call the ‘Posse’, that brings her enormous pleasure. What’s important about these stories from the future is that they illustrate an aspect of a working life that is missing or unbalanced. It is by considering these imbalances that we can draw a thread from the past to identify their pathway, and to the future to describe their outcomes.

As you think about each of these stories, I urge you to reflect on these questions:

* Have you noticed any of these future phenomena in your own working life – are they already resonating with you?

* Do they sound plausible for others in the future, and what are the drivers behind these phenomena?

* What would these mean to your working life and the lives of others?

The final question addresses the issue of choices and consequence, of assumptions and shifting assumptions. It ties directly with the three future-proofed shifts I believe will be crucial in creating meaningful work in the future. For example, the shift from the shallow generalist to something much more masterful and skilled – which in a sense is what sits at the heart of Briana’s story. Or the shift from isolation to connectivity – which is a choice that Rohan and Amon have failed to make. Or indeed the shift from the voracious consumer that is the basis of Jill’s life to a more balanced life in which meaning and experiences play a more central role.

These are four stories that illustrate what we might think of as the Default Future. That’s the future which emerges when the tough decisions are ignored. If, as you read these stories, you find them chilling, then they simply serve to illustrate how crucial it is to think hard about how work life will emerge, and to be prepared to question some deeply held assumptions, and make some tough shifts.