Working It

Are you Future-Ready

Greg Hutchins has tackled an extremely important topic, the future of work, in his book Working It: Disruption Rules. It is a provocative book.  It is a must read for Millennials and Generation Z members.

The Future of Work impacts people on a daily basis since it deals with our human needs, wants, and expectations.  The Future of Work is now!  So, we'd say that the Future of Work is important and relevant to the vast majority of people worldwide.

So, what's important about the Future of Work?  McKinsey, the global consulting firm, estimates that between the present and 2030, 75 to 375 million workers need to switch jobs that will require new skills and new education just due to automation and tech disruption:

"In terms of magnitude, it's akin to coping with the large-scale shift from agricultural work to manufacturing that occurred in the early 20th century in North America and Europe, and more recently in China. But in terms of who must find new jobs, we are moving into uncharted territory. Those earlier workforce transformations took place over many decades, allowing older workers to retire and new entrants to the workforce to transition to the growing industries.  But the speed of change today is potentially faster. The task confronting every economy, particularly advanced economies, will likely be to retrain and redeploy tens of millions of midcareer, middle-age workers."

Goldman Sachs estimates: "1/3 of the workforce will transfer to new occupations over the next five years".

7P's Framework

A full treatment of work, careers, and jobs is beyond the scope of this book and frankly beyond my abilities.  Working It:  Disruption Rules offers a unique structure, framework, and lens for your Future of Work.

Expressed another way, Working It offers a structure for understanding and a framework for looking at your work, career, and job.  Working It is not the total answer.  Hopefully, it offers glimpses of what’s occurring around you whether you work for someone or for yourself or are exploring options. 

One of the powerful analytical tools in management theory is the systems approach that explains complex relationships in simple terms. Working It: Disruption Rules presents a systems approach to work. Elements of a system can be parts of a machine, actors in a play, or people at work.

In this book, our 7P work system, framework, or architecture consists of Paradigms, People, Principles, Practices, Products, Processes, and Projects®.