The future of work and the impact of technology implications for leaders

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The future of work and the impact of technology
implications for leaders

• A presentation for the BCS, November 2006
• Dr. Gerry McSorley
• Centre for Health Improvement and Leadership

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What I dont want to do

• Bore you silly with a' off-the-head-brain-dump
• Hide behind futurology clichés
• Indebted to the work of John Knell, Michael
  Moynagh and Richard Worsley

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What I do want to do

• Stress that as leaders doing the future better
  is important
• Particularly the future that has already happened
  but is not here yet!
• That getting much of the future wrong is
  inevitable

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Getting the future right is a bit tricky
Anyone who thinks the ANC will rule South Africa
is living in cloud cuckoo land Thatcher, 1987
Crisis, what crisis Callaghan, 1979
Peace in our time Chamberlain, 1932
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• In preparing for battle I have always found that
  plans are useless, but planning is indispensable
  
• Dwight D. Eisenhower

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What Im going to talk about in respect of
technology

• The rise of self-service and outsourcing
• Open source innovation and public value
• Technology networks

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The rise and rise of self-service

• First Direct
• Fifteen years ago only a telephone bank
• Now 70 of its customers operate their accounts
  online or through text messages
• Headcount stable whilst customer numbers have
  risen 10 to 1.1 million in past year

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• Meet your airlines, your phone companys, and
  your banks latest employee
• You
• The Economist

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• Self-service automation offshoring a triple
  whammy for low value work
• Government is likely to begin offering a wide
  range of financial incentives to encourage users
  to carry out as many of their public service
  transactions as possible online
• Globalisation bites - from out-source to
  off-shore call centres now professional
  services next (Indian radiologists reading the
  X-rays of American patients)
• Innovation is therefore a necessary condition for
  survival

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• A new vision of the customer Open source
  innovation and public value

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A new vision of the customer?

• Customer as user, critic and partner
• A Customer Plus model if you like
• Choice, personalisation and support
• Advocates and joined up services
• Co-production
• Public value their control

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• Technology Networks

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Technology, networks social capital

• Technology, and particularly new ICTs, really do
  change everything
• Pace of change is both incredibly rapid
  (penetration of mobile phones) and slow
  (everywhere wireless connectivity)
• ICT creates new possibilities for the social
  organisation of networks, for how work happens
  and our conceptions of offices, cities, health
  and social care
• Technology changes the scope of personal networks
  and the way we communicate

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• The 1990s were not spectacular low bandwidth,
  low connectivity and little mobility but
• The current and next phase of technological
  development will deliver upon the promises made
  in the last one (proper wireless internet,
  always-on high bandwidth connections to the home,
  different and better types of software,
  particularly social networking software MySpace,
  UTube)

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Mobile phones matter - pervasive wireless
connectivity is coming next

• Mobile phones have become a truly pervasive
  technology
• From status symbol to ubiquitous necessity
• A fashion accessory
• As the motorcar was to the boomer generation, so
  the mobile phone is to current teenagers and
  tweenies we need to understand current and
  future generations who are growing up digital
• Were becoming accustomed to screen mediated
  living

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• All this new technology is giving us unheard of
  abilities to multitask and micro-manage
• For the 40 of workers work use ICT, this is a
  big story
• However, most of us arent that enthusiastic
  about it
• If new ICT is creating a new work future, we are
  embracing it very tentatively

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Labour saving devices that dont save us

• ICT seen as cranking up the pressure eroding
  the divide between work / home / life
• Both hero and villain in the contemporary work
  story
• From Blackberry to Crackberry

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Key execution challenge getting ICT to deliver

• Organisations continue to struggle with the ICT
  revolution
• Two elements
• How you use ICT to transform the way you work
• How you use ICT to transform the way you reach
  and serve your customers

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• You have to support people to work differently
  giving them new kit is not enough
• ICT investments only deliver productivity
  improvements if backed up by corresponding
  investments in people, culture, and process
• IT systems dont enable organisations new types
  of work and information flow do

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Why all the fuss about networks?

• What I call a network society is simply a
  society made up of networks. It is a society in
  which everything that counts, the economy,
  technology, politics, media, social movements and
  interpersonal relations, is increasingly made out
  of information technology powered networks
• Manuel Castells, Author of the Network Society
  Trilogy

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• Hot social and business networks have become the
  prerequisite for a successful career
• Organisations that are networked derive
  competitive advantage
• Organisations are increasingly concerned to hire
  networked, externally focused, leaders
• What bureaucracy was for the beginning of the
  last century so networks will be for the 21st
• Yet, our understanding of networks, and how they
  interact with ICT, remain under-developed

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Networks and public sector delivery?

• National Service Framework for Mental Health
  specifies how mental health provision should be
  organised and delivered implications
• Need for seamless collaboration amongst Health
  professionals, voluntary sector, social services
  and police multi-agency working
• So, a Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) will have
  to lead, inform, and involve a care team from
  across a range of agencies to deliver healthcare
  in a local community
• Management of networks, knowledge-sharing etc
  hasnt traditionally been a competency
  requirement of professionals in this context
• Likely to be a requirement of more public
  servants in the future

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The operational reality for public and private
sectors

• All organisations have two sides doing existing
  things better doing new things
• Preoccupied with improvement
• Performance management and delivery
• Lots of structural change
• Under pressure to innovate and to develop more
  effective service models

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Public sector context in more detail the glass
half empty view

• Current approaches to public service reform may
  be reaching their limits.
• Service providers bemoan central targets that
  drive performance.
• Professionals complain about poor pay and heavy
  workloads.
• Users complain of poor quality, lack of
  personalisation and services that do not join-up.
  
• Ministers and senior civil servants worry about
  improving large and complex systems that are
  difficult to control.
• Innovation is widespread but difficult to
  propagate.
• Attempts to make the public service machine work
  harder, produce their own backlash.

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• Demanding consumers have produced demanding
  employees non deferential, entitlement driven
• Web based campaigns, 24/7 multi-media world,
  values based perspectives all of them can lead
  to individual and brand reputations being damaged
  quickly and decisively

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Work - Hard Times Hardened Hearts

• Work is becoming more intense and demanding
• ICT developments are allowing work to pervade
  more of the working day and every location
• The death of loyalty - a broken psychological
  contract
• Growing fears of job and pension insecurity
• Stress and absenteeism remain headline issues

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People paradox at work

• Job tenure stable
• HRM and other sophisticated management techniques
  spreading across UK workplaces
• Rising living standards
• The rise of creative and knowledge work
• YET
• Feelings of insecurity, stress, over-work and
  dissatisfaction are on the rise within UK
  workforce
• Employee commitment more actively sought, yet
  more difficult to gain

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The rise and rise of the demanding consumer

• The latter half of the twentieth century has
  bred consumers and citizens so demanding that
  corporations have been left in their wake
  people have changed more than the organisations
  and institutions on which they depend. The
  result is a double crisis of competence and
  confidence.
• Shoshana Zuboff and James Maxmin,
• The Support Economy

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Organisations under pressure

• Product ranges and service offerings changing
  more quickly
• Constant imperative to offer more differentiation
  and choice
• Customers expect high quality service at speed,
  when and where it suits them best
• They often know more about your products than you
  do how do you enlist them as partners and
  critics?

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• Creates pressure for greater devolvement and
  intelligent accountability inside businesses
• As we have become more demanding customers in the
  market, we have become more demanding employees
  at work
• We need to innovate not just to meet customer
  need, but the needs of our employees

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Performance versus support

• Most organisations are getting better at
  performance management than support
• Lets ask a question over the last five years
  has your organisation done more to improve the
  performance context or more to improve the
  support context?

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Moving to the upper right
High Direction, stability, order Low
Low High Experimentation,
discovery, flexibility
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Agility blockers

• Line managers often lack the skills in job
  design, performance management, and in delegating
  accountability and responsibility to make
  agility happen
• Command and control and hierarchy are very
  resilient
• Risk and reward are often poorly balanced
  creating conflicting imperatives
• The use of ICT and technology remains tentative
• Were still more time bound than time sovereign
• The leadership challenges are enormous

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Leadership

• Leadership is a difficult craft because the
  expectations are always so high, the blame so
  swift and harsh, and leaders have less impact
  over what happens to their organisations than
  most people imagine
• J.Pfeffer R.I.Sutton Evidence-based
  Management, Harvard Business Review, January 2006

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Mastering the Three Worlds of Information
Technology

• McAfee (Harvard Business Review, November, 2006)
  suggests that there are three key categories of
  IT, each of which provides different
  organisational capabilities, and different
  management interventions.

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• He goes on to suggest that Leaders have four
  critical responsibilities when it comes to IT
• They must help choose technologies
• Smooth the adoption of those technologies
• Encourage their exploitation
• Look beyond the individual projects to a broader
  view of how IT is likely to affect the
  organisation

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The New Deal for Leaders

• Employees now expect their leaders to be visible,
  accountable and responsive
• How leaders meet their commitments is at least as
  important as whether they meet them and is often
  more important
• Did they do so in ways that strengthened their
  organizational and people capacity as a whole or
  weakened it?

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Emerging truths

• The cult of the heroic CEO, with the odd rare
  exception, is dying
• The cult of execution steady, pragmatic
  stewardship is on the rise
• Engaging people, and getting things done through
  others, is becoming more, not less, important

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• People think of execution as the tactical side
  of the business, something leaders delegate while
  they focus on the perceived bigger issues. The
  idea is completely wrong.
• Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan 2002

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• Leaders dont delegate the people thing
• Your followers are bright, ambitious and skittish
  so your leadership challenge is a big one
• The holy grail, and least understood area, is how
  best to attract and manage creative individuals
  and teams

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• All of which is producing new templates for key
  leadership traits, behaviours and approaches
• Tough empathy
• Knowing authenticity

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Tough empathy

• Caring intensely about the work your people do
• Giving people what they need, not what they want
• Challenging inappropriate behaviours and inviting
  challenge back
• Asking tough questions and fostering robust
  dialogue in the business
• Engaging people to confront reality, embrace new
  challenges, adjust their values, change
  perspectives, and learn new habits

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Knowing authenticity

• Know thyself

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Even if you dont like the answerStanley was
deeply disappointed when, high in the Tibetan
mountains, he finally found his true self.
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• Know thyself
• See yourself as others see you
• Reveal your differences and find your own
  leadership style
• Do what you say
• Be clear about your core principles and beliefs
• Dont collude with the culture
• Change the business rather than play the game

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• DONT worry about
• Charisma
• Personality
• Strategy

• DO worry about
• Teams
• Execution
• Reflection
• Learning
• Trust
• Courage

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• There are two sorts of leader Those that are
  effective and those that appear to be effective.
  You are better off in the former category because
  there is less competition.
• I Ghandi