Blog #5: Adapting to the changing work-verse

The main essence of this week's readings incorporated the idea that organizations need to be ready to adapt to the rapidly changing business sphere. This evolution is brought about by the changing business models, workspace attitudes, and major technological breakthroughs. The authors of the article Twelve Forces That Will Radically Change How Organizations Work divided these changing dynamics into two clusters. 

1. Changes in the demand for talent: This is mainly brought about due to the changing job sphere of the world. Historically, this type of change has always happened every 50 years or so. Old jobs die, new roles come up - with that, we have folks with new skillsets in the market. This time this change is brought about by the digital transformation of the existing job profiles. Automation of manual tasks alone is expected to replace nearly half of the current jobs in the US by 2050- this does not mean we will lose these 50% jobs, but the fact that folks involved in these industries need to re-skill themselves. 

The second significant change that we see is a massive amount of data that gets generated every day. This is changing the way strategists make decisions. Up until a few years back, we had industry specialists who were consulted whenever an organization had to make a major decision. This trend has changed quite a bit lately. With the huge amount of data now available, more and more of these decisions are based on fact rather than gut- a much refreshing change. Furthermore, customers are becoming much more aware of their own actions - which is resulting in a major shift towards eco-friendly products and services. 

2. Changes in the supply of demand: This is the next bucket of changes that are enveloping the market as we speak. With the exponential improvement in connectivity through the internet, we are seeing a major shift in how talent wants to work. Employees are no longer limited to working from onsite locations. In fact, more and more people are working remotely as what is called digital-nomads. Teams now want to be more diverse, and at the same time Millenials and GenZ no longer prefer a strictly hierarchical organization structure. 

Furthermore, with the gig-economy kicking in and digitalization happening in almost every facet of our work sphere, it is expected that more than 30% of the jobs by next year will remain unfilled because of lack of talent. At the same time, we see different economies and countries that rising as world leaders. With this shifting geopolitical and economic power of the world, we will more disparity in the wealth distribution. 

Considering all of these major changes that will be affecting our work-verse in the next few years, it is imperative that strategists take into account these factors when planning long term for the organisation. 

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References:

1. Creating Shared Value (Porter and Kramer, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2011)

2. Twelve Forces That Will Radically Change How Organizations Work (Bhalla, Dyrchs, and Strack, Boston Consulting Group, March 2017); https://www.bcg.com/en- us/publications/2017/people-organization-strategy-twelve-forces-radically-change-organizations- work.aspx

3. 2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast: Creative Destruction is Accelerating (Anthony, Viguerie, Schwartz and Landeghem, Innosight, 2018); https://www.innosight.com/insight/creative-destruction/