The profile of the future worker

Knowledge Collection Networks and Allies
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1

You, the young EU person, as the future worker will have to:

  • be the changemasters, not just prepared to accept change. You will be willing to control it. You will want to initiate it. 
  • re-invent yourself constantly in terms of career paths. This is painful, as we tend to stick to what works. You will survive (not thrive, survive) as one-person profit centres, as being self-employed with an employing organisation (intra-preneur some say).
  • take more and more control over the progression of your career. Those who have worked for one company for 10 years have only delivered the same 12 months' work ten times in a row.
  • have a mix of traits: e.g. excellent inter-personal skills and great focus on objectives.
  • put in a vision and a strong sense of common purpose. You will set aims you will not achieve in your lifetime. 
  • grow by identifying top performers. You will learn from them directly.
This is it.
2

Based on your own experiences?

Hi Jovin,

Your post m akes me curious to know more about the experiences from which you draw the abov insights. Maybe share your ryde with us?

3

it reminds me of Bollier’s Future of Work

The freelance worker as opposed to the Sloan age worker, diversity of job roles, including the interpersonal relations and skills, the learning component in work, and the resulting change in evaluations…

4

this is a great article noemi.

hope the rest of the gang will find some time to read through.

suffice to mention these trends.

Orthodoxies –> New Freedoms

  1. Roles of companies and customers are distinct  Partners in co-creation
  2. Competitive advantage from owning assets  Open assets—orchestration
  3. Businesses start from traditional markets  Born global and blowback
  4. Paying for value and talent  Value for free
  5. Seek blockbusters  Mining the tail
  6. Goods wear out  Goods improve with use
  7. Power of bigness  Radical empowerment
  8. Full-time employees in hierarchies  Everyone an employee
  9. Batch  Real-time business
  10. Trust your gut  Management science
    Source: The Future of Work

cheers!
jovin
in sweden

5

Help figure this out?

Hey Jovin, how’s it going my friend, still traveling?

Listen, I came across your  ideas about the future worker as I was reading a depiction of Edgeryders making a living and what better policies are needed, and you were quoted with the above.

And along these lines, the report also says (p.8) :

Contemporary internet based technologies provided prerequisites for acquiring a broad spectrum of knowledge, more or less profound, but still very diverse. In such a context specialisation of knowledge and skills is very often judged as limitations set by people who do not want to “try harder”. However, the Edgeryder Charanya recognises that specialisation is not necessarily bad, introducing a new term for people who are both specialised in one area and posses knowledge of related fields:

“Specialization is good – Corporations find specialized employees stable and less risky. Majority of projects that require cross or multidisciplinarity are outsourced to consultancies. T-shaped employees or hybrids are therefore, not preferred within large corporations and the arena of consulting is extremely competitive – this was identified as one of the major problems in finding paid work as more and more individuals are or consider themselves hybrids. Hybrids are people who have expertise in one area and a general understanding of related fields giving them the ability to be inter- or trans-disciplinary. Society favours classical titles and hybrids fit none making it difficult for them to find a place in the traditional job market. Once again, the individual is an asset or resource in the context of existing institutions.” (Charanya)

To be honest I don’t know whether or not specialization is more marketable than diversity of skills… Perhaps you have an opinion to add? Is this about employers or we should start by mentioning the mindset of the new worker, like in your post, and make a case for employers to embrace that? What mix of traits were you refering to? I’d appreciate it if you could comment on the doc, or the summary here, so that the community can react to it.

Dunja wrote the paper and what follows is that a large part of the content will go in the transition handbook we’re building with the community, if you remember that session at Lote. let me know if you need more info… I don’t want to burden you with links :slight_smile:

Cheers!

Noemi in Romania :smiley: