Continues… Gen X runs the show, Production Trends & the last days of Cubile life

According to Times Magazine and in the past 2 posts of this series: The future of work part 1 of 3 and The Future of work part 2 of 3 we could be expecting changes already in the way companies will choose talent, in the way we get ready for retirement and manage benefits for us and our loved ones, on how executives manage businesses, on the actual physical space we work since technology allows for higher standards of work/life balance, how the job market place will be more crowded than ever, why women are good for business and the glass celling will have to disappear for good and how it will be profitable to save the planet, a trend we are clearly starting to see around the auto industry.

But what else will we see shifting…?

8.- Gen X will run the show.-

By 2019, that small generation the “gen X” (1965 – 1978) the one between baby boomers and the Gen Y will actually have the power at hand and that means many changes and it will only be natural considering they will be leading a “tatooed-tech raised” job forced born from 1979 – 2000 that considers success is the amount of things that matter to you personally that you are able to do… think Tim Ferris and the 4 hour work week, though boomers won’t disappear from the job panorama, they will be able to “rent” their skills and act as outside consultants (coaches, strategists, advisors). Adapting for all these changes will signify quite some leadership challenges for Gen Xers that at the end will mean serious shifts in leadership styles like collaborative decision making, coordination of multi-cultural teams scattered around the world  and the ability to motivate and reward people with different values than yourself, you don’t learn that in business school but you can certainly learn it online as Howard Linzon founder and CEO of http://stocktwits.com/ a financial community with global audience of over one hundred thousand investors and traders said on AZ Entrepreneurial conference, “you have to play farmville at least to level 5″.

9.-  We will still make stuff, not everything can be virtual or outsourced.-

The dead of the Manufacturing Industry has been greatly exagerated, yes there are tousands of jobs that are being transferred to low wage countries but that doesn’t mean we will not be producing anything, there are a lot of quality sensitive highly regulated industries you cannot send overseas, after all the hype regarding offshore, manufacturers have come to realize there are exportable and non-exportable jobs, highly skilled workers creating high-value products in high-stakes industries — that’s the sweet spot for manufacturing workers in coming years. To top it of energy crisis will make freight expenses in the future years to make up for the savings in low wages even more so when considering the market is here, America still represents for the worlds prosperous marketplace, yes the idea of the noisy, smoky factory wont be the same, maybe we will produce in an quite-antiseptic-green facitly but we will still produce “things”.

10.-  The end of Cubicle Nation.- For economic reasons, more and more companies are cutting costs on non-essential jobs in order to keep key talent and that means you will have to take your own messages and type your own memo’s if you keep using memos at all, processing words and numbers can be outsource or there is an online service for that. That means they will be able to save big on RE, and less harm to the environment while we were saving the commute and tons of paper, more and more we will work completely free of insular attachments, you will still need someone else’s talent and collaboration but it will be someone that will practically manage himself as well, even if you never met him or her and you guys just share files and projects, as long as both’s work is essential and well done, management by results.

Some people will embrace this new high-stress, high-speed, high-flexibility way of work. We’ll go from a few days alone at home, maintaining the status quo, to urgent team sessions, sometimes in person, often online. The only reason to go to work, I think, is to do work. “Work will mean managing a tribe, creating a movement and operating in teams to change the world. Anything less is going to be outsourced to someone a lot cheaper and a lot less privileged than you or me” – Seth Godin.

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