Virtual Teams Collaborating describes a “continuation” scenario archetypes [see description below]
Work is increasingly virtual, but progress is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Thorny issues, such as transparency intruding on privacy, slow the introduction of new technologies and practices. The result is that work in 2020 is far more decentralized and different in many respects, but the transition to the world of knowledge work in 2020 is manageable.
As the millennial generation makes up a greater percentage of the workforce, they drive changes in the overall work environment. Companies seek to capitalize on digital natives’ skills and habits and create work processes and spaces that maximize their performance. Advances in sensing and data analytics provide workers continuous feedback, and new, more accurate measures of performance affect everything from promotions and salaries to how people are valued and market themselves to prospective employers. Continued efforts to hold down cost in the wake of the Great Recession mean a rise in telecommuting, virtual teams, and a new wave of freelance knowledge workers—all of which steadily decentralizes knowledge work. All of this happens, though, at a pace that makes it feel much more like an evolution than a knowledge work revolution, and many firms still try to skate by using twentieth-century work models.
The knowledge work scenarios were developed using the scenario archetype approach, adapted from the original version developed by Jim Dator and the Hawaii Futures Studies program . The approach describes typical patterns of change in a “system” (in this usage, roughly translated as “the way things are currently done). Let’s briefly review:
- Continuation: The system moves forward along its current trajectory. This is the “official future” and usually considered most likely.
- Collapse: The system falls apart under the weight of “negative” forces.
- New equilibrium: The system reaches a balance among competing forces that is significantly different from the current balance.
- Transformation: The system is discarded in favor of a new one with a new set of rules
The original article describing the research was in Employment Relations Today. — Andy Hines
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