Not My Image Of The Future
Discover more from Work Futures
Not My Image Of The Future
We don't trust business leaders' visions of the future, no matter what they say.
Quote of the Moment
What we do today depends on our image of the future, rather than the future depending on what we do today.
| Ilya Prigogine
1
Emily Peck has a great condensation of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink's 2022 letter to CEOs:
What he's saying: "No relationship has been changed more by the pandemic than the one between employers and employees. CEOs face a profoundly different paradigm than we are used to."
Other than saying CEOs need to get wise to the ‘new world of work’ he doesn’t really dig into the changes in the relationship between employers and employees.
Fink goes on to great length on ‘stakeholder capitalism’, and why ESG is not a fad. I agree with some of that since the only hope we have to save the world from climate catastrophe is the inexhaustible power of capitalist avarice.
I think that the biggest baloney in Fink's letter is in this line:
Employees are increasingly looking to their employer as the most trusted, competent, and ethical source of information – more so than government, the media, and NGOs.
Where's the proof of that? He doesn’t actually cite any. Meanwhile, Pew Research has a counterclaim:
This chart shows business leaders are only slightly more trusted than what I thought was the pond scum of trust, our elected officials:
Additionally, the inclination of Americans to express different levels of trust depending on the circumstances is reflected in their views on various institutions and kinds of leaders. The military enjoys “a great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence among 83% of U.S. adults, as do scientists (83%). Not far behind are principals of K-12 public schools (80%) and police officers (78%). Confidence in journalists stands at 55%.
These supportive views stand in contrast to the public’s overall lack of confidence in elected officials and corporate leaders: 63% express little confidence in elected officials, and 56% take a similarly skeptical view of business leaders.
It’s scientists and the military that Americans trust, not billionaires, CEOs, politicians, or journalists. If we don’t trust business leaders’ visions of the future, their prognostication is unlikely to frame our actions today, next week, and the months to come, no matter what Larry Fink says.
2
PlanBeyond released new research in Employers Must Prepare Themselves for the Great Resignation to Continue, which has this takeaway: ‘nearly half of all employees consider quitting their jobs in the next six months’. And what’s the reason? 21% feel undervalued, and the big bad boss is causing 18%.
…
In The Pandemic Changed Everything About Work, Except the Humble Résumé, Gray Beltran looked into the role of the resume. Part of why the résumé has stayed constant while work itself has transformed is that no one method has come along to take over.
What could replace it? Your Linkedin profile? An AI analysis of your social exhaust on the web?
“The traditional résumé is in the process of being disrupted, but I don’t think it’s necessarily clear yet what the outcome will be,” Ms. [Kathryn] Minshew said — adding that it might be replaced by several products instead of a single one. Part of the reason straying from traditional formatting is risky is a résumé could be discarded by the software screening it if it can’t process a candidate’s experience correctly. “This is a classic situation of, most people want something different,” she said — but no one has yet had the power to really change things. Though she did say that a number of recruiters — humans not robots — primarily consider a candidate’s LinkedIn profile, rather than a résumé, which is why she encourages people to keep both up-to-date.
3
I am writing for Cisco Webex Ahead, so you may want to look at these recent essays:
Toward a working equilibrium: the pace layers of work — How we pace our work permeates—and changes—work culture
Toward a working equilibrium: a time for silence — So much about work depends on the pace of alternating between noise and silence
I’ll be contributing a piece a month, so subscribe there.
…
Delivery Workers Cheer Restroom Access and Tip Transparency Alongside AOC and Chuck Schumer | Claudia Irizzary Aponte: ‘New York City’s app-based food delivery workers are entitled to increased clarity on their daily earnings and tips, and the right to use most restaurant bathrooms, as new laws begin their rollout’. Yes, bathroom access, which many restaurants prohibited.
…
From the Loonshots podcast: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries - with Safi Bahcall:
It’s easy to forget, Safi says, that things didn’t look great for the Allies through much of the war. The German army was just technologically superior, and they were winning. But Vannevar Bush was the Dean of Engineering at MIT during WWII, and he understood this concept that structure eats culture for breakfast. He had a conversation with FDR that probably changed the course of the war, Safi says, and he convinced FDR to create an organization where innovation could thrive. He didn’t want to change the structure of the military – the rigid structure was necessary to fight the war – but he knew they needed a less rigidly structured organization to come up with new ideas [like radar, which played a major role in winning the war].
Out of that came the first two Bush-Vail [Theodore Vail was head of what became Bell Labs] Rules: One, separate your artists and your soldiers. Two, manage transfer, not the technology.
“The genius entrepreneur building a great company, or creating these great inventions, on the back of his or her ideas is really a myth,” Safi says. “The companies that have been most successful, the leaders that have been most successful, manage more like a gardener. They’re taking care of the balance between these two groups.”