The Future of Work and the Work Environment!

Welcome to Art of the Future’s The Future of Work!

As systems thinkers, we know that everything affects everything else. Having a fascination with virtually everything is a key ingredient to being a futurist. In this blog we will be linking our facinations with their implications for the future of work. Work is not your grandfather's life long loyalty to a single employer, commute to work, nine to five rat race, full benefits package, annual review, corporate ladder climbing, pension plan, gold watch and retirement. Those things are long gone and the nature of work continues to change and an ever increasing pace.

This blog reflects our cumulative 60 years of experience, insights, research, and biases toward issues concerning the future of the workplace, the nature of community, the leadership of human systems and methodologies for studying the future. Other subjects, such as global warming and other environmental issues, security , religion, transportation, education, etc. will be addressed primarily as a result of their having a relationship to our core interests.

For example, a recent item in USA Today (1/16/07, pB1) describes the narcissistic character of many highly paid CEO’s, people who can do a hell of a job dishing out criticism, but do really poorly when it comes to accepting it. This topic is of interest to us from a number of angles, to name a few:
(1) It has ramifications for the future of training and coaching.
(2) It reminds us of Argyris and Schön’s formulation of the gap between the theories that people have about how to be effective leaders and the theories one can infer by observing their behavior.
(3) It highlights the problems created by complex systems where the leaders of organizations don’t get needed information simply because they have no contact with the people at lower levels in the hierarchy.

So, Hello Blogosphere! Art of the Future is joining the conversation!