We live in a Knowledge Worker Age but operate our organizations in a controlling Industrial age model that absolutely supresses the release of human potential. The mind-set of the Industrial Age that still dominates today’s workplace will simply not work in the Knowledge Worker Age and new economy. When all you want is a person’s body and you don’t really want their mind, heart and spirit you have reduced the person to a thing.
Organisation of the future, we are told, will need to move from hierarchical systems of prediction and control to more team based structures and reward systems. They need to be in the words of Jack Welsh, CEO of GE, “boundary-less” where information is shared freely ands openly across divisions and functional barriers.
These organisations will need a new kind of worker, one who is a continuous learner as well as a continuous teacher, who is willing to enable and empower others, to take responsibility for problems and work collaboratively with others to solve them. Moreover this new worker will need multiple intelligences. Rather than simply having technical skills, the worker of the future needs to be someone who can think creatively and who has what is often called emotional intelligence or the ability to work effectively with others, understanding the emotional context in which the work gets done