christopherAVERY's Responsibility e-Tips: May 2006

Thirty-six years ago futurist Alvin Toffler wrote that in the global techno-economic and socio-political slide into the much heralded and now-arrived information society, three skills would become primary, the abilities

to relate,
to choose, and
to learn (including unlearning and relearning).(1)

Since then, corporate management’s attempts to upgrade organizational functioning have cycled

through quality and service;
to cultures of excellence, innovation, creativity, empowerment, change, learning, and transformation;
to collaboration, teamwork, and leadership;
to sustainability, quality of work life, and a positive work environment; and
on to agility, execution, and accountability.

Concurrently, employee loyalty and commitment has been decimated by structural upheaval after structural upheaval–euphemistically called managed change(2)–in desperate attempts to compete in a market landscape resembling so much global quicksand.

And it’s not just the professional masses who are suffering. Enterprise executives have become embittered too. General managers once proud of their centers of professional and career development now tell me they’re “just running sweat shops for engineers.” Why? If the business does invest precious dollars in the engineer's development, goes the GM’s logic, she’ll only use the chit to go to market for better pay.

Those same engineers and other knowledge-workers (aka, gold-collar workers(3), or technical professionals, all information economy labels for corporate professionals) for the most part remain baffled about how to get their work done in a legal, moral, and ethical manner in less than twelve hours a day. Tossed into flattened structures they are assigned in units as small as 1/32 of a full-time-equivalent spread across half-a-dozen or more projects, each with it’s own demanding team lead or project manager who is spread just as thin trying to get his own work done, and precious few of them have a clear idea how to truly work together successfully.

In sum, for an organization to function at high levels no longer depends merely on efficient organization of work units, but also hinges on individual contributors' and managers' willingness to lead themselves as they make sense of their myriad changing demands i.e., to relate, to choose, and to learn.

Few leaders can imagine how to achieve such a culture of self-leadership and responsibility. But your team and your workforce could do it, and quicker than you may think.
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1. Future Shock, Random House (June 12, 1970)
2. See Christopher's analysis of the change industry in Responsible Change, his executive report prepared for the Cutter Consortium, an IT industry think-tank, available at www.cutter.com.
3. Kelley, Robert E. The Gold-Collar Worker: Harnessing the Brainpower of the New Work Force. Addison-Wesley (1985.)

Responsibility Redefined Skill