GenX: What's Ahead

To celebrate the launch of this New Year, 2010, this week I will review What’s Next, Gen X? (Tamara Erickson, Harvard Business School Publishing, 2010). This is the FOURTH post:

What’s Ahead for X’ers (and the rest of us too): Technology, the democratization of knowledge, and access to people has re-created the world as we know it now and in the future. So, here’s what the author Erickson sees as changes for the organization and workers:

• Innovation will be the key to keep up with rapid change.
• Strategy will be replaced by continual experimentation to keep pace with hyper-change.
• Corporate success will be based on sustainability.
• Chain of command will give way to democratic process.
• Results will replace hours (task vs. time). And we will be working less hours.
• Status titles will be less important.
• Schedules (time off and work) will be much more flexible…weekends, per se, will disappear.
• Managers will fashion systems that encourage employee engagement.
• Managers will function more like project managers (and cheerleaders).
• Careers won’t be linear or continuous. Also, people won’t retire at a specific age.
• Leaders will have to become much more like coaches than like evaluators.
• Individuals will customize their work experience. Much more negotiation about what and how things get done.
• Leaders will have to be flexible.
• Learning and education will become core to any company that remains competitive.