Page 26 - Make Work Great

You . . . as the Seed

than that! Our future is scripted by nobody but ourselves, and we try
to plan it well. We benefi t from being mobile, and we think in terms
of “what’s next.” 5
Yet our destiny feels less certain than ever. Our grandfathers
worked at one company until retirement and received a pension for
their years of service. We don’t even know if our present organization
will exist a few years from now, much less whether or not we will be
working there. Many of our job and career changes are not of our
own choosing and not on our personal timeline.

From Process to Network
Before the information age, things were much more straightforward.
Organizations designed and developed products or services, then pro-
duced, marketed, and sold them within fairly well-defi ned markets.
Individuals were connected most closely with one part of the work:
leaders and managers oversaw portions of the process or, at higher
levels, the whole fl ow. But the system itself, as Figure 1.1 shows, was
fairly linear. Each worker, represented here by a dot, was essentially
a point in a process.
Now the information age is with us, and things have changed.
Companies no longer deliver a product to a market. Instead, they
manage a mix of products, technologies, and production and dis-
tribution systems across a matrix of customers, demographics, and
geographical and logistical considerations. Sales, marketing, produc-
tion, distribution, and product and customer support work in tandem

FIGURE 1.1 Information flow in the pre-information age
workplace: the point/process model

15