2013: The Year of the ‘Who’

The turning of the new year is the traditional time for prognosticators to weigh in on what’s ahead. I’ve been known to do a bit of this myself, but this year there will be no predictions about the stars – movie, music, or celestial – although I do have one about sports. Most, however, are about the future of work.

My first prediction: A Person is a ‘Who’, Not a ‘What’: Teamability and the Future of Work will be published in 2013. (There’s some hedging here, since the first draft is complete, and Mark’s been Vision Forming it at an ever-increasing pace.)

Here are the rest:

  • The valuation of teams and ‘teaming’ will supersede the longstanding focus on talents, skills, experience, and ‘leadership’ because it is where people come together that true value creation happens.
  • There will be a new emphasis on promoting from within – but by casting a much wider net for potential successors, creating new opportunities for non-traditional paths to advancement.
  • Role-fit and Team-fit will become essential elements in the forefront of consulting for workforce planning, team selection, and management practice, as people begin to realize that both engagement and retention depend on them.
  • Sales will no longer be looked at as just one kind of job category, because people will recognize the profound differences required to ‘team’ with different kinds of customers, for different products, with different sales cycles, and different value propositions.
  • Applied research in the workplace will begin to produce new standards for Role Distribution and Coherence Ratios in vertical markets and functional-areas of business.
  • ‘Role-based Attraction’ will emerge in job-sourcing, as phrasing designed to appeal to the desired Roles will find its way into job requisitions and postings. Cost- and Time-to-Hire will decline, and Quality of Hire will improve because of this.
  • If you know me, you know I often say leadership is a team sport. (It’s just about the only sport I’m tall enough to play!) But as professional sports teams catch on to the power of Teamability, they will be able to calibrate their team synergy for peak performance and build winning team cultures to replace an unreliable ‘star system’.

Finally, as we stop pretending that a resume is a true reflection of a person’s worth, we will begin to honor the dignity of all those who contribute to the achievement of business value.

In my view of the future of work, people will be treated as ‘Who’s, not ‘What’s. It will be a future in which teaming technology enables more and more people to find and fulfill their true mission in life.

Is there anything more likely to produce Peace on Earth and goodwill to all? May you join us in that dream for the coming year and beyond!

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