You’ve seen the trends. You’ve read the headlines. Change is inescapable.
We’re on the verge of a demographic tsunami. By 2020, Millennials will make up 50% of the workforce, and 75% of the workforce by 2025.
Last year, Baby Boomers were retiring at the rate of 11,000 per day. This year, it’s 14,000 per day. We’re facing a huge gap in the passing on of knowledge and skills from generation to generation.
Technology is giving us more information faster than ever before, and giving us instant global connectivity. The rate of connectivity is increasing exponentially.
In response to these trends, companies are focused on workforce recruitment, retention, and management. Many are also emphasizing their social and environmental responsibility practices. While these responses are a good start, there is a much bigger problem that needs to be addressed. That problem is in the shape of a pyramid.
When we picture an organizational structure, typically a pyramid comes to mind. Under the pyramid model, power and privilege are concentrated at the top. It then trickles down through the ranks, leaving those at the bottom with the heaviest workload and the least privilege.
For centuries, the pyramid structure kept monarchies stable, dictated the rank-and-file system of the military, and enabled factories to manufacture highly reproducible goods from assembly lines. The model served America’s manufacturing economy well, helping it surge for most of the 20th century.
In the 21st century, information economy, however, leaders must remove the layers, get rid of the bottlenecks, and create a culture where their organizations can transform at the speed of change. Not only do they need to help their organizations transform, but they must be willing to be transformed themselves.
How to we do this? Where do we start? These are questions I addressed in a webcast on the subject last week.
Check out the webcast or join me next month at the Future of Work Conference in Boston to:
- Learn how economic systems have shaped our leadership models over time.
- Discover how those leadership models hold up in the information economy.
- Understand the transformative leadership model.
- Find out the 7 key practices of a transformative leader.
If you don’t like change, you’re going to hate extinction. Leaders who successfully navigate the 21st century will be transformative role models who ditch the pyramid mindset.
Join me as I present on Transformative Leadership at the Future of Work event in Boston! Register here
Question: Are there functional groups or levels in your organization where information gets blocked? How does that impact performance?
