Work

business & working

the exposure economy

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I wrote in the post, knowledge is personal, that pretty well everything  I have achieved professionally is a result of my sharing online, especially through this blog. I still learn a lot by sharing ideas and engaging with others who do as well. But I am wondering if there is a law of diminishing returns on sharing. The platform capitalists may be winning.

My posts are shared and copied a lot: 15,905 times in 2013, according to one source. Many of my models and presentations are used inside organizations. Salaried workers and consultants use what I give away in order to earn their livelihood. For the most part, I am fine with this, as it raises my profile and the level of engagement. But it seems we are entering a time when people expect to get whatever information they need for free and feel no obligation to support the people who create it. I am beginning to question my current business model. Last week I was twice asked to work for free. In each case the person asking me to work for ‘exposure’ was a salaried employee. My bank has yet to accept exposure as a form of payment.

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uber-proof your labour

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Platform capitalism is beginning to define the economy for the second Gilded Age we seem to be entering. It requires 4 contributing factors, which when combined, create a perfect opportunity for the ‘uberization’ of almost any industry.

  1. A platform: a mobile application delivered through an oligopoly like iTunes or Google Play.
  2. A critical mass of users: upwardly mobile knowledge workers, especially those in Silicon Valley or the tech sector.
  3. Desperate service providers: people with no ability to organize due to weak or non-existing trade unions in their field, who see opportunities for better cash flow.
  4. Lack of regulations and oversight: bureaucracies that either cannot keep up with technology advances, or political leadership that condones poor working conditions in the name of progress.

Platform capitalism is not just affecting the taxi, cleaning, and hotel businesses. Many professions are getting ‘uberized’.

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a new way to work

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Corporations were created to give limited liability to organizations that were taking on large, capital-intensive projects, like building railways. Today, most corporations have little physical capital and instead derive their value from intangible goods and services. Such a significant economic shift should make us question the value of putting so much value into the corporation, when most of it now is created by workers.

Do we still need a corporation to enable wealth-creation for a post-industrial, and more importantly, a post-job, economy? For example, the open source model has shown that software can be developed faster and cheaper (and many would say better) without a corporate, hierarchical structure. There are alternatives.

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hierarchies in perpetual beta

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I have said many times that teamwork is overrated. It can be a smoke screen for office bullies to coerce fellow workers. The economic stick often hangs over the team: be a team player or lose your job, is the implication in many workplaces. One of my main concerns with teams is that people are placed on them by those holding hierarchical power and are then told to work together (or else). However, there are usually power plays internal to the team so that being a team player really means doing what the leader says. For example, I know many people who work in call centres and I have heard how their teams are often quite dysfunctional. Teamwork too often just means towing the party line.

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We are the media, now what?

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One of the potential downsides of a network society is that deception, especially by those with power over the communications platforms, will become all-too-common. John Pilger takes a look at this, focusing much of the blame on professional journalists in War by media and the triumph of propaganda.

Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers?

Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what’s called the mainstream media is not information, but power?

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the democratic advantage

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Three billion people around the world are now connected with ubiquitous digital technologies that keep improving. They also keep getting cheaper. History shows  that technology can be an enabler of democracy. Distributed communications subvert gatekeepers. John Gilmore said that, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” As networks become the new companies, we may be moving toward a more democratic future of work, with authority distributed throughout the network. One significant counter to this trend is the emergence of platform capitalism.

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The Future of HR

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“The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” – Timbuk3

Complication

Many of today’s larger companies have overly complicated, hierarchical structures. As they grew to their current size, control processes were put in place to create efficiencies. To ensure reliable operations and avoid risk, work became standardized. New layers of supervision appeared, more silos were created, and knowledge acquisition was formalized, all in an attempt to gain efficiency through specialization. Support departments, like human resources, were added to manage the resulting complicated structure.

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Working and Learning Out Loud

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Working out loud is a way to ensure others know what you are doing and to be conscious of your own work. It is being mindful of your work and how it may influence others. But working out loud is nothing if there is no time taken for reflection. Learning out loud takes you to a different level, one that may seem even more precarious. It’s sharing your half-baked ideas with the world. But these ideas, combined with others over time, can build a resilient web of innovation.

Working out loud connects us as professionals and humans. It is a highly social activity. It also exposes us, so it requires trust. While we may get interesting ideas from our informal networks, such as on social media, we still need trusted spaces to test things out. A place to test new ideas is often the missing link between doing work and leisure time. We may see something interesting while engaging on social media at night, but when it comes time to go to work, there is no easy way to make the connection. At work we need to stay focused. We might have a chance for a quick chat over lunch, but for the most part we focus on getting things done.

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An update on jobs

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Nesta, a UK-based innovation charity, recently looked at jobs and automation, in the article, Creativity versus Robots. I have summarized some of their findings, and added my own perspective, with an image showing how standardized work is decreasing while creative work is increasing in the job market. Overall, we are seeing an increasing percentage of creative jobs in the workforce. But this is not a zero-sum game, as many jobs are getting automated and disappearing. If nothing is done, there will be severe societal repercussions.

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