The Economy of Ideas #34:
From the patriarchal to the professional
by Daniel Erasmus
The biggest
employer in the world used to be General Motors. General Motors had
more employees at one time than the amount of people it took to build
the great pyramid at Giza. General Motors offered its employees
a good salary, stability and the holy grail of industrial employment a
"job for life".
The winds of change have swept through the
corridors of corporations. The certainty of "a job for life"
that was promised your father, and perhaps even your mother, is gone.
Bureaucracies facing the economic slowdown of the early 90ıs took a
hard look at their organisations. They realised that with
computing power you did not need 7 layers of management. To
increase margins business processes were re-engineered. Corporations
downsized, out-sourced, rightsized whatever the jargon meant the
message was clear: middle management must go. People were fired,
consulting companies made a lot of money and corporate red ink turned
black. The strategy was an accounting success. But with
this corporate loyalty died and the employer employee relationship
changed from the patriarchal to the professional. You are in an
organisation, not for life, but for a period of time to offer a
service. If that service is no longer valued by the
organisation, you will be rightsized. (read fired). Conversely if the
organisation does not offer an environment where your services make a
valuable contribution, change organisations.
Today
the biggest employer in the United States is not General Motors, but a
temporary work agency. The biggest employer in the Netherlands
is a temporary work agency, the Randstad Uitsendburo. The people who
work in temporary agencies represent a new class of workers.
They are not managers or labourers but free agents. People
who took control of their working lives.
This new class of
workers realised that security does not lie in a job, but in
marketable skills. A portfolio of clients
in todayıs working environment is more secure than a "stable job".
In the United States there are more that 25 million free agents.
They work from home, in networks, or at their clients offices.
The basic premise of their work is that creativity, a fresh
outlook and flexibility are the assets for a businesses booming in the
economy of ideas. They are not looking for long term jobs, but
for clients and challenges. Stagnation is their
biggest fear.
These free agents will change the rules of the
working game. Security is not a large company name or an
important title anymore. Security is in the ability to change
faster. Employability in the economy of ideas stems from
hyper-creativity, the ability to learn fast and a global network.
If your current job is not offering you these, fire
your boss and join the class free agents. [sic]
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Copyright 1999 Daniel Erasmus, The Digital
Thinking Network, http://www.dtn.net
This article is
used with permission of Mr. Daniel Erasmus.
The Economy of Ideas is first published in Intermediair, a Dutch
weekly with 250 000 readers. Without Intermediair
and Intermediair-Online's support this column would not be possible.
A selected archive is at http://www.dtn.net (English)
The
full archive can be seen at http://www.intermediair.nl/Column/erasmus/index.html
(in Dutch)
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