I think it's going to be one of the biggest middle-class jobs -- collaborators. Collaborators are people who are good at working as part of global knowledge, manufacturing or supply chains.
- Thomas Friedman
In his seminal work: The World is Flat, author and “presentist” Thomas Friedman describes a highly integrated world where business is done instantaneously with billions of people across the planet. As a result of the lowering of trade and political barriers and the technical advances of the digital revolution, a new flat world has emerged in which a call center in the Philippines answers support questions from a distributor in England for software that was designed in California, coded in India and tested in Ireland.
For some of us on the leading edge of global commerce, these developments may not come as a big surprise. But Friedman convinces us that the new flat world is no longer the stuff of futurists or presentations at the World Economic Forum. Outsourcing and collaboration are facts of life, and much more the norm than the insulated small manufacturer based in the heartland of the U.S.
As organizations and executives find themselves with two feet planted firmly in a fully interconnected, truly global economy, one truth is evident for all enterprises; and particularly for project- or service- driven businesses that rely heavily on project teams and information workers:
In his seminal work Only the Paranoid Survive, then Intel Corporation CEO Andy Grove coined what would become the de facto phrase for points in time such as this: strategic inflection points. Strategic inflection points mark full-scale changes in the way business is conducted. The ways we work, the ways we compete, and the ways we win require a new approach, a new outlook beyond simply making our existing systems bigger, better, faster. During strategic inflection points, businesses that “get it” and change, achieve unprecedented gains- those that do not, stumble and fade.
Driving our current strategic inflection point is the underlying social, economic and world infrastructure transformation of what globalization guru, author and Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls a “flat world.” In a flat world, Friedman explained to Wired magazine, organizations compete on a “level, global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance—or soon, even language.”
Friedman goes on to tell us that while Fortune 500 firms are willing participants in this global business revolution, they are not driving it. Rather they are being pulled along by groups of highly innovative, widely dispersed project teams. Most of the individuals that comprise these teams are working from basements and boiler rooms, not skyscrapers. In essence, the new flat world is being driven by a corresponding flat hierarchy of small, co-equal teams interconnected by a series of co-dependent projects. And these teams are working fast!
Futurist, trends and innovation expert Jim Carrol concurs with Friedman and notes the increased pace at which change occurs in this new flat world. In his book What I Learned From Frogs In Texas, he writes:
“As globalization and technological advances converge, competition is changing overnight, and product lifecycles often last for just a few months. Permanence has been torn asunder. We are in a time that demands a new agility and flexibility: leaders must have the skill and insight to prepare for a future that is rushing at them faster than ever before.”
While star journalists like Thomas Friedman and Jim Carrol are free to chronicle the emergence of the flat world, it is left to the rest of us to figure out how to better manage and work in it, without falling off the edge. That’s where this book comes in. It’s a practical guide to organizing and getting work done in an environment that Friedman further describes as:
“More people than ever collaborating and competing in real-time with more other people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world.”
Today’s business systems are simply not designed to plan, schedule, manage, audit and optimize work that gets done in a flat world. In fact, the origin of double entry accounting actually dates back to the last time the world was flat: the days of Columbus. More modern versions of business automation tools such as ERP, CRM and project management software want to impose a certain rigidity within business processes, and fail to address the dynamic interplay and constantly shifting relationship between projects and people, which occurs naturally in the flat world and characterizes today’s business.
To help you navigate the flat world, this book is organized into three main sections.
Part 1: Working in a Flat World, is an Executive’s Guide to the trends and implications of this new business world order.
Part 2: Project Workforce Management, describes how a new class of software and associated best practices can help businesses better manage and produce work in the flat world.
Part 3: Implementation, details how to best implement Project Workforce Management in your company.
