Work | Hinesight

Where Do You Get Your Best Ideas?

August 30, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

A favorite exercise I use in working with groups is to ask the question above. I’ve done it hundreds of times. The “joke” is that work either doesn’t get mentioned or it is one of the very last places. Here we are talking about the importance of creativity and innovation in our economy, yet our workplaces are the last places to be if we want to be creative!

The places folks mention are “walking/running, the shower, driving, meditating, sleeping, gardening, etc. The common denominator: relaxation and time to think. So, it makes sense that the workplace can be challenging for that. Phones ringing, emails, instant messages, people dropping by, meetings….Not conducive to relaxation and time to think.

Some good news is that as notion of the work “place” expands (see one of the dozen surprises on place), it is increasingly permissible to leave the office and work somewhere else….in the future, that will increasingly be a place of relaxation, so find your creative space, and claim it! Andy Hines

Filed Under: Work Tagged With: creativity, ideas, work, workplace

Another take on Future of Work Surprises

August 30, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

I really enjoyed the commentary “A Dozen Surprises about the Future of Work: Implications for Workforce Professionals” by Kristin Wolff of Enhancing Workforce Leadership. She attended my Dozen Surprises talk and I thought the notes she posted had some very insightful interpretations that y’all might enjoy. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Forecasting, Foresight, Work Tagged With: forecasting, foresight, future, surprises, work

What’s your value-add? (Future of Work)

April 1, 2011 by Andy Hines 1 Comment

The best way for re-trainers to help their clients get back into the workforce may be to help them see their “value-add,” and then working on enhancing that value-add. That was my conclusion in preparing and then talking about the future of work in my “12 surprises” talk for the Department of Labor Employment Training Administration’s Retooling for the Recovery Forum on March 31st.

One of the big issues or challenges in the future of work is figuring out the value of information or knowledge when “information wants to be free.” Organizations are rethinking their business models as digitization provides a wealth of information, but also enables what used to be a sell-able commodity to be “free.” The search for value is focusing its eye on the contribution of workers as well. What, precisely, does one “bring to the party.” In an era of global workforces, if that value is similar to the value that someone overseas brings, but they bring it much more cheaply, then….Yep, competition will often be brutal.

At the same time, there are great opportunities for individuals to rethink and retool their individual value proposition. We talked about “the return of the crafts,” in which there is demand for products that have a personal touch and story behind them. We talked about how individuals can build a name for themselves in the blogosphere. We talked about all the continuing education and lifelong learning opportunities.

But it all stems from one key “mind change.” The assumption that has to shift is when an individual believes the world owes them a living. This is often a deeply held assumption, and for re-trainers, can be a very difficult one to challenge. But as long as it is present, my sense is that individual will struggle in the emerging world of work. Step one is to clearly assess and be aware of one’s potential contribution to projects or employers. Knowing one’s value, and understanding how that is viewed by others, is the essential beginning to positioning oneself for success in the emerging world of work. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Work Tagged With: Department of Labor, global, jobs, values, work

Anticipating [A Dozen] Surprises about the Future of Work

March 29, 2011 by Andy Hines 5 Comments

I’m pleased to be able to speak to the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) Region 4 group on Thursday at their Retooling for the Recovery conference. It’s always good news to me when government agencies are practicing foresight. The goal of the conference most directly related to me is to help stimulate thinking about how work is changing, so they can in turn rethink their training programs. What jobs? What skills? ETA’s mission is to contribute to the more efficient functioning of the U.S. labor market by providing high quality job training, employment, labor market information, and income maintenance services.

I’m doing my Thinking about the Future workshop in the morning. The closing plenary is “A Dozen Surprises about the Future of Work.” The piece will be coming out in Employment Relations Today soon. In the meantime, I’ll whet the appetite with the list.

1. Augmented Humans: Hey, that’s cheating.
2. Emerging markets rewrite the rules of work and work culture.
3. Intelligence shows up in unusual places.
4. Work now, get paid later . . . maybe.
5. Time- or project-based employment contracts begin to mainstream.
6. Fairness becomes impossible.
7. Workers prefer working to live instead of living to work.
8. Work increasingly becomes a thing you do instead of a place you go.
9. Employer-provided training disappears.
10.Nearsourcing will become preferable to outsourcing.
11.Work in the happiness society changes metrics.
12.Meet the new boss, [not the] same as the old boss
— Andy Hines

Filed Under: Talks, Work Tagged With: careers, Department of Labor, future, human resources, jobs, work

Where will training come from?

February 26, 2011 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

Not from employers! That’s been the long-term trend. The crude joke is that training has moved from in-house to the outhouse. Does anyone remember the days when upon being hired, one was subject to a week’s worth of training? Then periodic training was not only available, but mandatory. Some may welcome the removal of mandatory, but the pendulum has swung far in the other direction, to the point that employer-provided training is increasingly scarce.

As a professor with the University of Houston’s Futures Studies program, I see the challenge being particularly acute for younger students without significant workforce experience. Their potential is not viewed as worth much — what experience do they have? It’s a classic catch-22. Thus, we try to provide internships, and have even tailored our curriculum to provide work samples as part of a portfolio that one may show a potential employer.

This development reflects the evolution of the workplace. Large training investments make sense when one is going to be with an organization for years or even a lifetime. They make less sense with the typical shorter stays of today’s employees, who jump from organization to organization, often as contractors and sometimes on a project-by-project basis.

An implication for individual workers is in learning how to creatively and cost-effectively get the training one needs, and build up a portfolio of skills on their own.

An implication for organizations and HR professionals is that instead of providing training, they may become a clearinghouse that identifies others sources for acquiring essential skills and knowledge.

I will talk more about this and other “surprises” about the future of work in the Spring issue of Employment Relations Todayin a piece called “A Dozen Surprises about the Future of Work.” Andy Hines

Filed Under: Education, Work Tagged With: Futures Studies, human resources, training, work

Knowing the Limits of Your Work and Technology Expertise

January 31, 2011 by Andy Hines 2 Comments

As the great Dirty Harry once told us, “A Man’s Got to Know His Limitations.” Advice I would have been well advised to have taken, as Hinesight returns to the blogosphere after a one-week absence. In the spirit of expanding my horizons, I read up on search engine optimization and decided to tweak a few settings. Right! It wasn’t long before the site disappeared, resuscitation failed, a frantic call to web developer, and a rebuild just completed yesterday.

Upon reflection, this is an issue that more and more of us in “free agent nation” will face. What do we do ourselves and what do we outsource? As one-person or small operations, this is critical. It should start with the assumption that there are not unlimited hours available for work — no matter how tempting that might be. So going down a “bunny trail” and following one’s curiosity on a problem outside one’s core expertise is a luxury that simply cannot be indulged. [not only did I wreck my site, but wasted several hours exploring, and then trying to fix it].

It requires a strong focus on what’s your expertise and what’s not. Sure, you can do a lot of things, but does it make economic sense to do so, in the face of limit’s on one’s time? It means that there are not totally “free” agents, as it just won’t make economic sense to do it all alone. So, dear readers, please join me in focusing….on what we do best. I promise! Andy Hines

Filed Under: Work Tagged With: Dirty Harry, do-it-yourself, free agent, outsource, web, work

Sandrine: A Poster Child for Emerging Values Shifts

January 10, 2011 by Andy Hines 2 Comments

In researching the emerging values shifts for my upcoming book with No Limits Publishing, I’m always eager to come across “real life” examples. Meet Sandrine Gressard Bélanger, who had hired me for a speaking gig several years back. My memory of her was as a positive, energetic, and hard worker — someone on the fast track to success.

We recently caught back up, and she relayed some significant changes in her life. She and her husband took over an Inn in the country called Auberge des Beaux Cantons, which they run as a ranch and wellness center with workshops, conferences, and performances around happiness and well-being. Her production company, Jasabel productions just launched a new motivational audio CD on Happiness with 8 songs and 10 spoken tracks. She helps people to focus on the positive in their lives and to find the happiness inside them. Not stopping there, she wants this happiness work to form the basis for working towards a society model in order to go into politics. She thinks politics can be done very differently. Her overall goal, “is to get people to reduce the economic factor from their lives and instead focus on their potential and create their lives using that and unconditional love. Then, abundance always follows and finds its way into their lives.”

There’s more (e.g., presiding over a Business Women’s Network) but you get the idea. The essence here is how value shifts are leading consumers (aka people) to increasingly make career and lifestyle choices that favor quality-of-life, self-expression, and making a difference over the old model of accumulating materials goods, wealth, and success-at-all costs. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values, Work Tagged With: happiness, making a difference, meaning, politics, self-expression, society, values, wellness, work

Coast to Coast Futures

January 3, 2011 by Andy Hines 1 Comment

Really enjoyed my appearance on Ian Punnett’s Coast to Coast radio program with University of Houston Futures faculty colleagues Peter Bishop, Terry Grim, and Garry Golden. [The show is available for download on the Coast to Coast .] Peter and I did hour #2, Terry the first half and Garry the second half our hour #3, and the Peter and I came back to take questions from callers in hour #4.

The topics ranged widely across the future. Given my current work in getting the future of values book together, I was pleased to see that topic was well-received. We talked about the postmodern shift away from an emphasis on material goods and toward the search for meaning, desire for experiences, and self-expression. We also touched on emerging jobs and how changes in the economy inevitably lead to new jobs, such as online reputation managers, virtual real estate developers, or carbon footprint managers.

We talked some about how futurists distinguish the expected future, alternative futures, and preferred futures, and that the point of our work is to help people and organizations get to their preferred futures. We also distinguished discontinuities (shifts off of the the expected future) and wildcards (low probability and high impact events).

The questions hour was fun. One caller asked about the shadow government and we were able to tie the response to our Social Change course, noting that one theory was that a power elite is the key driver of change. Ian was great and has a real interest in the future — he even came to our last Association of Professional Futurists meeting in Denver on “The Big Questions.” Andy Hines

Filed Under: Media, Values, Work Tagged With: change, coast to coast, discontinuities, jobs, postmodern, values, wildcard, work

Retirement is an obsolescent concept

December 22, 2010 by Andy Hines 2 Comments

My futurist colleagues and I have often joked about putting together a dictionary of obsolescent concepts. Entry #1: retirement! Just put together an article together on this topic for Career Planning and Adult Development Network, as they are putting together a special issue on “Golden Boomers” approaching retirement age. The bottom line is most won’t–at least voluntarily. Rather they’ll move on to the next phase of their lives. One way to capture this is “moving from the job you had to do (to survive financially) to the job you want to do.” The postmodern values values shifts toward self-expression and a search for greater meaning in life suggest that people are not going to view retirement as a reward for a job well done, but an opportunity to do something different. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Forecasting, Values, Work Tagged With: Boomers, jobs, postmodern, retirement, values, work

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