FUTURES RESEARCH

9031 Wiley7 Evolution3 (unpublished)

7. COMMUNITY

One other victim of recent progress seemingly has been that of 'community'. This has traditionally been defined geographically. Not least it emerged from the legacy of the local village, whose membership was tightly defined and behaved as if they were part of a very extended family. Such villages were, in earlier history, geographically quite separated - often more than a day's journey apart. In addition, they were often made up of a relatively small number of families, who had indeed inter-married to form a real extended family with similar interests and shared values. But even the few such remaining, genuinely isolated, communities - in the remote areas of Siberia or Alaska - are now being connected through satellite links to the Internet. This is bringing us all together in the global village. For the rest of us, in the developed world, such remote village communities have long since disappeared into the mists of history.

This is partly the result of urbanisation; though it should be noted that, in the earlier days of urbanisation, that process often took the form of creating local communities within the overall urban population. In this way, some parts of the local culture were maintained. More recently, the community has suffered the same sort of fragmentation as the family, and the pervasive suburban sprawl has even engulfed many of the remaining villages in the surrounding countryside.

Job Mobility…then, of course, there was job mobility, which we have already discussed in the context of the family. This has been just as destructive of local communities. In the old days the larger proportion of local residents also worked locally. Initially they worked on nearby farms, but as they moved into the new cities they still worked in the local factories. By necessity, indeed, the workers had to be within reasonable walking distance of those factories - so local communities had close links through the workplace as well us through social activities.

Now the typical local community supports people who spend long hours each day commuting to work many miles away. Most of these commuters now see the local community merely in terms of its dormitory aspects. Literally it is the place where they go to eat and sleep - and not much else.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• What are your links with your local community? Does your work, with its daily commuting, weaken those links?

Whatever the reasons, it is clear that the geographically defined community is no longer a viable model for most of community life. Indeed, it is irrelevant to most aspects of modern individual living. We no longer accept that the geographical area where we have our house offers the primary definition of the community to which we belong. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. There are still a few villages which, in traditions built over many years and perhaps centuries, still maintain a very vibrant local culture. There are also ethnic communities where individuals have collected together to protect their special cultures and values. But these are the exceptions which illustrate the more general rule. More typically, people now are free to choose communities to which they make a deliberate personal commitment; not those based on historical accident of birth.

Communitarians…in this respect those, most notably the so-called communitarians, who would have us return to the old style of community, and in particular to the old community values, are probably pursuing an unattainable goal. Life has moved on and, literally in some cases, bypassed these local village communities.

Having said all of that, there are still some communities of interest which remain based on geographical locations. But these typically are only on offer those rich enough to make such a selection, and invest in it. These may be communities of shared class interests, or at least a shared privilege, where the rich - members of the establishment - get together to form a socially exclusive enclave and keep out lesser mortals such as us! At the extreme they may, especially in the United States, end up as communities with armed guards to keep out all outsiders. Less often there are communities of shared social manners, and sometimes even of shared lives. For instance, there were the communes which emerged in the 1960s, though these have tended to disappear since that time.

Geographical Communities of Choice

On the other a hand, despite the failures of the 1960s, we may yet see the development of geographical communities of choice rather than of historical accident. These will emerge as the new format for very localised communities. The driver for these may, paradoxically, be the one people think is a potent force for destroying such communities - the e-Revolution. Although there has been little real activity as yet, teleworking - people working over the electronic networks from home - means that people can now live in places that would be otherwise impossible for commuters. At its extreme it might be possible for certain people to conduct their business from the foothills of the Himalayas almost as easily as from the City of London. I would immediately issue the caveat, however, that despite the claims of enthusiasts this is an unlikely to happen to most people. The new view from most 'electronic cottages' will be that of other electronic cottages scattered - in fact packed closely together - in suburbia! In any case, even this is unlikely to happen, on any dramatic scale, in the near future.

Teleworking…not least the infrastructural investment in the homes which are suitable for tele-working has yet to be made. Most houses are still only able to provide minimal facilities for life, in the evening hours, along with sleeping at night. They're obviously not built as offices. To add on office facilities to the existing domestic arrangements will often be very expensive and sometimes impossible. One only has to take a cursory glance at suburbia to wonder where all these extra offices are going to be built; on such small plots. Perhaps the now obligatory double garage will be converted to become the obligatory homeworking-office. This is the most practical solution I can think of. In some more affluent areas these developments - or at least similar forms of 'home office conversion' - are indeed beginning to be seen. If you want a hot-tip for rising stocks on the financial markets, look to those corporations which will be the suppliers to this new sector! Otherwise, as the turnover of the capital housing stock is relatively slow, it may easily take anything up to a century before we have replaced the existing houses with ones that are more suitable for this new lifestyle. On the other hand, maybe the demand for tele-working will be so powerful that it will stimulate a massive housing boom.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• How suitable might your own home be for teleworking?

As a guide, our experience shows that you should assume you will need at least the equivalent of a good-sized double bedroom for a one-person office!

Even in the shorter term we will see - limited - moves in this direction, and we will see rather more interim moves where the offices of organisations are decentralised to suburban locations. Indeed, this is already happening all around the world. You only have to drive in from an American airport to the centre of the city to realise that the heart of the city has moved out. I recently drove into Chicago from the airport in the rush hour, to discover that I was in the traffic jams. People were travelling back from their work on the outskirts to their homes in the centre of the City - the very reverse of what we have come to expect! Indeed, in a real world, where skills shortages are widespread, even the largest multinationals will want to move closer to the villages where their workers want to live. With sophisticated electronic communications this should pose no problems for them, since they at least have the resources to make the necessary investment in such infra-structure.

Our Ideal Location

Tele-working ultimately will allow the opportunity for all of us to choose the ideal geographical location for our house - matching our aspirations and allowing us to belong to the community with which we feel most comfortable. Whether commercial organisations will allow their workers the freedom to live in such communities has yet to be established. But I think it is reasonable to assume that within that the not too distant future we will see the property speculators - who are, forgive the pun, late developers in this field - at last starting to provide housing which is aspirational in the sense of providing communities of interest as well as communities of elitism. As indicated above, in the shorter term we may see more builders offering packages to convert your double-garage to an office rather than add on the now almost obligatory conservatory. When you next move, however, you would be well advised to keep in mind the likely need for an office. Having one may well make life much easier for you in the future and even give you a special advantage in the promotion race!

Ideal Communities…in this way it will now become possible for you to choose your ideal community; perhaps where you will spend the whole of your life. This is a choice that hasn't been available to most people, quite simply because the mobility necessary for making that choice has, paradoxically, meant that they could not set down roots - but were always moving on. Now, with the e-Revolution offering the possibility of working through the Internet, you can have the best of both worlds.

So the first key decision, in your new life, will be what sort of community you want to join. In practice, most people have made some such of decision during the years in their first job. When they are experimenting with work, they also experiment with lifestyles - including the location of their homes. The difference now, I suppose, is that in taking this decision you will need to recognise that this could be a choice for life. The basic question then is whether will you feel comfortable - and will be able to fulfil yourself - in the community you choose. Of course you can always move on, as in recent years most of us that have been forced to do, but in so doing you will lose some of the (social) 'investment' you have made in relationships within the community.

Enriching the Lifestyle of the Community…once you are entrenched in the community, however, there is the other side of the coin. How do you persuade fellow thinkers to join, and enrich, the community of your choice.

This is a totally new concept. The developers have built communities based upon class, or on affordability. Just sometimes these have taken lifestyles to a very high-level, so that the inhabitants need never mix with the wider world and sometimes, as I have said, that wider world is kept well beyond the boundary walls by gates manned by armed guards! Now, though, the parameters for the community may be much more subtle. So, how do you promote this to the wider world - to attract in 'customers' to share your lifestyle and reinforce the long-term potential of your community? I guess the answer is to follow the well-known rules for successful marketing. The difference, and it is a very real difference, is that you will have a totally new type of product to sell - the lifestyle community.

Residents Associations

Moving in the opposite direction, you may also want to be look at how you can protect that community; not least from the predations of national government. The area where I have had most experience, and probably the one that is most relevant in this context, is the development of what are called 'residents associations'. Unfortunately, the terminology can be confusing. At one extreme you literally have the people, in a small group of houses or apartments, who get together to share their physical amenities. At the other extreme you have much larger organisations which are used as a front for the national political parties, typically the right-wing ones, so they don't look as aggressive in the local environment.

In between are the ones that I think are really important in this context. They are the ones which are genuinely independent, ranging across all the local issues of a community. They provide the necessary political framework for the residents to pressurise, and indeed capture, the local government systems in their community. These can be very effective organisations, quite simply because they can focus much more tightly on specific local issues.

It's quite easy to start such a residents association. You just go and knock on doors and you will soon have hundreds, maybe thousands, of members. The difficulty comes thereafter, in maintaining interest. That's where having a regular news paper - albeit a photocopied one - soon starts to establish the links between the various parts of the community. Then you will soon stumble across contentious local issues where people start to feel that their legitimate views are being overridden - and this will generate sufficient interest to have some vociferous local meetings opposing what's going on! It's a terrible fact of political life that most such organisations start by opposing something, rather than trying to work collaboratively for a better future. But, luckily for our personal εvolution, one thing leads to another. So the informal opposition turns into a fully-fledged pressure group. In the local community this is much easier to manage. Once more it is door-to-door; pushing through leaflets about the issue or talking with local residents about it. And there is nothing better for stimulating the community into action than a rowdy public meeting!

Community Politics…beyond that, you probably will have to get into a local community politics! Indeed, it is not  that difficult to get local councillors elected. Most people in the community will happily support genuinely independent candidates - especially if they come from a group which they already respect, such as a residents association. The real problem is finding the people to stand as councillors, and that can be very difficult indeed. Most candidates instinctively recognise how much time it is going to take, and how much impact on their lives it will have.

In fact, they probably underestimate the workload they would be taking on. This means your community group, be it a residents association or any other form of grouping, will need to recruit significant numbers of activists. And, once again, we are back to my earlier comments about being an activist yourself. If you keep going long enough, and meet the needs of the community, the association may even grow to take over the local council, as my own group did!

It is actually a very rewarding form of political representation. Many other councillors, from political parties, feel that they are just so much 'lobby fodder' - and that is exactly what they are. But residents association councillors have a very direct link to the community's needs, and every incentive to do their very best for their own community. Not least, this means that they are able to judge most issues on the basis of what the community wants. If there is ever any doubt, it is easy enough to call a local meeting of the people involved and let them tell you what they want. The only important caveat is that you mustn't allow yourself to be overtaken by the very voluble (NIMBY) pressure groups which often try to dominate such meetings. But, if you survive these pressures, it is easy - and very rewarding - to be a residents association councillor. The only test you need to meet, over any decision, is quite simply how does it play with your voters. As long as you keep in touch with your residents, it's very easy to know what the right decision is. Unfortunately this is a lesson lost on most national politicians!

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Is there a residents association in your locality? Is it active, especially politically active? Are you active within it? Why not?

The problem, if you have wider political aspirations, is that - despite residents associations being immensely powerful at local level - they typically have no evangelical motivations to take them beyond their existing geographical boundaries. After a number of failed attempts, I have conclude that it is near impossible, to convert a residents association into a political party at the national level. The principles involved will apply just as well, but the political base will not transfer.

Internet Communities

Rather better documented are the growing communities on the global stage which - amongst the more fortunate beneficiaries of the e-revolution - are able to share their interest through the new medium of the Internet. These are communities where geography no longer enters into the equation. People can participate in them even though they are on opposite sides of the world. I myself run a conference concerned with the future of society. It has approaching a thousand contributors scattered across the face of the earth. I recently noticed that there was one in Novasibirsk and one on the North slope of the Alaska - both pretty far away from my normal contact with the outside world. Even so their contribution to the debate did not indicate any special characteristics which would have marked them out as living in such remote regions. For them, as for the rest of us, the whole world is now their community.

Such communities of interest can allow individuals the freedom to participate in ever more exotic interests. There may only be half a dozen people around the world who have the same interest, in studying some specialised ant colony, or collecting ancient coins of a particular period, but it doesn't matter since - if these half-dozen people can find each other - they can form a community of interest and share that interest effectively on the Internet. This is a great step forward, even though it will be even better when we have viable video connections. Even now, it means that the choice for you, and everyone else, is widened - almost infinitely - in terms of the range of options available to you.

Whatever your interest, you should be able to find fellow enthusiasts somewhere. So, your challenge is to find them. If such a community doesn't yet exist then set one up! All those things, with which you have bored the neighbours near to death, will now fascinate your new virtual - Internet - friends who share your exotic interests.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• What hobby, or interest, would you really like to pursue? Have you looked on the Internet to see what help for this there might be?

Affinity Groups…one particularly important form of e-community, which is now emerging, is that of the shared affinity group. As yet the needs of these are only crudely met by the broad spectrum portals, such as AOL - which, to parody it, only recognises that its members share an interest in 'entertainment'. Others, which can be very active for a time, are the web-sites of protesters. Their Internet based organisational capabilities, albeit typically focused on very narrow issues, have enabled them to run rings around governments!

The most powerful of the new 'affinity' portals will, though, be lifestyle-based communities. They will, in effect, be the electronic equivalent of your ideal geographic community, but writ large and spread over the globe. They have yet to fully emerge, so perhaps you would like to get together with some friends and start one. There are lots of Application Service Providers (ASPs) out there who are waiting to provide all the technical services you need to start-up your business! And there is at least one very good incentive for you to do this. For the first few fortunate founders, this will lead to considerable riches, for these affinity portals will become the forums where those shared ideas - the most valuable e-Revolution markets of the future - will be exchanged. If you don't start one then join one which matches your lifestyle aspirations. It may make a major contribution to a fulfilled life.

In the context of the e-Revolution, I have already mentioned one other important aspect of community - those who will use it to retain their links, especially with the childhood friends even when they are geographically dispersed. Under these circumstances the Internet also becomes indispensable in terms of maintaining links with their communities long-range, geographically, and long-term, throughout life. So the key element of the new forms of community is not the destruction of the old historical communities but is the emergence of new communities of choice. You, as an individual, will be able to choose which communities - not least the affinity group portals - you want to belong to at any point in your life. You should start to implement that choice immediately - otherwise you may waste an important part of your life.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you already belong to an interest group on the Internet? Do you belong to an affinity group on it? Do you plan to join any of these? Why not?

Lack of Emotion…it is worth noting, though, that - while the Internet may support the intellectual stimulus from such communities - it may not support your emotional needs. A keyboard and screen, or even a video wall and spoken communication, can't put its arm around you when you have problems, as a local community may be able to do. This gap remains an open challenge for these communities.

Limitations of the Internet…the technical problems, on which the most of the media still focus, have proved to be easy to solve. These days most equipment manufacturers, and software suppliers, make it simple to join the Internet - often by hitting a single button. Moreover, most people seem to be able to learn how to get past that stage in literally minutes not months. The problem is what you do when you get there. I have already indicated the problem even of finding information. The current search engines are near useless, and are getting worse rather than better. Indeed, they now deliberately make it hard for you to find anything other than the offerings of those suppliers who give them a kick-back from any sales which result. The market wins again! Over time that may be resolved, as better - and more trustworthy - search-engines emerge.

But it still leaves the problem of how you find your fellow community members rather than bits of information. Based on hard-won experience, I think it's essentially a matter of trawling through as many of your existing contacts as you can. If you are already involved in some activity, then you should know at least of a few others who are also involved and they, in turn, may well be the people to give you the best leads. There may even be a magazine covering the field, and you could ask them for contacts - or get on their letters page. It is just possible that you will get lucky, and there will be a web-site, or contact group, already in existence.

Launching an Internet Community…looking at it from the other direction, how can you set up your own interest community - if not an affinity portal - on the Net, if one isn't already there? You can't just stick a sign on the Web and hope the people will find it. There are millions upon millions of other signs trying to attract people, and it is near impossible for them to detect a specific one - even if they are actively searching. It is totally impossible if they are just there on the basis of an impulse. So you have to reverse the process I have just described. You have to advertise yourself via the contacts you already have. Get them to tell their friends. Then use the other media. Place your stories in the specialist press which covers your subject. Ideally, if they have mailing lists and quite often they do, you should persuade them - as a public duty - to let you mail suitable readers with details of the community site you intend to start. But don't think that all this is easy. Setting up a Web community is almost as difficult as setting up a geographical one!

Moving on from the slightly positive to the more negative, to one which is a very important - but probably short-term - challenge still facing many communities. This is how to handle those excluded by society, especially those in the underclasses.

Exclusion

Thus, perhaps the most invidious form of communal segregation affects those excluded from active participation in society. Most typically they are those who are currently out of work. When such people are also located in what are almost ghettos - as they often are - their communities are further deprived by the way the outside world treats them. It has been seen at its worst in the United States where there appears now an almost unbridgeable gulf emerging between those in work - who are now reasonably well off - and the under classes who - out of work - are spiralling down into oblivion. Worse still, the former seem to have accepted that the existence of the highly deprived, in the under-classes, is no less than a necessity for their own comfortable lifestyle. The result increasingly seems to look like a covert civil war; even without the intervention of global terrorists!

Fortunately, in Europe such an unbridgeable gap has yet to appear. The under-classes certainly exist but they're not yet totally consigned to oblivion, and now we are out of the 1990s recession governments are having some success in at least reducing the numbers excluded in this way. Even so, the remaining inhabitants of these communities are impoverished and excluded from many of the rights that most of the rest of us enjoy.

The suggestions I made earlier about joining the community of your choice are certainly not available to this particular section of the population. Indeed many of the things we would consider necessary for the simplest of comfortable lives, including even shops where reasonably priced food can be obtained, are not available to them. They live almost literally on the edge of society. This isolation of the underclasses is imposed from the outside. Unlike most of you readers, they have no choice in their future.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• What can you do to help the excluded?

Escape…my only advice to people who are currently excluded in this way is to escape; whichever way they can. I know that's easy advice to give, but very difficult to follow - and accordingly they have my sympathy. Perhaps they should take more direct action. God knows they have reason enough. Yet there have been remarkably few riots, which is surprising given the conditions in which they are often forced to live. Some time, probably far into the future, the rest of the society - and even the politicians - may ride to your rescue. But don't count on that happening until you have made life intolerable for them. It is significant that they only took notice of the poll tax riots in the United Kingdom, even though these were led by the middle classes, when they started to burn down the commercial centres rather than the slums! So, learn that lesson at least. If you are really desperate take a walk to your richer neighbourhoods before you open that box of matches! But, better still, use up your frustrations by turning the bureaucracy against itself; and never lose the sympathy of the communities on which you will depend by taking violent action against people rather than property.

Education Again…in the meantime perhaps the best means of escape is education. Once again, though, if you live on the sink estates this is not easy to achieve. In  particular, your local  schools usually have such difficulties that their pupils are disadvantaged from the day they start their education - and rarely are able to catch up this deficit. In addition the dominant culture in such areas is such that adults are severely discouraged from any attempt at personal advancement later. But all is not lost and, despite everything, the education route out it is still far easier than most of the other alternatives. My own university is genuinely open to everyone (as its name, Open University, suggests). As it employs distance-teaching, you can study at no cost - the fees for disadvantaged students are picked up by government - and you can do this behind closed curtains, so that even your closest neighbours do not realise you might be getting ideas above your station!

Once you have some form of qualification, which these days is essential for almost any job worth the name, you can start your search your more rewarding employment - and begin the slow climb out of those dire circumstances. Coming from a sink estate it will still not be an easy task. Even your address will alert employers to your past problems, and may be enough to deter them from employing you. But, I repeat, it is probably still the best - maybe the only - chance you have to escape from those circumstances. For the rest of us, perhaps, the warning is simply never to fall into such dire circumstances.

Future Plans

In fact, in these uncertain days it can happen to any one of us, especially if we don't plan our future correctly. If, in the heady days of youth, we accept short term pleasures - especially those debilitating ones offered by some (hard) recreational drugs - rather than make the long term investments, we may sell our future short. This is, therefore, a particular problem for the modern young generation. Perhaps it always has been, with previous generations. But, in the case of modern youngsters, they have been presented by society with so many rights - without having any corresponding responsibilities - that they often fail to understand their own long-term needs. Once set on the wrong path, and in particular not taking advantage of the investments in education which are available, some children unwittingly seal their own fate. Unfortunately, on the sink estates this becomes an inevitability for almost all of these. The only role models the youngsters have available to them are likely to be people who have lived around them on the sink estates - and who may have had not a single permanent job in the whole of their lives.

Saving for Old Age…all of us need to invest in some form of personal planning, throughout our whole life. Only with this can you know where you are going and how your progress towards that end will be achieved. In particular, these days when social budgets are becoming so large and the population at large is becoming so tax averse, you will almost certainly need to make suitable provision for your old age. There is at least a reasonable chance that nobody else will do this for you.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Have you planned for old age - in financial terms at least? Are these plans viable in view of the problems facing the financial services industry (and even governments) world-wide?

It is not surprising, therefore, that there is at present a great fear of poverty in old age. People certainly are living longer. Equally, working lives have in recent years shortened; to the extent that you may now be expected to retire in your mid-fifties - a whole decade earlier that used to be the case. The net result is that the larger amounts of money you need to save, to fund the longer time in retirement, have to be saved over a period that has dramatically shortened. The recession of the 1990s threw many millions of people out to work - in particular, almost for the first time, middle managers 're-engineered' out of their jobs - and significantly expanded the numbers in the under classes. Fortunately, in its place, across much of the world outside of the US, we are seeing the emergence of a significant skills-shortage. Unfortunately, the unskilled will still see little relief, and they represent most of the people living on those infamous sink estates. In modern society a lack of any skills means that you have you have very little to offer employers and society offers you even less in return. This is the reason I suggested that education is the best chance for such people to escape from those circumstances.

Skills Shortages…but, assuming that you have some skills, increasingly as evidenced by some form of qualification, then your work is likely to be increasingly in demand. What is more, these skills are likely to be in demand for much longer. The recent (artificial) lowering of retirement age, used by many corporations as a hidden form of redundancy, will soon cease. Instead the retirement age will soon return to the level which used to exist; typically 65 years of age. What is more, it will go beyond that - to more than 70 years old. The European Commission, for example, expect that within a very few years such a retirement age - of 70 years or more - will become mandatory (replacing the current ones of below 65 years). The 'Ageing' task-force run by the United Kingdom Department for Trade and Industry (DTI), of which I was a member, certainly believed this would eventually come to pass. Our only problem was how to kick-start industry into sharing the same view! When it does come, though, it will also apply to almost everyone, not just the privileged few.

Of course, this has a massive implications in terms of the resources that are available for supporting people through their old age. Not least, it takes a large chunk out of the numbers counted as being in their old age - and receiving state support as of right. But it also generates a significant amount of new money, derived from a much longer working life, to invest in supporting all those on the periphery of society. The scale of the impact, indeed, will not just be an increase from 65 to 70 years - which by itself would add a good ten per cent to the overall earnings available to society - but will be that from 55 (the effective current retirement age) to 70. That will give a 40 per cent increase to the life-long earnings available to society - a massive boost; which is why our DTI task-force was so keen on it!. When this happens nobody will bother to ask the question 'can we afford a welfare state?'!

Investment in the Individual…is the single greatest investment that society makes; far greater than all its investments in machinery and property. If that investment is now to be spread over a 40 per cent longer period it immediately becomes that much more efficient; which is one of the reasons why we will see such a boom in education, especially life-long-learning (LLL). It will also ensure the we have the money available for all those in the community who need our support - and won't even need to consider whether we can we afford this. The question will, once more, seem as ridiculous within the next few years as it once did to the more optimistic post-war policy-makers!

Lifestages in Work

On the other hand this poses the counter-intuitive problem that some people will believe that we are taking time - the extra time in retirement - away from them. They will still want to retire at 55 because, to put it simply, they hate the job they're doing. That is one reason why life-stage planning has now become so important, for organisations as much as for individuals. Without it we won't agree to continue in work beyond the earliest point individuals can afford to retire.

In particular, it is not unreasonable for a 55 year old person to refuse to accept the same demands as a 22 year old, and we should not be surprised if they walk away when they are treated in this way. It will, therefore, be increasingly important for all organisations - in a situation where the skills shortages are overwhelming - to create the jobs that we want to do. This means that many, if not most, jobs are going to be much richer in the opportunities they offer us. They may well even be much more entertaining. If this happens we then will want to stay on at work much later in life. When this comes about, retirement will not beckon to us in quite such an alluring way.

Indeed, the whole life-stage philosophy is one key to improving all aspects of our lives - at each stage, not just the final one. It will, it is true, enable us to better fund that last stage but it will also enable us all to enjoy the maximum fulfilment at all stages of our lives - the objective I set in the first chapter. In particular, the stages which currently tend to be ignored - those leading up to retirement - will become much more fruitful. Indeed, these may well be the most productive for the community; and certainly will be the most productive for the individual as well as the most enjoyable for them.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you enjoy your work? Or can't you wait to retire? What would make your working life rewarding enough for you to stay?

So, the answer to what at first seems to be the most intractable problem of all - the seeming demise of family and community - is perhaps the easiest of all to deal with. Simply wait; and let the new structures emerge naturally, in their own time. In fact, this may not prove so easy in practice. For everyone, from the establishment down, will be telling you that these new developments are wrong - indeed the work of the devil! Even so, ignore these doomsayers. Tolerate, and even encourage, these developments. Where it suits you, participate in them. The future, a far better future, will eventually emerge; and nobody, even backed by the might of the establishment, will be able to stop this.

The next chapter, though, embarks once more on a series of topics where you will have to exert your personal influence, starting with the future of your working life.

8. WORKING, AND WORKABLE, FUTURES

We can now return to those areas where the e-Revolution is having the most direct impact on our lives in the shorter term. Thus, we will experience some of the greatest changes at our place of work and indeed in the shape of the work we do. Not least, the days when people like us had just one simple job to do for all of their lives are long since gone. In fact even that was something of a myth. We were all much more versatile, necessarily so, than the traditional descriptions of such work have allowed for. More important, for several decades now, most of us have changed our jobs at least once every 10 years. But, it has to be admitted, our movement between jobs is now much faster - though more often within the same organisation - and it probably will get faster still in the future.

Just as important, the jobs we do will become increasingly complex. In the old days it was sufficient for work on the production line to be split down so that each of us had just one job - even, with the more dubious applications of work study, just one movement of our hand - and we sometimes repeated that over and over all day, every day. That particular hell has now typically been replaced by the much more sympathetic office environment, where we handle many different problems, viewing them from almost as many different perspectives. This may look less efficient - especially to a previous generations very aware of the strict O & M (Organisation & Methods) rules applying on the production line - but in fact we have shown that we are quite capable of handling the flexibility now involved. And this provides us with significant additional gains, in that our work also has become that much more interesting. It should be even more attractive for employers, since its greater appeal to the workers they now need to recruit makes an otherwise impossible recruitment task just about achievable - but only if they put considerable effort into being seen as a 'good' employer!

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Is your job still constrained by O&M rules? Or does it demand a flexible approach to a range of situations? How has it changed over the past 20 years?

Job Enrichment

So we have to look to a situation where we'll undertake an ever wider range of tasks in our jobs. I may be somewhat extreme in this respect, since my work recently has ranged from to doing my own photocopying, to teaching students and even to some international diplomacy. But I have no problem accommodating these various roles.  Maybe the photocopying element does not really add interest to my life, but the other contrasting experiences certainly make up for that. Similarly other people, although they may not be operating across quite such a wide range of tasks, have no problem handling the spectrum of skills these demand. The fact is that you can almost certainly handle a far more complex set of tasks than your employers realise. I guess even your own boss probably underestimates your potential. What is more, if nobody tells you so, you probably do not even recognise your own abilities!

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you successfully handle a range of tasks in your daily work? Does your boss realise how 'multi-skilled' you are? Is your work now driven by queries from others?

Office Work…so our more typical experience now is likely to take place in an office environment; answering a wide range of queries coming in, usually by telephone or other electronic communications. This requires very different skills from the 'good old days'. Not least, many of these skills now take the form of the IT skills without which we would be unemployable. Despite all the horror stories you have heard, of the threats posed by the e-Revolution, in many respects these IT skills are just about the easiest to learn. More difficult - but also more interesting - is the range of knowledge-based skills we now need to develop, to handle all the different variations of questions we will be asked. Less well recognised, but becoming increasingly important, is the skill of communication itself. It is now reckoned that we spend more than half our time communicating with other individuals. That communication may still be face-to-face, but now is just as likely to be through the medium of our telephone or increasingly through our PC. But, in all cases, this poses very different challenges from those of traditional work and it is one which is as yet poorly served by the education industries and badly recognised - if at all - by employers.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• What proportion of your time do you spend communicating with others; face-to-face, by phone, of through your PC?

Develop your IT Skills…so, my first advice to you, if you want to improve your position in the world and in particular in your job, is to develop at least some of these new skills; especially those relating to IT. In any case, we all now know that these are an essential requirement for employment in modern society. On the other hand, beyond these basic skills, you now will also need to develop some knowledge skills and in particular the intellectual frameworks needed to handle such knowledge. These frameworks will be explored in more detail in the later chapter on skills and education. But, above all, you will need to develop your communication skills, and these may well be much more difficult to achieve, because no-one as yet really teaches these in the context of real-life communications.

Communications Skills

Traditionally, so-called communications skills have been taught in two very different environments. One is for sales personnel, where what is often taught is really about how to lie most effectively. That will scarcely produce the most effective results in day to day communications - even with customers - where the need to build trust is paramount. At the other extreme, 'managing meetings' prepares managers to best manipulate the people reporting to them. And again this is scarcely an ideal model for the normal communications processes. Why do almost all those selling us communications skills assume that we want to be charlatans or monsters? There is an enormous gap, in this area of communications skills, between what is required and what is offered; not just by training in the commercial world but by the education system as a whole. So, at present, we are forced to learn our basic communications skills from experience. We 'apprentice' ourselves - usually unknowingly - to our mentors. This may be quite an effective process - after all that is how we learn our basic language skills as infants - but it does beg the question as to whether this is the best way, or whether it is even sufficient to meet the new needs of society.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• How well do you communicate with others; verbally face-to-face and on the phone, or written through the PC? Have you ever been taught the skills you need to handle these various forms of communication? Why not? Would such training help you in your work?

Life Long Learning (LLL)

One thing which is becoming obvious to policy-makers, though not to employers, is that further training for your current job should no longer be your only priority; even that in IT skills. Such training should, of course, be willingly accepted; not least because it is the sort most likely to be offered. But it is wider education, preparing you for future developments, that you should most eagerly seek. Above all, this education should provide you with the new intellectual frameworks which will to help you assimilate the information that will soon flood into your brain from every direction. Without the intellectual lifeline they offer, you may drown in the coming flood of information!

Another excellent reason for investing in wider education is that you will, over your life, move through multiple careers. I said that in the old days people did move around and change jobs - perhaps a once every 10 years - but now people are changing their whole career even more frequently. You will also remember the statement I made at the beginning of this book, that of the European Commission saying that 80 per cent off technology will change completely over the next ten years. You can see, therefore, that it is going to be difficult - indeed well nigh impossible - for you to rely for long on just the set of skills that you currently have. The solution to this is not - as many employers would claim - ever more retraining; typically on the job. This may improve the standard of your current performance, and offer that employer an ever more efficient workforce, but it does nothing to prepare you for the future bearing down on you. The threat posed by the rapid technological change is that your current job will soon disappear, and you will have to embark on some as yet unspecified new career. So, the solution has to be found in an education which prepares you for the new skills as they are demanded of you.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• How well educated are you? Will this be sufficient for the career changes which may face you? How will you rectify any shortcomings?

Education…in this context is about providing the overall knowledge and understanding within which you can best manage the changes in your life - including the new skills which you will need to meet the future. But, as we will see later, this is no longer an education which finishes the moment you leave school. Indeed, it is education through the whole of your life. To use a very inelegant buzz-word, it is Life Long Learning (LLL). But that is missing, as yet, for most people. Educationalists talk a great deal about it - and in particular those in government pronounce on it with monotonous regularity - but they do remarkably little about it.

You may be comfortably settled in your current career, but the implication of all of this is that you must even now start to prepare for your next one. No matter how pleasant life currently is, as soon as possible you should start to educate yourself for the next one. No longer is it sufficient to lapse into a permanent state of educational torpor once you have got your first job. Instead you'll have to immediately think about the next one - because if you don't everyone else will. One specific example of the sort of development you might have to cope with will be the move from the tradition of an employer who directly employs you - often in earlier times for whole of your working life - to a situation where many employers are constantly sub-contracting various elements of their business to individuals, or other organisations.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• What is most likely to become your next career? How will you need to prepare for it?

• Will you become an independent sub-contractor? If so, how will you handle this?

Subcontractors

This has already posed major problems for those workers who, in recent years, have been 're-engineered' or 'released' - or whatever 'neutral' word has been cynically used instead of the reality of redundancy. Not least, it has been seen as a way for the larger organisations to put their workers into indirect employment, as contractors, so that their wages can be reduced. This has been an unfortunate, albeit short term, development - since it introduced the new multiple (contractual) relationships in an atmosphere of considerable cynicism. Quite rightly, we now distrust our employers and their cynical 'efficiency' measures, especially when they often proudly boast they are taking this money from us to give more to their shareholders!

'Demands of the Labour Markets'… is one especially unfortunate term used to justify this process, since it implies workers are a commodity to be used, and then to be thrown away like any other commodity. And that is exactly what bad employers have done. As we will see later, though, when we consider this in terms of 'intellectual capital'  - as it is increasingly being seen - it does not in practice follow the rules of any other commodity. For, in such new labour markets, there are a wide range of options now available on both sides of the bargaining table. Even bad employers now recognise that they need certain core skills that have to be retained. These are the skills which are  essential for day to day operations. Without them the business will be very much in jeopardy.

Labour Economics…as a result, these core workers are still privileged, and continue to receive all the benefits of full employment from their employers. At the same time, employers are supposed - in the new economic theory - to have a variable need for 'peripheral' workers. Where these are easily available - they can come and go in what is literally a commodity market - these can be hired and fired at the employer's whim. In many respects it is these peripheral workers who have been the worst victims of the fashion for sub-contracting, in what is comfortingly - for the sake of the self-esteem of employers - described as a 'more flexible labour market'.

Hidden beneath the machinations of employers - which, let us admit it, are simply aimed at reducing costs - there is another group emerging. It is made up of an increasingly large group of people - even amongst 'peripheral' workers - with scarce specialist skills. Such specialisation may at present be mainly seen in the professions, or those who provide professional services, but it is spreading to the areas of less skilled services.

Expert Sub-Contractors…the seductive theory of this, and sometimes the practice of it, is that each of these specialised operations is then handled by experts in the field. Indeed, it is difficult - in theory - to argue that a company which is expert in manufacturing and selling cars should be equally effective at running catering operations and it is just as easy to see that a catering supplier - of which there are many from which to choose - might be very expert in this area.

As I have already indicated, however, the real problem has - to date - been that in too many situations this has been deliberately used to disadvantage the workers involved! Fortunately, this is already changing, because of the emerging skills shortages I mentioned earlier. Soon employers will no longer be able to use sub-contracting just as a means of driving down wages. Indeed, as scarcities set in, they will see, no doubt to their horror, that such sub-contractors will be able to demand dramatic 'wage' increases! The coming shortage of workers in developed countries will mean that the suppliers of these skills will be able to ask ever higher prices for their services, the very reverse of most employers' original rationale in setting up these systems.

When this happens, many organisations will try to bring these employees back into the fold, in order to guarantee their 'labor' costs. At that time you and I, as ordinary workers, will find ourselves - for once - in the very pleasant position of being wooed by these employers. They will be increasingly desperate to engage our services - and at last we will be able to choose the work we really want to do. It will truly be a sellers' market. We will be able to sell our labour to the highest bidder.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• What is the position in your organisation, and in your industry? Are sub-contractors used as a means of reducing labour costs, rather than to tap specialist expertise? What will happen when their skills move into short supply and the position is reversed?

Even so, the worst thing we could do in such circumstances would be to succumb to short-term greed. Instead, we should use the opportunity to create a new system. We need one which will work for us in a much better way, not just in the good times but in the bad which may eventually return.

Employability…it has been said that the new protection against unemployment of the individual is no longer that of lifetime employment - which used to hold in a few large organisations, most notably in the Japanese corporations. Instead the new guarantee for employees is now said to be employability. This is the acquisition of, and maintenance of, a set of skills which make you employable on the labour market. You will have gathered, from my earlier comments, this is no longer a static set of skills but one you must constantly update; to meet the changing needs of employers. What better incentive for treating yourself to some LLL could there be!

Self-Employment

It is possible that, in future, an ever wider range of facilities in organisations will be best be handled by specialist contractors or self-employed individuals. In a multi-employment society they may even be provided by individuals sharing their skills across different employers at much the same time. These 'employees' will enjoy all the benefits of 'full-time employment' but spread across a number of different employers who are so desperate to add them to their core work-force, that they will be prepared to buy only a part of their time! What a joy it will be for us to be so wooed and cosseted!

This already happens at the lower end of the labour market where some service workers can have several jobs over the course of a day. Postmen may complete their morning rounds and then move on to their second jobs, or a children's nurse may be a barmaid in the evening. These people are, however, not cosseted. They have usually been forced into this position because they need the extra incomes just to survive. Even so, we may see people in future following a similar pattern simply to enhance their already rich lifestyles. For them the main benefits may not be purely monetary. Thus, the main benefit of consultancy work for business management academics like myself is not the money - though that certainly helps - but is the experience of real business life which we can build upon in our classroom teaching.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you already have any other jobs in addition to your primary employment? If so, why? Do these different jobs complement each other; can the ideas you find in one be productively used in the other?

If they are wise, employers too may value the extra experience their staff get working for others. Cross-fertilisation of ideas is valuable for all organisations. So far only a few organisations have recognised this, and they have mainly implemented it by putting workers 'on assignment' with other organisations - especially those in the voluntary sector. Even so, the major benefit they have gained comes from the additional skills acquired by their staff.

9. A NEW MODEL OF EMPLOYMENT

All of this sounds remarkably chaotic - almost totally uncontrolled - and this may frighten many bureaucrats. We will shortly see, however, that in some respects this seeming chaos is the new model for industry! In fact, from an individual's point of view, it will be much less anarchic than it might seem. A typical example might be that you will be primarily employed, probably with a relatively short working week, by one organisation. This may well be what I will call your core employer - a 'blue chip' company such as IBM or Citibank. In other words, your 'safety net' will be provided by one of the well-recognised 'old' employers - working for them 'full-time' - in the new sense.

Or you may be primarily working for one of the agencies which subcontract people on a temporary basis to other organisations. These will increasingly act as full-time employers on their own account. Manpower - the world's largest commercial employer albeit mostly of temporary staff - already does so for some of its employees. The result may be confusing for some - not least the employers. You will sit at a desk in an organisation, just like the full-time employees around you. You too will be permanently employed, but by the agency which has supplied you. Perhaps, if the skills shortages are very deep, your 'temporary' assignment will be on a semi-permanent basis to the organisation which is itself directly employing those around you! In other words, the boundaries - inside and outside - between people and organisations will melt.

From your point of view the situation will be clear; you will owe your allegiance - however temporary - to the organisation which is ultimately paying your salary and, of course, to the one which takes care of you when there is no work around - even if it does take a cut of your various working salaries to cover that! You will, once you are used to the idea, switch between the organisations you are contracted out to on an almost daily basis - with barely a blink of the eye. Many of us are already doing just that - but as yet without the feeling of security the new arrangements will engender.

Core and Self-Employment…but the main difference in future may be that - in addition to your core job - you will also be self-employed. You will get home from the 'office', perhaps at lunchtime, and will sit down to start your second job. Possibly this will be writing a book, as I am doing at this moment, whilst my core job is as a university academic. Maybe you will run an art-class or your will coach a sporting team or you will landscape your local park - all on a contract basis. The point is that each of us will be able to choose a portfolio of additional contract jobs, just as we are now able to choose our core job. If you have a fascinating core job, to which you are totally committed, you may even want to spend all your time on that - though few of us are that lucky. For many of us the great attraction of having several jobs, which complement each other to offer real variety in our lives, is that it will be the best - and certainly the most balanced - solution for a fulfilling life.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Would you like to have part-time (self-employed) jobs, to see how the rest of the world lives?

Permanently Self-Employed…at a different level, there may well be those of us who wish to sell our skills all the time on a self-employed basis. This already occurs, but the opportunities that the e-Revolution offers will make this much more attractive for many people. The Internet developments in the pipeline - which will make it much easier for individuals to market their skills in this way - will make it more attractive still. Indeed, by far the biggest drawback of almost every form of self-employment is that you still have to sell what you have to offer The new developments on the Internet simply will make this task much easier, so that it becomes almost invisible. Increasingly the Web offers a literally global market-place for our new skills. Thus, more and more of us may wish to spend our lives selling bits of ourselves - as small 'parcels' through the Internet. In this way we will be able to earn a good living and, more important, one that we both enjoy and find fulfilling.

Lifestages in Employment

This is one of the aspects of employment which will closely be tied into lifestage - which we looked at in the earlier chapter. It is obvious that youngsters experimenting with jobs will, in any case, move around from organisation to organisation, for the experience, though probably still working 'full-time' with each. Eventually they will find their core niche, the one they find most comfortable. When we come to the family stage of an individual's life, I would expect that at least one of the partners will want the stability of longer-term employment. On the other hand, their partner, or sometimes even both of them, may value the contract working element as a way of handling child-care responsibilities.

The most interesting part will come after the children leave the nest; leaving behind the 'social entrepreneurs', the 'empty-nesters'. Those individuals will be in a much better position to sell themselves on the Internet market. They have no family responsibilities; and will typically have a financial nest-egg to buffer them through the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life. More important, they are likely to have the incentive to - at last - fulfil their potential in whatever way they want. Again, they may sell themselves as authors or as researchers. Perhaps they will choose to be just security guards. They will be able to watch over their charges, perhaps on the other side of the globe, using their Internet/television interface to do this from the comfort of their own home. The important point about all of these developments is that they will allow us much greater freedom, to create the employment environment we want. This will not least be in terms of the variety of employment we will be able to tap into. It will enable us to meet the objective, spelled out in the first chapter, of fulfilling ourselves!

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Can you see yourself, when you reach the 'social entrepreneur' lifestage, launching yourself out onto the self-employed market; or are you already there? How would you cope with this? What education, in particular, will you need?