This book is perfect for your next flight, as it is a quick read and a little more than 100 pages. End of Work is not focused on the start up and entrepreneurship side of business. Instead, its’ audience is that of the employee in a more corporate environment.

The preface says it all: “71% disengagement in the workplace,” (Gallup, 2004). That is a scary statistic- since is five plus years old, I imagine that this figure may be higher now.

To sum it up, this book offers different strategies in which to view your current in a more positive light so that work will become more rewarding and something less to dread. So this is not a book filled with quick get rich ideas to end your work career and make you financially independent, but instead something to cope with your current work challenges.

Each of their strategies is given a dedicated chapter, which starts with a brief situational case study. It follows that the chapter asks whether the strategy is for you and also explains the strategy in detail. The eight strategies include: Share Expertise, Initiate Change, Demand Autonomy, Create Meaning, Spark Creativity, Seize Cognition, Maintain Balance and Build Legacy.

From my big company experience, these strategies seem like various coping mechanisms for dealing with all of the bs and noise that is a large part of the corporate lifestyle. With the high percentage of disengagement, it seems that something big obviously needs to be done to rectify this situation.

Until this “miracle” occurs (I’m not holding my breath) workers can review these tactics to frame their situation so that they can find fulfillment in a tough place.

In a world driven by human and intellectual capital, traditional Org Charts, Employee Handbooks and most traditional tools that used to help enterprises to run their business have become increasingly unreliable and ineffective. High performance and value creation doesn’t originate from to traditional enterprise tools or new technologies, it originates from focusing on the human side of business.

Jack Welch had it right when he said: “The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.”

Enterprises face the biggest challenges to humanize their business since their organizations are driven by spreadsheets and shareholder value. As we’ve learned throughout the Great Recession, many companies leveraged their future away by focusing on short-term gains, destroying long-term value over time.

While shareholder value will remain a dominant metric, businesses have to focus their attention more and more on their relationships with customers, employees, partners, and all other stakeholder groups. By investing in these relationships, businesses will be able to create long-term value and, ultimately, shareholder value.

We believe that those organization aspiring to succeed in the current socio-economic environment have to understand holistically who their key stakeholders are and what they want. They have clearly defined strategies to ensure that constant value is delivered to these stakeholders. They have implemented processes to support this strategy and understand the necessary capabilities to execute processes. And they have thought through and communicated what the organization needs from its stakeholders – Loyalty, profitability, investment, etc.

Too often, metrics are derived from strategy. It seems so obvious. But it’s a trap. You can go from A to B directly, pass by C or go from A to D to C and end at B. Strategy is not a destination, it’s a choice of one path you’re going to take. Metrics help you track whether you’re moving in the right direction. Most corporate initiatives are focused on incremental improvements – expand your business to a new market, grow your product line, find new consumers. All these initiatives are developed with the belief that they will enable the business to deliver better value to all its stakeholders. That’s why focusing on the stakeholder perspective is imperative to deliver replicable value, choose the right strategy and exact metrics. When formulating strategies, businesses need to consider the wants and needs of all their stakeholders. This is not limited to primary stakeholders, the view needs to be expanded to the general public, special interest groups, legal and regulatory community. If this broad view of stakeholders is not adopted, businesses run the risk failing to satisfy the needs of their stakeholders, opening themselves up for revenge on multiple Social Media channels.

So, what is the best path for businesses to increase stakeholder value?

1) Stakeholder Satisfaction: Who are the most influential stakeholders and what do they desire?

2) Performance Strategies: What strategies should the organization adopt to ensure the desires of stakeholders are satisfied?

3) Measurement: Metrics are required to track if the chosen strategies are actually implemented. Metrics help to communicate strategies throughout the organization. Metrics combined with incentives help to speed up implementation. And, ultimately, metrics help you determine if the chosen strategy was the right one and if not, why. When the measures are consistent with the organization’s strategies, they encourage behaviors that are consistent with the mission and vision of the business.

4) Align processes with strategies: What processes do we need to put in place to allow the strategies to be executed?

5) Capabilities: What capabilities do we require to operate these processes? Today, tomorrow and in the future?

6) Stakeholder Contribution and Collaboration: What contribution does the business require from its stakeholders to succeed? How can we maintain and enhance these capabilities?

This complex exercise will help your business to face the challenging socio-economic environment and adapt efficiently. Or as Jack Welch said:

“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”

My father worked in the same company for more than 40 years. He started at the bottom, climbed the corporate ladder and retired in his 60’s. His company took care of him. He had a healthy pension, a great social work environment – he felt respected and rewarded by his. In exchange for these benefits, he had to settle: Don’t rock the boat. Keep your head down and do what others tell you. At one point, you can tell others what to do.

This world has disappeared. There are no more pensions. If corporations find somebody cheaper to do your job, you’re gone. No loyalty. No real connection between employee and employer. Just a business deal.

The  sad truth is: you’re on your own.

The exciting truth is: you’re on your own.

If you believe that following orders or going with the flow will get you anywhere, you’re better off try to make a living selling fridges in Alaska. The deal we had is gone. And it won’t come back. That’s why we need to create a new deal.

As an employee, you’re a free agent. You might still enjoy all the benefits of a corporation and the juicy expense accounts but you’re on the hot seat, ready to be  replaced by a cheaper, younger and (insert adjectives here) employee. In order to survive, you need to stand out, tap into your uniqueness. That’s a huge opportunity. Don’t feel restrained by the rules that corporations have bestowed upon you. Those rules are gone. Create your own rules. And change your workplace while you’re at it.

For companies, you need to create an open environment. An environment where free agents feel at home. Enable open communications with all stakeholders, no holds barred. No more meetings where the value of ideas is determined by the status of the employee. No more corporate silos of distrust. No more closed door conversations. Everything should be transparent and accessible.

Corporate culture can be defined as the personality of an organization. It used to guide how employees act, think and feel. Just like the Mayan culture, the corporate is almost gone. We need to replace it with community culture.

Community culture guides the whole organization how to collaborate, innovate and co-create. Develop a community culture that is the living expression of culture in everyday life. Create an environment where all stakeholders take the experiences of their lives and transform them into stories, ideas, innovations – or as some call it ‘expressive culture’.

There’s a bit of nostalgia rattling through my mind experiencing this world of corporate culture disappear in front of our eyes. It used to be the world my father lived in. Let’s make this world a better place by transforming corporate culture into community culture.

Image and T-Shirt by Origin68

Orson Welles’s first film was Citizen Kane. It’s still considered one of the most famous and highly-rated films, partly because he deployed innovative cinematic and narrative techniques. In an interview in 1969 with Huw Wheldon, Welles explained where he got the confidence to make this new kind of film:

Welles: Ignorance, ignorance, sheer ignorance – you know there’s no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession, I think, that you’re timid or careful.

Wheldon: How did this ignorance show itself?

Welles: I though you do anything with a camera, you know, that the eye could do and the imagination could do and if you come up from the bottom in the film business you’re taught all the things that the cameraman doesn’t want to attempt for fear he will be criticized for having failed. And in this case I had a cameraman who didn’t care if he was criticized if he failed and I didn’t know there were things you couldn’t do, so anything I could think up in my dreams I attempted to photograph.

Wheldon: You got away with enormous technical advance, didn’t you?

Welles: Simply by not knowing that they were impossible, or theoretically impossible.

Embracing ignorance allowed Welles to challenge the boundaries of existing knowledge and develop innovative techniques still utilized in today’s film-making.

While organizations are racing to embrace Knowledge Management and deploy systems to benefit from it, enterprises that engage in creative and innovative activity need to consider ignorance as a virtue. Accumulating and managing knowledge can become a dangerous trap when it just reinforces biases and don’t drive organizations into new ways of thinking and approaching challenges.

Knowledge Management has to find the perfect balance between deploying existential information, eliminating knowledge that has run its course and embracing ignorance in the pursuit of creativity and innovation.

There’s a reason why companies are looking for fresh blood all the time: They need to get new ideas and new assumptions into the system in order to continue to be a living organisms. Too often, new ideas and new brains are being streamlined quickly to ensure the system doesn’t break and everybody can continue on their merry way.

Enterprises need to develop systems embracing ignorance as a corporate virtue and integrating Ignorance Management into their Knowledge Management system. Human knowledge is limited, human ignorance has no boundaries. Strategic Ignorance Management will transform your business and turn your workforce from order-taking drones to creative contributors.