DECADES AGO (1998 & 2006) I WROTE "CHANGING THE WAY AMERICA WORKS”--(AND THE WAY PEOPLE WORK.)
At that time I was drafting a book, of the same name, which remains unpublished. That title morphed into a series of articles, and a discussion topic at The Reunion Conference™ a Roundtable I hosted annually from 1997 to 2013. Here we are, another decade later, and see how much has changed, and yet how much remains the same.
Starting in 2020, COVID caused the American people to realize they could change their workplace from an office or a job location to their home. In many cases, they could avoid long commutes, high gas prices and the watchful eyes of management—and still get their job done in less time than before—creating free personal time to use as they wanted. This led to the worker preference for Work-at-home, and made managers wonder if this was a good idea. How could they manage and control this widely distributed workforce and its workplaces?
CULTURE IN WORKPLACES CHANGED, AS DID FREEDOM TO WORK AT A NEW PACE—HIGHLY VARIABLE, LESS REGIMENTED
But it’s hard to collaborate on getting things done when people are widely distributed, or even know if collaboration is occurring. For the first time in generations, workers are more measured by how, when and if the jobs get done. That’s not a bad thing—until the jobs that required collaborative efforts on defined time frames don’t get done. Who is to blame? Workers? Management? Both? Or the new way of working?
PEOPLE IN CERTAIN KINDS OF JOBS BEGAN TO REALIZE THAT THEY NO LONGER HAD TO LIVE AND WORK IN A DEFINED PLACE—AN OFFICE COMPLEX, WITH CUBICLES, AND CONTROL
Some kinds of work had to be done where the customers were—personal service jobs were especially customer-location-delivery sensitive. The entire restaurant & dining out industry changed a lot. Remote ordering via tablets grew, but someone had to deliver the food. A whole industry of food delivery arose. Without large offices full of employees, there was no lunch-time rush, and cocktail hours changed too. The “Great Migration” has begun (I don’t mean immigrants from outside our borders—but that too has begun). I mean the migration of value adding people and companies out of failing cities and states led by NY, CA, and IL, but those three are far from the only ones—moving to places like TX, FL and even OH and a host of sensible Midwestern and South Central states and cities.
NEW FORMS OF SELF-SERVICE EXPLODED
What changed very little was personal services like beauty salons, barber shops, etc. because the service-delivery person and the customer needed to be in the same place at the same time. Not so with many other jobs, and customers. Air travel shopped, reserved and ticketed by electronic devices—smart phones, tablets, personal computers. DIY pump and pay at the gas station (until or unless gas stations get replaced by EV charging stations—another topic entirely). Grocery stores still exist where people “pick & pack & pay for” their groceries—or simply order electronically and have them delivered to a huge Work-At-Home society. Many jobs previously done by people are now done by the customers using electronic devices or smart swipe-insert-or tap credit cards.
HUMAN WORKER-CUSTOMER INTERACTION IN THIS NEW MODEL IS REDUCED DRAMATICALLY
With no “boss” at the “office” people work when they want (within boundaries and deadlines), and often practice “quiet quitting,” disappearing from jobs only to be discovered when no one answers the phone or computer or does the work at all. When workers are no longer tied to the jobs and people they serve, more changes. Companies no longer must stay in locations that are not “company-friendly” and the "great migration" is underway. Why live in traffic clogged cities, to work in large office buildings, requiring expensive commutes (trains or cars) and incur big fees including parking the car. Workers found an hour or two per day free—not trapped in traffic, listening to radios in their cars or working on electronic devices on a commuter train.
THE DECENTRALIZATION AND MOBILIZATION AND FLEXIBILITY OF SO MANY OTHER PARTS OF WORK & LIFE ARE NOW CHANGED, NEVER TO BECOME THE SAME AGAIN
Working women, now over half of the work force, find new child-care solutions when working at home. It’s possible to change diapers or get kids off to school, while on Bluetooth wireless ear buds, talking to a colleague at “work.” Unlike prior periods, Immigration is totally out of control. The America that welcomed LEGAL immigrants in the past, who were assimilated, became part of the fabric of the US economy and an expanded workforce. Not in 2022. Immigration is now a flood of an uncontrolled, unmanaged and illegal/undocumented immigrants.
AS SOCIETY CHANGES, GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO CHANGE—LEADERSHIP AND MANAGERIAL SKILLS GROW IN IMPORTANCE—FLEXIBILITY, ADAPTABILITY & CONSENSUS BASED COLLABORATION BECOMES EVEN MORE IMPORTANT.
HOW ARE WE DOING IN AMERICA’S NEW ENVIRONMENT? A HEADLINE GLIMPSE AT AMERICA’S SITUATION LESS THAN A MONTH BEFORE MID-TERM ELECTIONS SAYS, “NOT VERY WELL AT ALL.” MANAGEMENT IS NOT GOOD. LEADERSHIP IS EVEN WORSE. A MASSIVE LEADERSHIP CHANGE IS NEEDED—AND COMING—IN THE NEXT SEVERAL YEARS!
"BIDEN’S MAKE-BELIEVE VICTORY OVER INFLATION"—A Bizarro world detached from reality.
Don’t turn on the TV for too long. You’ll wonder what reality America’s elected leaders are living in these days. President Joe Biden and his administration seem to be totally lost in an alternate reality, one in which they are declaring success of their misguided policies that are in fact, not making things better. The facts say that those policies are making everything worse. The old Seinfeld TV show in 1996 called it a “Bizarro" universe in which everything seems normal, but nothing is really normal at all—quite the opposite.
“ROBUST ECONOMY WEAKENS MARKETS OUTLOOK”—A contradiction in itself, this headline sums it up. The economy seems conflicted; growing and struggling to find enough workers, and each upset causes the stock market to either dive or climb—illogically. The inept Biden’s border “czar” is the equally inept VP Kamala Harris, who has yet to even visit America’s southern border to experience the chaos there. Immigrants flood into the US by the millions, with no idea where they will go or what they will do, but somehow believing it’s a better place to be. However, the Fed continues trying to slow inflation by crushing the economy with higher interest rates, forcing the country into a needless recession.
AMERICA’S LARGEST STATES AND CITIES ARE HOTBEDS OF REBELLION AND CRIME (“defund the Police”). Experience has proven that Democrats in control of those cities and states cannot (and do not) lead or manage the states or cities well at all. They do, however, convince the largely poor, misinformed/uninformed populace to vote them into office. How? The same way Biden and the Dems have caused the country’s economic malaise: throw taxpayer money at problems, and give handouts to keep the poorly educated in intellectual/factual dependence, (because Dems run the schools there too). This places the people in a new form of economic dependence—“monetary slavery.” Tragic, but true! Think about it.
BIG MEDIA IS AS GUILTY AS POLITICIANS FOR AMERICA’S WOES
The power of the mainstream media and its control over the news is at the heart of the problem as much as poor leadership. Media is critical to political success in getting elected. News media was once a form of oversight—checks and balances—on political power. Not any more. Media is now part of the problem. Insulated by long-standing immunity from prosecution, intended to offer them the ability to “tell the truth about news,” that has now been an easy protection for (disguising) biased opinions as real news. The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) will be reviewing that abuse in its upcoming issues.
IMMIGRATION CONTROL IS A MISNOMER—AN OXYMORON—BECAUSE THERE IS LESS AND LESS CONTROL OF THE ANNUAL 4 MILLION PLUS UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS—SINCE BIDEN THREW OPEN AMERICA’S BORDERS AND PUT HIS INEPT VP KAMALA HARRIS "IN CHARGE OF BORDER CONTROL” A PLACE SHE’S NEVER EVEN VISITED
In a word, immigration is a huge disaster, ranking along with Biden’s big three great failures: 1) Immigration control, 2) Exit from Afghanistan & Loss of respect globally, and 3) Rampant Inflation. Foreign Policy could be listed as a fourth failure, but there aren’t any rational Foreign policies to examine (except random reaction and then retraction.)
Biden has failed in every way, as he falls further and further into cognitive decline with no viable replacement (in the VP spot). President Biden (the compromise “not-Trump”) candidate, and his Teleprompter script writers, have failed to realize that dithering, blustering, misspeaking and then correcting (to a different error) is neither good leadership nor good management.
I will repeat this line: A MASSIVE LEADERSHIP CHANGE IS NEEDED—AND IN THE NEXT THREE YEARS!
AN VALUABLE READING RECOMMENDATION: This link is to the Tuchfarber Report. It is full of good info, well thought out and factually sound. READ IT—before you vote. (FYI, I subscribed months ago, and suggest that you do too.)
A FINAL TOPIC, ONE THAT GETS FAR TOO LITTLE ATTENTION: THE EDUCATION OF AMERICA’S YOUTH.
Shutting down America’s schools (impetus, teacher’s unions who didn’t want them to stay open due to Covid risk) has set back American youth at all levels—by several years—from a level that was weak to begin with. Disclosure: I am a member of Columbus Rotary, and our club is trying to help students in Columbus City Schools, who were behind before Covid, and are now further behind. I recently found articles describing a small study showing that reading aloud in primary grades (3 & 4 especially.) helped literacy and learning in many ways.
Just Google https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Benefits+of+Reading+aloud+for+3rd+graders&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 This is a perfect example of Occam’s Razor at work. Occam’s Razor is a theory that the simplest, most direct solution is usually the best one. The cost is negligible, the benefits are huge. Combine this with school vouchers to enable its widest use, and watch the results improve. Our Rotary Club has been providing 5000+ Dictionaries, hand deliv
ELECTIONS ARE LESS THAN 4 WEEKS AWAY.
Research candidates, think, consider, decide and then VOTE!
IT’S TIME WE CHANGED HOW AMERICA WORKS—AND HOW IT THINKS ABOUT IMPORTANT ISSUES.
JOHN
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