- I like this...
- Complexity is reality. It's clear to (almost) everybody today that complexity and variability are back to their full strength, after a century of mechanistic illusion of control and stability. People do not want "experts" telling them how to deal with complexity by technical models and theories. They live complexity as part of life, they always have. And they now want work environments thatallow it to be expressed and "surfed", without the frustration that comes from strict planning plus command-and-control industrial-age approaches.
- Work is (part of) life. Our work must be balanced with all the other important activities of life. There is no such thing as "work-life balance". Thus we need our work to be aligned with our identity and values, just as all the other important activities in our lives. Moreover, our time is precious, and the present moment is un-wastable. There is a strong desire to live it in-depth and with full meaning.
- Tools must be means, not goals. Money, institutions, digital technologies are all examples of "tools" that in the last two centuries have progressively become social goals in many different ways. This has provoked severe identity and happiness problems both on the collective and on the individual levels. These tools now need to be put back in the right perspective, and in some cases even completely re-designed, to revert back to being just a useful means for our collective and individual evolution.
- Work is not a place. We have broken free from the factory-employee approach. In the era of knowledge and creativity the value of work is produced through interactions, contamination, exchange. And, accidentally, so is also most of the personal value within our lives. People want to be able to move, to use their feet to go and meet other people, different perspectives, outdoor horizons, valuable creation spaces. This is key to fulfill a basic human need: the need for passion.
- We are much more than rationality. People knew it way before neuroscience proved it, but now it is also proven and understood by science. Emotions, intuition, creativity, inspiration, playfulness, are important parts of our being, together with our "cortical brain" rationality. They need to be expressed and cultivated in order for each of us to thrive. And they are key at work for tapping into each person's full potential, and into the multiplied power of co-creation and collective intelligence.
- Purpose and meaning are core. Having set profit and power as central goals of most human institutions, both formally and informally, has proven being a devastating choice. This is a fact that in the last decades has been massively recognized by most people in the world. There is now a strong determination to put purpose and meaning at the center of our institutions at all scales, and to have formal structures serve and enable them, instead of the other way around.
- We are a unique whole. From the first step of intellectually understanding that we are interdependent beings belonging to the same "family", mankind is now moving into realizing that our individuality is the explicated manifestation of an implicated whole. We are one. This awareness changes everything, from social and environmental actions to the deep understanding of love and fear. For sure it will change the future of work too, at the very least.
