Do they sound plausible for others in the future, and what are the drivers behind these phenomena?
* What would these mean to your working life and the lives of others?
The final question addresses the issue of choices and consequence, of assumptions and shifting assumptions. It ties directly with the three future-proofed shifts I believe will be crucial in creating meaningful work in the future. For example, the shift from the shallow generalist to something much more masterful and skilled – which in a sense is what sits at the heart of Briana’s story. Or the shift from isolation to connectivity – which is a choice that Rohan and Amon have failed to make. Or indeed the shift from the voracious consumer that is the basis of Jill’s life to a more balanced life in which meaning and experiences play a more central role.
These are four stories that illustrate what we might think of as the Default Future. That’s the future which emerges when the tough decisions are ignored. If, as you read these stories, you find them chilling, then they simply serve to illustrate how crucial it is to think hard about how work life will emerge, and to be prepared to question some deeply held assumptions, and make some tough shifts.
Chapter 2
Fragmentation: A Three-Minute World
Jill’s story
It is 6.00 a.m. on a cold morning in London in January 2025 and Jill is awakened to the sound of the alarm. As soon as her eyes begin to focus, her attention is grabbed by the 300 messages that flash up on her wall screen. During the night, colleagues, friends, current employers and our future employers from across the world are keen to share their ideas with her, check information and ask her opinion on pressing issues. Getting out of bed, as her eyes become accustomed to the dawn light, the first hologram call comes in. Over the next ten minutes Jill works with her avatar, as it is needed for a meeting across the globe that will begin in two hours’ time and will require broad directions.
By 7.00 Jill is connected to her cognitive assistant that has created the timetable for her day and made the preparations for the teleconferencing and video-presence connections she will need. Her first conference call is to her colleagues in the Beijing office who are keen to link up with her, and so the next 30 minutes is spent in a conference call with the team. As she listens to their voices over the telephone she is able to work on another 30 messages – thank goodness for the mute button! The next 50 minutes are spent still in her bedroom taking another quick look at the nighttime messages, briefing her avatar and working on a project that is key to the group.
By 10.00, still in her pyjamas, Jill snatches a quick bite of breakfast, holds back on the demands from her colleagues for yet more feedback from them, and logs on to her worksite to see if any new work has come in overnight.
The next hour is spent on conference calls to clients, negotiating a couple of deals and agreeing delivery times. She has the final call with Mumbai before they go offline. They are using the recently developed hologram technology to project themselves, and Jill is pleased with the clarity of the representations. It is 10.30 and her team in Boston are awake and keen to ask her opinion about a particular deal they have put together: it involves linking with the Shanghai team so she agrees to brief her Chinese colleagues the following morning.
By 11.00 Jill is ready to take the train into the office hub that has been built about 10 miles away. This hub is used by any employee of the company who lives in the vicinity and provides an opportunity for people to work together in an office environment. As Jill jumps on the train she spends the next 15 minutes on her handheld computer answering more messages and taking a couple of calls to her team members. There is a particularly tricky problem in Johannesburg and her colleagues are keen to get her advice about how to proceed with the sales. By 11.30 Jill has arrived in the hub where she takes a quick look around to find a workstation that is vacant and then logs in, saying a quick hello to the others who have also decided to work in the hub that morning. Some of the people she knows, others are new faces.
Her boss Jerry is keen to talk with her about the daily sales figures, so by 3.00 p.m. she is patched through to his home office in Los Angeles. It’s early morning there, so he has chosen to use his avatar to present for him – no one wants to be seen working in their pyjamas. The conversation goes pretty well – one of Jill’s major clients is a telecoms company based in Rwanda in West Africa and they are negotiating a substantial order for the chips for handheld devices. Jill had caught up with the client earlier in the day, so was able to brief Jerry about how the process was going and the likely revenue stream. Jerry also wants Jill’s views on how best to build the market in Patagonia and Peru. For the last two decades, Essar in Kenya and MTN in South Africa have been leaders in the field and have been particularly adept at encouraging their customers to use their mobiles to make money transfers. It’s become big business, and Jerry is keen to know Jill’s views on how their experiences in Kenya could be transferred to the steadily growing markets of Chile and Argentina. His plan is to link with the Chinese telecom giant that is making impressive investments in these countries.
By 4.00 the conversation with Jerry is over, so Jill takes a last look at her messages before her 4.30 team briefing. It’s an opportunity to catch up with her US team members and also to hear their views on the situation in Rwanda. A couple of them have gone to the company hub in downtown Phoenix and have booked the telepresence room for the next 30 minutes. Jill waits a moment for the telepresence to be free and then is able to link through to her group. As always the sound and visual quality is first class – and she is able to really get a real sense of how the Phoenix team are feeling about the project. By 5.00 the conference is over and Jill grabs her bags before rushing to the station to get the train home. For Jill, it is a ritual that she cooks supper at home every Wednesday when she is at home, and today is Wednesday. She is in the local supermarket by 6.00 to pick up the evening food and opens the door to her home by 6.30.
A moment of peace – food on the table, conversation with her teenage daughter and a great cup of coffee.
By 10.00 p.m. that evening Jill is in her study booting up her videoconference to Beijing; she wants to catch up on one of her team members before their day begins – Jerry wants to form a stronger partnership with the Chinese telecom company and she wants to know her colleague’s view on how best to do this. By 10.20 the videoconference is over and Jill has her last cup of coffee before turning on the television to catch the evening news. Her eyes are caught by the fires that are raging across Russia, and by the floods that continue to devastate Pakistan. As her eyes close her final image is of Greenpeace protesters calling for the protection of the small part of the Amazon forest that still remains …
Welcome to the fragmented world, where it seems that no activity lasts more than three minutes, and where those in employment are continuously competing with people across the globe to strive to serve the different stakeholders they work with.
Do you think your world is already fragmented? Right now you are already likely to be interrupted at least every three minutes.1 If you feel that technology is already out of control, fast forward to 2025 and it’s only got worse. It’s a global world that’s so interconnected that working 24/7 is the norm, a world where 5 billion people are connected to each other through their handheld devices and as many as want to can connect to you. Imagine it – no peace, no quiet, no reflection time. Constantly plugged in, hooked up, online.
Work began to really fragment from around 2000. This was the time when internet access reached half a billion people, when desktop computers and email brought hundreds of messages into your daily inbox, and when your mobile phone began to interrupt you as often as it could.
Rewinding to the past: a pre-fragmented day in 1990
Can you remember a time when work was not fragmented? Perhaps the writer Jared Diamond is right that this has become ‘creeping normalcy’.2 The fragmentation of our working lives has unfolded so slowly that the build-up of pain occurs in small, almost unnoticeable steps. As a consequence of this slow unfolding, we accept the outcome without resistance, even if the same outcome, had it come about in one sudden leap, would have earned a vigorous