3 Concepts that Define the Future of Work: Data, Decentralisation and Automation

The organisation of tomorrow will look fundamentally different than today’s organisation. Those enterprises that are aware of the upcoming changes can best prepare and achieve competitive advantage in a data-driven society. Consequently, the future of work will require management and employees to take a different approach when it comes to creating and delivering a product or service. The future of work will be defined by three concepts: data, decentralisation and automation that will radically change leadership, culture, privacy and security. Let’s discuss each of these concepts.

Big data has been around for some time now. It has often been coined the next “management revolution”, the Fourth Industrial Revolution or “the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity”. While only a few years ago, organisations were still struggling to understand the impact of these trends on their business, big data has now emerged as the corporate standard.

Big data analytics affects all organisations, big or small, has an impact on every industry around the globe and is a key characteristic of the organisation of tomorrow. Especially in these ambiguous and uncertain times, analytics enables organisations to sense opportunities. Using large amounts of structured and unstructured data and applying it to advanced analytics enables organisations to understand their environment and seize opportunities, which enables them to remain competitive.

Data analytics can help to interpret the business environment, enable managers to act and result in sustained superior performance and competitive advantage. The introduction of descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics in your work means that the traditional way of decision-making, based on experience and expertise, is exchanged for data-driven decision-making. When organisations provide more people with access to knowledge, power is distributed more equally, enabling employee empowerment within an organisation. This power shift is necessary to fully benefit from big data analytics.

The future of work, therefore, will result in flatter organisations. Where those employees facing the customer or those directly involved in building a product use data to optimise their decisions. This requires a change in company culture, as real-time insights from data require real-time action from employees and management. Fewer managers and more empowered employees will radically change your culture.

As a result, I believe that future organisations will increasingly be a holacracy. A holacracy is an organisation where power is distributed across the organisation, enabling self-management and empowerment. It applies decentralised management and organisational governance, whereby authority and decision-making are distributed and delegated using self-organising teams. Within a holacracy, leadership is an enabler for empowered employees.

Once processes and customer touchpoints have been datafied, data will become the common denominator in the organisation. Data can be easily shared with industry partners, resulting in numerous opportunities to increase efficiency within a supply chain and improve collaboration with industry partners.

Therefore, I think that blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, will be the golden standard for supply chains. The future of work will rely on a decentralised single source of the truth when exchanging value among industry partners. In a decentralised system, data becomes immutable, verifiable and traceable. This means that the provenance of either data or products will help the organisation of tomorrow become more efficient and transparent. Organisations can create value by effortlessly collaborating in real-time with a network of peer-to-peer actors.

Thanks to blockchain, the future of work will be more efficient, transparent and secure.