I have seen the Future of Work and it is Good...

I have dreams of the future based on the Future of Work by Thomas Malone.  Now, I work in a Corporation, I’m a peon, I'm here for now but I am planning my exodus - (finding a replacement is taking longer than I thought, thanks for your patience, Jim). 

Thinking of the future of work, imagine all the people you’ve had the opportunity to work with over your career.  Granted there have been many, many people I could take or leave, but there have been many that I can sincerely say were a “pleasure” to work with (not surprisingly, most of them have left the company).  Now, imagine that you could pick and choose from various teams of people.  Just imagine being on a team comprised of people with whom you enjoy working, people you have a history with, or that rev you up to your full potential.  You look forward to your work, you wake up at night energized and have to jot down your ideas - yes, you become passionate about your work.  Literally a dream team for now, but others are doing it and have been for decades...right now mainly the province of the rich and famous – well-known directors and actors who can pick and choose roles to play, and yes, there are pockets of entrepreneurs out there - now more and more bloggers able to eke out a living as well, but imagine that ability being in the hands of everyone.  You work with the people with whom you work well.  You develop worthwhile ideas, create great products, you are respected and respect those with whom you work.  You can create teams of people, tied together NOT by corporations, but by services who manage your healthcare, your retirement plan, etc.  You are a free agent. 

Big organizations are rapidly going the way of the dinosaur.  Originally created for their distribution channels, the money they had for manufacturing, we now have an array of options – hell, look at all the small websites out there gaining popularity and developing their own brands!  And who’s manufacturing their products?  Small independents.  Who’s selling them?  E-bay; or they sell right off their own site.  Examples:  Pez MP3; Hugh’s T-Shirts; Nikol Lohr.  Niche marketing, perhaps, but even on a larger scale we’ll have better, more imaginative products.  People designing them who care about the end product.  Like Henry Copeland/blogads says about bloggers caring about their audiences, people will want feedback on their products.  They care about their customer’s opinions, and customers will influence the creation of products that they want to buy.  Warm fuzzies for everyone. 

But until that day comes, reality is Corporate Slavery Life for some of us.  The company I work for is right out of a Dilbert comic.  The CEO surrounds himself with "yes" men and I've seen too many people with differing opinions, innovative thinking, either quietly leave or get the boot to have hope that things will ever change.  The growth by acquisition/merger bug infected this company and the result after 7-8 years of this is a collection of disjointed, disconnected companies; people constantly stepping on each other's toes, salespeople competing against each other for the same clients; clients being pitched at by different offices of the same company.  A HUGE disconnect.  This is where I wish we had internal blogs.  Ideascape would be absolutely perfect for us!  The morale of this company is lousy, and employee attrition is definitely a problem.  I doubt I'll stick around for it, but I'm hoping someday someone will get a clue and straighten things out around here; otherwise the weak infrastructure will just cause the whole corporation to implode.