The Economics of Being Nomadic

When analytics became a crutch, what happens when top talent goes off-road, and how to revamp management practices for VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) times.

BLUEPRINT // the future of work // ISSUE #12 NOVEMBER 17th, 2016

Co-workers,

We are living in strange and unpredictable times. Yet Friday always comes. So cheers, at least, to that!

Despite the failure of most electoral prognostics, our itinerant columnist Faris says we should not abandon analytics — just the kinds of lazy quantitative models that forget that “humans are terrible predictors of their own behavior.”

Next, Faris takes us off-road and into the nomadic future of work. He reports on companies that are attracting “the best, most restless, adventurous, and creative talent” by letting their people work wherever the hell want.

Finally, Reimaginaire’s Lisa Gill travels to the other side of the world to find three companies that have abandoned command-and-control management for some seriously innovative alternatives.

Looking forward,

Dept. of Future Possibilities

What we’re reading

Has cyberslacking reached epidemic proportions? Despite gains from new technologies, “cyberslacking is eroding American productivity from the inside out,” worries the people at TalentCulture. Check out their webcast featuring #futureofwork guru and best-selling author William Keiper.

• Pair with: Could VR provide a solution? Bloomberg asks if the “distraction-dimming effects” of virtual reality can remove distractions and dramatically boost productivity.
• Or maybe: Before investing in VR headsets, World Economic Forum thinks we should just get a good night’s sleep. “Striking new research suggests the effect of additional sleep has a high monetary value,” the WEF reports.

Sorry, what was that? “Functional transcription has been a persistent challenge, even for the most sophisticated neural networks,” reports Fast Company. They talk to an ex-war reporter who is fighting for more effective transcription software.

• Meanwhile: Social media is coming through loud and clear. But what happens when it’s full of lies? The New York Times reports on the social media’s globe-shaking power — and the new fight to stop fake news.
• Opting out: TechCrunch reports on efforts by security firm Kaspersky Lab to create a real-time encrypted back-up service that would enable social media users to store their social data “outside the walled garden of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google+.”

Dept. of New Tools

New software we’re excited about

Refly — a smart editor designed to help you write better content, faster.

Dept. of Who to Follow on Twitter

Future of work thought leaders, irascible know-it-alls, and friends

Matt Monge — expert on work, leadership and mental health.

Nancy Rubin — HR consultant and life-long learner tweeting about the never-ending journey of discovery.

Jeremy Roberts — VP of CX, HiringSolved.

Dept. of Future Graphs

What we’re sharing

Dept. of Goodbyes

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