WorkTrends

ADAPTATION has over 20 years’ of experience helping companies with business transformation and organization transition. Adaptation is here to help company leadership and their workforce navigate through change to accelerate and smooth the adoption of new ways of working.

Today’s global economy is fueled by innovation and change, starting with the workplace. With so many people working outside of traditional office environments, how do you stay connected, informed and knowledgeable? You can start by engaging in conversations on social media and other digital platforms with people who have similar interests, backgrounds and work lives. These connections give you a sense of belonging to a team or group, even if you are not physically in the same space.

Have you taken a good look at your company’s organizational structure lately? What’s changed? Not a thing? How is that possible? It is amazing that the hierarchical organizational structures of the past remain intact today, even as the people and the functions they represent continue to change and evolve. New technologies boast full integration of data. Yet in many companies today, there is no cross-functional organizational structure to support such technologies. Hierarchical structures are reliable, but they are also rigid and restrictive.‍

It’s easy to put off the future until tomorrow. Heck, for many companies, waiting is a part of their strategy. These are industry followers who consciously sit back and watch their competitors implement new technologies and operations. They don’t want to be on the “bleeding edge,” or so far out in front of the leading edge that they make mistakes.

Can Healthcare Reform Make or Break the Gig Economy? There is a very real possibility that the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—or significant portions of it—will be repealed. This raises many questions that affect workers’ employment decisions, overall health and well-being, and financial status.

New technologies, such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), can help procurement departments uncover information and data in ways that humans cannot. There is no question that the digitization of procurement is following the same digital revolution that is affecting every line of business and business support function at all organizations. It is being driven by the convergence of these new technologies and a heightened level of customer expectations that demands speed, value, lower cost and customization.

New technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) will provide opportunities for organizations to automate routine tasks and focus on more interesting and value-added work. These new technologies, though, change the nature of work itself. They require leaders to prepare their organizations for change and to embrace new opportunities in the digital age.

The org chart isn’t dead. It’s a living, breathing and ever-changing symbol of corporate structure. Its beauty is in its fluidity. So grab a whiteboard, a marker and a very big eraser. It’s time to draw the org chart of the future. Reinvention is the key to relevancy in the New World of Work.

New technologies are increasingly being used today to perform repetitive tasks faster and more accurately than humans ever can. If you’re an accountant who once performed these tasks, the implications are profound. Cloud computing, data analytics, robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive learning (CL) are disrupting your profession and transforming your role from back office accountant to strategic adviser.

Call it the “Gray Wave,” the “Silver Reservoir,” or any other metaphor for Baby Boomers, it’s no secret that a significant number of the workforce is getting older. In the public sector in particular, this is having an impact as over 31% of their current workers are approaching retirement eligibility.

It seems that every day you hear about a new innovation that is disrupting the workforce. How can you be sure your company is maximizing the benefits of digitization? How can you leverage robotic technology and enhance satisfaction of your workforce at the same time? How can you stop operating with an old hierarchical organization structure and keep ahead of the business transformations and disruptions that are changing the way we work today?

Let’s take a traditional brainstorm session and turn it upside down–and then take it for a walk around the block. This is exactly what we did when we attended a Design Thinking Workshop at the Harvard Extension School. Our mission? To experience a new, more collective way to problem-solve and expand our knowledge.