Fighting It Isn’t Working!
For most of my adult life, I have worked in the construction industry. Perhaps like all industries involving blue-collar workers, there is an emphasis on productivity. The entire Industrial Revolution, which began in the 1800s, was about creating machines to enable people to be more productive. This was, undeniably, a good thing. One result of this was the emergence of large organizations and companies. Compared to what came before, companies offered a measure of stability and employment security, which resulted in organizational loyalty. The source of authority was “the boss”. The companies were operationally organized into hierarchical structures. Sometime toward the end of the 1900s, a significant change occurred. Our economy shifted from one based on the production of goods such as housing, automobiles, etc., to one more based on information. This is often referred to as a knowledge-based economy. A knowledge-based economy is characterized by an emphasis on services and information, not on physical products. One of the side effects of our knowledge-based economy has been rapid change, which has often been disruptive. The stability, employment security, and organizational loyalty that characterized the Industrial Revolution are gone. It has been replaced by employees who value their freedom, hence the rise of the emphasis on the “gig economy” and “side hustles”. Free agents now make up a substantial portion of our workforce. Indeed, my executive assistant lives in Florida, my marketing director lives in Georgia, and I live in Iowa. This would not have happened in the 1970s or 80s, or even been possible.
This brings me back to the construction industry. There are aspects of the fieldwork in the construction industry that keep those companies anchored in the industrial revolution and even pre-industrial periods. While there have been many technological advances in tools and techniques for those working in the field, they are still being executed by blue-collar workers, not knowledge workers, and the organizational structures of these companies seem to also be significantly lagging the rate of change in society as a whole. The construction industry may be a very visible example of this lagging, but I suspect that it is also present in many industries.
What I am befuddled by is this: Companies seem to be “fighting” this new reality rather than embracing it, which only serves to cause them to slip even further behind.
To understand the most fundamental change behind this shift and what to begin to do about it, head over to my Substack to read on!