Take one part an ever-demanding workforce and two parts smart women and you get the next book I’ll be reading after I finish this one: Mass Career Customization – Aligning the Workplace with Today’s Nontraditional Workforce. I actually learned about this book a couple of days ago from a colleague of mine, but a post on the Time Work In Progress blog jogged my interest.
The book, as described on the website is, “a wake up call to corporate America and a guidebook for business leaders.” Its premise is based on nixing the general assumption that more flex time is what we need. Instead of flex time, the authors Cathy Benko and Anne C. Weisberg, argue we should be fighting to customize our career into four dimensions: Pace, Workload, Not Restricted, Role and gauge where you are in these four categories (i.e. Accelerated or Declerated.) The result would look something like a “sine wave of sorts, with climbing and falling engagement over time.”
At first glance, I buy this argument (without the consulting mumbo-jumbo.) I’d like to say that my part-time schedule is keeping me in line to get a promotion at my next review, but in reality, it probably isn’t. And that’s probably okay right now, because I am on some sort of decelerated path. I could accelerate if I wanted to, maybe in the “mid-career” bucket a long, long time from now.Â
The premise of mass career customization is good in theory, and as the Time WIP blogger Lisa Takecuchi Cullen says it’s ”all well and good for a huge, rich and diverse employer like Deloitte.”  And she points out the issue of rating yourself to the point of getting caught up in a “hypercompetitive atmosphere” with your peers.
I’m just hoping this isn’t just another interesting theory that gets scuttled in silly Mommy War debates. Because if we can start consuming our work-life like we consume our TV programs, food and clothing, we may start to make real waves outside of a nice four-dimensional chart.
Tags: mass career customization, Deloitte, Cathy Benko, Anne Weisberg
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I heard about this book from a group of women who own a “flexible staffing” placement firm out in the SF Bay Area. Can’t wait to read it – I’m waiting for it to hit the library since I’m on a book-buying budget as my own major de-celeration begins in 5 weeks.
BTW – can’t believe that person who posted right before you on that Time website. I hope their cubicle and their TPS reports (that’s what the guy in Office Space called them, right?) keep them company when they are waiting out their final days in a nursing home.
I know – way harsh. But sentiments like that are the reason I’m losing my part-time schedule. Until people can accept that flexibility isn’t about being unable or unwilling to do the work, but rather completely redefining the workplace. The industrial revolution is over and the majority of american office workers (not factory workers, not retail workers, OFFICE workers) have a different role today. It’s about time the companies employing us catch up. From what I’ve heard Deloitte is at the front lines in this – along with Best Buy (don’t have the link, but they have that big results-oriented redesign with virtual cubes rather than facetime).
Sorry for “borrowing you” to rant. Ack. People make me crazy sometimes!
Thanks for the rec! The changing workforce and technological innovation will change the workforce.
We’re the trailblazers, and I’m sure the next generation will thank us. In our dreams
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