Tag: Future Shock

Future shock and past snapback

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Before advances in information and communications technologies over the past four decades, knowledge work required industrial scale centralized commuter offices (CCOs), often staffed by hundreds or thousands of knowledge workers.

Much of the staff worked processing repetitive tasks that shifted from paper to digital form that did not require centralized creation, processing and storage. Information then became portable and decentralized, moving along with knowledge workers on personal computer and communication devices and later internet-based telecommunications and the cloud.

That made CCOs obsolete as exclusive work and meeting places by making knowledge work far less dependent on time and place, allowing information to travel as text, data and video most anywhere and asynchronistically.

These ICT advances have sped up considerably in the current decade with widespread adoption of working from home accelerated by the pandemic and the emergence of generative and agentic artificial intelligence.

These changes have come so rapidly that they challenge knowledge organizations to constructively adapt to them. They are experiencing what futurist Alvin Toffler termed “future shock” in his 1970 book of that title. It happens when the pace of technological change is so rapid institutions and organizations feel overwhelmed by it and experience cognitive dissonance as past, present and future seem to merge.

Understandably so considering the as built environment of office buildings concentrated in central metro areas and connected by what were originally designed as “high speed” highways to bring knowledge workers to and from them from outlying bedroom communities.

That world of the 20th century when companies grew and staffed up and occupied offices at industrial age scale no longer easily jibes with the 21st. That scale no longer make sense when knowledge, innovation and strategic judgment are the most valuable resources, resources that no longer require large numbers of staff regularly concentrated in office buildings.

Future shock produces what could be described as past snapback. It’s resistance to the future and nostalgia for when knowledge workers regularly commuted to the office because that’s where the job was. It’s clearly seen with “return to office” expectations.

Which haven’t gone over well since knowledge workers and not their organizations have traditionally borne the costs of getting there. And once there, sitting in a cube farm doing the same activities they could do in their home offices. That produces cognitive dissonance for knowledge workers.

Knowledge organizations have been trying to reconcile the conflict between the 20th and 21st centuries with “hybrid” office attendance, having staff come in on a designated number and days of the work week. In other words, working in the CCO like in the 20th but with the current century recognition that knowledge work doesn’t necessarily require office attendance.

It eases future shock and cognitive dissonance. But going forward into the third decade of the 21 century, the shifts will require knowledge organizations make a big adjustment to a world that for many seems to have changed in less than a decade.

Knowledge organizations suffer “future shock”

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In 1970, futurist Alvin Toffler coined term “future shock.” It occurs when the future arrives too quickly for people and organizations to adapt to it. Consequently, they get out of sync with the onrushing change in their environments, leading to maladaptive behaviors such as:

 • Crisis-Driven Decision-Making – Reactive rather than proactive approaches to industry disruption (e.g., panic layoffs, rushed technology investments).

• Over-Centralization & Micromanagement – Leadership tightens control in response to perceived chaos, stifling innovation.

• Resistance to virtual work — A rigid preference for traditional centralized commuter office-based operations, despite clear benefits of decentralization.

• Internal Conflict & Cultural Breakdown – Generational clashes between leadership and younger, more digitally native employees.

Two related major forces of change are affecting knowledge organizations. Both have been building over the past five decades or so and have reached critical inflection points in the past few years, accelerated by public health measures taken in response to the 2020 pandemic.

The first is advances in information and communications technology (ICT) that has decentralized knowledge work out of commute-in offices in metro areas. Microcomputers and personal communication devices like smartphones allow knowledge work – researching, reviewing, analyzing and communicating information to arrive at decisions on how to use it – to be done most anywhere. Beforehand, that required dedicated office space and meeting rooms — and staff to commute to and from them.

The second is housing costs and transportation systems in metro areas. Housing tends to cost more nearer to their centers, increasing demand for more affordable, lower cost housing more distant from them. That in turn boosts demand on transportation systems that could in earlier decades enable knowledge workers to rapidly commute from homes located far from centralized commuter offices but no longer have adequate capacity to do so.

Knowledge organizations can overcome future shock, build resilience and adjust to change that shows no sign of slowing down. This requires them to assess and examine the evidence supporting how they conceptualize how their work is done, how their value proposition and strategic advantages are created and the best means to sustain them.

It takes courage to challenge long held assumptions and thinking. This isn’t an easy task for many knowledge organizations since for many, their foundations are built on a pre-digital era where ICT played a far less prominent role. But the benefits are many, allowing them reduce internal tensions and move forward more confidently and with greater capacity to adapt to the changing world of knowledge work. Help is available.

Silicon Valley — of all places — is suffering from future shock

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Alvin Toffler, the recently deceased futurist who authored the bestselling book Future Shock, is credited with coining that term. As Toffler defined it, it’s the psychological reaction to too much change over a short period of time. The mind protects itself by effectively putting on blinders to block out the change it’s not yet ready to accommodate.

Not long after Future Shock was published in 1970, a Los Angeles aerospace engineer had a brainstorm while stuck in that city’s infamous traffic congestion. What if companies could set up satellite offices connected with data lines in communities where workers live so they can avoid getting on the freeway each workday, Jack Nilles thought. With that, Nilles conceived of a novel transportation demand technique — what he was to call “telecommuting” — to take the place of vehicular commuting to jobs that continues to plague L.A. and other large metro areas today. The idea didn’t catch on right away. Nilles attributed it to societal shock to the revolutionary notion that people could avoid commuting daily to an office distant from their home communities. After all, people “go to” work, don’t they? How could that be possible?

Today, nearly a half century later, that future shock not only continues but has intensified with the advances in information and communications technology (ICT). Many of those innovations were hatched in Silicon Valley and make it possible to perform knowledge work in the satellite offices envisioned by Nilles but also in home offices, libraries, coffeehouses and virtually anyplace with good Internet connectivity. Still, Silicon Valley companies like Google, Apple and Facebook continue to insist everyone show up at their corporate mega campuses each workday. The rationale is it’s necessary to have staff co-located in order to collaborate. It stems from Silicon Valley’s founding as a technology manufacturing center where people worked in “plants” operated by Hewlett Packard, Intel and Apple Computer.

That’s less the case now with nearly all manufacturing offshored and the aforementioned advances in ICT that facilitate both real time and non real time collaboration. Ideas can occur and be exchanged with colleagues whenever and wherever they germinate. The “everyone must be on campus in order to collaborate” rationalization is a symptom of future shock. Ironically manifesting in Silicon Valley of all places.