High-quality service jobs and the advent of a new golden age
Presented by: Thought Sparks
High-quality service jobs and the advent of a new golden age?
Rita McGrath
As MIT’s Zeynep Ton has pointed out, the U.S. suffers from a deluge of bad jobs, many in the service sector. While some suggest trying to revive manufacturing as the basis for a solid middle class, automation and other advances make it highly unlikely to be the solution. Instead, let’s think about what it would take to create high-quality frontline jobs and potentially lay the groundwork for a new Golden Age.
Of bubbles and golden ages
When looked at through one lens, things look pretty grim out there. Tariffs are once again on the policy menu, the assumptions of economic order that have been in place since the end of the Second World War have been shaken up and organizations are facing multiple existential threats. But, economist Carlota Perez reminds us, we have been here before.
The new world of work, ‘permissionless’ organizations and future good jobs
We are already seeing the emergence of new kinds of jobs made possible by digital technologies.
These organizations behave quite differently from firms designed to deliver value in the mass production paradigm with its linear hierarchies. The digital paradigm favors flexible, interconnected networks of specialized entities. We can already observe that network-centric organizations operating as networks of competence or ecosystems are taking the place of traditional firms.
Might the end of mass standardization be the opening we need?
In the mass production paradigm, the sweet spot was to produce a whole lot of items that were of high quality, affordable, and exactly the same. One toaster would be like the next, one car like the one just coming off the production line, your clock radio exactly like the one your neighbor bought.
As the mass market paradigm gives way to a service paradigm, services can come to replace what products used to do. Take listening to music – today, we don’t even buy albums anymore, in fact, we don’t buy music much, rather we rent it. The algorithm, not the music studio, decides what to play and in what order.
Good jobs today, good jobs tomorrow
What Ton describes is a systemic approach to job design that regards workers not as a cost to be minimized but as drivers of profitability and growth. Good pay, investment in the form of continuous education and development, the ability to create a career track from a front-line job to one with greater authority and redesign of systems to reduce unnecessary complexity and give people all the tools they need to do their jobs well are all elements of her proposal. We see evidence that this can work at the level of a corporation. Companies like Costco, Enterprise Car rental and Quick Trip would all be examples.
Golden Ages are not guaranteed
While the AI revolution, which will almost certainly destroy any number of existing jobs, will also come new ones, many that we probably haven’t even thought of yet. There could be sustainability-focused occupations, such as energy efficiency specialists, urban farmers, repair technicians for products not designed to go obsolete and building retrofitters who take existing stock and make it “green.”
We can begin to see what good jobs might look like in a future in which networks and ecosystems of value-creating teams and individuals are alternatives to or even replacements for the mass market production machines of yore.
