Creator: Haydn Shaughnessy writes for Forbes.com about Innovation within the New Economy.
Purpose: The stats show that unto 66% of US workers are actively dis-engaged with their work. That means only 33% are! Thus the search for meaning and empowerment from ‘unconventional’ sources.
The New Work Manifesto: Be Unconventional (Selection)
People are busy adding unconventional twists to their lives and their narratives, building twists like minimalism, reducing our dependency on material possessions – there’s a list of minimalist growth indicators here; or it’s about collective as well as personal innovation: looking for ways to engage, transitioning the relationship between the town and the countryside – or the wacky art allied to gardening, the vegan tattoo, or the conventionally unconventional like the street food movement.
The New Work Manifesto is I want to do it my way. This is not just or even a Gen Y phenomenon. It is a story that 66% of us might want to tell. So how do we reconcile people’s desire for personal innovation with the enterprise’s need for innovative people and ideas?
A couple of years ago I interviewed an artist at the Disonancias project which arranges artist residencies inside Spanish companies. Her observation of working in a company? Everything I proposed they found a way to cut.
As an artist she was accustomed to starting small and growing a creative work. In business she started small and still got cut.
Enterprise leaders need to look to how people are innovating and creating and then set out how they want to interact with the workforce. We have to take the personal seriously.
Source
Full Article on Forbes.com: The New Work Manifesto: Be Unconventional, 24 June 2011
Image from Daylife: Job Seekers waiting to talk to employment agencies.