Jack in the Box

Today I want to blog about Jack in the box. This thought came to me when I returned from WEF (World Economic Forum). The reason is that there were a couple of conversations in WEF around Generation X and Generation Y whatever we call them.

Fifty percent of our population is under the age of twenty five years. I understand that the younger generation, Generation X and Y, can do eight simultaneous transactions at a time, where my generation can do four; I can do two or maybe even one.

This generation has been born along with the Internet and therefore knowledge has been on their finger tips because they can search it out. This generation has worked in collaboration, using Facebook or MySpace and many other such collaborative tools, and therefore their group of advisors, who advise them on various facets of things, is fairly large and very well spread. Therefore their decision making on consumption, on likes and dislikes, and on where and how they buy is influenced a lot by this pattern of what I call advisors.

Now if we look at this pattern of Generation Y, we ask: Are our education systems today, and our organizational structures of today and tomorrow, ready for them. Or, are we putting Jack in a box?

My point of view on this is that because knowledge is on a surge, our education systems should have progressed away from imparting knowledge to imparting what I call intellect or application of knowledge. I do not think that education institutions across the world are geared to make that happen. On one hand, we have almost fifty six million less teachers in primary schools; on the other hand, we have the issue of quality of teaching. I think that there is also an issue in terms of the fact that we continue to be in the business of imparting knowledge, whereas the emphasis on intelligence and application is going to be very critical. That is the reason I am saying that poor little Jack is being fit into a hundred year old educational box.

When we go into organizations, unfortunately I see the same thing happening. These people who can do simultaneous tasks and have a wide range of interests, they want to be engaged in an organization, not in a single dimension but in a very large multi- dimensional way. They socialize in a very different way, they collaborate in a very different way and they work in a very different way. Are these large command and control oriented and very hierarchy oriented organizations ready for Jack? I get the same answer that we will force fit Jack in a box called the organization structure we created a hundred years ago, which makes collaboration different, competition excel, and treats people on a relative basis where one wins at the cost of the others. There are so many aspects of the hierarchy, information control, "the boss is always right", look up and not within, a lot of these we will talk about these in my subsequent posts, but I still find that the poor little Jack is being put into a box even in the organization which is not geared for him.

So the thought for today is that with fifty percent of our people, talent and future of the world residing in these two eyes of the young Generation X and Generation Y, shouldn't we be thinking about changing the hierarchies and the structures of our education systems and changing the hierarchies and structures of our corporate systems so that the Jack doesn't feel boxed in, but thinks out of the box...