Every now and again, I’ve written about how the networked generation live and work in a completely different way to their elders, and about how cultural issues regarding power distance are going to make this a really big challenge for Singaporean businesses.
Well, it’s hit the mainstream as a topic for discussion after Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong talked about it in his National Day speech yesterday. Mr Brown has put up the relevant excerpt (direct link to mp3 file, 8.7Mb).
It must be on my mind, and subconsciously guiding my online reading today, as I’ve found a couple of other supporting articles:
- Via Wired, I found Powazek writing about “Generation M” – never mind Gen X or Gen Y, we’re “Generation Multitask”! Hehe, I’m a similar age, and I can relate!
- There’s also a short piece on Fast Company, written by Avram Miller on the end of time and space. Although it’s a reprint from a 1997 piece, it’s absolutely relevant to the way people increasingly work.
When I worked at [a very large and prominent Singaporean institution], the management structures were absolutely unable to deal with this kind of post-location, multitasking, always-on way of working. I wasn’t happy, my management wasn’t happy… There was no resolution; we just had to cope, and since I was on a fixed-term contract and I was going to be leaving anyway, there was no incentive to look for alternative management techniques. It isn’t just Singaporean institutions either; my experience with the local offices of multinational consulting firms has shown that they can also have this inflexible, top-down approach – which, IMNSHO, needs to go the way of the dodo!
This issue isn’t going to go away though, and it’s a good thing that the Prime Minister has addressed it; now it’s going to be OK to bring it up for discussion in the management environment here.
