The Company of the Future

For Burgum, the idea of balance goes deeper than simply juggling tasks and appointments. "It's important to have flexibility over a life span or a career span," he says. "There has to be a deeper level of personal satisfaction, a sense that things are all right. If you can help people find that level, they tend to stick around." Burgum is proud of Great Plains's extraordinarily low turnover. "That's no small accomplishment in an industry where so much of a company's assets are linked to individual employees' knowledge," he says.

The 21st-Century Company

What do all of these new enterprises have in common? They are only as good as their most talented people. And they don't take the loyalty of those people for granted. They understand that talented people have never had more options. So these companies have developed strategies to recruit and keep people from whom they want total commitment.

What do the joiners have in common? They could have gone anywhere. They had their pick of the best. Many could have successful careers as free agents. They've chosen to join up - to commit themselves, at least for a time - because the mix of social glue in one organization was overwhelmingly strong.

The big change today, then, is not the absolute demise of loyalty in the workplace. Nor is it the evolution of free agency into the only way that people can work. The basic facts of work life are the same as they've always been: Everybody works for somebody or something - be it a board of directors, a pension fund, a venture capitalist, or a traditional boss. Sooner or later, you're going to have to decide whom you want to work for. And everybody works with someone else. The linkage may be tight, or it may be loose. But you've got to decide who to work with, as well as how strong the bonds of mutual commitment will be.

The big change is in the amount of choice and the variety of experiences available in today's workplace: Talented people are actively shopping for colleagues and bosses who meet their needs and match their values. The market for talent - the sellers of it, the buyers of it - is the most vital market in the modern economy. To attract and keep talented people, companies today are not just experimenting with how they approach the competitive marketplace of goods and services. They're also experimenting with how they approach the competitive marketplace of talent. Companies are testing the attractiveness of various combinations of social glue, and they are recognizing that unusual benefits attract unusual people - and that what works in one industry, or at one time, may not work in another industry, or at another time. Deployed carefully, these social glues become stronger through use: Each can attract talent in a way that makes an enterprise even more attractive to the same kind of talent in the future.

More fundamentally, companies are experimenting with a new operating system for the employer-employee relationship - one to replace the old set of practices that put employers and employees on opposite sides of the table. The model for the organization of the future aims to create tangible and intangible value that both sides can share and enjoy. It accepts as a core reality - rather than as a pleasant fantasy - the old saw that a company's people are its most important asset. And it builds on that reality to create a way of working that is profoundly human and fundamentally humane.

It is a revolutionary notion: Collaboration and mutual advantage are the essence of the organization. They can create flexibility, resiliency, speed, and creativity - the fundamental qualities of the company of the 21st century.

Robert B. Reich (reich@brandeis.edu), university professor of economic and social policy at Brandeis University and a former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is writing a book about the work of the future.