McKinsey has some great data about enterprise impacts based on social technology. Their 10 IT-enabled business trends report from a few months ago has been on my mind, as it segues with several themes I muse about – the future of work; the social enterprise; personal branding amongst others.

What organizations will our leaders – you – be leading in 5 years time? Let’s have a look-see at some of the trends.

1. Joining the social matrix

Employees ‘could become up to 25 percent more productive through the use of social technologies.’

I have seen this in my own life – social technology and networks have transformed the way I work, the way I learn, the way I think, the way I approach problems, projects, collaboration. At work we leverage a Yammer ESN pretty well, but this is a ‘more to come’ trend. Iceberg!

2. Competing with ‘big data’ and advanced analytics

”Developing a big-data plan is becoming a critical new priority—one whose importance our colleagues likened, in a recent article, to the birth of strategic planning 40 years ago.”

Big data is a cool topic; with a BIG sense about it. Another McKinsey report talked about data replacing opinion as the primary corporate decision-making tool. Think about that for a moment: some upstart analyst with her hands deep in the data, proving out the strategic next steps, usurping all the bigwigs with their years of experience and “I think..”s. Hot topic!

4. Offering anything as a service

Finally, all the corporate cost centres start to think like businesspeople! Let’s hire out our spare capacity, using incremental online technology to enable it. Exciting.

5. Automating knowledge work

Sad and scary, but true. Large impacts for ‘admin’ / support teams; and on ‘generic’ mid-level workers. We will see a further ‘leaning’ of the workplace.

9. Buying and selling as digital commerce leaps ahead

Traditional markets will be disrupted by smart digital natives redelivering a more efficient, impactful customer relationship model. Disrupt happens.

The organizational impacts? According to the report, such things as:

Transparent and innovative business models. Enterprises will be “more transparent and elevate rapid responsiveness to the level of a core competency.”

Something I discussed in Give Choices, Make Changes, Take Leaps.

Talent. “The rising economic and business impact of information technology means that competition will heat up for graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—the STEM fields, where job growth is likely to be about 1.7 times faster than it will be in other areas.”

Organization. “The flowering of many of these trends could imply decentralization, along with changing relationships among managers, employees, suppliers, and customers.”

This will create opportunities for employees to work differently, with choice as a central imperative.

As usual…wow! The new world order awaits. Who wants some?

←This Much We Know.→