I wrote a post this past November about Future Shock by Alvin Toffler (see the post, "Future Shock"). Toffler first coined the term "future shock" in an article "The future as a way of life" in Horizon magazine in 1965. He used the term in this context "to describe the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time." That change can be technological, cultural, or social in nature. He wrote, "If agriculture is the first stage of economic development and industrialism the second, we can now see that still another stage - the third - has suddenly been reached."
As Toffler described it, society was (at least at that time of his book) just entering an entire new period or age, which he called the super-industrial society, which others have similarly labeled, the Information Age, post-industrial society, and post-modernism. A post-industrial society has a number of important and defining characteristics, which include:
1. The economy undergoes a transition from the production of goods to the provision of services.
2. Knowledge becomes a valued form of capital.
3. Through technological advancements (e.g. automation) and globalization, both the value and importance of manual labor decline, while at the same time the need for professional knowledge workers (e.g. engineers, scientists, software developers, analysts) increases.
Toffler predicted that the transition to the super-industrial society would occur much quicker than similar transitions of the past. Whereas previous generations had experienced gradual transformation over time, the newer generations growing up in modern society were facing constant, rapid shifts in everything from family life to work to values (which is why those living through this rapid period of change would be subject to "future shock"). Toffler further suggested three key features of the super-industrial society - transience, novelty, and diversity.
Toffler used the word transience to describe the impermanence and shortened lifespan of all things in the super-industrial society. He said, "We are moving swiftly into the era of the temporary product, made by temporary methods, to serve temporary needs...Transience is the 'new temporariness' in everyday life...It results in a mood, a feeling of impermanence." He used the word novelty to describe the unceasing (i.e. constant) introduction of new things - technology, lifestyles, and social arrangements. He said, "The future will unfold as an unending succession of bizarre incidents, sensational discoveries, implausible conflicts, and wildly novel dilemmas." Finally, Toffler referred to diversity as the multiplicity of choices available in work, lifestyle, consumption, and identity. He further wrote that when all three - transience, novelty, and diversity - converge, "we rocket the society toward an historical crisis of adaptation. We create an environment so ephemeral, unfamiliar, and complex as to threaten millions with adaptive breakdown. This breakdown is future shock."
The management scholar Warren Bennis first coined the term adhocracy in his 1968 book, The Temporary Society: What is Happening to Business and Family Life in America Under the Impact of Accelerating Change. Toffler further popularized the term in his book Future Shock, which came out just two years later. Both Bennis and Toffler felt that the acceleration of change that we are experiencing in society, both then and certainly now, doesn't lend itself to classic bureaucracy. Rather, adhocracy describes a more flexible, adaptable, and informal organizational structure without bureaucratic policies or procedures. Toffler wrote, "If it was Max Weber who first defined bureaucracy and predicted its triumph, Warren Bennis may go down in sociological textbooks as the man who first convincingly predicted its demise and sketched the outlines of the organizations that are springing up to replace it."
Bureaucracies - at least according to Bennis and Toffler - are rigid, hierarchical, slow-moving, and centralized (in regards to power and authority), which means that they are best suited to stable, unchanging environments. Adhocracies, on the other hand, are temporary, flexible, and adaptive. They place an emphasis on creativity, innovation, and rapid decision-making through experimentation. Whereas bureaucracies are strictly hierarchical, decision-making in an adhocracy is team-based, collaborative, and decentralized (can anyone say, "Deference to Expertise" or "Pushing Authority to Information"?). Toffler believed that an adhocracy was essential for on an organization to succeed in a fast-moving, rapidly evolving super-industrial society.
All that being said, as Martin Reeves, Edzard Wesselink, and Kevin Whitaker at the Boston Consulting Group point out in their essay, "The end of bureaucracy, again?", the bureaucracy remains the dominant paradigm even now, almost sixty years after Warren Bennis and Alvin Toffler predicted the end of bureaucracy. A number of management experts have proposed alternative paradigms, and in many cases, organizations have tried to re-structure around these alternative paradigms - see for example Frederic Laloux's teal organization, Brian Robertson's holacracy, or the concept of self-managed teams. While attractive in principle, few organizations have successfully adopted these different models. Reeves, Wesselink, and Whitaker suggest that the solution is somewhere in the middle. The organizations that will be most successful, both now and in the future, will have elements of both the classic bureaucracy and adhocracy. What that organizational structure will look like is not currently known. Reeves, Wesselink, and Whitaker write, "The exact shape of these new models is still undetermined, but enterprising leaders are currently developing them." Referring to the teal organization, holacracy, and others, they go on to admit, "We can see hints of a revolution that will likely affect all companies and sectors eventually."
So, are we about to see the end of bureaucracy as we know it? Probably not. But we will certainly see the continuing evolution of different organizational models and paradigms for many years to come. Survival in this VUCA world will depend upon it.
