The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization

Chapter 2The CogToday's Employee

Let's get one thing straight right from the beginning. Employees are not incompetent idiots. They are fully capable, smart, intelligent, and creative people. So why do we treat them like the former and not like the latter?

The word and the concept of employee is fairly new to our lexicon and way of thinking, it was introduced less than 200 years ago around 1825 to 1835 and it hasn't changed since.

A Day in the Life Of…

Meet Tara. She's an employee at a midsize company with a husband and two kids. Tara wakes up around 6 a.m. every day to help get the kids ready for school, but first she checks a few emails. She drops off the kids and then heads to work. After her 45-minute drive she arrives at 8:30 a.m.; by the time she gets situated her workday starts at around 9 a.m. She checks her email again and then goes into her first meeting. Then, she gets to work on a presentation she has been working on, a policy document, and a strategy document that she needs to provide her input on. She starts working and then her boss emails her asking her a question. She quickly responds and gets back to work putting a few more slides together. Then it's off to another meeting and then lunchtime. After lunch she checks her email again, works on her tasks a bit more, checks email again, and attends another meeting. It's 5 p.m. and she scrambles to head out of the office to make it home by 6 p.m. so that she can have time to go to the gym and have dinner with her ...