A few months back, I was approached by a colleague that had been thinking about the collision of a number of key events: the turbulent economic environment, political uncertainty, changing workplace dynamics and the consumerisation of IT – individually, these topics have all been visited here at the Envisioners and yet the bleedin’ obvious had, until now, escaped us – what happens when you bring all of these events together at once?

We know that each one of these topics is enough on it’s own to start a conversation around how the business world needs to change (in both public and private sector) and yet here we are, presented with a once in a lifetime opportunity (I hope) where the convergence of compelling events in each of these areas create the mother of all incentives to become more agile and effective in the way we live work and play.

The Hybrid Organisation work comprises of three studies by distinguished thought leaders in their field; Prof Michael Hulme on the impact of current social change, Philip Ross on the opportunity provided by changes in the “built environment” and finally Ken Wood from MSR and myself on both the current and future potential offered by technology.

Alone, each one of these studies mark an incredible insight into each specific area, yet combined they create an incredibly compelling view of how organisations, leaders and individuals need to change in order to take advantage of the opportunities being offered and more importantly, how to stay relevant and competitive in our changing world.

To help organisations and individuals understand how to make these changes happen, we’ve created a final summary report which outlines the key themes from each of the papers and outlines 20 things every organisation should do on it’s journey to becoming hybrid.

I know all the cynics out there will be rolling your eyes and saying, “we’ve heard all this before” and that it doesn’t matter – well two things spring to my mind:

1. The unprecedented convergence of the recession, the election, workplace demographics and IT consumerisation is something that _cannot_ be ignored.
2. Read the reports and judge for yourself – Look at the 20 point plan and ask yourself (honestly) where you and your organisation stand…

Click here to view the embedded video.

For the second of our regular monthly podcasts, we’re joined by two of our latest additions to the Envisioners team – Robin Cavonious and Jonathan Peach who have been working over the past year on some research around the impact and challenges that the Millennial generation will bring to the workforce.

I’ve been really fortunate to work with both of them over the past couple of months and they very kindly agreed to share this research with me by both contributing to this blog and by providing us with an opportunity to hear a summary of their work to date.

It’s a great perspective and rather unusually, it’s from some real life millennials, (rather than those of us that have to pretend what it’s like…)

Sit back and enjoy…

You can download the webcast here (right click and “save as”) or click here to subscribe to the Envisioners podcasts on iTunes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is the presentation that launched the Envisioners – A year ago, I was lucky enough to get a slot presenting at the Architect Insight Conference here in the UK.  I used the opportunity to start to talk to others about the whole “Consumerisation” story and show some examples of how things are already beginning to change.

You can download the webcast here (right click & “save as”) or click here to subscribe to the Envisioners podcasts on iTunes.

You can also download the slides from the event - like everything on this site, they’re available for use under Creative Commons license, so feel free use them if they’re helpful to you, but please respect the copyright of the image authors (see last slide in the deck) and ensure you are licensed properly for their use.