Istanbul is one of my favorite places. It’s rich with history, culture and diversity, and the region has some of the most breathtaking landscapes I’ve ever seen. Being immersed in distant cultures keeps me stimulated and builds my emotional intelligence and other skills that make for happier clients. Istanbul, like many cities, is a hotbed of culture and commerce, a pathway to economic opportunity. If you haven’t seen the world, a city like Istanbul is a great place to start.
What our cities need is a global workforce that can meet challenges where they are.
Cities are the topic of the century, and for good reason. By 2050, cities will be home to six billion people—about 70% of the world’s projected population. While cities comprise a mere 3% of our planet’s surface, they account for more than two thirds of our energy consumption. Cities are beacons of culture and economic opportunity. Cities are blueprints for social policy. Urban specialist Robert Muggah says, “Cities are where the future happens first.”
And yet, as much as cities are symbols of a society’s progress, they also amplify its problems. Urbanization brings violence, pollution, resource shortages and civil unrest. It’s why Muggah co-founded the Brazilian think tank Igarapé Institute—to gather unique insights in developing countries that could stimulate action around key issues, including urbanization itself. You could say the future interests Muggah the most, and from his TED Talk on the rise of modern city-states, it’s clear that our work is cut out for us. For instance, while we look to cities for clues on how to lead, we still know very little about urban societies in the regions that are growing the fastest.
To manage urbanization, we need a work culture that enables mobility, balances profit with purpose, and values personal autonomy. We need an infrastructure that connects people and information, facilitating process development and decision-making in real time. What cities need is a workforce of thinkers, doers, and makers who can meet challenges where they are.
According to a white paper on employee engagement published by PWC, “Employees who feel they can act with autonomy in their day-to-day work environment tend to have stronger job performance, higher job satisfaction and greater commitment to the organization.”
How can a distributed workforce provide the fuel urban initiatives need? Collaborating in real time from anywhere in the world is one of the social web’s biggest draws. It allows for better process visibility, faster decision making, and increased output, all without expending additional resources. A global workforce that’s always connected and “always on” is equipped to address challenges when and where they happen. More eyes on an issue is a good thing, and having those eyes spread out across agencies, sectors, and continents has become the norm. The efficiency of the social web has made the traditional work model obsolete. The new model—a culture grounded in autonomy, responsibility and reward—is replacing it.
It’s easy to see how a distributed workforce is best for what cities need. Consider social media. Beyond the rusty confines of traditional work spaces and siloed job descriptions, nomads are reshaping business by using the social web to connect and grow with like-minded professionals. By humanizing work and lifting barriers to productivity, this rapidly growing segment of the global workforce is teaching the world how to live and engage more deeply and meaningfully.
Nomads are integrated in their local communities, both home and abroad. This “worms-eye” view affords unique insights that could help agencies like Igarapé connect with people and projects on the ground. The social web gives remote workers greater access to resources, as well as the means to bypass bottlenecks in communication when pursuing opportunities and growing partnerships. Nomads are resilient, which makes a distributed workforce equipped to meet urbanization and other complex issues head on. But the promise of the social web has yet to be realized.
For autonomous workers, centralized social networking can only go so far.
The social web we know is inadequate. LinkedIn, the “official” professional networking social network, is blind to workflows, littered with ghost towns masquerading as social groups, and plagued with a frustrating freemium model. Facebook provides a space to reconnect with old friends and lost relatives and little more. Twitter’s ticker tape of gifs is teeming with unsightly memes, “marketeering” chat bots, and flame wars, an ever-growing cache of vitriol and minutiae.
None are designed for work and the numbers prove it. U.S. workers spend nearly 5 hours on apps every day (the majority on Facebook) and only 33 percent are engaged at work. Despite claims of “connecting the world,” the social web we know (even love) isn’t made for remote work. because it can’t be everything everywhere all at once, and there’s a reason for that.
Centralized social networks aren’t built for a distributed workforce. Even enterprise-level “federated” social networks reinforce information silos by limiting inputs and access. Many companies employ enterprise social networks like Yammer to keep workers engaged across projects and departments. But it’s difficult, if not impossible, to extend conversations beyond the safety of the company’s own network.
For a world that’s opening up, centralized systems can only go so far. Responsive design is now standard. The circular economy is replacing the linear one. Interdisciplinary education and systems thinking are reshaping business. Cross-sector partnerships are the new norm for complex problem solving. With cities on the rise, governance systems are recalibrating. Old school offices just don’t cut it anymore. No wonder a third of remote employees would rather quit than go back.
As more workers are emancipated, the ways in which they connect will become more fluid. Solutions will be more customizable and interoperable. The world will be more open, and remote workers (digital nomads) will supercharge the work cultures they help create.
A distributed, digital savvy workforce is integrated, motivated, and competent. A nomad is ready to get their hands dirty—send my work visa, give me my shots, stamp my passport, wire my cash, and throw in a VPN and I’m there, no questions asked. Nomads are techies—luddites need not apply. A nomad values technology like a right arm. None of it would be possible without tech and a nomad knows it. Nomads are socially driven. If you’re talking to people every day on their turf and on their terms, you’re learning to appreciate them in ways you never could chained to a desk.
Nomads who are entrepreneurs do more for themselves than most employers do for their on-site employees. Many handle their own benefits; HR, AP, AR, and IT are all in a day’s work. As systems thinkers, nomads take an interdisciplinary approach to learning on the job; traveling and immersing themselves in local customs, navigating work cultures, solving technical issues, logging data, and following security protocols are a slice of what a nomad does every day. Soft skills come easier for someone who is interested in different cultures. And perhaps most importantly, nomads are independent self-starters who need less supervision. For them, autonomy on the job is square one.
Distributed networks allow workers to integrate and innovate on their own terms.
To meet the challenges our cities face, a distributed workforce needs a system of communication to match. Richard Esguerra at the Electronic Frontier Foundation says federated social networks are “a vital step towards fulfilling values often lacking in the existing social networking ecosystem: user-control, diversity of services, innovation, and more.”
The more people can shape their careers, the better their work will be. Distributed social networks foster more fluid communication, allowing people to connect and work, and carry their identities between platforms without the fear of losing information or reputations, or being excluded from important conversations.
SIDE NOTE: When it comes to decentralized social networks, distributed and federated can mean the same thing—but it helps to know the difference.
Distributed social networks encourage people to solve problems in new ways. Digital platforms, AI, and cultural innovations are rapidly changing how we work. By giving workers ownership of their data, distributed networks would allow them to integrate and innovate better. Giving people more control over when and how they work and with whom is more conducive to getting stuff done. Distributed platforms are a natural fit because people can grow and improve at their own pace and on their own terms. In other words, decentralized networks have the power to unleash the potential of a distributed workforce.
Distributed workers could reanimate communities by participating in cross-sector partnerships incentivized by local governments. Relocation programs could help bolster ailing economies in reflexive ways. Detroit’s revitalization, for instance, could benefit from remote transplants. Workers could join registries for cities where revitalization is underway, and pop-up co-working spaces could spur local businesses by hosting workers in the short and long term. Housing authorities could provide incentives to match.
City leaders could advance policies through coalitions like the Global Parliament of Mayors and the C40’s Compact of Mayors, and utility providers could work with local governments and service-oriented nonprofits to design pilot programs. Programs that could bring much needed support to cities like Huizhou in China’s Guangdong province. With a metro population of more than 40 million, Huizhou attracts large numbers of migrant workers from rural areas throughout the region. In China, rapid urbanization has left millions of children in remote areas to fend for themselves as their parents work in cities far from their homes.
Universities and organizations like TNTP (formerly The New Teacher Project) could work with city leaders and utility providers to deploy teachers to remote areas, providing supervision and saving children from long and dangerous commutes. Doctors Without Borders and other NGOs could launch affiliate programs to bring medical care to the young and old whose caregivers have migrated for work. Meanwhile, editorial professionals and filmmakers could document the issues, craft narratives, engage with officials, and mobilize local and global audiences. Data specialists, psychologists, and social workers could track the efficacy of programs and work with local agencies to develop preventative measures.
In the U.S. state of Vermont, partnerships could build local talent where retention is low. The state’s advanced manufacturing sector has reported difficulty in finding STEM-qualified employees. In 2010, technical workers made up less than 2% of the state’s workforce, ranking it 34th in the country. As of 2013, less than half of the state’s high school graduates moved on to higher education within two years of graduating. A statewide cross-sector initiative could reverse the trend by creating pathways between incubators and schools to identify and cultivate talent.
An ambitious plan put forward by the Vermont Technology Council advocates creating an ecosystem for science and tech in the state by supporting early-stage science and tech-based companies, connecting students with employers, encouraging companies to identify future employees, and expanding a private-public consortium to support retraining for the highly skilled. A partner city exchange with Burlington, the state’s most populous city, could innovate retraining programs to include students early on.
In 2015, following the UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris, the City of Burlington announced that it had joined the Compact of Mayors. One of 400 cities to pledge support, Burlington has strengthened its local and regional tech scene. Mayor Miro Weinberger says, “The actions we take at a local level are part of a larger collective effort that will have global impact and create a better world for future generations.” What better way to connect local communities than through a global system built for a broad range of real-world applications?
Distributed social networks could test a combination of business models.
Apart from the tech itself, there are sociopolitical considerations surrounding the development of a decentralized web. For distributed social networking to work, people would need incentives to run their own servers and network nodes, either individually or through a group administrator.
In his introduction to the federated social network, Richard Esguerra writes, “The best way for online social networking to become safer, more flexible, and more innovative is to distribute the ability and authority to the world’s users and developers, whose various needs and imaginations can do far more than what any single company could achieve.” Given the limited accountability to which super-monopolies like Facebook are currently held, it isn’t hard to imagine the social media giant viewing such a movement as a threat to its own profitability, and then committing considerable resources toward ensuring the movement’s demise.
MIT Media Lab’s Chelsea Barabas, Neha Narula, and Ethan Zuckerman say decentralization alone isn’t the answer. They suggest focusing on “policies that strengthen the environment for decentralized platforms, including data portability, interoperability, and alternatives to advertising-based funding models.” As for no ad-funding, ex-Facebook developer Dalton Cauldwell’s attempt with App.net shows that subscription-based models are easier said than done. The service couldn’t sustain itself, even after surpassing its crowdfunding goal by a quarter of a million dollars. After two years it announced it had no plans to hire staff or develop improvements.
Learning from the past, a distributed social network for professionals could test a combination of funding models, including a barter system, where users trade products for services or referrals. Or a subscription model based on an employer’s annual budget or individual’s salary. Nonprofits could allocate corporate donations for storage and bandwidth costs, and work with federal or city programs to provide location-based data in exchange for funding.
In choosing a suite of features to maintain a social presence, each remote worker would, in effect, create their own business ecosystem—connecting employers, vendors, and affiliates, and adapting fluidly across sectors, regions, and regulatory environments. Programs like this could precipitate opportunities in the tech space, stimulate tourism and local food systems, generate value for cross-sector initiatives, and improve the education of the labor force.
Business as usual isn’t ready for the challenges our cities face. A distributed workforce can pick up the slack. I can’t tell you exactly when remote workers became the eyes and ears of urbanization, but it does make sense.
If cities really are where the future happens first, then why not design them for a global workforce that can get the job done?