Korn/Ferry International Doesn't Get It

Allen Delattre, Global Managing Director of Korn/Ferry International's Technology Practice, gave a brief presentation at GigaOm's Net:Work 2010 on the human factor in the future of work.

"Technology has progressed, but have we?" asked Delattre. "Pick your timeframe—5 or 10 years—and you'll see how rapidly technology has changed. Yet we as humans haven't evolved organically."

I thought I was at a tech conference, not a Matrix meet-up.

"You thought the telegraph to telephone was a bit leap," said Delattre, "but we've done more in the last fifteen years than in the past 3000 years."

I'm now beginning to wonder if there's a disconnect with reality, or just a marketing pitch coming, since there's not much that we've done recently that wasn't done in the 1800s (see the
Victorian Internet as a proof point: have we really pushed beyond the place shifting?)

"We live in world where we live locally but have to work globally," he continued. D'oh!

One good piece of news, however, in the presentation is the fact that democracy is growing across the world, at least based around the concept of the democratization of IT. Delattre wisely calls this "constructive anarchy" because workers are brining new mobile devices—such as the iPad—to the workplace.

"They are, in essence, dragging along the IT departments to the point of better tools to get work done," he said.

Yet there's one more disconnect.

"The past is no longer an indicator of the future," he said. "Tomorrow's leaders need to adapt and execute."

Yet he calls out that those who "took a turn through marketing and finance and operations" might not be the candidates to push up the chain, since they don't have the "new media" or "social media" chops.

But wait! Where will they get the experience to adapt, if we're overlooking those people who have taking a turn through finance, marketing and operations? What are they adapting from?