The work environment is changing rapidly, driven by advances in technology and evolving business exigencies. The workforce is much more mobile and dispersed than even a few years ago, giving new meaning to the term "workplace." Over the next 10 years, the workplace is going to become increasingly chaotic, marked by less routine and greater volatility and organizations will have less direct control over the work environment--if, that is, the crystal ball at Gartner proves accurate.

"People will swarm more often and work solo less. They'll work with others with whom they have few links, and teams will include people outside the control of the organization," Tom Austin, vice president and Gartner fellow, said in a sneak peak at what will be on the agenda at the firm's "Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit" in September.

As the workplace becomes increasingly virtual, fewer workers will have an office they commute to each day: "Many will have neither a company-provided physical office nor a desk, and their work will increasingly happen 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In this work environment, the lines between personal, professional, social and family matters, along with organization subjects, will disappear."

The future envisioned at Gartner sounds remarkably like my work environment today (without the swarming), and yet trying to picture it as the norm leaves me strangely uneasy. My job can be done just about any time and from just about anywhere. It usually involves working during the weekend and sometimes late into the night. I rarely see my colleagues or my boss face-to-face, and most of my professional communication is done by email or instant messaging and occasionally by phone. It is admittedly a little chaotic, but it works for me.

At the same time, this unstructured environment does not suit most of the professionals I know. Most of them want more clearly defined parameters around their work, more routine and less chaos; they want to maintain a physical divide between their personal and professional lives; they want to leave their work behind at the end of the day.  

What's more, most professionals I know want to interact in-person with colleagues, taking the opportunity to simultaneously reduce stress and boost creativity. Not having these opportunities can hurt their morale. However, they do not necessarily want to blend their business and personal spheres; for many, maintaining separate spheres can provide havens that are mutually beneficial. 

Gartner envisions a new type of teamwork--swarming--in which people who don't answer to the same boss and don't know each other well quickly come together to solve a problem and then disband: "Swarming is a work style characterized by a flurry of collective activity by anyone and everyone conceivably available...[It] is an agile response to an observed increase in ad hoc action requirements, as ad hoc activities continue to displace structured, bureaucratic situations."

Is this really a recipe for long-term value creation within an organization? Swarming may be an agile form of decision-making, but is it the smartest one? When a problem is approached by anyone and everyone in a flurry of activity, what prevents a mob mentality--or a herd mentality--from driving the work? It seems that some quality assurance inherent in more structured work environments will be lost in the process.

As any preschool director will tell you, people generally need structure, routine, hierarchy (and maybe even a little bureaucracy) to channel their best natures. As leaders of essential teams within your organizations, do you think this is true? - Caron