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APAC Forum match them to the best cancer treatments for an individual patient. The doctor's skills are augmented by computing power, but he remains the patient's contact and advisor. Others will find entrepreneurial ways to use robots to create new jobs, new services, and new opportunities. For example, artistically inclined people can design artwork on computers that robotic printers can then manufacture. Over time, we will find many ways to create things or develop services that we never dreamed of by using robots and computers. Our relationships with robots will grow more complex over the next decade. Many new jobs will be created as old ones disappear. Nothing new here—it happened as we moved into the industrial age and mechanisation replaced most of the people who worked on, say, farms. Since then, thousands of new jobs have been created. Robotics will inspire us to invent new things to do that are uniquely human. Disruptor #5: Hierarchy are giving way to self-organising systems. Traditional models of hierarchical leadership are already failing to deliver results. Financial stress, talent gaps, lack of innovation, and competition on a global scale are causing many organisations to stumble. This last recession almost brought the end to General Motors and to many of the traditional, hierarchical firms that manufactured products or delivered services at too high a cost and with not enough innovation. A complex, rapidly changing world made up of fickle customers and global markets requires new ways to organise and new ways of thinking about leadership. Biology has taught us that organisms are more resilient if they are nimble, adaptable, live in diverse colonies or networks, and are quick to move. Organisations, too, need to become smaller, act faster, and be more networked. Organisations are more resilient in tough times if they have, and leverage, strong social networks that bring together diverse types of people. Some organisations have adopted non-hierarchal forms and have built strong networks among their employees and customers. Firms such as Handlesbanken in Sweden—which offers a full range of financial services in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and in Great Britain—is Sweden's largest and most profitable bank. It has weathered the financial crisis and recession with record profits. It is almost completely decentralised, designed around collaboration and sharing, has virtually no hierarchy, and empowers every employee to make decisions without consulting a boss. Morning Star, a tomato processing company in California, is a completely self-managed organisation. Chris Rufer, founder and president, believes in three basic principles: [12] HRO TODAY GLOBAL | SPRING 2013 • People are happiest and most productive when they have personal control over their lives. • People are "thinking, energetic, creative, and caring human beings of integrity." • The best human organisations are those in which others don't manage people, but in which participants coordinate among themselves, managing their own relationships and commitments to others. As a result, he asks each employee to create a Colleague Letter of Understanding (CLOU) in which they craft a personal mission statement, agree to achieve certain objectives, and identify the measures that they will be judged by. They do this in a network with other employees. There are no managers and no hierarchy. Says Rufer: "Clouds form and go away because atmospheric conditions, temperatures, and humidity cause molecules of water to condense or vaporise. Organisations should be the same; structures need to appear and disappear based on the forces that are acting on the organisation." Centralised, hierarchical organisations are never aligned with customer, market, or employee interests. We should always ask if formal structure is contributing to market success or whether it is only for internal purposes. Organisations such as Handelsbankn, Morning Star, and W.L. Gore have eliminated formal structure as much as possible. As little as 10 per cent of their energy goes into creating or maintaining a hierarchy. Even the informal structure is limited. Control is social, and most energy is spent in value-creation. They empower teams, keep most employees market-facing so that they can respond quickly, learn constantly, and keep management filters at a minimum. Time For Change Demographic pressures, expanding economies in non-traditional markets, rapidly changing customer needs and desires, technological innovation, and an increasingly complex, networked world are leading to significant changes in how people think about work, how people actually work, and how organisations are shaped. These five disruptors are tearing apart traditional human resource leaders and recruiter thinking. Assumptions are challenged by market realities and the growing difficulty in fitting people into outmoded systems that were built for anther time. Human resource leaders and recruiters need to adapt their thinking and practices in order to be successful over the next decade. Kevin Wheeler is president at The Future of Talent Institute. He can be reached at kwheeler@futureoftalent.org.