PODCAST: The future of work is anti-disciplinarian

" I’m excited about this year; we have a new narrative which is anti-disciplinary - to me that’s the future of business."
Soren Trampedach, Founder and CEO Workclub

Trampedach is a thought-leader on innovation and the new work culture, he has an impressive 20-year career in leadership positions, and continues to provide consultancy on workplace structure – or non-structure.

Soren Trampedach created Work Club to provide established businesses with a unique, boutique solution to the challenges posed by the rapid pace of change in the working environment, partnering with TEDxSydney.

“Most people think I started Work Club because of my background in spaces – commercial spaces – that’s not the whole theory behind it” he says, adding the motivation comes more from his history of working with thought leaders and his exposure to different workspaces.

“I’ve always been around progressive thinkers globally from the technology perspective, from the organisation perspective… and I saw one of the first co-working places in New York in 2005 and I really liked the idea of that. I just didn’t quite understand why it was so industry specific and it comes back to a theory I have… it’s a theory that’s a bit fluffy in some ways I guess."

“It’s a theory around Leonardo da Vinci… So he lived in Florence in the early renaissance time when it was the centre of the world in terms of new ideas, new cultures, new inventions and at the time he was very calculative - at least very conscious - of whom he would surround himself with in his local network. Because he felt that diversity in that network elevated the quality of his work… this is the very short version.”

“If you fast-forward to today. All of the disruption, all the changes that are happening across all industries and disciplines are creating a lot of questions for all”, he says. “It doesn’t matter who you are whether you’re an individual working from home alone or you’re a big multi-national or national company or anything in between, if you work in isolation to some extent within your own tribe, network, industry - call it whatever you like - you’re just less likely to find answers.

“If you move yourself outside of your tribe, network, industry you increase the probability of at least getting different perspectives and possibly ideas.”

ANTI-DISCIPLINARY

“I’m excited about this year; we have a new narrative which is anti-disciplinary - to me that’s the future of business” Trampedach says.

Traditionally businesses are very industry specific and top-down in terms of their structure, there’s not so much collaboration or interaction across structure and between industries.

“Work club is kind of the entry point in, we’re creating that diversity and we are encouraging links between those different industries and disciplines,” Trampedach says.

“The end point is not about actually collaborating between one or two industries… in the future it will be four, five, six disciplines collaborating across these disciplines on specific topics or challenges.

“So the complexity in terms of collaborating and working together is enormous it’s a hybrid across all of these disciplines. And to me that’s coming whether we like it or not. It’s already happening.

“Technology is a big piece of that. Anti-disciplinary as a word – it’s no longer about the discipline it’s about new disciplines appearing out of all this collaboration.”

“My biggest area of interest right now is organisational structure - what should you be doing as a business in terms of your own structure – of your teams, your people."

“I don’t believe its top down; it becomes really emergent. It is basically from bottom up. How do structure your business so that your frontline, everybody cares and goes that extra mile. That’s what’s needed in that environment.

“How do you create a community or client base that is participating in developing? If you don’t’ address that in the coming years you’re going to disappear.”

This podcast is from  The Mentor List and is part of their ongoing series on learning from industry leaders and the world's top business minds about their personal experience; including their daily habits, challenges and advice for generating passion and engagements. 

For more see the Mentor List’s full coverage. You can also find out more about Work Club and the Florence Guild – Trampedach’s medium for bringing together thought leaders from a diverse range of disciplines to discuss key issues on their corresponding websites.

David Lewis is an Australian business professional and founder of The Mentor List.