I am about halfway through Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat. I go to work on Monday and one of my co-workers tells me a story of just how flat our world at work is. I am relatively sure this gentleman has never heard of Tom or his book. But he tells me with excitement, "Dave you gotta hear this! We are working over the weekend on this project. The equipment is made in Italy, the tools we are using are made in China, we are Americans (although he is an American, he was born in Puerto Rico) and our company is owned by Japanese!"
Tom spends over five-hundred pages in his book explaining how the world is flat. It's fascinating. Briefly, countries throughout the world are opening up, (Berlin Wall came down), the Internet came along packing unbridled communication in its holsters, work flow software, outsourcing and offshoring are just a few flattening factors. Remove walls and boundaries; lubricate communication. You still have a neighborhood market, its just that a few of the stores are ten thousand miles away.
Tom has caused me to view American industries farming labor overseas in an entirely different light. I used to think, poor American workers losing their jobs. But reality says that labor intensive work is more cost effective overseas. And instead of our workers migrating to the next labor job that can be performed abroad, we need Americans to plug into positions where they can add value. Instead of working on an assembly line, maybe design, repair and maintain the assembly line. I am thinking out loud here but whatever we do, we as workers must add value to the finished product or service.
