The Work In Progress Report

FIVE AREAS FOR ATTENTION

 

How was your Q1 2023? Tumultuous, somewhat chaotic, or relatively orderly? Have pre-pandemic re-established processes and arrangements been working smoothly or are many straining and needing updating? Flexibility is essential to allow your company to adjust for the new era of business and work. Integrate flexibility into these five areas and your organization and workforce can adapt to current conditions and be ready for whatever the future holds.

 

Wherever you are in the process, transformation requires substantial shifts across multiple dimensions. During this period of flux, we need to be regularly assessing strategic changes, what needs most attention next, as well as how, where, and when to benefit holistically from the latest disruptive technologies. It is imperative to keep stepping back to review, realign, reconfigure, or even rethink aspects of what you are doing—how, with and for whom.

 

Flexibility is Fundamental

 

Most of us would prefer to be on familiar, solid ground, knowing where we are going, moving at a steady pace. However, that’s not where we are right now, nor will these conditions be over soon. Societal evolution and technological advances and implementations—accelerated, not caused, by the pandemic—have launched us into the Future of Work.

 

This new era is characterized by highly digitalized, interconnected, fast-paced, and unpredictable marketplace developments. We need to flex to be able to transform and transition so our businesses can compete and achieve sustainable growth. Counterbalancing the digital drivers, this modern era emphasizes talent. The orientation for success is human-centric—understanding and optimizing for your customers and employees.

 

Why? Humans are the ones:

• you are selling to and serving—whatever the delivery medium or mechanism.
• prompting chatbots and using sophisticated new platforms and applications.
• capable of completing the growing volume of non-routine projects in teams.

 

Agility to adapt to ongoing changes is an operational necessity for your business. Your employees need the information and responsibility to make timely decisions anticipating or reacting to changing customer demands and behaviors. Every team member must be engaged and ready to respond. For flexibility to be integrated and pervasive--infusing all the business and work arrangements and activities affecting your ecosystem—ensure you are:

 

1.   Shifting Your Mindset

A flexible mindset is your starting point to enable the open-minded approach that is critical for recognizing and accepting current realities. You can focus on what is important and adjust as necessary to move forward without wasting time, energy, and effort resisting the inevitable. Conventional (fixed) attitudes often rely on methods that cannot morph with sufficient speed or range. Many previously pioneering CEOs and investors are drawing heavily on traditional experiences to try and solve today’s problems and tomorrow’s needs. Instead, engage a student mindset to investigate new ideas. Use first principles to develop viable solutions for current situations and to be able to prepare for whatever is next.

 

2.   Accommodating Economic Uncertainties

From mental to macro, it is important to assess the potential repercussions of relevant economic environments: global, national, and local. Globally: the impact of war(s), shifting alliances, and international tensions. Nationally: the effect of an impending recession (or not or how much) and the incalculable, unprojectable results of government actions (eg. The Fed (US)). Locally: how entities all along your supply chain are being affected and the consequences for your business of their new choices and possible direction. Explore risk mitigation through diversification and scenario planning. Develop close relationships with valued partners to align strategies and decision-making to be flexible in concert.

 

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

The conventional wisdom suggests that an economic downturn would put a stop to remote work. The conventional wisdom is wrong.

Eventbrite - host Sophie Wade, Author of Empathy Works presents MANAGING THE TRANSFORMATION OF/AT WORK - Tuesday, 24 May 2022 at Venue 1, London, Greater London. Find event and ticket information.

For decades, ‘superstar cities’ have been attracting talent and money. But thanks to remote work, their status may change, bringing tech expertise to places that have long tried to attract it.

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CULTURE IN THE HYBRID WORKPLACE

A conversation with Sophie Wade about the future of work, the impact of the pandemic, the "hybrid" workspace, leadership and empathy

Four top thought leaders discuss how Covid has produced huge shifts in the workplace, focusing on technology as it shapes human interaction.

HR leaders must work with IT to create a productive and inspiring work environment if they want to sustain a positive hybrid work model.

The world of work has evolved in recent years. Hybrid and remote working is now commonplace - but what are the main trends for remote working in 2023?

A recent survey of 1,000 Singapore workers aged between 18 and 67 has stirred a heated debate online over the current sentiments of employees here.

For many of us, the end of summer is approaching, and kids are going back to school. The next week is time well spent looking backwards and forwards and mulling over what’s next as we prepare to ramp up for the busy months that round out the year.

Managers stay remote while staff are sent back to the office, further fuelling resentment - and the Great Resignation.

LOOKING BACK: We repeatedly went to our designated place at the office and completed our tasks, ‘learning on the job’ over years from our managers. We didn’t think much about how we did it—we have been deliberately schooled to be compliant workers (since ~1835 in the US). We hardly needed to engage to fulfill a predictable, projectable, and linear series of tasks for years.

 

LOOKING AHEAD: With pandemic-accelerated digitization and ongoing tech advances, the Future of Work’s arrival means continuing unpredictable market developments and changing customer needs. Employees need to engage fully and flexibly to respond effectively while continuing to accumulate new skills and iterating often as business models and operating methods evolve. The bar has been raised substantially.

 

RIGHT NOW: Adapting to fulfill more challenging business requirements requires new approaches, including adopting more sophisticated work models. We need to be purposeful in understanding, defining, and designing our work going forward: what we do, the flow of tasks, how we accomplish them, with whom, plus where and when—accommodating business, team, and personal needs and preferences.

 

DELIBERATE DESIGN: With an adaptive mindset, if you are specific and detailed, and consider all aspects of work, you can craft optimized work arrangements to adjust for each person’s and group’s performance.  Establishing new means and methods will allow you to accommodate: the new tempo, pivoting, contingency realities, remote working needs, virtual innovation, intentional creative intersections, trust-building, and an inclusive culture—integrating empathy throughout to improve connections, communications, and collaboration.

 

Click here to listen to my new podcast episode interviewing Sacha Connor, Founder and CEO of Virtual Work Insider, sharing creative strategies and tactics about her transition to virtual working and how she became a successful remote leader, including as the head of an innovation team at The Clorox Company.

A research-based case for why everyone should be in the office on the same days.

CIOs have been in the hot seat regarding how well teams, including their own, connect while working remotely.