3 F's of successful leadership

This is a short one, but an important one.

With changes caused by the pandemic around where we work (WFH, Office, 3rd space, hybrid etc), and what feels like some quite epic mobility influenced by the "great resignation", it feels like we find ourselves in a work environment that's in a bit of a state of flux.

It feels chaotic. And one of the reactions I'm seeing from senior leaders, is the desire to control that chaos with process...and with certainty. Certainty that just might not be there?

In my role as Work Futurist (made up job) at Atlassian (real company), I spend a lot of time outside our '4 walls' and with our customers, partners, users, and at conferences. One privilege of this role is access to a lot of high fidelity conversations around modern work and the struggles leaders are experiencing in their work environments right now. Less about the future and more about the current.

Problem/Question:

It's normally a topic around flexible work, distributed teams, or ways of working, and a desire to get some certainty and standardisation across teams.

Solutions/Answer:

I've shared many examples before, but I was actually inspired by a conversation with a brilliant colleague of mine, Peter Scobie , who shared the following approach. I've used it since we a stack of leaders, and they LOVE it. So here it is.

Imagine you've got a team you're about to work with. There's a temptation to build YOUR way of working and share it with them.That's probably the quickest approach, but it's not very engaging and feels a bit like compliance.

Plan B is to arrive with a blank piece of paper, and start from scratch. Highly engaging, but can be paralysing and could end up rabbit holed.

The alternative is the 3 F's:

• Fixed
• Flexible
• Free

Maybe let's work through an example to bring it to life. We have an initiative around Team Anywhere.

FIXED:

Our fixed element includes legal jurisdictions where we can employ people, the terms and conditions of our employment contract, how we interview and onboard, etc...

Fixed elements can be written as a Policy or Procedure. They are usually highly applicable to all or the majority of the population you're dealing with. They are open for review, but they are probably altered rarely.

These are the things you can debate, but it might just be a waste of time. Often more valuable to establish how you work within them. Again, it's not that you can't challenge them, but worth understanding WHY they exist and what purpose they serve.

FLEX:

Our flex elements include where you actually work. Australia is a legal juristiction (FIXED) in which we can legally hire and pay someone, but where you live in Australia is entirely up to you.

Similarly, we've opened offices, but whether you work from home or the office, is entirely up to you.

We've agreed that within our teams that we want 4 hours of overlap time a day for synchronous work. But how you work around those 4 hours is up to you.

We're flexible on what you wear to work, but within the boundaries of decency.

Flexible is where you give guardrails and options to people to operate within, but within those boundaries you are trusting them to optimise for their environment. You want some level of personalisation, but you don't need to start from scratch.

These are sometimes called practices. They're suggestive, but a bit looser than processes. They're directional, but not about compliance or adherence.

FREE:

Free is where there isn't a precedent or established way, or maybe there is just more value in starting with a blank piece of paper and seeing where your creativity goes. Let yourself wonder. And wander.

It's worth noting that this has a higher cognitive load, so it should be used where that investment gives a return. Co-design isn't cheap, but also requires a lot of intellectual honesty. DO NOT attempt "co-design theatre" where you pretend it's a blank piece of paper, but you've already got the answers. That leads to less engagement than doing nothing!

With travel opening up again, we've started to kick off lots of offsites...or onsites...we knew the world had changed during the pandemic, and we heard that our teams were keen to reconnect and build lasting relationships. But we were also confident that our old way of "offsiting" wasn't going to cut it.

So we started with a blank piece of paper and told our people they were FREE to experiment with this whilst we evolved and established.

As we've ran these experiments, different teams have shared what they tried, and more importantly, what worked and what didn't. It's likely that over time as we get more established at this, it will graduate to FLEXI where we provide guidance and guardrails to people.

Conclusion:

Instead of wearing the Certainty Blanket and pretending we're in control, let's accept the reality of the situation we're in. Fix the bits where you want compliance, be flexible where you can, and provide freedom to innovate and create, where it's valuable and desired.

It's not one or the other. It's a balanced combination of all 3F's.