#3 Measuring What Matters

And building the momentum toward something better

I’ve delayed writing this November issue of The Workplace Strategist more times than I can count. (And seeing as it’s November 30, I’ve made it to the 11th hour.) Thinking about the future of work and how businesses operate has felt trivial compared to what is happening on the global stage these past seven weeks.

Despite everything, business and work in the US continue as usual, and employees are expected to do the same. Supporting employees through nonlinear emotions like grief, fear, and anger on an individual basis has never been a corporate strong suit, so few would be surprised by how companies have been navigating the social change we're experiencing today.

Adding to the triviality, the future of work conversation has mostly stalled since September’s Return to Office “surge.” Aside from companies like Atlassian and Dropbox that demonstrate people-centric leadership and work flexibility do not undercut operational success, the companies and executives that were dug in on RTO this autumn have remained steadfast.

The first two issues of The Workplace Strategist aimed to persuade these steadfast executives to chart a new path for the businesses they steward. That persuasion is far from complete, but people need relief faster than executives are willing to change their positions. We continue to exist in this liminal, in-between space where we haven’t entirely shed the outdated work instincts and expectations of pre-2020 and haven’t yet established new ones that can move us forward.

This is why the next few issues of The Workplace Strategist will be dedicated to the people in the weeds, influencing and leading teams, and guiding projects. In short, all of you who are doing the work.

Many employees feel stuck and unable to turn the corner toward more effectiveness and ease in their work. Burnout and mental health crisis rates continue to rise, and - at least in the sample size of my friends and loved ones - we’re just glad to be getting by, keeping whatever momentum we have. Still, we are keenly aware that our mental and emotional loads are at capacity; if just one block of our respective metaphorical Jenga towers gets moved, the whole apparatus could collapse.

When it comes to work, much of this at-capacity feeling is because we, as individuals, can only do so much within the systems and structures of a larger company. Our mental and emotional loads are overburdened (mostly) because of systemic problems, not individual ones. No one person’s productivity app, bullet journal, habit stack, or zeroed-out inbox will solve these challenges.

At the risk of sounding trite, we need to work together on this. We must channel our inner Marie Kondo and [in lieu of keeping what sparks joy since universal base income doesn’t exist in the US…yet] only keep the norms, rituals, systems, and tools that help to foster creativity, build momentum, eliminate unnecessary burden, and - generally - let you move forward as a group.

Using a simple experimentation framework, I want to offer teams a low-risk approach to shaping how they work together for the better. Over the next few months, I will map out the approach you and your team can take to learn how to maximize how you spend time together, providing more time for individual focus time and, hopefully, less burden. This approach isn’t about personality tests or writing your personal user manuals. It’s about establishing clear agreements with one another to build upon, layer by layer.

The data teams collect from this experimentation framework can inform how companies approach future workplace strategy and business operations. As much as I, and many people working in this space, would love to snap my fingers and create a more balanced, equitable reality for work, the companies and executives still playing RTO on repeat are not ready to budge. Changes to flexibility and the workplace still feel too risky; a lot of that resistance and fear are based on needing more information. Let’s start measuring and give it to them.

These past seven weeks have reminded me of something so essential that’s easy to lose sight of from time to time: the top of every hierarchy is required for big, sweeping decisions to be made, and change that shapes those decisions comes from the persistent actions that always start at the grassroots.

Phase One will start in December; you’ll hear from me soon.

Oh, don’t worry; we’ll boomerang back to executives soon enough, I promise.