5 Steps to New Work

And why it's all about how to make purpose work

It seems to most of us that new terms emerge every once in a while to create new influencers. "New work" is not different in this regards. In fact, it's even worse, as it's often associated with new age, yoga, and "some esoteric bulls**t". But as most of the other buzz words, new work, too, is an important phenomenon connected with the Internet and the globalisation of labor and the economy.

New Work is the next wave of digital transformation - the transformation of the workplace

Yes, new work has to do something with yoga, but it's more profound than most people believe. Josh Bersin has a wonderful article that explains the transformation of the workplace as part of the digitisation (see image below).

1. First we automated the collection of information through forms. a.k.a. Web 2.0 (very futuristic during my studies in 2002)
2. Then we started using tools for integrated talent management, digitising business processes like payment and data administration
3. Then we started using technology to interact and collaborate, and create new types of data, and more dat
4. And then the Millenials took over as majority at the workplace and it all flipped to Talent & Employee Experience. That's the yoga part.

You haven't voted for the Internet, and you won't be voting for New Work - the are both just happening.

Source: Josh Bersin at https://joshbersin.com/2019/04/is-integrated-talent-management-over-yes-let-talent-experience-reign/

The digital transformation is a transformation of work culture.

1. New people with new values, new technological capability, and new habits. New generations of talent joined the workforce to increase diversity and change it forever.
2. Those new people met in new spaces, like big open coworking lofts, with Italian coffee and green walls, replacing fixed desks and private offices with communities.
3. The new spaces enabled new communication, and most of all required more communication, on more channels, to increase transparency and the amount of information available to ever more stakeholders - power to the networks!
4. This enabled new collaboration forms like virtual teams, self-organisation, and agile management.
5. And of course, when people know more and work differently, new leadership is required with data-driven decision making, integrity, and new goals centered around purpose.

These are the 5 steps to new work and how it's all about purpose

Source: Dr. Tina Ruseva, https://www.tinaruseva.com

But how to make purpose work?

This is exactly the question we asked ourselves last year. For the first time in the history of labor, five different generations of culture, habits, backgrounds, values, and communication channel preferences, work hand in hand at the workforce. And ... they don't talk to each other (or not as much as they should). The future of work seems to be emerging by itself, as random set of bubbles, driven by the giant tech companies, science, or leadership coaches - all with different agendas.

But what is now a future of work, will tomorrow be the result of our actions today.

And it better be working for more people. This was the drive behind the Big & Growing New Work Festival we started in 2019. Its goal is to create a democratic platform, connect all stakeholders, and create a future of work that belongs to the people.

New Work, New Conference

When we started Big & Growing we wanted it be like New Work itself - decentralised, agile, and inclusive. We wanted everything at the event not only to speak about the future of work, but be it. We aimed for nothing less than a complete New Work experience - that embraces complexity, uncertainty, and diversity to bring people together to make purpose work.

As a completely new type of conference - an agile conference - a decentralised event, which content is created by the audience (like in a giant BarCamp), with the goal to connect all stakeholders of the future workplace, it was the harder job to do, but the one with a purpose.

Big & Growing - How it works

In a typical conference, you have experts who deliver their content from up on the stage to down to the audience, saying how the future will be. As the future is not only unknown and complex, but also highly ambiguous, we decided to take a different approach. Our assumption - the road is the destination. Rather than finding out, we decided that Big & Growing will emphasize on the value of discourse and community. So we took the 5 steps of New Work and set them as separate festival topics and we invited everyone to apply and host a session:

• People
• Spaces
• Communication
• Collaboration
• Leadership

On the last day, we host a purpose conference to wrap up the results, and create actionable and sustainable outcome - this is how you make purpose work. And you are cordially invited to try and join as a partner, host, or speaker.