Flexibility and team work is where it's at!

The COVID-19 outbreak has forced a sudden shift in how councils’ function by presenting them with an unprecedented peacetime challenge. It turns out we have been stifling employees with a rigid office set-up for years, despite the recent attempt to introduce open plan workplaces and hot desking. Flexibility and team work is where it's at for forward-looking councils from this point onwards.

With VE Day fast approaching, lets remind ourselves of something Winston Churchill once said, "First, we shape our places, then our places shape us." A bit like our office spaces.

The term Agile working has been flying around our workspaces for quite some time. Working groups have been set up to discuss it, a consultant might have been drafted in to give some heart stopping presentation on how it all works, there will have been the inevitable discussions confusing flexible working with Agile too, its all par for the course.

Agile working is a concept devised by the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota to get production lines moving faster. Big UK firms such as Sky and BT are using it too to transform their work ethos. Agile working is "the ability to focus on performance, not mere presenteeism, to create trust-based relationships not hierarchies, to embrace innovation rather than bureaucracy, and to value people more than property," according to Paul Allsopp, managing director of business consultancy The Agile Organisation.

Lets read that quote again, but this time putting your self slap bang in the middle of the emergency response you are currently handling “Agile working is the ability to focus on performance, not mere presenteeism, to create trust-based relationships not hierarchies, to embrace innovation rather than bureaucracy, and to value people more than property”. In other words, councils up and down the country are at last embracing Agile working. In the space of 6-7 weeks, councils have mobilised teams, collapsed hierarchies, formed teams around objectives, worked out quickly how we need to work and are communicating in ways they used to dream about. Its amazing how a burning platform speeds up change isn’t it?

So how are we going to learn from this? Well here are some thoughts;

·        Lose the desks. What you do is more important than where you are. Managers like to see people so they can grab them when they need them, that has made us lazy. Give people whole projects with end-targets and trust them to get on with it. The office should be configured to suit different needs with zones for homeworkers to drop in, round tables for team work, private booths for quiet conversations and lounge areas for informal catch ups.

·        Lose the hierarchies. Agility is all about team-working as opposed to managerial dictating. Toyota put its workers in pairs, often a novice with an expert because the former learns from the latter and might occasionally come up with a new way of doing something. They also checked each other's work, saving the need for quality-control departments.

·        Deconstruct everything. Like a chef in a fancy Michelin starred restaurant, break down everything you know into smaller components. Take a project connected to the COVID-19 response for instance; you’ve broken it down and got the team straight to work. Test each stage, gather feedback and adapt as you go along, rather than waiting for an end result that doesn't deliver.

·        Embrace failure. Without risk you cannot innovate. Once they realise that it's OK to fail, people become more creative. With agile working there's no project management or quality control – everyone takes equal responsibility, and if you struggle with something you can guarantee you'll be given that task along with someone more experienced, so you can overcome your difficulties.

·        Be flexible. If this emergency response has taught us anything it’s that people enjoy moving around and reforming in different teams when a project is finished, rather than being structured in departments.  No one is hidden away and people who aren't pulling their weight are immediately exposed.

·        Meet regularly. Face-to-face group meetings (via Zoom naturally) are the best way to communicate. How invigorating has it been to have almost daily, short meetings with team members? It prevents problems being hidden.

There is so much we can learn and then embed from these last 7 weeks. Going back to how it was should not be an option for local authorities. I can support you in facilitating discussions and generating ideas on how we recreate all these Agile working methods when the global pandemic is over.

Drop me a line [email protected]

Richard Wills launched his own training business RW Training Associates in March 2020 after working in local government as a senior manager for 17 years. During the global pandemic emergency response, Richard has been supporting a local authority with the coordination of its food and medicine mobilisation project.