Forging Ahead with Flexibility

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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3.???Updating Operating Systems

The flexible mindset that helped your business pivot under duress during the pandemic can also help you devise an operating framework and systems that can flex as the marketplace evolves. Question “standard” practices and engage your curiosity to imagine and test other options. Consider what processes need to be (re)designed for the new business environment. Identify what workflows have not been logged and optimized to ensure they can be modified as needed.

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4.???Integrating Technology Upgrades

ChatGPT is exciting and scaring people. The horizon for significant change seems near-term in many cases and longer-term or cost-dependent in others. You cannot yet project how the composition, skills, and roles of your company’s employees might evolve over the next three years. These unknowns compound prior effects of embedding artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate routine job components. Non-routine jobs’ growth rate was almost 25 times higher than routine jobs’?growth between 1976 and 2014. Use a flexible approach to test and deliberate which new technologies to introduce when, clarifying and agreeing their purpose, benefit, and broad-based impact—on customers and employees.

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5.????Adapting for Talent Preferences

Workplace flexibility for knowledge and fixed on-site workers started well before the pandemic, mostly informally with scheduling and occasional working-from-home options. Narratives about who “has the power” are counterproductive and miss the point. The objective of giving workers flexibility over aspects of their work schedule, location, and even tasks is to improve engagement and results—while recruitment and retention are important additional benefits. Flexible work options allow optimization of individual and group work so employees can engage, excel, and adapt for business needs. Keep iterating, surveying employees, and refining the hybrid model, so leaders and teams can work together to discover what works best for them and the business.

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Overextension?

As human beings, we are creatures of habit. At the same time, we prove over and again how adaptable we are to disruptions that we cause and create. Although sometimes, unwittingly and unwillingly, we must adjust to the unintended consequences of our innovations! While uncomfortable at times, flexibility is essential so we can ride the swell of change and not be overwhelmed or inundated.

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As the second quarter begins, the road ahead is mostly uneven and unmapped for all of us. Engage your flexibility, activate your curiosity, practice your empathy, and reframe your approaches, so you can move ahead with energy, understanding, and imagination. The flip-side of every challenge is opportunity, and there are many to embrace as your business transforms.

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If you are interested to find out more about the new era of work, flexible mindsets, empathy, and much more, please check out my book “Empathy Works: The Key to Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work”. Flexibility is also one of the core skills included in my LinkedIn video course The Future of Work: The Necessary Skills of Your Future Workforce which is free to take until April 21. You might also be interested in my popular podcast “Transforming Work with Sophie Wade” coming up next are episodes on entrepreneurship and the evolution and integration of telecommuting (now remote working!).