The four-door method

As we close out the year 2020, most organizational decision-makers are still scratching their heads about how, if, and where we will all work from in 2021. Some have decided to declare full flexibility and told employees they can work from wherever they feel appropriate or productive. Others have been more cautious, allowing the current working from home to continue till the middle or end of 2021. Many others are struggling- some tried to bring employees back, only to reverse course soon after either due to employee backlash or the second surge. 

Employees, too, are figuring out what this means. Some packed their bags from overcrowded offices, high priced cities, extended commute arrangements, and went somewhere else. The more adventurous are trying out exotic islands as ideal places to work (and enjoy?). Others feel socially isolated, working from home, and yearn to get back to the office. 

So pretty much everyone is in a soup. Whatever decisions they make will involve some trade-off, either at an individual or organizational level. Organizations worry about what policies to make and how to implement them uniformly, while individuals try and balance out their work and life roles and figure out the optimum solution. 

We hang in a delicate balance, and whatever move we make organizationally or individually will upset it in some way or the other. However, the day of reckoning will come when we need to make calls that will affect us personally and organizationally.  

The simple tool I intend to show you is a best practice to evaluate the consequences of your decisions- so that you are aware of and assess the implications of any decision you will make carefully. 

Introducing the simple four-door method to filter decisions in figure 1

Imagine you have four doors to enter, sequentially; each door-entry a decision point. To cross one door, you need to answer a question and then proceed to the next door. You can choose to answer the questions yourself or include your family members if you are an individual. If you are an HR function, making calls for the entire organization, you can include a broad cross-section of employees on any call you make. 

I illustrate using a particular example for an individual employee, though the tool is simple enough to grasp to extend it to an organizational level. Suppose, as an individual, the decision you want to make is to work from home permanently (assume, for this example, it is your decision, and there are no impediments from the organization to do so).

At the first door, answer the question, "What is it that I could do while working in an office space that I can still do while working from home?" And you answer, for instance, "I can still complete my tasks and perform effectively, I can still connect with my boss and team members, though virtually." Great. Enter that door.

At the second door, ask the question, "What is it I could not do earlier, I still cannot do?" And you may go, "I still cannot avoid working extra during quarter-ends, I cannot take a time-out during lunch breaks." Yes...things that you could not do earlier, you cannot do now as well. 

In these first two doors, pretty much nothing has changed in this example. It is business as usual. Also, I have kept the examples pretty simple- I do realize some of the stuff you may want to list is far more complicated than what I have shown.

Now get ready for the third door. Here ask the question, "What is it I could do before while working in an office that I cannot do now while working from home?" And you may answer, "I cannot see my team face to face, collaboration may be more difficult, I may miss the chances for my promotion if I don't show my face every day." 

Now you are on the fourth door. Now ask the final question, "What can I do now that I could not do earlier while working from the office?" And you may say, "I can have more work-life balance, avoid the 40-minute commute, and exercise more."

Once you make a list (and you may have many more items than I have shown) at each door, take a hard look at what you have written. As mentioned earlier, there is no change from before at doors one and two- business as usual. They are the same as before. Changes occur at doors three and four. You then need to ask the question, am I willing to let go of the list on door three to benefit from the list at door four? If yes, make the decision and move on. If not, check if there are other ways you can address the issue. If you cannot handle the issue any other way, be very careful. You may not want to make the trade-off.

With this simple tool, you can deliberately reflect on any decision at a level deeper than you would typically take. Here are typical decisions you could put through the four-door method. 

At an individual level, some of these decisions could be: Should I relocate to the Caribbean to work from there? Or, Should I enroll in a virtual degree to enhance my skill set. Or, should I home-school my child? Or, should I give my job (temporarily or permanently) to take care of my loved ones? Or, should I embark on a gig-career?

At an organizational level, here are some decisions you can filter through the four-door method. Should we close down our principal office or repurpose it? Should we issue a company-wide policy on allowing people to work from home permanently? Should we not allow for some functions to be allowed to work from home permanently? 

One variation of the four-door method is also to test out assumptions before implementing a decision. If you want to start a few experiments and check out how the four-door questions are answered, you have real-time data that proves the efficacy of an action you may take. This approach will work well when an organization has to consider many variables and is not sure of committing itself to an action. Differences in culture, infrastructure, and generational differences may bear that one cannot be presumptuous about and may want real data before deciding. 

The purpose was to share a simple tool that allows for a more considered assessment of actions to take in the changes you may want to make while emerging from the pandemic. Hope you find it useful.