The Future of Work: Can we stop making assumptions?

For those who have picked up a copy of my book, you'll read about how, throughout my career I have consistently said, "I don't know, I'll find out". For such an answer, the best managers praised me, the worst managers treated me in such a way that I felt punished, sometimes even punished enough to start pretending I knew everything.

I presume that the latter group thought knowledge was power. I call BS on that.

When we rely on our knowledge and experiences, the assumption dial is turned right up, and our curiosity dial suffers. Where 'knowledge' is underpinned by assumptions, it is not power, it is stupidity.

If you skid whilst driving, it'd be quite easy to trust our instinct and assume we should break, when actually, taking your feet off the pedals altogether and riding it out is the best thing to do (according to the experts... no lawsuits please haha).

When we make assumptions, we are hiding behind our version of the story. We take snippets of what we know and fill in the gaps, connecting dots that simply don't exist. It is safe, it is easy. But it is not big, and it is not clever. We remain stuck in the past, carrying toxicity into new situations. It is dangerous.

When we are vulnerable enough to embrace not knowing, we are opening the door to creativity, connection, curiosity, and growth. Not knowing encourages us to question, to be critical, to learn. When we accept what we don't know, we draw the line, we manage other people's expectations, and we manage the expectations we place on ourselves too.

There's always something that inspires my writing, and in this case, it is consistently being asked, "What is the future of work?". My response is an authentic one:

• I know what the future of work SHOULD be.
• I know what the future of work COULD be.
• I do not know, and neither does anybody, what the future of work WILL be.

The ongoing rhetoric surrounding the future of work continues to be fuelled by vested interests and the hopes from the sector it is being written by, and what we read will depend on who has the biggest marketing budget!

Just in case you are wondering, my vested interest is that of a human being hoping that whatever we do, we put people, our communities, and our planet first. My marketing budget is nil and from experience, anything between 40 and 35,000 people will see this.

So, Simone, what is the future of work?

Well, I do not believe there is a single answer or a single approach that we should be taking. We need to understand the why of the organisation, the idiosyncrasies, needs and desires of the role and tasks, and treat people as the individuals they are. To do this there are some key things we will need to do along the way...

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Drop the assumptions. Unless you like making an ASS out of U and ME.

Purpose must be clearly defined so every single person/function understands what their contribution means to the bigger picture.

The organisational culture is going to need conscious and intentional energy and effort to ensure it is enabling your people, your business, to thrive.

By ensuring culture is Human-Centric we are building our people and in return they build our business. Future leaders need to be skilled at the hard stuff (the 'soft' stuff!) like trust, psychological safety, empathy, authenticity, and vulnerability.

Speed, agility, and adaptability is key. Siloed and top-down organisations based on predictable commercial events are a thing of the past. The unpredictability and disruption that comes with the 21st Century needs speed, agility and adaptability to stay ahead. There will be more ambiguity and we need to embrace that and be comfortable with not knowing what's coming next.

Curiosity fuels the speed, agility, adaptability, and ambiguity requires. The more curious we are, the more information we have, the more we can connect the dots at speed.

Resilience underpins speed and curiosity. We need to fail and bounce back stronger, reinventing, innovating and consistently solving problems.

Networks of teams is an important part of designing for adaptability and resilience. It is the shift away from hierarchical organisational structures toward models where work is accomplished in teams. Rapport and the strength of relationships gets stuff done; people dig deep for each other.

Accountability becomes more crucial and transparent when we work within networks of teams. Individual and team goals and metrics should be shared for everyone to see. The sense of accountability this can create is critical to team and corporate effectiveness. This of course links to rapport and relationships; digging deep together and for each other.

We need to be brave to act and make things happen, failing, learning and trying again!

Adopt continuous, feedback-based performance management. When we work at speed with ambiguity, regular feedback empowers people to reset goals continuously, change projects, and feel rewarded for their 'work' not just their 'job'.

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What assumptions do you make?

How truly confident are you to say out loud that you don't have the answer?

How often are you putting your foot to the floor instead of riding things out to see what happens?

As always, take care and be a good human!

SFJ.