There is NO going back

We are not going back to work.?We aren’t going back to the office. For those of us fortunate to have jobs that can be flexibly structured, we’ve been working the whole time and in our offices - our offices have just been in different places.

What we want is to move forward to a new way of working.?The old way of working hasn’t been working for all of us. Teams that don’t understand this will backslide and lose talent as well as business.

The new work model cannot result in more inequities:?we have too many of them already. The way most companies are doing “hybrid” isn’t?working. Workers aren’t just looking for flexibility, they are looking for autonomy - choice and input into how and when they work. When given the option,?employees with care-taking responsibilities are the ones most likely to work remotely. But, as one one?study?shows, 34% of men with children working remotely received promotions, compared with just 9% of women with children.

We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to reframe what work looks like.

I’ve synthesized what I’ve heard from clients and what I’ve been listening, reading and thinking about the way we work so you can deliberately figure out a new approach for your team.?

Facilitator, strategic advisor and the acclaimed author of?The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, Priya Parker on?Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead podcast?challenges us to answer these questions:?

“What have we learned during this time about our work, about how we work? About at the core of it, what it is we do and what is needed right now?”

The answers are not found by answering the logistics question - “Which days of the week do we come into the office?”

So What Can We Do Instead?

Don’t concern yourself with copying what others are doing or carelessly let how your team works aimlessly unfold. Start with a clean slate of what work can be like, not an offshoot of what work has been. It is not about which days of the week you will come in to the office, work remotely or a hybrid of both.?Be intentional. Make thoughtful, informed decisions:

Think it Through

• Start by thinking about your business, employee, customer and social goals and priorities. What have you learned from this time and new way of working? What’s been most effective? How have your teams been most productive? What outcomes are you driving for and what are the ways they can best be achieved??
• Ask yourself if it’s important to you to fully engage every employees or if your business will thrive in this tight labor market with only a subset of them. If so, how will you ensure you do that? How will you keep everyone visible, heard and engaged?
• Ask and engage your employees in defining the new work processes, especially the ones who are the most different from the management and leadership teams. Ask them what they think, what they want and what they think is needed to achieve the business goals. Really ask. Listen deeply.
• Change the way you assign critical, high value work from “Who is here that I can see? to “who can add the most value? or “who can be best developed and advanced through this opportunity??If the only way you know how to assign work, get the best out of people, measure performance and recognize contributions is by?physically?being in the same space with your team - you have a critical business vulnerability.

Get Into the Details

• Break things down: How should we handle internal meetings? Meetings with clients or key vendors? How will we plan strategy and set goals? What will it take to make the best key decisions?
• Break it down again - When will we meet? How will we meet? Why will we meet?
• Break it down even further and answer a question Priya Parker asks:?If everyone is not in the room, should someone manage the process for the people meeting in person and another person facilitate and have as their priority the people who are working remotely?
• Figure out what ways your team will need to communicate so everyone is included.

Endure Equitable Processes

• Balance each individual’s needs with the collective needs of the company and customers.
• Determine how you will manage and reward performance if you aren’t located in the same place and how you won’t arbitrarily favor people who are co-located with you.?
• Fully?allocate time, budget and focus to enabling this new way of working that you’ve created. Move money around to support the new way of working you’ve defined.

The measure of performance is not time spent on a task, time spent in the office, or time spent in meetings - the measure of performance is output/results and relationships that matter. We can collectively decide what matters now.?