The Great Reboot

The notion of "The Great Reboot" struck me as I read, this morning, an article in Fortune magazine entitled: "American worker productivity is declining at the fastest rate in 75 years—and it could see CEOs go to war against WFH"

It is refreshing to see mainstream media finally bring to light the dark side of the productivity-less COVID-19 era. I feel that the media, in their quest for trends and readership appeasement, is at least 1 (or 2) years late to the party. I am one of the many CEOs that have been highly concerned (and for a while now) about the resulting imbalance between the employees' experience vs. their effectiveness; and the intertwinement of their happiness and their usefulness, at work. We need as a society, and leaders, to be more anticipatory, and to better lead from the future. We have the collective responsibility towards our children, and theirs, to leave the world in a better place than the one we came into.

I personally am not at war with the principle of Work-From-Home (WFH). I believe that it has its spot in tomorrow's, and in specific cases in today's, workplace model. I am however a staunch believer that the pandemic induced WFH movement has only given us a preview of what the future of work may incorporate. The same way that the current AI movement is providing us with another glimpse of what the future of work may also include. At the end, the biggest issue that businesses will face in the future is the scarcity of the resources needed to help them innovate and thrive. This is where Remote Work, AI, the Metaverse, and other future movements, may play a critical role in advancing humanity. Remote Work will give organizations direct access to the global pool of talent, hence equalizing opportunity for everyone no matter where they live. AI will help augment our workforce's capability enabling us to do more with less. The Metaverse may give us that place that emulates closely our connected reality.

"A rebound in productivity will be key to solving many of the economy’s current issues", economic expert Gregory Daco said.

Our reality, today, is that we are ill equipped in leadership skills, WFH competency, and technology advancement, to be truly effective at disrupting the pre-pandemic proven working model. Change will come, but not before a decade or two, have elapsed.

"Reboot" can be a powerful term in the context of technology or systems, as it implies a complete reset that can fix glitches and improve performance. In this context, a reboot can have a significant impact by restoring functionality and ensuring that systems are working optimally.

I hence went on a journey to further my understanding in why computers need to be restarted from time to time, as I saw an intuitive application of this concept in addressing the inefficiency plague that has infected tech-businesses at large in our post-pandemic word.

Can Rebooting Fix Deep Organizational Issues?

This is where the fun begins: I simply copied content from a website about how "Rebooting a Computer Can Fix Issues", and replaced a couple of "computer related" terms with "business centric" ones. Below is the outcome.

Your organization runs many processes in the background that may not be needed. They can slow down your advancement and cannibalize critical resources like people, systems, and finances. These inefficiencies keep on accumulating until you restart your business. On the flip side, if you tolerate these issues for a long time, your organization will run into problems, and may get unbootable.

When restarting, every single inefficient process, useless project, and culture issue is?closed. Upon reboot, the organization will be back to its clean state. Chronic issues are resolved, and performance is optimized.

When Should You Reboot Your Organization?

Below are some key indicators, or triggers, for restarting your organization:

• It is running slowly
• It is working abnormally
• It is freezing
• There are culture or strategy issues
• It is taking a long time to release a product, complete a project, or deliver success to customers
• It is facing productivity or profitability issues
• You are applying a foundational change

A reboot will fix any of the above mentioned problems, and more, almost every time.

Restart Now, or You Will Fast Be Unbootable!

I will wrap this up by sharing insights from another article I recently read. This one was published by Business Today, and is entitled: "ChatGPT-maker Sam Altman says era of remote work is over", ChatGPT-maker OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, talking about work from home, stated, "I think definitely one of tech industry's worst mistakes in a long time was that everybody (thought they) could go full remote forever, and startups didn't need to be together. There was going to be no loss of creativity. I would say that the experiment on that is over, and the technology is not yet good enough that people can be full remote forever, particularly on startups."

We can choose to agree, or disagree, with the essence of this article, but when all is said and done, nothing (yes nothing) can replace being there. It seems to me that everyone has been working so hard at changing proven ways, and evolving technology, so that we can live a virtual experience that imitates so closely the real life that we already have. Isn't that ironic?

The organizational reboot that I am hereby referring to, is unfortunately neither a return to 2023, nor a return to 2019, but rather a return to 2003 (the founding year of Explorance ). This was the year that cemented everyone's crisp realization that followed the hype and burst cycles of the now infamous tech-bubble. This reboot means a return to an era where profitability, productivity, team effectiveness, and customer success all mattered simultaneously and equally as sole priorities.

There is no future without the present, and the "Present of Work" must be a world where experience is the reward of effectiveness; happiness is the result of usefulness; and convenience is the fruit of our hard work and sacrifice. Wherever possible everyone should make the inconvenient effort to come, and work, together.

WFH tech, AI, the Metaverse, and other advancements in the way we live our lives should primarily be aimed at enhancing our capability, and equalizing opportunity in the world. Today, they are not ready, neither are we. But they will surely influence the "Future of Work".

Every tech-enabled business must reboot as fast as humanly possible, or face imminent obsoletion.