The “Humanics” (human dynamics) of our business; not the "future" anymore but ‘the now of work’

It’s a bright and warm morning and I am here in the beautiful and historic city of Porto.

Over the last few weeks, I have been on the road across continents and cities – New York, Boston, Dallas, Cincinnati, Dubai, London, Stuttgart, Stockholm, Paris, Amsterdam, and Porto. I have met about 25 customers, 15 partners and my teams across the US, Europe, and India. It’s been the first time since the pandemic that I have hit the road so much and I have realized that sometimes the real magic happens when people meet people – in person.

And this is exactly what I seemed to have missed the most at work over the last couple of years!

For almost all of us, the last couple of years have been surreal. In my very first week as CEO, everything pretty much shut down globally. I had never experienced anything like this before and I was totally unprepared for it. I was also a bit in a state of denial – pretty much thinking this won’t last long. Despite all this, my team just rose to the occasion spectacularly and delivered some unbelievable outcomes.

Now, as we emerge from this pandemic, the work-place dynamics will never be the same again. Everyone talks about the “new normal”; a hybrid work model; but what would this really look like?

As I have pondered over this, I have arrived at a few operating principles that have helped me achieve some clarity on this. I call this the “Humanics” (human dynamics) of our business.

[1] Purpose driven coming together

In my opinion, the office needs to be able to do something that a home cannot do.

I am not a believer of a hybrid model of work which says people start coming to work 2-3 times a day – especially where people do most of their work on a laptop. I also believe that magic happens when people interact in-person with each other.

I think offices will primarily be a place where people come together for collaboration and creation or for some specific purpose defined by a respective team. For example, we just had a 2-day “design thinking” in-person huddle at office with our product, sales and customer success teams and it was so uplifting. I cannot imagine us getting such high-impact outcomes doing this remotely. Now the execution of follow through actions can happen remotely – absolutely no issues.

And I think this “purpose driven” coming together will be the fundamental premise of the hybrid work model.

[2] Clarity on “am I working from home” OR “living in the office”

Another thing that we will all need to learn to do better is balance our lives.

As part of this remote working, I have found myself being “on” all the time – with very little to separate from my personal time and space. I seem to be on calls all the time – and many a times even lunch and dinner are always on calls. My dog Mufasa and I go on a drive every evening – that’s become a sacrosanct “tradition”; and he politely but very resolutely comes and reminds me of this “drive time” every single evening. Invariably, even during this "personal" drive time, I find myself to be on calls. Somehow there has been very little time to unwind – every day seems to be fully loaded.?And I know I need to get better at achieving balance.??

And this has been a case for many of us I believe as we try to come to terms with our own sense of balance.

My daughter once told me “Dad, you are not working from home. You are living in the office!”.?We need to be clear on the difference between “working from home” and “living in office”; we need to find our own balance.

[3] Building company culture

This is a tough one! And it needs to start from the top and permeate across the organization.

How do we build a deep-rooted company culture where many of our people are working remotely? Many have not even met each other, not even once!?

I believe the means are as important as the end – especially for a young and rapidly growing company. Values are very important. Communication is very important. Walking the talk by having leaders lead by example is very important. Trusting is important. Outcomes are important. Learnability is important. A collective sense of purpose is important.

Bringing all this together in every single interaction and transaction is important – even if this is mostly remote.

I believe that my thoughts on this topic are by no means complete; things will keep evolving and all of us will continue to learn from each other and collectively get better.?