It's time to look towards retail as we understand our relationship with work.

At the start of the year, after it was recommended to me by several different people, I finally got round to reading Matthew Syed’s book Rebel Ideas, the power of diverse thinking. I'd highly recommend anyone reading this blog to check the book out. 

It explains how to harness our unique perspectives and pool our collective intelligence to tackle the greatest challenges of our age. The book is about strengthening teams or organisations but has dozens of personal applications too. It shows us how to become more creative, how to collaborate in a world becoming more interconnected and crucially how to break free of the echo chambers that surround us all.

Syed explains that essentially people who have common lived experiences will look at problems in similar ways. And herein lies the issue in the future of work narrative that I’m seeing. 

In conversations and texts relating to the future of work and hybrid working, it seems the perspective we're getting is doing the exact opposite of what the book taught me. It’s narrow and largely dominated by voices from similar backgrounds. but I would love to hear from graduates for example who have joined the workforce during the pandemic and have no real conceptions of a 5 day office week. 

There seems to be a universal agreement around what work is going to be like in some form i.e. We have to be more flexible, there will be a combination of physical and digital interactions, this isn’t a remote vs. office debate.

Yet the one thing I don’t think we talk about enough is how new this all is We’re only 12 or so months into the messy middle that hybrid has brought. Previous to that we had a very clear idea of what full remote working looks like, and previous to that we all had an idea of what life was like mainly in an office. 

For many companies, hybrid working is still very new and it’s obvious to have teething problems as we essentially rethink what work actually is.

Now relating back to Matthew Syed's book. I think it's so important to broaden our thinking and look at different areas of life to understand what lessons we can take from them to use in our current climate.

I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine Nicky Wightman last week and she explained to me…Well, I actually asked her to write down what she explained to me:

“For some while, I have thought that in trying to understand our relationship with work, we might learn from what we have seen happening in the world of retail. Online is an important part of our shopping experience but we still see the value of physical retail. Both need to create a good customer experience and ideally should align, so that we feel that we have a seamless experience of a brand.”

As soon as she said this it dawned on me how obvious and right that she was to think about the way that we shop in today's age with what work will become. 

Source: The shift in shopping: The data that reveals the permanent changes to U.K. consumer behaviour

Everyone will have their own experience of how they shop

I can only speak for myself and I do most of my shopping online. It would only be if I'm buying something of significant value that I would go into a physical shop to see the product. And it is different again when it comes to food and perishable goods. I typically go to a local supermarket to get most of my weekly produce and we'll top that up with a farmers market at the weekend or one of the many grocery delivery companies here in London.

(Check me in the Sunday Times on this exact subject and how I rake in the discount codes from these rapid delivery companies)

(Check me in the Sunday Times on this exact subject and how I rake in the discount codes from these rapid delivery companies)

I have a very clear idea in my head on how the physical and digital worlds of shopping coexist. Both are valuable to me for different reasons and my relationship with them  is easy to explain. 

This differentiation is down to the transformation of physical stores in the wake of online shopoing. They have had to become more experiential. Now, there has to be a reason to go into a store and you largely have to be inspired by the space you're going to.

We have seen a whole host of high-profile casualties along the way of this transition, those that weren't able to adapt quick enough, those that couldn't find the balance between online and offline.

So why can't it be something similar when we look at work?

The vast majority of my shopping takes place online. And it looks like my work is heading in the same direction. But what dawned on me when I go to a physical shop is that it’s for very defined reasons i.e I need produce quickly for a meal this evening or I'm buying something of significant value and I need to go and see and feel and touch the product that I'm purchasing. And beyond that, it's a very rare occurrence for me to go to a physical store.

They're clearly defined. They coexist and they're intertwined in the way that all of us shop for different things. Anyone reading this will probably have their own experience of how they exist in hybrid when it comes to retail. Is that because we've had longer to experiment? We've had longer to figure out what works and what doesn't for us? There's obviously more of a trend to online shopping, the pandemic also extended that, but there's still a place for that physical store and that experience when we connect with a brand/shop.

It may just take time. It may just take a couple of years longer than the 12 months or so that we've had to figure this out. I mean think about the way we look at the internet and how that's changed from the "Information superhighway" we were first sold on.

It's going to be different for every person and as we talked about before flexibility is the key.

I think we need to look beyond the future of work and hybrid ecosystem and look to other sectors and other areas of our lives to find the answers to this very complex and big issue.

For me, retail is a good one to follow and an easy way for me to anchor what work will be.