Myth-busting: The Fallacies exposed by the Coronavirus Crisis

Did you know that the Black Death of the 1340s led to the transformation of hospitals from being places where the sick would be isolated, so as not to infect others, to somewhere where they would be treated and nursed back to health? It also led to the birth of the perfume industry, English replacing Latin in written texts and the end of feudalism.

Hard to say whether anything quite as dramatic will come out of our current crisis, but in the past couple of weeks I've observed five ways in which it is busting some commonly held "truths" about work in the 21st Century. Specifically:

This job cannot be done remotely

Oh how we laughed. Late February, someone I know approached her employer about the possibility of working from home. She's in London, her internal client was in the US, why not? Well ... there was no precedent, what would everyone else say, what if other people wanted to work from home, could she really be trusted (this was an unspoken objection). In short, she was warned to expect plenty of objections.

Late March? Run those objections by me again ...

Yes, face to face is important for development relationships and trust, but thereafter, with the right technology and well defined roles, we're all having to find ways of making remote working work. In some cases it's even making us more productive.

At the Reignite Academy we used to run face to face "return to work" bootcamps in Central London, for up to 20 people at at time. Now, they're Zoom webinars, you can join from anywhere in the world and our maximum capacity is 100. Why on earth didn't we think of this before?

It has to be full time

What even is full time? Does anyone arrive at work at 9am and work with a constant level of productivity, creativity and efficiency for the following 8 hours (or 10 or 12 depending on your profession)?

Many of the best thinkers on the subject - Cal Newport (Deep Work), Tony Schwartz (The Way we're Working isn't Working), Laura Vanderkam (168 hours), Tim Ferris (The Four Hour Work Week) - have demonstrated that this simply isn't the case. We can only be super-productive at certain times during the day and we, most likely, achieve 80% of our best output through just 20% of our efforts.

Thrown out of our offices and into a home working environment, which might be infested with children, other home-workers, dependents and various pets, we're all having to find ways to structure our time. What time will we carve out to think about that tricky problem, when will we walk the dog, help the kids, put the washing on ... do that daily exercise that Boris has decreed we all need to engage in?

Perhaps many of us will emerge the other side with a renewed perspective on time and how we make the most of it. In particular, having had to balance our days to ensure we are healthy and sane first, and productive second, perhaps we will think differently about the balance between the hours we "work" and the hours we spend on the other, equally important, parts of our lives.

There's no getting away from the long hours ... our clients demand it

Now this is a puzzle. We've recently been looking into the issue of why there are so few female barristers. Reading this article, you'd be forgiven for believing the problem lays with barristers' chambers.

Except that we've been talking to barristers about why so many women leave the bar. "The culture of impossible demands and long hours." Barristers blame the law firms, law firms blame clients, clients blame banks: banks blame clients ..... and on we go.

Could it possibly be, in this period where nothing is "normal" any more, we could press reset on some of these norms and begin to work across the supply chain to find better ways of working. (And back to the previous point, has anyone, ever done their best, most accurate, most thoughtful work at 3am in the morning????)

We are a meritocracy

The claim made by most organisations who also happen to find themselves with a predominance of men at the top, despite having men and women in equal numbers at entry level. Clearly you are not a meritocracy (unless we buy-in to the assumption that 80% of the men are simply better than the women). No, it's not that you're a meritocracy it's just that it's easier for men to fit in with you long hours culture than it is for women.

This article "What's Really Holding Women Back" in HBR March 2020 does a better job of explaining my point.

We Value Diversity

Or the myth that it's fine to say that on your website and have a section in your annual report and everyone will believe it to be true. They won't.

Women have read those words and wondered why, if that's the case, you're so opposed to remote working. Why, if you'd like to see more women in senior positions, does moving to some form of flexible working arrangement go hand in hand with an admission that you now lack ambition. Why, when a long hours culture clearly penalises women are you unprepared to take any action to change it.

This pandemic might not create anything as fragrant as the perfume industry or a transformational as having proper hospitals, but a few changes to the assumptions about how work is conducted could make a huge difference to everyone's lives. When and if we come out the other side.

And let's face it, come out of the other side we will .... just not entirely sure when.