OFFICE WORK EVOLUTION, LEADERSHIP REVOLUTION

Covid 19 forced the leadership to rapidly resort into work-at-home in order to protect the people while proceeding with the business. A majority of the people surveyed reported they were happy with work-at-home, some stated they did not want to return to the office.

Now companies are asking people to return to their office. Some are delighted to get back to the office, some will resist, but all will have to deal with a <different normality>.

When it hit, companies to respond to unprecedented challenges with resilience. Now is the time to analyze and to adjust with agility. Click on the picture so see the article.

Opening remarks

CNBCs reported on May 04 that Goldman’s CEO had written: “In the U.S. we ask those who have not yet done so to make plans to be in a position to return to the office by June 14”.       Also according to CNBC, Morgan’s Jamie Dimon said: “We want people back to work, and my view is that sometime in September, October it will look just like it did before.” Maybe not quite, experience shows that the disruptive changes such as induced by Covid 19 engender a “different normality”.

The work evolution

People that worked-at-home enjoyed saving the time of commuting, they enjoyed not being distracted by other people and by other things, and in particular they are delighted not to have a micro-managing boss on their back. They enjoyed being left alone, being the master of their time. So, while working-at-home, they just focused on the assigned tasks, doing the same thing the same way because it is more efficient to get the work done. They became more digitalization savvy.

Before being sent to work-at-home, many things were just accepted as “the way we do things around here”. Now, people noticed several ways to improve on how they used to work. For example, tele-conferencing provided a new means of communication, which induced people to prepare better for their tele-discussions than they used to do while at the office.

Just a few days ago Ken Blanchard wrote on LinkedIn how happy he was to go back to the office However, many people said they were happy working-at-home. Now that they may have to go back to office-work, be it full-time or part-time, different people in different positions may have different reactions, and they may have different expectations of their office-work. There may be positive and productive reactions, and there may be negative reactions. 

At the different levels and in the different functions the spirit and the style of leadership will make the difference on our 3 drivers of sustainable success, the connectivity-the creativity-the celerity of the organization. *

Let us outline some of the things that will complement the resilience the organization showed resorting as much as possible to work-at-home with the agility adjusting to the “different normality”. *

The leadership revolution

The physical distance needed to prevent infections also engendered psychological distances. HBS Prof. Tsedal Neeley showed that tele-conferencing can generate trust concerning the cognitive and competences of others, however, it does not work very well with the emotional trust. The first task of the network of business-leaders is to sense the distances that work-at-home have ripped open between individuals and their group/team, between individuals and the value-chain to which their particular task should contribute, between the individual and the company.

Should business-leaders need to go deeper than looking at the “psychological distances” and their upshots, they can refer to my model of the 5 behavioral drivers, namely: the rational, the result-oriented, the relational, the emotional, and the creative dynamics.*

Psychological distances concern how people feel about their assigned tasks, about their colleagues/customers, and about the company overall. A French saying submits: ?loin des yeux, loin du c?ur? or out of sight, out of the heart. Physical distances may entail psychological distances that may go largely unnoticed, but they can undermine albeit covertly and unintentionally confidence, cooperation, and commitment, and – last but not least – they can affect the company-culture. * Focusing on the task, on the desk, on home may detach the individual from the company and its purpose.

The Goldman executes quoted by CNBC that we mentioned earlier also stated: “We know from experience that our culture of collaboration, innovation and apprenticeship thrives when our people come together”. But, people, particularly those that said they were happy to work-at-home - may do not understand why they now have to go back to the office. They will most likely refer to earlier surveys that stated that by and large also companies were quite happy with the work done at home.

Of course, there are a number of things that business-leaders can and should do. Firstly, they have to distinguish between (a) simple and repetitive routine-type tasks that can be delegated to work-at-home without much impact on the psychological distance and (b) complex tasks that need the interactions among different professional and personal profiles and (c) the ones that are in between and where a hybrid modus operandi would make for a good modus vivendi. Secondly, we have to distinguish between organizations that operate essentially in a traditional way and agile and innovative enterprises. Different management-models require different approaches. Without going into details, here are some suggestions.

The leader in the traditional management-model performs through command-control-chastisement. That may not go down very well with people that have enjoyed plenty of liberty. The senior management may want to organize short seminars to reprogram traditional managers to move over to focus more on share-steer-support. But, it is just as difficult to change the habits of traditional managers as it is to change a company-culture. Should the Covid 19 have caused in addition to external disruptions also significant internal disruptions, it may be just the right time for the CEO and his/her executive committee to consider launching a program of agile and innovative management. *

Enterprises that have implemented at least in part of their organization the agile management-model use a team-based management. People grow up in the frame of teams, first the family, then the class-mates and the sport-teams, then the professional teams. Leaders build the effectiveness of their team-work on the basis of t.r.u.s.t., an acronym that stands for <trust, respect, understanding, support, and team-work>. T.r.u.s.t. is the natural lubricant of the organization.

We advocate our 5 value-chains to optimize the connectivity-the creativity-the celerity of agile teams. * The mind-map that we propose helps people to better visualize how their work contribute value to the value-chain. Furthermore, each of the 5 value-chains contributes different perspectives and different proficiencies thus fomenting collective creativity.

The network of business-leaders of both traditional as well as of agile and innovative organizations should draw on the experiences made by people while working-at-home to improve the office-work. Combinations of office-work and work-at-home may prove optimal, and may be used to schedule office-work outside of the commuters rush-hours.

People’s togetherness can be greatly enhanced by social events, which may be combined with sharing learning experiences.

Closing remarks

Evolutions and revolutions are opportunities for the leaders to bolster the company, and to boost their own position. 

Most likely as a side-spin of Covid 19, more emphasis will be put on the “bionic organization”, the organization that optimizes the man-machine capabilities. However, the need to boost the collective creativity will also scale the need for people to get together, to socialize, to play business-games and to engage in other events that enhance learning processes.

° W. A. Sussland “The Platform of Agile Management and the Program to Implement It” Routledge 2018. NB I will post on LinkedIn articles that address specifically each of the highlighted subjects.