You don't have to be a rebel to change the way you are working, but sometimes it helps!

One of the most challenging change adventures has to be the one involving changing our way of working. It is such a well defined and looks like an immovable part of our culture that most of the time changing it leads to conflict. The fear of not knowing how you will perform after, lack of trust in an unclear future. The story of the week is not trying to state a point, yes it is hard, yes it is scary, no it is not about awareness, we all know that. The point of this story is to make everyone understand why in spite of all those scary thoughts, doubts and worries you should change and stay in the game.

The story of the week is about a group of rebels, Corporate Rebels that is, they are challenging the way companies are working and fighting for the idea that the way we are working is badly broken. And to make matters serious they also made a survey and the results are troublesome. They speak from experience, the initial Corporate Rebels left corporate jobs and left in search of a different approach. We have in Romania a story from Ion Creanga in which a peasant leaves his family and said to only return if he finds people that are more stupid than them. Our rebels could have went back to corporate jobs, instead they found an answer.

So what did our main characters of this week story discovered, it is painfully obvious: the system in which many people still work was created for a stable, slow and predictable world that no longer exists. The results?

77% of employees are not engaged believe their job makes no useful contribution to society

37% of an annual salary is the cost of disengagement

34% left their job due to burnout

40% of employees are considering leaving their jobs.

As we all have witnessed over the years and I tried to change in some of my projects working with different companies trying to improve ways of working, the frustrations of employees come from these areas.

More rules, less reasoning Feedback goes into a black hole

Back-to-back meetings, all day long I’m drowning in a sea of emails

Every idea needs five signatures We can’t attract new talent

Trapped under the micromanager’s magnifying glass Decisions held hostage by hierarchy

Have your moment of honesty. These rebels are right, those percentage are not just scary but also true, and the causes for frustration are daily habits in most of the companies. So just admit you have a problem and start changing something. Maybe not all at once, but just start. And here is why...

People side of business improves - 37% lower absenteeism, 41% less defects and 48% less accidents, 23% higher profitability and 22% higher productivity.

Financial side of business improves - Reinventing the way you work pays off for everyone. Companies ranked as best places to work outperform others on the stock market. Happy employees, happy customers, happy shareholders. What’s not to like?

You can find out more about the Corporate Rebels story here https://www.corporate-rebels.com/

Getting back to our organizations, you cannot become rebels over night. And not everyone is or can be a rebel, there is a drop of crazy in everyone of us going against the current. Not every time you get recognition and some of the times you might just make some enemies. All I am asking is to really take a look at your current situation, diagnose the culture, look at the way of working and recalibrate the vision. If you are still relevant in the market with that and everyone is happy inside your team, feel free to go on, but if some thing are not that good of a fit, why not take a chance on you.

Companies that innovated and embraced disruptors, even encouraged them, rewrote the rules of the game and "stolen the lead". The parallel with the way people work is easy to make, companies that have innovated the way they work, from the 8-hour schedule, Ford's production line, to home or remote work and the four-day work week have brought improvements. We have reached a point where we need to build new ways for people to work in order to remain relevant, efficient and productive. Not only from where we work, how much we work and what tools we use, but also in what form we work becomes very important.

Change also requires action, and people's motivation to take action only comes from two directions – what do I gain by doing or what do I lose if I don't. What we tell others that was the reason we decided something is just a justification. And when we talk about the major change in the way we work, we realize that it was a systemic, intrinsic change for which we needed to be shaken by a global pandemic, a war close to the border, to start looking for concrete solutions for new ways of working and not just withdrawing into the valley of complaint, whispering in the corners or resigning.

Changing the way of working must focus more and more carefully on autonomy, responsibility, passion, vocation. It is necessary that each person who wants to be able to outline his professional path as he considers most suitable, depending on the level of knowledge, skills, level of assumption of responsibility and motivation. Let's increase our level of independence and entrepreneurial initiatives, learn that our professional path must be our priority and then ask to be taken care of by our partners.

I had the privilege of leading teams and I always made a priority in building autonomy and even some levels of independence inside my teams. I put all on the table in short meetings, making everyone aware of the context and challenges and trusted their ideas to change things. Made work as fun as possible but also keep results in sights. Shared leadership, shared responsibilities, shared decision making will always offer you more depth and insight and rally the troops behind every idea because it is also theirs. Don't change because it sounds good, because i say it or because some crazy rebels worked for 8 years, interviewed more than 1000 people and visited over 150 companies to gather data to support these ideas, change if it helps your organizations be better.

In the end, just remember for real deep change, with results you need professionals, it's a symphony, not manele.