Are you ready for the new view?

There’s been a lot of talk about the new normal or the next normal, but it’s time to accept that whatever the world looks like in six months, or a year or two, it’s going to be impossible to define what normal is.

That’s because everyone’s definition of ‘normal’ is going to be radically different, and it’s up to each of us to start defining what we want our world of work to look like.

If I look at how my life has changed since the onset of COVID-19 and the subsequent travel restrictions, the change has been stark. As CEO of NTT Security, I spent the better part of 300 days travelling in 2019. For me, a normal day was defined by waking up in an unfamiliar hotel and orienting myself around to where I was and what needed to be achieved that day.

For other people normal would’ve meant a train ride to the office and back each day, meetings with colleagues and customers - often with the other people sitting across the table from them.

All of a sudden, we were all plucked from our normal and forced to change the way we conducted our business lives. For many of us this meant that we got to see a lot more of our families, which was a mixed blessing. Some of us were lucky enough to have the room to create a dedicated work environment. But others had to make do with the kitchen table, meaning that lines between workspace and personal space blurred even more than they had already.

The one thing that I noticed was that days quickly filled up with meetings. As everyday office interactions that may have taken a couple of minutes suddenly became meetings, the time we would have set aside for focused work became consumed by additional meetings.

Once we accept that we’re not going to be returning to the work environment of the past, we need to start thinking about what our new view is going to be. For most of us we have a unique opportunity to create the world of work that we want, embracing what works for us and minimizing what doesn’t.

Embracing some key strategies have helped me immensely in creating a more productive work environment, both for myself and for the people I work with:

1.    Create the human connection

We’re so used to having a human connection on a day-to-day-basis that we’ve been thrown by having to work remotely. By having informal, unstructured conversations with teammates, it’s possible to recreate this level of interaction. The opportunity here is that you can build new connections with colleagues across the world or in other teams. Something that might not have happened before because you wouldn’t have crossed paths.

2.    Get a sounding board

Mentoring is as important for executives as it is for other team members. In order to grow you need to find people who can help you build out your ideas and provide insight into how to take them to the next level. One benefit of the current uncertainty is that good ideas that might have been considered too far out of the box before are being taken more seriously. Working with a trusted advisor can help you take advantage of this opportunity.

Managers should be working closely with their teams to help them advance their careers.

3.    Embrace the new business culture

The one thing that travelling around the world has taught me is that every country has a specific way of doing business. How you greet someone in Japan is vastly different from how you would in Australia. In a world where all meetings are conducted remotely, a new set of business rules are emerging. Understanding how to respect the way of doing business when you have five different regions on a call is going to drive an entirely new business culture. Those who master this are going to have a real advantage.

We’re all going to have to adapt but taking a new view of the world and making it work is each person’s individual responsibility.