LESSONS TO TAKE TO THE FUTURE OF WORK
John Dewey, an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer once said: we only think when we are confronted with problems. You will agree that the Covid19 era has been one such poignant phase for humanity. It has shaken us as a collective global society and has made us think differently. It has tested us to the core and, suffice to say, there has been a significant shift in the global paradigm. Whether these will be positive or negative lessons in the long term, we will discover as time goes on.
We held a Leadership Webinar titled: Workspaces of the Future, asking Leaders to share their thoughts on how this period has shaped their approach as well as how it will impact the future.
The sentiments shared were quite similar, giving an indication of what is on the minds of Leaders for the future. I can only list the lessons from the areas of resonance and these ranged from different viewpoints of both private and public sectors.
1. A New Style of Leadership Emerged
There’s no “playbook” for leadership when the stakes are high, and there’s certainly no playbook for what to do in the face of a 21st Century pandemic… Forbes: Leadership in the time of Covid19
The Leadership unanimously agreed that, in recent times, there has not been a greater test to the collective leadership to this magnitude.
Firstly, we were tested on a personal level. We were required to navigate an uncertain minefield with rapid changes on a daily and even an hourly basis. ‘Keeping it together’ on a personal level was in itself a major achievement. Added to this was a responsibility of supporting families and subordinates to go through this with a steady support of leadership. One needs to remember that this did not only affect our professional lives but our health, our families as well as close relations.
Secondly, our people went through the most mentally taxing time in their lifetime. This time completely encouraged us as leaders, to focus our support through closer engagement and build on the employee value-proposition with more support to our most important resource. Linda Sharkley & Morag Barret on the Six Revolutions in the Future of Work refers to a change from a ‘command and control’ approach to a more engagement and collaboration approach. Leaders have had to learn to be more human-centred and consider many aspects to employees like the mental state of employees and how they were coping with the competing demands for their attention. The Harvard Business Publication’s article: Strong Leadership, quotes leaders that won the admiration of others did this through not only swift and decisive response but also qualities like, empathy, honesty, and down-to-earth style qualities. Prime Minister Ardern is such an example and won praise and re-election by a landslide owing to these unique qualities.
2. Organisational culture shifts and a ‘values’ led organisation
Harvard Business Review’ article titled “Begin with Trust” states that “Trust is one of the most essential forms of capital a leader has.” Equally important is the ability of leaders to trust employees and what leaders do with that hard-earned asset that makes the biggest difference. The Covid era has without a doubt changed the impression that culture is developed from old beliefs and agreed on practices which forms part of the Company strategy documents and walls. Culture moved from purely conformity to a more values-based and meaningful approach. As Leaders, we needed to trust our people more and believe that they would be remotely self-managed and perform the work they were meant to without our physical supervision at every turn. The Leaders around the table were all sharing how positively surprised they were by how employees responded and co-operated with the new normal. Leaders also had to learn to be sensitive of the personal spaces we were threading on as we introduced online meetings into people’s private spaces. We also became more understanding of the additional actors to the online meetings like the kids and the pets in the background.
One factor that was echoed by Leaders is how important flexibility, both in decision making as well as organisational response, became crucial and will be an asset for the leader of the future. At the beginning of Covid19, flexibility as an organisational attribute, contributed immensely to ensuring accelerated responses and even automation of the manual processes so that work could continue. It is amazing how fast organisations realised that this was a ‘do’ or ‘die’, responding with similar urgency to keep customers as well as employees as priority.
3. Relationships are our bread and butter
John Maxwell refers to relational currency as ‘the way leaders give/receive value and influence among those they lead’. This time showed the importance of nurturing and cultivating relationships with colleagues and subordinates. The good relationships with customers also paid off in a great way. In the moments of challenges with services through unforeseen circumstances, we engaged earlier and were amazed at the responses from our customers. We were all human after all and going through a human experience. The Leaders on the panel related how in the midst of a tough terrain we had to navigate, one factor remained true, we all trusted in our counterparts to make the right calls. We also trusted in them to support the calls we were making and a somehow incredible camaraderie kept us going. It was times of great uncertainty and somehow, the positive thing that emerged from this, was a common desire to move forward and make the best calls for the organisations and the people.
Equally, the support of all during the most difficult times left an indelible mark. We went through all seasons from our home offices. We had to attend funerals of colleagues and their families from our remote offices. We received the same outpour of love on our moments of need.
4. Technology
We have globally, without a doubt, accelerated digitisation. This time also brought massive gains for the vaccine and drug development processes. The world was pushed to implement many of the collaboration solutions we had been delaying adopting for years. We also exceeded the eCommerce adoption forecasts by far. We became accustomed to shopping from our seats whilst in online meetings and the issues of trust were almost a lower barrier. Co-creating with our customers also became a reality, marking how in the future, we will develop more and more products with our stakeholders.
The realities of cyber crime also hit us hard. As more and more people trusted the internet, so too were those exploring to find creative ways to access customer details and accounts. CIOs realised the need for much more stringent measures for protecting company data as well as customers. endpoint security has never been more crucial.
What was a common thread across all the leaders is the realisation that we all missed the human contact. We are, after all, social beings and networking is at the core of how we have survived over decades. This is one aspect we do not want to miss out on.
