The wrong end of the telescope

Looking For Clues

“Remote Work Is Dead: Zoom Tells Employees to Return to the Office” is pretty typical of the headlines for the (mis)reporting of Zoom’s ‘Return to Office’ announcement.

Frankly, I don’t care. I am SOOOOOOOO bored of this ‘conversation’, which is mostly a load of empty posturing paid for by office block owners and misplaced attempts by CEOs to go back to times when they felt comfortable, surrounded by their minions on whom they could exercise their whims and feel powerful.

It’s a perfect example of the conversation focusing intently on the wrong issue. Where we work is irrelevant to the future of work, it’s a side issue, a hygiene factor at most. As a result, the majority are distracted by this froth, this concocted cacophony, this meringue of moronity. Meanwhile, tomorrow’s stars are quietly getting with the real work of creating the workplace fit for the future.

“So what do you think are the important factors for the future of work, Colin?” I hear you ask.

Well, here’s what I think we should be focusing on.

• Distributed working to enable rapid team formation. (Large global corporations already do this).

• Porous organisational boundaries to enable short-term access to specialists and knowledge experts, influx of new ideas and thinking, and the ability to scale up and down quickly.

• The organisation as the centre of an ecosystem, embracing suppliers, contractors, customers, industry associations, employees and other stakeholders.

• Self-organisation, where employees have autonomy over their work, their schedule and teams are largely self-directing and self-managing.

• Employment fluidity, where people will move between different relationships with employers and different modes (e.g. full-time, part-time, contractor, self-employed) during their career.

• Asynchronous working as the default mode, synchronous working as the (more costly) exception.

This is not a comprehensive list but I do believe that the successful organisations of the future will have addressed these issues and in a way that will guide the way they are structured and the way that they work.

And the solutions are location agnostic. The ‘where’ doesn’t matter. These are about the ‘how’ and, to some degree, the ‘why’ (that is more in the ‘culture’ bucket, which is a huge area in itself and outside the ‘office v WfH’ fake debate).

The challenges here are around changing people’s mental models about what work is, creating the support systems to enable the solutions and dealing with the external pressures that come from the financial, political and social systems that have developed to support and enforce the status quo.

What the challenge isn’t is deciding whether employees have to come to the office 2 or 3 days a week. That’s truly ‘fake news’.

All Day And All Of The Night

Another aspect of this conversation about the wrong things is the issue of office utilisation.

What seems to be driving some of these ‘RTO’ mandates is the desire to utilise the office space that has been (often heavily) invested in. This is an obvious example of the ‘sunk cost’ fallacy because they are throwing good money (the costs of lost productivity, lower morale and increased staff turnover) after bad (the office investment they made pre-COVID). To be fair, the investment decisions were probably sound and well-reasoned at the time but the world has changed and now they are a liability, so thinking needs to change in response.

This expressed need to ‘use our assets’ is also reflected around concerns about how much the office is used and by how many people. There is much fretting about it only being ‘full’ for three days a week, and ‘empty’ for the other two. As if it’s a business objective to achieve 100% utilisation of the office space. What does it matter? In case you hadn’t noticed, the office was already empty for two days a week. We call it a weekend!

I get that there are issues around operational costs and carbon usage if you have large bits of office space running with lighting, heating and the rest when no-one’s there - but we do already cope with that during that weekend thing I spoke about. Doing it in a more dynamic way will require some re-organisation but does that justify wasting everyone’s time and money, and using all that carbon, to travel in on more days than they need or want to?

It seems to me this is looking in the wrong direction again. Instead of seeing the office as an investment asset that needs to ‘sweated’, we should start to see it as a value-generating tool. We should stop worrying about how much time it has people in it and focus on how much value it helps to create.

Football stadiums get used about 50 times a year, so that’s about once a week. On the logic being used about the office, teams should be playing more days of the week to increase the utilisation and make the football club more successful. Or maybe they should share the stadium with other teams? Or even sell the stadium and hire other stadiums for the 50 days that they need them?

It’s silly, isn’t it? That’s because the stadium is an integral part of the club identity, which creates brand value and is the basis of the whole business. A few clubs do share stadiums but it doesn’t always last because they want to have their own ground and strengthen their identity, because it is central to how they create value.

So if you have office space that is only use two days a week but is essential to your value creation process, what does it matter? You might want to take steps to minimise the costs, as you would do with any cost item, but it would be completely justified to run that way.

I suspect that amongst the reason that organisations haven’t started thinking this way is that they don’t have a very good handle on how they create value. Even if they do, they fear that a proper analysis will show that the office is NOT central to their value creation process, and that has consequences they don’t even want to think about.

Not yet, anyway.

Money On My Mind

Continuing on the theme of focusing on the wrong part of the problem, let’s look at what attracts people to join, and then stay, with an organisation.

If you look at how jobs are advertised, the main determinant would seem to be salary. Maybe be ‘salary and benefits’, if a particularly good package is offered.

It’s certainly the focus of a lot of review processes in organisations, particularly where they link the annual review with the pay review (a singularly stupid approach that undermines the effectiveness of both).

Of course, it’s a part of the consideration but is it what people are really after?

It depends where work sits in your life. If it is simply a means to an end, the thing you do to earn the money to do the things you love, then salary and the impact on your financial position is the main consideration by far. If is just an ‘effort for money’ transaction, then the money is key.

But that’s not what work is for a lot of people (which is not ‘better’ than the above, just a different view of life). What’s more, organisations tell people that their job is about more than just the money, something worthy of your emotional investment (whether that investment is reciprocated is, shall we say, moot). That means a lot of people are looking for much more than just the money.

Two of our strongest needs as humans is for a sense of belonging and for connection. Work can provide both of those things.

We’re also want to be able to balance the different priorities in our life (also known by the overused phrase ‘work/life’ balance) and to be able to adjust as these change during our lives.

We want opportunities to grow and develop, both professionally and as people. We want to develop our talents and have experiences that would otherwise be beyond our reach, which organisations can often provide through supporting study and travel.

We want to be trusted, we wanted to be treated with dignity and compassion, we want to feel someone has our back and cares for us.

We want some stability and for the organisation to be loyal to us through the ups and downs of life.

And, finally, we want to see a balance of commitment, that the organisation really does pull for us as much as they ask us to pull for them.

Do you know of organisations who focus on providing these?

If they did, they wouldn’t behave in the ways that seems routine these days. Mass sackings (or layoffs, if you are squeamish) to hit the numbers, surveillance and micro-management, tolerance of abusive behaviours, ever increasing pressure to do more with less, to work longer and harder.

If salary is SO important, why do surveys show most people would take a 10% payout to escape a bad boss? Or to be able to work flexibly?

If an organisation addressed all these other needs successfully, it could pay below market rate and still have a queue of people wanting to join. Only it would be so successful, it could pay above market rate anyway - and probably would because it would be good for its people.

It Only Takes A Minute

I was listening to my mate Mark LeBusque’s podcast that he did with Mark C. Crowley the other day (BTW, Mark’s just re-posted the podcast he did with me a couple of years ago and it’s still totally relevant, and a good listen too!)

Mark C has been an advocate of ‘Leading from the Heart’ (title of his book AND his excellent podcast) for over a decade, often in the face of scorn and criticism. It seems that the world is finally starting to come around to his view.

Much of the scepticism has been that the ‘soft’ stuff had no place in business and got in the way of hard decision making and effective operation. (Mark L had a similar experience, earning the title ‘Kumbaya Mark’ at work!). He made the point that you have to strike a balance between being kindness and performance, too much of either doesn’t work. He then said that if you showed kindness and compassion to people, they would run through brick walls for you, so you could actually be more demanding because they trusted that you had their back.

I’m sure he’s right, that was my own experience of leading people. I didn’t make unreasonable demands very often but when I did, people took them on without complaint and often over-delivered. I had built up some reserves of trust with them that I could call upon when I needed.

It stuck me that maybe we’re talking about this ‘human-centric’ approach all wrong. It’s not just that it’s the right way to treat people, that it makes the organisations more effective, that it is good for business. It’s more than that, it’s a force multiplier.

Again, we focus on productivity as a fixed amount over a period of time but actually that’s not what’s important. What can make the difference between ‘good’ and ‘great’, between survival and bankruptcy, is the ability to respond to opportunity or crisis. We saw an example of the latter when COVID hit and organisations had to switch to fully virtual in a couple of weeks. IT, HR and other unsung heroes responded magnificently to keep organisations running and in business.

It’s the capacity to massively up your game, individually and collectively, that has the real impact. To do that, people have to be ready to invest their heart and soul.

As a leader, you have to do the same. But do it first.

Turning Tables

Finally, I had good laugh when I saw this tweet

I think that’s what we call a ‘Gotcha! And kind of hard to argue with, right?

I’d say I’m sure The Big Three will try but I think they will probably ignore it and attack the union for being ‘unrealistic’ and say ‘this would make the company unprofitable and end everyone’s jobs’.

This is smart tactic by the union and I expect them to keep CEO pay front and centre of negotiations and challenge the companies to come up with a justification for it. Which they can’t. Because it’s not justified.

I don’t know if it will work in this case but I expect more unions to use this approach because it’s a very good point. And very embarrassing for the bosses. Because equality is hard to argue against.