The Work Leadership Problem

Leadership is not meant to be easy, and often, it means doing difficult things. When it comes to the intersection of work, life, and place today, that difficult thing is redesigning the way teams work.

We Need Leaders

You might say to yourself, “We’ve already changed the way we work. We’re hybrid.” Well, you may be working in multiple locations now: home, office, third place, Disneyland. However, it’s unlikely your company has actually redesigned the way work happens at your company (i.e. the means and methods used to accomplish work) in light of this new location strategy. In fact, physical location strategy should be based on the work to be done, not the other way around.

This requires slowing down and starting from first principles to help teams successfully work in a distributed manner. The most effective leaders at this moment are not just putting out mandates. They’re also not using their privilege to maintain flexibility for themselves alone (see the articles at the end of the page). In fact, we know from the past four years of experience that mandates do not work. They actually result in “significant declines in employee job satisfaction.” Yet some companies persist in creating mandates and hard-line policies, hoping it will be a magical fix for business issues that aren’t actually connected to physical location strategy. We cannot apply 19th-century thinking to work in the 21st.

So, what is holding leaders back from taking the difficult path and actually leading?

What is Holding Teams Back?

Some common arguments for what is holding teams back are lack of evidence that this effort will be effective (we need more data,) lack of conviction (we are uncertain and therefore wary of commitment,) and peering over the neighbor’s fence AKA benchmarking (wanting to know what their competitors are doing.) However, these arguments are typically just really great ways for teams to spin their wheels internally in aeternum and wind up in self-inflicted analysis paralysis. As we discussed above, leaders need to do the difficult thing and make decisions.

The truth of the matter is that we have enough evidence from the past four years of teams running experiments and trying models for companies to begin moving forward.

We have the data: https://www.wfhresearch.com

We have the benchmarks: https://www.flexindex.com

All we lack is conviction and the desire to do difficult work.

Ok, How Long Will This Take?

I am sure my clients, colleagues, and friends are tired of hearing this from me, but this is not a 6 month or 1 year problem. This is a 20-year effort. The shift from offices being the primary location where “work happens” is a permanent outcome of the pandemic. One that will have a waterfall of repercussions we’ve only started to see on cities and the way we live.

We have landed in the messy middle. We are spending time in multiple locations without teams having done the work to redesign their work methods. Two years ago, I spoke with a friend who was working late nights because their firm had added so many virtual meetings to “coordinate” work that they were now doing the actual work after hours and not on billable time. They hadn’t taken the time to reconsider any of the methods after the pandemic. As far as I know, the issue remains unresolved.

The sooner more leaders accept that change has come and start the hard work that teams like Atlassian, Dropbox, and Aecom have started - the sooner we can turn more of our attention to the important task of how we fully redesign the interaction of work, life, and places.

If you’re ready to get cracking, reach out.

Top Headlines in Work, Life, and Place.

• Inside Atlassian’s newest workplace.

• SHRM Removes the “equity” from DEI.

• Zoom launches RTO, but Chief People Officer will stay remote.

• Lattice launched “AI Employees” but then quickly reversed.

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