Future of Work

With the Thanksgiving holiday this Thursday in the United States, I hope everyone who reads this is thankful for their work.

I hope you love it so much that you jump out of bed every morning, ready to start on the ideas swarming in your head.

I hope that when you think of the phrase “Future of Work” you think, “I’m living that!”

I hope that you are helping others life their future of work and love what they do.

I hope you are creating teams that are organized on new principles that allow them to continually amaze you by the awesome work they do.

I hope that your work is more than just a paycheck.  If that is all it is, I challenge you to work all year so that next Thanksgiving day, you will look back and be very thankful for being able to do work you love.

As we look toward the future, we have a lot to be thankful for.  And I hope your work is one of them.

13 Scary Statistics on Employee Engagement

“There is a serious problem with the way we work. Most employees are disengaged and not passionate about the work they do. This is costing companies a ton of money in lost productivity, absenteeism, and turnover. It’s also harmful to employees, because they’re more stressed out than ever. The thing that bothers me the most about it, is that it’s all so easy to fix…”  (read more…)

Have you found ‘your thing’ yet?

“Every single one of us on this planet has at least one ‘thing’ on this planet that makes us come alive. We may have discovered it as a kid (like me) . Or it may have taken several decades for us to peel back the layers of your soul enough to get to the heart of it. And some of you reading this still may not know what that magical thing is. To you I say – keep peeling back the layers. One day that magical ‘thing’ will hit you and you’ll wonder how you lived without it.”  (read more…)

THE MANY PERKS THAT COME WITH QUITTING YOUR 9-TO-5 JOB FOR YOUR SIDE BUSINESS

“You shouldn’t barge into your boss’s office tomorrow to announce that you quit, especially if you don’t have a well-thought-out plan. But if you have been toying with an idea for a business or have already started one on the side, I will share some of the benefits of leaving your day job to dive into your startup.”   (read more…)

Being Happy at Work Matters

“My research with dozens of companies and hundreds of people — as well as the research conducted by the likes of neuroscientists Richard Davidson and V.S. Ramachandran and scholars such as Shawn Achor — increasingly points to a simple fact: Happy people are better workers. Those who are engaged with their jobs and colleagues work harder — and smarter.” (read more…)

The Future of Work All Week Long

All of these excellent articles are posted through the week with many others on the Future of Work FLIPBOARD. You can view it online or get the app for quick, easy, mind-filling reading.

Isn’t it interesting that when we need to get something done, it can get done? Politics, bureaucracy, policy, ego – they all fade into the background as we crank something out.  At this point, it is about doing the right thing.

Last week I had a very large client call and say, “We need to create three videos for a meeting of our executives.  Oh, and they need to be done by next Wednesday.”  Wow.  This is a huge undertaking.  And the stories behind the three videos?  Getting things done using collaborative, innovative, nonconventional ways that cut through the red tape and deliver.  It looks like we are about to create story number four by producing these videos.

So now, it’s heads down, focus time for a number of people to pull this off.  And we will.  And it will be great.

Besides fatigue, why don’t we work like this more? Just get it done?  This is what it will look like in the future of work – so let’s practice now.

This is my challenge for you this week.

Find something that has been stalling and just go get it done.  Cut through the red tape and deliver.  Then go celebrate a work week well lived.

Here are four posts to fuel your imagination.

Why organizations need self-managed learners – and how you can help

A foundational part of the future of work is self-managed teams.  As you dive into it, you can’t have a self-managed team without self-managed learners.   Jane Hart is a favorite of mine with her spot on analysis of employee performance.

“Today’s workplace needs employees to continually learn for themselves and stay abreast of developments in their field of work – not just through self-study but through a continuous approach to learning, e.g. in their professional networks and other social channels.”

What To Do About Employee Moonlighting

This gives a number of concerns to be aware of, focusing on how to ensure their productivity.  But there is a glaring omission: If they are moonlighting, maybe it is because they don’t like their day job. And if they don’t like their job, there is little you can do to squeeze every little bit of productivity out of them.  Instead of watching it closely and being wary of it, I would advocate to embrace it.  Encourage them to moonlight.  Seems backwards?  Yes it does. Maybe I will do a post on this sometime soon to explain why…

5 ways your organization shouldn’t approach social

Another favorite of mine is Oscar Berg.  He knows his stuff.  This post reminds me of my eBook and numerous posts on How to Fail in Social Business.  His post is a great reminder.

“Many organizations see no big change in the existing ways of working after deploying social tools or social collaboration initiatives. Not only has it proven to be quite difficult to make people adopt these tools. It has also proven to be difficult to achieve any significant improvement of business performance.”

Our Obsession With Scalability Must End

Wow.  Saul Kaplan is spot on here.  Our focus on scalability can often hurt us, and we need to redirect our focus.  His last line sealed the deal for me:

“We are still allowing predominant business models to slow down and block the emergence of new business models that can better meet our needs. It’s time to move from the era of the predominant business model to the era of business model proliferation.”

One of my favorite magazines is Entrepreneur magazine.  Although it isn’t focused on organizational strategy, it is focused on the future of work.

One of the features they have is a Q&A.  And this one caught my attention.

“Employees at my restaurant are taking food home without paying for it and are not charging their friends for drinks. I made it clear that I’ll fire people if the behavior continues, and I bought locks for the refrigerators. However, I remain angry. How do I trust my staff after this betrayal?”

The answer was pretty typical.  In part it said, “Rather than asking how you can trust your staffers, figure out how you can communicate effectively that their behavior negatively affects the restaurant’s success–and their future with the company.”

There are two major issues I see here.

The first is they don’t care about the restaurant’s success.  It is very unlikely that because of the little amounts they steal that the restaurant will shut down.  Plus, they are not there for your success.  They are there for (most often) their survival.  Which is one reason why they are stealing food.

The second is regarding the point of “their behavior negatively affects …their future with the company.” This is only another threat.  Pile those up and sticky fingers will soon be only one of many major issues you will need to deal with.

The Management Paradox

Management is about controlling the outcomes.  When outcomes don’t go their way, they often get set in a spiral:

1. Employees steal.
2. Management threatens with being fired.
3. Locks are put on refrigerators.
4. Processes and policies are put in place.
5. Processes and policies cost time and resources and double checking.
6. Cost of service goes up.
7. To cover, cost to customers go up.
8. The locks are a physical symbol that management doesn’t trust them.
9. Employees find another way to continue doing what they have been doing.
10. Repeat.

Take this and duplicate it in a number of contexts.  No wonder management is such an energy draining activity!

Transcending the Issue

Rather than deal with the issue, create an environment in which the issue is starved and will have a very hard time existing.  Here are some ideas.

1) Team accountability

Rather than being accountable to a manager, make them accountable to each other.  It is easy to dupe one person.  Duping a whole team? Not so easy.

2) Trust them with specific things

In restaurants (and, frankly, most office environments), employees have very little say in anything they do.  Find ways to give them a choice and have control themselves.  For example, you may decide to leave the scheduling to the team.  Back out and let them figure out what is best.  There are so many ramifications in this one move that I won’t detail out now – but you better be ready for a number of instances where detoxing of negativity will naturally happen.  And then you need to be able to lead them to a new spot.

2) Open up the financials

That’s right.  Let the employees see where you are struggling and where you are doing well.  They will look for specific ways to improve the overall performance.  The question is, “Will they even care?”  Some won’t.  At least at first until…

Base a portion of their pay on team or (in this case) restaurant performance

If they understand that a bonus or part of their base pay comes to them because of superior work as a team, they will actively try to be better.

Now, does that mean that no one will ever steal again? Not at all.  But the chances of them stealing dramatically decreases.

Warning. Be sure to make this more of a bonus, rather than a retraction.  For example, if they are paid $15/hr, don’t hold back part of their pay as the team performance and pay them only $12/hr.  Keep it at $15 and their improvements will be on top of that.

It’s Not About Stealing

Now take the generic version of this problem.  It could be coming in late, spending too much time on social sites, being apathetic and lacking drive…

Rather than fix the issue, transcend it.  Create an environment where the issue starves and you don’t need to deal with it.

Sitting in a “Chili’s Too” at the O’Hare airport today, I heard the man at the table next to me say, “Travel has lost it’s glory. It’s not fun any more.”

My first thought was, “Then why are you flying?”  I started thinking about the possibility of getting tired of traveling and I realized two things:

First, if I am going somewhere, I hope I want to go there. Too many people are traveling to a place to do work they dread.  It is just another flight, taking them somewhere they don’t want to be.  No wonder they don’t like the travel.

Secondly, if I love what I am doing and am going to do something worthwhile and am excited about what I get to do, the travel is barely a thought.  My mind is on what I get to do when I am there and how it will fulfill my purpose.

Sure the travel may be difficult – delays, sitting on the tarmac for two hours, dead-stop traffic, long layovers or cancelled flights.  But if I am going to do something that I love, I can handle a few inconveniences.

Because I will barely remember the delays once I get there and am immersed in my purpose.  The work overpowers any difficulties I had getting there.  It was worth it.

My future of work involves work I love.  If it doesn’t, I’m on a plane headed some place I don’t want to go again.

I’d rather go where I am excited to go.

You hear about the Future of Work and you think, “Yes, there must be something better than where we are.  I feel it and know it is out there.  But what does it look like?   How does it work?” Do you want to take your company to a higher level?  Do you want to transcend the problems that you have today and replace them with sound maxims and principles? Of course you do.  But what are they?  What does a company which works in the “Future of Work” do differently than what  you are doing today? Here are 11 characteristics of companies who are already living where you hope to be.  These characteristics come from examples of living, successful (and often very large) organizations that are in operation today.

DISCLAIMER #1: Not all companies have all of these characteristics, but they have at least a majority of them.  Each company is different in the way it operates, but there are threads that run through them all.  (And there are many companies that advancing toward these models that have picked up only a few of these characteristics.)

DISCLAIMER #2: Don’t freak out.  These are not pipe dreams.  Companies actually work these ways with VERY successful results.  And so can your company.

DISCLAIMER #3: As you read these, remember when one thing changes, it has a cascading effect that changes the status quo and allows you to do things you have never been able to do before.

11 Characteristics of Future of Work Companies

#1: Everyone has the power and authority

To do what?  To do whatever needs to get done.  To purchase a tool (including one that is over $100,000), to hire someone if they need it, to change roles without another’s approval, to do something for a customer that is outside of the norm.  It frees the employee up to not only do the right thing, but to take on a role that plays to their strength.  Do this, and you can unleash the talents of each employee organically, instead of trying to force it out with another program.  Give them that trust and you would be surprised what they can accomplish.  In addition, if everyone has power and authority, you can’t tell another person what to do.  Let that sink in for a minute…

#2: No org chart

“What?!  No org chart?  That seems like a recipe for chaos!  Can a large company with tens of thousands of employees not have an org chart?”  Actually, yes.  Org charts show who has the power. But when everyone has power and authority to do what is best, you can’t contain someone in a box.  Rather, you can clump groups of people around a specific function, but then realize that each person on that team may have an expanded scope that has nothing to do with that function.  These groups of people are self-created and self-managed.  And they may be fluid and may change as business needs change.

#3 No traditional job descriptions

If there isn’t an org chart, you might guess that there are no job descriptions.  But that doesn’t mean that people don’t have very specific roles and goals to which they are held explicitly accountable to.  Instead of boxing them in, the job functions have the ability to be fluid when needed, but they may be very specific as well.

#4: No traditional management

If everyone has power and authority, and job descriptions don’t exist, then what do the managers, directors and VPs have? Actually, you can’t answer that question because it doesn’t fit in this world.  The way the Future of Work is organized, there aren’t any managers, directors or VPs.  They are not needed.  It seems odd that a company can function without these roles. This is contrary to everything we have not only been brought up with, but have been taught in school.  It brings up so many questions that I can’t get into right now.  But let’s just say that it is not only possible, but it happens.  Successfully. In a very organized way that empowers employees.  They are even held MORE accountable for their roles without management.

#5: No HR department

Can you imagine that?!  No HR department.  Think about that for a minute and you might go through a range of emotions, starting with “Hallelujah!” to, “Oh my goodness, could we even survive?”  The answer is YES.  “Who would hire and fire?  Who would limit the number of people that could be hired?”  The answer is you.  (In fact, one company’s employees have gone so far as to outlaw the practice of firing anyone.)

#6: “That’s not my job” doesn’t exist

It can’t wait for someone else to do.  If it needs to get done, do it.  Whether the employee does it or puts together a team to get it done, if the employees feel like it is necessary, it gets done.  Why? Because they have the power to do so.

#7: You work for what is right

In most companies, the bottom line always comes down to, “What is best for the stakeholders?”  In the Future of Work companies, “What is the right thing to do” is what guides their actions.

#8: Conflict is encouraged

If the guiding star for us to follow is “What is right,” you can imagine there will be debate and conflict – as there should be.  What is “right” may change as situations, industries, culture, and physical environments will change.  But there is a healthy way to deal with conflict in these organizations.

#9: Meetings are optional and open

No one is mandated to go to a meeting.  And at the same time, all meetings are open with the understanding that anyone can join the meeting.  There is nothing to hide, nothing is done in secret.  “Even if there need to be layoffs?”  Yes, even then.

#10: All information is open

If all meetings are open, so is all the information.  The strategy.  The financials.  The employee evaluations.  The salaries.  All the things that make most managers squirm if they were to share with the employees actually empower and strengthen the employees who work in this style of organization.  Because they have all the information they need, they can make sound decisions.

#11 Employees feel free & trusted

Wow.  What a change.  Rather than feeling like a cog in the machine or a box on a chart, they feel liberated – free to be an adult and make good judgements.  Trusted by all those around them to make the right decision for all those involved.

Is it possible?

Yes, it is possible for your company to work this way.  It is a big change, but a change that is worth it.  Why? Because the way in which we manage our companies today has hit the ceiling in effectiveness.  To go beyond where we are today we must work differently – in a way that unleashes the potential the current management practices are unable to unlock. The reason not all companies pick up all these practices is because they are all different.  You will need to find out which are best for your company.