What the year 2020 has taught me... (part 2)

Observations and reflections from my toughest year in employment to date.

In my first article published last week, I explored my first two observations from 2020: 1) Mental health and employee wellbeing is finally getting the attention it needs, and that 2) Over-resilience is a thing. So onto the next...

3) We'll never be able to replace the office experience

In May, I wrote an article about how organisations can adapt to a more hybrid and flexible working style, re-evaluating whether they need a big corporate office or not. Over the subsequent 7 months, there have been no end of articles and resources produced on how organisations can start defining their “New Normal” and what this means in terms of office space. However my main observation is the question that organisations really need to answer is “what is the purpose of our future offices?” not “how much office space do we need?”

As someone who has spent their whole career in the business consultancy industry, I’ve spent the last 10 years working effectively with a hybrid flexible work style: working from both my employers and customer’s office space, blended with remote home working. However the forced home working directive in 2020 took away a portion of that, and made me realise that we’ll never be able to replace the office experience. Offices, and in turn face to face human interaction, is vital for both individuals and organisations to succeed.

For me, the future office should serve a different purpose to which we have been used to. Corporate real estate should be positioned and provided to the organisation as a multi-function collaboration space, providing functional areas based on differing persona requirements from their workforce.

For example, there will be a portion of the workforce (such as young talent living in shared accommodation, or individuals with ineffective home working environments) who will rely on their employers to provide the space for personal productivity and focus time. With disperse teams, this space also needs to cover the scenario of online video meetings or conference calls, so open plan spaces with banks of desks is not the answer.

Further, and to me the biggest change, will be the increased use of office space for team collaboration and creative team work. A specific team may need to use this space day-in-day-out to deliver a short term project or deliverable, or a team may periodically once a week, a few times a week or once a month want to get together in the same place. My team have completed quite a few virtual brainstorming or co-creation sessions virtually this year, of which most have been successful and met the objectives of the workshop. However for me, it’s just not the same as all being in the same room, feeding off each other’s input, getting first hand feedback and direction, and innovating.

A few organisations have already started to publish their approach and direction towards office space, Google are exploring a more hybrid approach via their pilot of a new ‘flexible work week’ and re-purposing of office space with emphasis on personal and team collaboration areas.

Purposeful use of office space is not a new concept though, a recent article published in HBR, outlines how McKinsey approach a predominantly remote based working model across their global operations. McKinsey have been able to “reconceptualise the physical office as a ‘values-reinforcing supplement to virtual work’, rather than the default for where people do most of their actual day-to-day work” via their ‘Super-Friday’ and other initiatives. By encouraging colleagues to be physically present in an office on a regular basis, McKinsey have been able to enhance social interaction amongst colleagues, ensure celebration of successes and achievements, together with placing an emphasis on understanding and alignment with the organisations values and purpose, with reinforcement activities such as special interest groups and keynote speeches.

Each organisation is now tasked with defining the most effective future of work model for them and their people, however it seems the overwhelming proportion of future models will still involve an office. Seeing and speaking with others, building relationships and the passing spontaneous interactions in the corridor just cannot be replaced virtually.

4) Leadership should be about creating an environment and system for teams to thrive

Earlier this year, the CEO of my current customer’s organisation described their organisation as “a team of teams”, and on reflection that probably describes most of, if not all organisations out there. But the extent to which organisations are able to embed a shared purpose or vision, and maintain a consistent environment for teams to thrive across their organisation differs greatly.

My learning backlog this year has consisted of a number of articles, TED talks and podcasts related to the topic of “leadership”, mostly written and published pre-pandemic. However on reflection there seems to be an underlying theme on the ‘new-wave’ of leadership, and the distinction between management vs leadership, coupled with concept of “leadership with a little l”. Many of the pre-pandemic resources put focus on a set of Leadership themes and principles, namely: trust, transparency, communication, empathy and vision-setting. Most, if not all, articles aimed at Leaders navigating their organisation through the pandemic reinforce these as key competencies of successful future leaders.

However a Microsoft research paper recently found that whilst many workers and business leaders have seen personal productivity gains through forced remote working, many have also lost a sense of purpose with their organisation. Without a sense of purpose, innovation and creativity can take a hit, and ultimately impact an organisations ability to meet their desired business outcomes and vision.

So to me, the current challenge for leaders is to set the purpose and vision for their organisation, or department, and provide the operative environment encompassing the people, tools, frameworks, trust and delegation of authority for teams to focus, innovate and deliver. 

The HBR article referenced earlier also explores how McKinsey, a team of thousands of teams, utilise a ‘team charter’ and ‘team barometer’ to enable effective micro-cultures across their dynamic forming and reforming project and delivery teams, striving for psychological safety and collaboration throughout. This is a great example of how leadership has given trust to teams themselves, within a framework, to find the most effective was of working to deliver project objectives and outcomes.

Within my team, remote working prompted us to set up weekly ‘temperature checks’ (kudos @Megan Waddell) to enable a conversation and feedback on team dynamics, lessons learned and weekly team wellbeing pulse-check. This has been a great introduction to the way we work as a team and hopefully something that will stick as and when we evolve our ways of working closer to normality.

5) No matter how good your plan or strategy is, you’ll always need to be able to adapt

Finally, one of my biggest observations from 2020 is that whilst most organisations will have a variety of resilience, incident or crisis management plans and procedures in place, alongside a variety of corporate strategies and execution plans, no matter how much planning you do, something might be around the corner that critically impacts your business – positively or negatively.

Therefore it is critical for businesses to have flexibility and agility in their business models that enable them to react to minimise disruption to challenges, or capitalise on opportunities and react with speed. Again, this might stem from the leadership style of those in senior management positions, the embedded organisational culture, rigidity of processes and procedures, flexible project delivery methods or delegated authority of decision making.

I’ve read and heard of many organisations who have used the challenges 2020 has thrown up as an opportunity to either capitalise on additional demand, or diversify their products to meet consumer or industry demand to survive. Some great examples of this include automotive companies creating ventilators, Ocado adapting to a 40% upsurge in demand or one of my local pubs temporarily re-purposing as a Christmas shop in response to the Governments opening limitations.

In June, I wrote with my colleague Mark Haslam about how organisations can start to prepare for the new normal using the BTOPP organisational design model. The underpinning theme to all elements, the processes, the people, the technology, needs to be embedded with an element of flexibility and agility to be adapted or structured to enable the organisation to rapidly counter and innovate in response to business impacting circumstances. This is vital for organisations to survive.

Overall, 2020 has taught me many things, and provided so many different learning experiences that should hopefully place me in a position to learn and thrive in 2021 onwards, so thank you to everyone who has been part of that journey.