What next?
By Richard Butler
Lockdown Three has eclipsed the shot in the arm news of the roll out of multiple Covid vaccines. For now, running a business is like driving a Formula 1 car racing under the safety car. No race strategy, no overtaking, no smart moves, just a procession ... just the process of doing business. No innovation, creativity, or even face mask to face mask training.
We would cite this intriguing data as evidence of business’s safety-first approach.
In the US the rate of CEO ‘defenestration’ has declined by almost 20% during the pandemic.
Are CEOs suddenly better, was 2020 a vintage year for CEOs, or does this fact indicate that shareholders are settling for survival, or at least the status quo? Are they driving but not racing, leaving the important strategic questions sublimated by the need to just stay in the race?
Dull though the lack of racing has been, let’s not ignore a key positive of lockdown … that the consensual hallucination that work can only mean going to work has been retired. Even the most ardent Analogs have come to wonder why their opposition to working from home was so intense. And the realisation that WFH isn’t much fun when all your flatmates, or children (perhaps attitudinally much the same thing?) have their laptops on the kitchen table too, may have turned the volume down on the ‘we-told-you-so’ chorus from Digitals.
Experts suggest we will be out of the viral woods, if not our masks, by June, though with the probability of further lockdowns, tiers and fears to confront before then. Which leaves those in charge of talent-driven businesses six months ‘What Next?’ thinking time. For those on the pit wall of business the key question will be what’s your strategy when the safety car pits?
Will senior managers ignore lockdown learning and order everyone back to the office, or insist employees work from home, or give their talent the freedom to choose? Equally importantly, how will they galvanise the firm to grow in a pandemic ‘controlled’ world? And how will they fix the firm’s culture, frayed by the Covid ordeal?
First up is deciding where work is done. In our new book we argue that a business specific blend of WFH and WIO is the answer. Why?
The case for WFH couldn’t be clearer. If the pandemic has proved anything, it is that managing a business and geographic proximity are not inextricably linked.
Which is why the Digital’s trailblazer Facebook, has said that 50% of its jobs will be remote within ten years. Twitter has gone further announcing (not tweeting) that it’s letting all its workers WFH forever! Even the more Analog end of business world is following suit (or should that be suit-less?) with lawyers Linklaters, bankers JP Morgan, and fund managers Schroders trumpeting ‘flexible working’ as their indefinite future.
But has the case for WFH forever really been proven? We see fault lines for example with reference to those handy handholds on the greasy pole: training and promotion.
Take training. What will replace the opportunities for informal incidental learning if everyone’s stuck in their spare bedroom for all time? Talking through your work problems and listening to how your colleagues have sorted out similar issues, is of huge value and requires the face time and serendipity, that only come from social proximity.
And how long will forever last, in light of studies by Stanford and Cardiff Universities which found that out-of-face-time is out-of-mind when it comes to promotions?
Turning to culture, the impact of WFH has yet to be calculated but given that the single most important factor that lawyers cite for loyalty to their firm is ‘the people’ it’s reasonable to assume that absence may not be making the heart grow fonder.
(And forgive the contrarian glibness, but what are the other 50% of Facebook’s workforce going to be doing in ten years if they aren’t working from home?)
Creating a new post-pandemic strategy should be at the top of any talent-driven firm’s management agenda. Grand Prix teams see the removal of the safety car as the start of a new race, not just a restart of the old one. The original strategy is replaced with new thinking. We believe that such new thinking should be built around firmwide Emotional Ownership of your firm’s Purpose 3.0. And an innovative plan for a new blended way of working from home and in the office can be the starting point for turbo-charged performance.
For business leaders the key question in the post-race analysis, will not be, what you did in the pandemic? but what did you do after the pandemic was over?
1 // For brevity we’ll use the accepted acronyms WFH for working from home and WIO for working in the office
2 // See our recent post, Culture in a Covid Climate
3 // How your law firm can stop boiling frogs and start creating Emotional Ownership©
4 // Roll on Friday Firm of the Year research 2020
5 // See How your law firm can stop boiling frogs and start creating Emotional Ownership©
