One day after school a young girl noticed that her mom was cutting off the ends of a pot roast before putting it in the oven to cook for dinner. She had seen her mom do this many times before but had never asked her why.
So this time she asked and her mom replied, “I don’t know why I cut the ends off, but it’s what my mom always did. Why don’t you ask your Grandma?”
So the young girl called her grandmother on the phone and said, “Grandma why do you cut the ends off the pot roast before cooking it?” Her grandmother replied, “I don’t know. That’s just the way my mom always cooked it. Why don’t you ask her?”
Undeterred, the girl called her great grandmother, who was living in a nursing home and asked her the same question. “Why did you cut the ends off the pot roast before cooking it?
“I cut off the ends of the pot roast because when I was first married we had a very small oven, and the pot roast didn’t fit in the oven unless I cut the ends off.”
In this article, management consulting firm The SOAR Institute, who specialises in the strategic assessment, design and implementation of progressive management principles for organisations, takes a deeper organisational look at this parable. What happens when we don’t ask questions or challenge assumptions about how we do things in our personal lives and in the work place?
Extensive research has been done into the “When, How and Where of work” in an effort to understand our traditional working models.
The classic model of the 9 to 5 workday originates in the pre industrial era when manufacturers needed day light in order to do their work since there was no electricity.
The “How” of work is a throwback to the 1950’s when people communicated via memos, which was a slow, laborious process. To counter this, organisations instituted a culture of hosting meetings to get work done. This system already reached saturation levels pre the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then it has intensified as even more meetings were instituted in the virtual space because leaders and managers instructed people to ensure regular contact, which has led to mass meeting fatigue.
The “Where” or location of work comes from the mindset that the office has traditionally always been the headquarters of where work happens. Even the term ‘remote work’ denotes work away from a central hub. More so now, this location-centric model has been turned on its head as it has been proven that work can, in the vast majority of cases, be done from almost anywhere.
In reimagining and redesigning how we work, much like the pot roast, organisations have to be willing to ask questions and begin to challenge many more outdated assumptions or face a backlash from employees who have begun reassessing their lives and how they want to work moving forward. This backlash is already taking effect in the form of “the great resignation.” While there are various reasons why employees are resigning – some seeking new opportunities or higher earnings – and thereby making vertical shifts. The research, however, shows that more of those resigning are moving laterally to positions that provide a higher level of flexibility and autonomy. The caveat here, is that this applies mostly to knowledge workers whose skill set is sort after in the market. In a recent survey by research and advisory consultancy firm Gartner, 39% of these workers indicated they will leave their present employment if a hard return to the office post COVID-19 was enforced by their organisations.
In exploring other assumptions many leaders believe that having their employees working remotely equates to a loss of control, which means a loss of productivity. In our own experience as a management consulting firm who has been coaching organisational managers pre and during COVID, our statistics suggest that loss of productivity is not the case, and if anything the opposite is true. Two in every three employees at different managerial levels whom we coach from diverse industries, said that working from home has them working harder now than ever before.
Another organisation-led argument against remote work is that there is a decrease in innovation and collaboration.
“Once more this does not hold true when teams are intentional about the “when, where and how” their work transpires. When teams become more empowered to choose these aspects of how they work, creativity and collaboration increases and we’re more likely to see higher levels of innovation,” says Riaad Isaacs, co-founder of The SOAR Institute.
Human vs. Location Centric Design
In moving to a new design it cannot mean simply taking the old ways of working and placing it into a virtual setting. This is what most organisations did, and added more meetings to compensate for the lack of face time which has led to disastrous outcomes on the wellbeing side.
“Employees have become overwhelmed with the number of meetings they must attend during an average day and then work late into the night to catch up with the actual implementation of the work discussed in those meetings. Anyone who has sat through virtual meetings can attest to the level of energy and focus it requires and why it is not the same as a face to face interaction. We’ve heard of seemingly bizarre yet commonplace stories of how laptops accompany employees on their bathroom breaks, or drive shotgun in the passenger seat between school drop offs or pick-ups,” says Isaacs.
When organisations adopt a more human centric approach where work is designed around humans and what makes them more productive, healthy and happy, not only does productivity go up, but there is also a reduction in fatigue and burn out. When given more flexibility, employees perform astonishingly better. Leaders have a choice about which perspective to adopt. They can see this as a loss of control which will lead to chaos or they can begin to view it as empowering their employees to create the work patterns that allow them to be more productive, healthier and happier, ultimately leading to higher performance. Looking after the needs of employees therefore does make business sense.
The Hybrid working model
As the world adjusts to working in and around the constraints and uncertainties of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic now already in its third year, most organisations are advocating for the return to traditional ways of working and are not listening to the 75% of knowledge workers who are saying their expectations of working flexibly have increased. It is clear that employees want something different and leaders must respond with a new vision of how work transpires in this new reality we find ourselves in.
In agreement with the Gartner research, we believe that organisations that are thinking in a progressive way are ones considering the “where” of work in terms of co-located or distributed formats. And also about the “how” of work in terms of synchronous, where employees are working at the same time, and asynchronous meaning work is performed at different times.
Organisations that rank the synchronous mode as more important for collaboration and innovation still operate in a culture of meetings. The asynchronous mode must be given equal importance as individuals need deep focus time to dedicate to uninterrupted strategic-thinking work and downtime to restore mental energy.
The Four Modes of Working are distributed as follows (source: Gartner):
According Psychiatrist, and Founder and Chief organiser of Physician Support Line, Dr Mona Masood: “We often think productivity means to work. It doesn’t. Productivity means to make intentional choices towards a goal. The choice could be to pause. The goal could be to replenish. Productivity could mean to rest.”
Life is changing at a rapid rate. The way we work is changing equally fast. People’s needs and expectations are evolving as they adapt to these changes. Organisations are being called to become more fluid, innovative and human centric to keep up with the changing expectations of a workforce in flux. Leaders who fail to pay attention and adapt to the growing current are putting their organisations at increasing risk.
We leave you with 6 Big Ideas for Leaders and Employees to ensure a collaborative approach to finding solutions that make sense.
3 Adaptive tips for Leaders:
- Tip 1 – Create forums for employees to safely express their views and create workable solutions. Listen to, and understand the needs of your employees.
- Tip 2 – Explore the possibility that what is good for your employees could also be good for the organisation. There is an intersection between the organisations needs and the employees’ needs that must leveraged effectively.
- Tip 3 – Be open to explore new and innovative ways of working using the latest research available to develop approaches that are unique to your organisational and employee needs.
3 Adaptive tips for Employees:
- Tip 1 – Recognise and understand the organisations needs and your role in meeting these needs.
- Tip 2 – Be consistent and responsible in using your autonomy to do what is in your own as well the organisation’s best interest.
- Tip 3 – Work collaboratively with your organisational leaders in creating innovative new ways of working
Ends
Words by: Riaad Isaacs