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Date posted: 02nd August 2022

02nd August 2022

What About Your Work? The Future Is Not What It Used To Be

What About Your Work? The Future Is Not What It Used To Be

Over the past 2.5 years the definition of the future of work seemed to be the word…’tomorrow’.

We had no idea what was in store for us from one day to the next. We knew we had to empower our people and give them the tools to get the job done. Beyond that we were reacting. Little time to think or plan long term.

Things have thankfully settled down over the past two years but the challenges we face are great and ever fluid to say the least. How do you plan your people strategy six months out, let alone five years? To do so we have to have a mindset shift to a new way of working/thinking. One we have been promoting for many years.

This interview from Forbes featuring the great Lynda Gratton will help you answer some of those questions and at the very least to start thinking differently.  Enjoy.

From the article in Forbes:

Rodger Dean Duncan: There’s no doubt that the Covid pandemic shocked a lot of people into challenging old assumptions about their working lives. What have you seen as the biggest changes spawned by all that reimagining

Lynda Gratton: We find ourselves in a very exciting moment. We’ve been wanting to redesign the way we work, and the pandemic—alongside advancements in technology—opened a door to make it possible.

My initial question is, “Couldn’t work be more humane?” It’s a question I’ve been asking for many years, and the pandemic is a break with the past. We’ve formed new habits as a result of it, and we’ve begun to see that there are other ways of working. The challenge now is these new ways of working need to be integrated effectively. There’s no doubt that our collective experience of the pandemic has created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rethink what we want from our working lives. We’ve had a chance to question many fundamental assumptions, adopt new habits and form new narratives around “how work gets done.” For someone who has been studying organizations for over 30 years, this collective “unfreeze” from bureaucratic rigidity is the most significant phenomenon I’ve experienced. Across industries, there’s massive experimentation going on—and it’s been embraced with open arms by workers.

Leaders are saying, “I know there’s this amazing opportunity, but I feel worried about what’s going to happen to my organization.”

Click here to read the full article.

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