The future of work is distributed: leadership, space - and time

In building the modern, responsive, antifragile organisation, we have adopted models in which leadership is distributed (think agile, to lean start-up, to holocracy etc). But the accelerating impact of COVID-19 identifies two other ways in which distribution is the key to understanding the future of work.
Distributed across space, has become a given. Many of us have been asked to work from home, accelerating our understanding of the tools which allow us to work in teams operating across distributed space.
And as we consider how we may emerge from lock-down in a pre-vaccine world, we find ourselves rapidly coming to terms with work having to be distributed across time.
The time constraints of traditional working; 9-5; 5 days-a-week; 25 days holiday; bank holidays etc are likely to be a problem to be overcome as we build a new normal.
Imagine, for example, the challenge of mass transit commuting. Could we see regulations limiting our travel to specified and immutable times - eg You are issued with a start and finish time so that there are no commuting peaks. Your start time may be 6am. Mine 7am, my colleagues 8am, etc through to folk starting at 5am 23 hours later. To make that more effective we may have to break that down to 15 minute slots. All to avoid being closer than 2m from the next person on your commute.
Imagine working in manufacture; 24-hour working with reduced numbers 'on' per shift may have to replace a one or two shift models across 'daytime'.
It's a monumental task, which will accelerate distributed leadership, too. The boss can't be there 24/7. A decision maker will have to be. So the pressure to distribute decision making power to those 'on the job' will inevitably build.
It will accelerate distribution through space too - you may only be allowed to travel on certain days, so the push to get still better at working across space, usually from home, will only get harder.
Making the organisation flexible requires that people are flexible too. Cultural norms around 'time off' that everyone can share (weekends, bank holidays, evenings) will inevitably be challenged.
In the next few months all of us will be involved in rapidly innovating new models of distributed work - through leadership, space and time.
The lessons we learn from this crisis will help us create more antifragile organisations, better able to cope with the shocks that are yet to come.
How ready are you?

Photo by Heather Zabriskie on Unsplash

Comfort with ambiguity: Leadership Through Crisis

There are no experts in the new. But you can become a leader in exploring emerging realities.

That starts with an open, honest curiosity - a love of learning and a willingness to try. These traits help you get comfortable with ambiguity, and help you understand how to live with it and navigate through it.

I'm on one of several panels for a virtual conference on May 8 in which we will explore uncertainty, risk, complexity, resilience, antifragility, and future-proofing from a range of perspectives - economic, social and ecological. We are trying to understand what is required to lead through and beyond the Covid19 crisis.

What could new normal look like, how can we thrive in it - could we learn to love it? Are new habits the same as a new culture? Is the experience of Covid19 jolting us out of our silos or pulling up the draw bridges. 

Hope you can join us. Sign up here.

Image: Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Get on and do it - but get on and do it right!

When you really need to move fast, being handed the keys to a fast car is much more welcome than being passed the plans to build a car factory.
Here in April 2020 we have an exceptional need to move fast - so. for many, strategy is just extra paperwork right now.
There are many benefits to just 'getting on and doing it'. But there is always the counter that you may just be heading fast in the wrong direction. The solution is to think in terms of a rapidly rolled out framework. It should give you something you can start on right now, that gets you results fast, but in being started on also provides solid foundations to build a sustainable future on.
For me that looks somewhat like this:

1. WORK TO VALUE, AT PACE: (AKA, get on and do it). Choose a problem - pull together a small team - call the output of their labours 'the product' and start. Stand that up with access to insight, clarity of constrains and appropriate process and tools for ideation, concept development and prototyping. Allow decision making to stay within the team - and you'll get to a solution fast. You can do that tomorrow. It's a first and important step and can be done without any of the other three foundations laid. Go!

2. TECHNICAL BASICS: In step 1 you can get a long way just working on paper, with the insight you have and with the tools that may already be readily available. But in the rapid solutioning of WORK TO VALUE AT PACE you are also likely to start identifying additional basic data and technology needs. These will form your TECHNICAL BASICS. These can be captured as a backlog through repeating step 1, but you can get ahead of them by a rapid review vs need. Deploy step 2 early and fast and you'll be speeding up and scaling up your iterative capacity. So while step 1 will get you started, step two will enhance both your capabilities and your capacity.

3. NETWORK LEADERSHIP: By following step 1, and preparing to scale its activities with step 2, you will already been seeing the benefits of distributed leadership. You will likely be wanting more. To achieve that requires changes to governance, roles and responsibilities. By selecting to make this part of your framework you can unleash the network potential of the organisation - taking what you have learned from doing, to make it the way that you work across the enterprise. Change management, coaching and mentoring are essential value adds in step 3.

4. CULTURE TO SUSTAIN: Steps 1 to 3 will have taught you a lot about solving problems at speed and with accuracy. You will have achieved amazing things. It's great. You will enjoy it. But it can't go on for ever unless you appreciate that, like individuals, organisations exist in a society and on a planet on which our success depends. Steps 1-3 give you the tools to create value at speed - step 4 recognises that your continued success depends on that of people and planet. There's no profit without them. In this step governance and value generation build in a balanced approach to allow you to sustain your success.

Efficiency is lazy. But hard to shake.

I have just returned from my daily, government-proscribed, exercise. Thoughts gathered on that walk, inspired somewhat by Dave Snowden's COVID-19 & Leadership initiative, led me to identify a 'weak signal' which may gain significance as we find ourselves having to relearn how to respond and organise.
Let me explain.
I'm very keen to maintain my 2 meter minimum distance from people. I am lucky enough to be able to walk into the countryside so the folk I do encounter are relatively rare. When one does hove into view I usually have 2-3 minutes to adjust my direction to keep well clear. As do they.
Often I will cross the road to ensure we keep well apart. Often I will pause, slow my direction, change my trajectory. As do many others.
I would guestimate its 19/20 times that I do the making way. Joggers sometimes bounce past a little too close for comfort (I don't hear them coming from behind if I have my earphones in). Cyclists sometimes fly by on the same path - rather than trouble themselves with the change in direction that would take them onto grass or a very quiet road.
We could see this as a metaphor only - it is inefficient to step away from the path you've set yourself. It may add steps to your journey. It may take you longer. You may expend more energy.
But it's more than metaphor. It is how we behave. It is how we behave even under the threat of a virus that is changing so much else about how we live.
And that's the weak signal that is still there four week's into lockdown and longer still into social isolation. We seem to prefer efficiency even under threat to our health. Perhaps this is as much because the default behaviour for us - recognised in the whole 'don't make me think' culture of Easy we have delivered - is to be lazy.
It is harder to take extra steps, it costs us more to replan our direction of travel - in energy and time.
One other weak signal to consider, emerging from my walks: The larger the group, the less likely it is to change direction. There is both metaphor and real behaviour in this.
As we face the chaos of COVID-19 and attempt to sense our way to what comes next, we must do so recognising the threat to change from our fixation on efficiency - and the potential for faster responses inherent in smaller groups.

What success looks like in the post Covid-19 reality

Two very rapid shocks to our system are happening within six months. Two Black Swans. The first - the emotional, economic and health trauma of COVID-19, we didn't see coming. The second, the COVID-19 economic Bounce Back - that we can.
Best predictions are that the UK economy will contract by 35% this quarter but bounce back (perhaps we should call it Boom Back) to plus 30% in the following quarter. That positive shock is just as hard for organisations to handle as the negative one - think of the impact on supply chains, labour demand, infrastructure use, retail demand, capital and cash flow requirements etc. The bounce back looks like being as short and as sharp as the crash we have experienced. An extreme impact black swan in the other direction. And one you KNOW is coming.
The expectation is that after the bounce back there will be a resettlement of the economy to a new stasis with a smaller GDP on a global scale. I will return to this new stasis shortly.
But first a note on the decisions facing us now. The greatest threat to your organisation right now is in choosing the 'hunker down' option. This may appear counter-intuitive. But in hunkering down (ie reduce costs as much as possible, try to get by with the trickle of business you sustain, scale back ambition and initiatives, return to basics, halt investment in the new etc etc... you've been in those meetings) you make your organisation more fragile to the next shock just as the second black swan looms. You will not be prepared for the shock of the upturn.
The net result is you are choosing to be a victim of the first crash, taking all of the hit with no levers available to you to take advantage of the bounce back. Lose-Lose when you could have at least come out evens with a Lose-Win response.

Returning now to the new, post Boom-Back stasis, the new normal if you will.
I wrote recently about The Second Order Consequences of COVID-19, which I urge you also to consider in your preparations for life after the Boom-Back. In it I start to unpack the disruption that will follow.

To those I would like to add a handful more:
1. Digital magicians have had their day. The mystery of digital is rapidly dissipating as even the most Luddite leader is forced to learn how to DIY digital, to maintain any semblance of control over their business and people. The thing they thought they needed an 'expert' for, they have (and not through choice) found they really don't. This means:
2. Digital Transformation will have to go well beyond the tools and training. Everyone and their aged mother now 'gets' digital. The dads are discovering they can dance at this wedding and they don't care who is watching. So digital transformation must now be more about business models not simply the roll out of Teams. That stuff was always IT. Digital is new ways of working and new ways of doing business.
3. High Street Honeymoon: Pop-up shops. This will be a short term boom. The High Streets will be rammed for while but fall back to a-bit-less-than-now shortly after. So, pop-up shops and everything that supports that will explode. Expect markets to get a new lease of life.
4. Value your people people: The first meeting may be the only one in a travel-budget constrained world. Those who are excellent at building rapport will be at an advantage in rapidly building relationships that can continue online.

I want to build on these now to identify the a broader impact on the skills we value in business and the ambitions we have for organisations. The most important may be an end to the idolising of growth.

Grow Or Die, is dead.
The double black swan shock we are going through, followed by the new globally reduced GDP in the mid-term at least, offers us the opportunity to ask what success now looks like.
Are you a successful nation, company, individual or leader if you earn less this year than last?
We are going to have to get comfortable with answering Yes to that question. At the heart of this challenge is the Grow Or Die mythology.
Today we understand that myth is leading us toward environmental collapse. Grow And Die.
Success in a world of less is more aligned to human happiness. After all, our economy was never meant to simply generate a GDP figure. What should it be for? Perhaps to deliver happiness.
Doughnut Economics offers us some clues: "The framework was proposed to regard the performance of an economy by the extent to which the needs of people are met without overshooting Earth's ecological ceiling." In this model the job of the economy is to generate a safe and just space for humanity to thrive.
If that is the job of the economy (rather than to deliver growing GDP) then what is the job of a business or organisation within that economy?
These questions lead me towards the triple-bottom-line thinking captured in the Planet Experience frameworks I have been developing - and an increasing demand for ecologically sound business and products.
In Planet Experience we have a way of being successful without costing the earth, without taking more than we need, and in line with the needs of humanity.
Being successful in 2021 will be all about how well you adapt to thrive within the constraints of a clearly constrained environment.
Empathy is now a key survival skill where ruthlessness was once lauded. Co-operation and collaboration are back.
And that, already, makes me happy.

Photo by Larm Rmah on Unsplash

2nd Order Consequences of COVID-19

The Great Interruption of 2020 will lead to the Great Disruption of 2021. And this will be a disruption unique since World War II - one which took everyone by surprise and is pretty much evenly distributed in a very short period.
Tech disruptions tend to impact over 20 year cycles. This is something different. COVID-19 is driving massive habit change and with it the potential to have deep impact on society - potentially culture-changing impact. We are seeing the initial impact immediately.
Again, uniquely, we have the Great Pause we are all being forced to contemplate, to prepare for what comes next.
There are the first order consequences we see reported on our evening news. The economic shut-down, the school closures, the strain on supply chains.
And then there are the second and third order to come.

Consider:
1. Demographics: Beyond the first order consequence of the death of one-in-ten aged over 80 (which is about in line with deaths from all causes for the over 80s in a typical year), the bigger impact will be in a slump in pregnancy rates. Since COVID-19 was identified as a risk to pregnant mothers, sales of birth control went through the roof. So we can expect a 3-4 month birth lull in 9-12 months time. That gap will be present as it hits the health service, then nursery education age, school age, college age, and entering the workplace in 18-21 years time. That's a lot of flux for all our institutions to handle. The lull is likely to be followed by a boom.
2. Food: Yep, in lock down we think about it a lot. We make meal plans. We start to value 'fresh', we become very conscious of waste, we find time to make from scratch - all the things the convenience (read Easy) generation(s) have bypassed for 20 years. The first order consequence of disruptions to supply lead to second order consequences of increased valuation of the food we do have. New habits forming now could see a mid-term negative impact on restaurants, fast food outlets, convenience food manufacturers... and a positive impact on organic, locally-sourced, fresh suppliers. Reduced consumption (via reduction of waste) is a likely second order consequence across the board.
3. Education: Lessons, quite literally, are being learned about digital. First educators are getting a rapid education in virtual lessons. This has benefits for meeting individual learning styles, aligning with need in more individual ways vs time of day you find best for learning, pace at which you prefer to learn etc. Just as digital has generated the opportunity to move away from treating customers in a one-size-fits-all way, so it reveals an opportunity for segmenting and personalising education which could rapidly accelerate its outcomes for every individual. And beyond that, digital means expanding the capacity of an individual teacher or institution such that we can now teach the world. There's a UN Sustainable Development Goal on the way to being met, right there.
4. Politics: The emergence of an instant Technocracy (rule by unelected experts) is one we seem quite comfortable with. Our politicians right now (as seen from the UK) are pretty much mouth-pieces for their experts - the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Science Officer bringing a level of evidence-based rigour to decision-making that our very generalist politicians are quick to defer to. Will this be forgotten when our experts on the economy make comment on issues (such as) Brexit in the future? That remains to be seen but trust is science is (outside of the flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers and 5G fallacy peddlars) at an all time high. This bodes well for a shift in the political landscape toward one where the focus is less on what plays well to the gallery (the populist agenda) and more on a test-and-learn, more honest, approach to dealing with the ambiguity of the economy. Less opinions - more evidence. We can hope.
5. Travel. When this lock down is over I suspect a lot of folk will want to travel for pleasure. But from a business point of view, we have learned a lot about how digital really can replace jumping on a plane. Senior execs have been given an accelerated learning and that has positive impacts for their bottom line. Expect travel budgets to be slashed at the very least - with all the second order consequences for airlines, airports, hotels, car rental, conference venues etc.
6. Antifragility - If that sounds like a made up word, let's talk about business resilience instead (though if you are familiar with antifragility, you will appreciate the difference). The bottom line is COVID-19 has revealed to us again how inefficient being too optimised is over anything more than a short-term period. And we cannot predict, with any certainty worth having, how long that short-term may last. Systems - from supply chains, to ways of working, to value proposition have been revealed to be too inflexible to cope with shock. The first order consequence of that is shattered businesses with the shattered lives they leave in their wake. Second order - businesses that survive will have already made themselves anti-fragile in several ways and those that build after will learn from them. The whole notion of leveraging, fantasy multipliers, business plans built on same-happening-next-year-but-a-bit-more must be swept away. Second order may be in the personal realm - we may have just created a generation of savers, folk who will try to build some anti-fragility into their own finances and ways of living. My guess is this will result in reduced consumption as people seek to live lives in reduced debt, building some cash reserves, fore-going the next new car, TV, phone, foreign holiday. Consuming less and savouring more.

All these consequences of COVID-19 (and I'm sure you can think of many others) accelerate the demand for what I had already identified as twin increasing trends:

1. Ways of dealing with the ambiguous, complex requirements of the digital world
2. Ways of handling the rising prioritisation of concerns for the planet.

The first because we face such a period of disruption in which we may see what is hitting us but we lack clarity as to the connections between cause and effect. We have to probe-sense-respond our way through this to develop the most appropriate digital responses.

The second because we have seen we CAN make a difference (in those pollution-falls stories you will have seen). We all have a renewed appreciation of the simple pleasure of time spent in nature. We are all learning the importance of reducing waste. And we are all appreciating more the damaging impact of unchecked consumption on our own lives and on the fragility of the systems, economic and natural, we depend on.

Change is coming. You have time to act. Don't waste the opportunity.

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash