Episode 153 - Working Out How to Work

<h2 data-pm-slice="0 0 []"><strong>Summary</strong></h2> <p class="">The workplace has changed forever. This is how teams and organisations can work out how to work.</p> <p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true"> </p> <h2><strong>Transcript</strong></h2> <p class="">Welcome to episode 153 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore working out how to work with your team.</p> <p class="">Chances are your team and organisation are struggling to figure out how best to work. Are we in the office? If so, how many days a week? Who gets to decide which days? Can’t I just work from home all the time? Leaders are thoroughly confused about the best way forward. </p> <p class="">So often this conversation happens in exactly the wrong order - we start with the location first, rather than focusing on the work that’s being completed. This leads to seemingly arbitrary decisions, such as forcing people into the office three days a week, or allowing people to never come in to the office, or not allowing people to work from home on Mondays and Fridays. Those forcing people in often focus on the importance of things like water cooler conversations, ad hoc innovation, or the need to bring energy back in to the office. Those encouraging completely remote argue that we did just fine working from home during the pandemic. With such a diverse range of opinions, it feels like there’s no way to avoid letting people down.</p> <p class="">The first thing to accept is that you can’t figure this out alone - this is not a challenge that can be solved while locked away in a boardroom. And you can’t figure it out for all time - even if you do come up with an approach that works for now, you will probably need to change it again in the future. </p> <p class="">Some key principles here are that we need to work with the team to figure this out and to increase acceptance. We also need to bring an experimental mindset where we can try new approaches out and measure their effectiv