THE INSPERATUS NEWSLETTER

A realistic future

 

The death of office-based work has been greatly exaggerated. It’s true that the reaction in some quarters has been extreme. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey announced a “working from home forever” policy. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on the other hand said last week he sees “no positives” to home-working.

 

Both these positions are at best ridiculous and at worst, strategically inept.

 

The reality is that completely forgoing central offices would be a disaster for most organizations. Too many people value and have a need for daily interaction with colleagues. But neither is it fair or realistic to continue forcing people to commute for hours every day anymore – especially if doing so creates huge financial and emotional pressures among employees and their families. Eventually, employers always pay for this anyway in more sick days, lost productivity and higher staff turnover. A few other considerations:

 

  • Whatever the merits of Zoom, Microsoft Teams and the rest, I don’t think many senior executives want to make all their high stakes decisions over a video link.

 

  • Some roles, such as software development, can be performed effectively from anywhere, and programmers are used to doing most of their communication online.

 

  • Salespeople on the other hand, usually prefer to deal with colleagues and customers in person.

 

  • And of course, many people simply don’t have the space to create an effective office at home.

 

That’s why for most organizations, the future of work will be about enabling a hybrid office/home office model for a large portion of their employees. The approach to establishing this model should be:

 

  • Founded on flexibility for employees, not a free-for-all
  • Enabled and enhanced by technology, not controlled by it
  • Designed to drive better business results, not simply to maintain the status quo  

 

If you’d like to discuss how to create a hybrid “future of work” model for your business, contact me today: hm@hamishmackenzie.com.

A versatile player

 

The NFL season started last week, which gave me a chance to see my favorite player, Taysom Hill of the New Orleans Saints, in action. He’s special in that he can play as quarterback, running back, wide receiver, and kick returner – and I’ve probably forgotten a couple of other positions he can handle.

 

Contrary to what you might think, the best consultants are like Taysom, not one-dimensional specialists. If they weren’t, you might find that some of their work has a lot of undesirable consequences in other areas of your business.

 

A lasting change

 

There are three ways to create change in your organization – make an intellectual argument, make an emotional appeal, and make the change easy for people to adopt.

 

  • Intellectual argument will help establish agreement
  • Emotional appeals will help generate willingness
  • Making change easy will drive action

 

If you want to create lasting change in your organization, every initiative should combine all three.

 

A way to work with me

 

In my experience, many CEOs and business owners spend too much time on operational issues at the expense of evolving strategy, driving innovation and creating change. One of my biggest strengths is in helping leaders refocus, eliminate drags on their productivity and spend more time working on the busines, instead of in it.

 

Book a free call with me now to discuss the opportunities. https://www.hamishmackenzie.com/calendly

 

Hamish

Like this newsletter? Please forward it to someone you think might benefit.

 

Copyright, Hamish Mackenzie, 2020.

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