Since the start of COVID, I’ve been super curious about how work might be permanently changed by what had previously been considered “temporary” adjustments. Whether or not these “temporary” changes become permanent remains to be seen, but I am hopeful that this might actually be a turning point – in a great way – for the way we work.
Jim Dethmer, one of the founders of Conscious Leadership Group, offers a question that we can use for reflection that asks: “What if every person or every situation is meant to serve your learning and growth?” [I’m paraphrasing a bit]. So if I were to apply his inquiry to the situation COVID has forced when it comes to work, it might go something like: “If COVID were meant to serve our learning and growth, what would we take away from this time in regards to work?”
And this is where it gets interesting.
For many, remote work is usually an exception granted due to extraordinary circumstances or a one-off need. Most organizations seem to want their people to be in the office when they’re working. Often this gets explained away with reasoning like: people just work better when they’re near their teams, or it’s too hard to connect people when they’re not physically together, or there are too many things that disrupt people when they work remotely. And yes, that last one is as overused as it is nebulous.
But COVID forced us to pressure test these beliefs. And the results are uncomfortable for some who are used to “the way things have always been” because here we are, making work work in what we previously thought were sub-optimal conditions.
More than that, it forces us to address the REAL issues that hold us back from working in unusual or experimental ways. What I’ve noticed is that when it really comes down to it, the hesitation for remote work – and more broadly, results-based work – is not about “being away from the office” at all.
When our economy was much more driven by the industrial age vs. the information age that drives so much of our work now, hours mattered. If you could make 10 widgets an hour, and you worked 40 hours a week, that means you could make 400 widgets. And if you worked an extra 5 hours that week, it meant 50 more widgets. It was simple math.
But a big proportion of our work now has changed to work where it matters HOW we do it, and not nearly as much as HOW LONG we do it for. We’ve long used the adage “Work smarter, not harder,” but even some of the most seasoned leaders mean that only so long as you’re working smarter…for at least 40 hours a week.
The big leap here is to shift our perspective to ACTUALLY focus on the results our people get, not how much time they put toward getting them.
So what’s been keeping us from doing the thing we’ve always claimed to care about and focus on results and not face time? I think it comes down to questions that, if addressed honestly, would clear the way for us to create results-oriented workplaces. And then being willing to have the tough conversations that invariably follow.
Here are just a few questions that might help you get down to the root of the resistance to a true results-focused workplace:
Do I trust the people I work with? (If you don’t, being able to “see” them for 40 hours a week isn’t going to change this)
Have I made crystal clear agreements, where everyone knows what is due, by when, and by who?
Do job descriptions lump together responsibilities that “seem to go together” or that require someone to “be good at everything” instead of playing to any given employee’s strengths and areas of highest contribution?
There is so much more to this. Too much for just one blog post, so I have a feeling I’ll be back at this topic again. I’ll leave you with a quote from investor and entrepreneur Naval Ravikant (by way of James Clear and his 3-2-1 Thursday email, which I highly recommend) on the importance of leverage:
A leveraged worker can out-produce a non-leveraged worker by a factor of one thousand or ten thousand. With a leveraged worker, judgment is far more important than how much time they put in or how hard they work.
For example, a good software engineer, just by writing the right little piece of code and creating the right little application, can literally create half a billion dollars' worth of value for a company. But ten engineers working ten times as hard, just because they choose the wrong model, the wrong product, wrote it the wrong way, or put it in the wrong viral loop, have basically wasted their time. Inputs don't match outputs, especially for leveraged workers.
What you want in life is to be in control of your time. You want to get into a leveraged job where you control your time and you're tracked on outputs.
