Ch...Ch...Ch...Changes

Welcome to 2024 Edition 4! This week, I'll be looking at a method you can use to claim back some downtime, discuss change, and examine how tricky it can be to understand what customer and employees really want.

Just make it predictable

I recently read a very interesting book - How the Future Works, by Brian Elliott, Sheela Subramanian and Helen Kupp. I also have interviewed Brian Elliott for our Humanity Working podcast - when that is out, I'll write more about some of the key themes.

But hidden within the book was something I've been hearing more about of late - the idea of explicitly reclaiming time when work does NOT invade our lives. Many of us don't do this - when our phone dings, we jump.

So this week, my animated twin looks at a very simple human method you can use to create a little extra time to recharge each week. Check out the video below for more details.

About Change

At BillionMinds we spend a lot of time thinking about how work is changing, so that we can help people in the organization navigate that change better. Ryan Tubbs and I are working on a paper (and book) we will publish on this later in the year, but I thought it would you might be interested to hear some of our early thoughts.

As we look at this, we try to emulate what the best futurists do - look back (sometimes 50 years or more) and use it to provide us context. After all, work has always changed. What could first be recognized as an office arrived in the 1920s, and if you look at pictures from the 40s, 70s and 90s, you will clearly see wave after wave of dramatic change.

So, is what we are going through now different in any meaningful way to what happened before? We would argue yes, for three key reasons.

1) Change is happening on multiple fronts, all at once. In addition to the change you see when a company alters its business strategy, there is change in work environments as organizations leave formal time and place. There is very significant change to work practices as companies move towards v-teams, and measuring outcomes over effort. And of course, there is change to the technology we are using, as AI, robotics and automation truly become mainstream.

2) Change is invading our personal lives. The new world of work doesn't respect our personal boundaries. Until at least the mid-1990s, for the vast majority of us, work was connected to the physical place where we performed it. Today, for office workers at least, that's a thing of the past. Keeping work at bay now takes genuine effort, like the method my animated twin suggests in the video above.

3) Organizations cannot resist technology change. It used to be that changing technology environments and business conditions would happen, and then executives in companies would determine how and when to respond. Even up until the late 2000s, adoption of technology was determined by executives, with the Chief Security Officer having a very significant say. Today, if it's useful or desirable, it's in your company in a flash. ChatGPT launched on Nov 30th 2022. By September of 2023 a majority of office workers were using it, in most cases with their companies having no official policy on the matter.

So, what does all this mean? In our view, it means that the old ways of dealing with change don't really work anymore. As an organization, there is no meaningful boundary between change in the outside world and what is happening inside your "four walls", which means you have much less choice on when to respond. As an individual, change is constantly happening to you and around you, which means you must develop the adaptability and resilience to respond. And interestingly, as the humans in an organization are the only ones truly capable of BEING adaptable and resilient, they represent the best chance your organization has of being able to navigate all this change, provided of course you create the conditions that allow them to thrive.

We will have much, much more on this in the coming months, but at its heart, this is why we believe that focusing on the human isn't just morally right for organizations, but it's the strategy that truly makes most business sense.

What do employees (and customers) really want?

In the most recent episode of our Humanity Working podcast, I spoke to Sharekh Shaikh . I wanted to talk to Sharekh, because he knows how to find out what businesses think, specifically people in those businesses.

As anyone who follows polling knows, measuring what people think can be seriously difficult. People avoid answering, people interpret questions in different ways, some people even consciously mislead or lie. This type of work is often as much art as science. But as a business, your success depends on understanding the sentiments of your employees and your customers.

In this chat, we discussed what works, what doesn't, and how to adjust customer facing methods to work inside your organization. As ever, you can listen to the episode on your favorite podcasting platform, or watch the full podcast below.

Thanks for Reading!

I'm Paul and I'm the CEO and Co-Founder of BillionMinds . If you are worried about how prepared your employees are for change - change in work environments (like hybrid and remote), business strategy, or even technology changes, you should talk to us. Just reach out to me here on LinkedIn and we can get a call scheduled.

As for this newsletter - please let me know your thoughts on it in the comments (I try to respond to everything)

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