Who Are You? Who? Who?
Identity plays into the discussion of hybrid/remote in a way we don’t talk about much.
Who are you as a leader if you don’t have people around you to lead? The office has all kinds of little signals that indicate role & hierarchy.
The reserved parking space with your name in it by the elevators. The executive floor people can only access if they are invited. The private washroom.
If you work from home?
That’s all gone. Or even if you work from the office and the rest of the staff is virtual first, what fun are all the little status indicators if no one else notices?
In a global company, work has always been distributed. People in Toronto are remote to London, Paris and Tokyo. It’s often been the role of the executive to fly between different locations to connect the locations. If that can be done via Zoom, is the international travel really necesssry? Just think of the cost savings, not to mention the reduction in CO2. Keeping the CFO happy and getting closer to your ESG targets in one fell swoop. Except - is that what is happening? Are executives willing to shift their identity from the international world traveller?
With return to office mandates, often a motivator which is never disclosed (if it’s even consciously recognized) is that the status quo of identity needs to be maintained. Leaders need people. Who are you as a leader if you can’t see your people? The senses aren’t satisfied. You can’t see them or hear them (we’ll stay away from touch, taste and smell lol). The ping of constant notifications isn’t as rewarding as the hum of conversation.
But the problem is that your employees have come to value the identities they established while embracing flexibility. They are the people who can have breakfast with their retired parents, work for a few hours from their house and still be home in time to pick up the kids from school. They are the people who go to the gym and get healthy rather than sitting in traffic for 2 hours a day.
So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get very clear on how your identity is impacted by flexibility and return to office. This clarity is essential for you to create a vision for the future. We need to do this at all levels of the organization - executives especially because they are making the decisions about the operating system used (office or hybrid/remote) as well as the supporting policies and procedures.
Your perception of the future of work is deeply connected to who you are at work. How, when and where you work play a factor.
Join me in The Flexible Path - January is when we work on the necesssry clarity to build the vision.
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