How to Thrive in the Modern Workspace

Three interacting forces are sculpting a new terrain for the future of work1 Globalization which while creating wealth overall can be devastating for communities and industries in many regions Both globalization itself and a backlash to it will shape the contours of opportunities or their loss for everyone2 The three A39s of technology Artificial intelligence which accelerates middleclass income job loss at speeds far greater than jobs they create Another major factor will be how mobile devices and advanced measurement will change how work is compartmentalized and distributed3 COVIDshockdriven behavioral and structural change After nearly two years of dispersed work forces and plummeting travel replaced by ZoomTeams the expectations and behaviors of bosses employees and clients are going to be dramatically different Like a champagne cork that once opened never fits back in the bottle there is no going back to December 2019 but imagining forwardThe nature of work how it is done and where it is done will be dramatically different in the coming years Three shifts are underway1 The quotOfficequot as we knew it is over Let us not kid ourselves or find succor in the belief that quothybridquot work will bring back the office Yes if you are in dentistry work on an assembly line or your work requires close physical proximity with your customer inperson work will resume Otherwise we are likely to spend less than 20 percent of our time in the office as we knew itIn quotJigsaw or Returnquot the concept of the quotunbundled quot workplace was discussed where there are four places we work including home increasingly distant from our old offices and significantly upgraded for working eventsconferences where we go to network learn and build relationships third places WeWork Starbucks and other places where we get out of our homes and collaborate with our colleagues and the museum the old office filled with artifacts and history where senior management or curators of quotculturequot pass down learning and training and clients are pitchedLet39s be real How much time will we spend in museumsDespite what you may be hearing most smart companies are recognizing that to compete for top talent retain flexibility and agility and control costs they must significantly reduce their physical footprint Even the big banks and old school investment firms that insisted everybody return all the time are working behind the scenes to align with the new reality2 We are all going to be gig workers The reason for this is threefoldFirst companies in a world of change are beginning to see that making costs variable is a key to success The ability to shed costs with changing demand is what makes an Uber which owns no cars and its drivers are not employees do better than a Hertz which owns the cars and has employees on its payrollIncreasingly in a world of change and zerobased budgeting and with new companies starting with a fresh sheet of paper the modern organization is reaggregating skills at scale rather than hiring generalists and training them to be specialists And based on demand it adds and subtracts what it needsOne driving force of this is platforms Not just the platforms that we are familiar with from Microsoft Google and Amazon but also internal corporate platforms that allow a company to give employees everywhere training connections and also importantly opportunities they may not have had in their market Companies now can reaggregate customized solutions by choosing individuals from everywhere2 The diminishing halflife of skills A company today remains in the SampampP 500 for less than 14 years while many of us will work for 40 years Someone perusing job descriptions today who was asleep for the past fifteen years would probably not understand many of the words in the job spec3 The future is fusion It is not manwoman versus machine but manwoman working with machinesToday we may be people using machines Tomorrow we will be helpers attached to machines to do what we can do more cost effectively like pick produce or enter a building to drop things off or add a bit of empathy or experience so we can connect with other analog carbonbased feeling appendages of digital siliconbased computing machines The machines will advance at the rate of improvement in chips and machine learning which means getting twice as good every six to 18 months while we humans improve far slowerHow to thrive in the modern workspaceWhile the modern workspace might sound dystopian it does not have to be so Having the option to work from anywhere on opportunities we did not have access to with repetitive work delegated to machines is not an unpleasant scenario But it will require us to change retool and grow by honing four skills1 Continuous learning The day you stop learning and upgrading your skills is the day your future in the modern workspace begins to decayIn today39s world where many smart companies are providing access to significant learning resources online and where Coursera YouTube and a multitude of free or lowcost training and credential programs are available there is no excuse not to learn Allocate an hour a day to learning regardless of your level in the organization In many ways middle and senior management need to learn the most since our skills are probably the most rusty and irrelevant2 Upgrading our emotional operating system While understanding data and technology and its implications will be necessary to succeed they will not be sufficient If we are to work in a connected workplace where we add value to machines and quickly integrate with other people we will need to ensure that our emotional operating systems are continuously refined since while we will be working with siliconbased datadriven computing machines we will be adding value and connecting with others as carbonbased storydriven feeling humans We will need to build our skills to empathize our ability to listen our ability to inspire with creativity design and storytelling and to earn and gain trust by doing what we say and building a longterm reputationThe future of human careers in a distributed and technology driven world will be built with emotional TILE Trust Inspiration Listening and Empathy3 Think like a quotCompany of Onequot Even if you are working in a company of tens of thousands in the modern workplace your company will reaggregate individual talents into teams that work on a client or project In many cases you may find yourself working with different parts of your company or different regions that may not know about your skills or you may find yourself working with several companies You are now a company of one who needs to ensure that people within the company are aware of your skills and to build skills in areas there is a needIn addition to ensuring that databases and information about you on your company39s system are up to date it is also critical that you build out an external online presence Your resume is not what is on your hard drive or LinkedIn it is a sum of your web presence particularly the first page that people see on Google when they search for you Go look at it today Go look at news Go look at pictures Go look at videos This is you as the future becomes more distributed and digitalYou would be surprised at how many clients now check out the people that companies assign to them to see if they are any goodTo help create a better presence think of being active on Twitter and LinkedIn develop a website using Square Space or some other service think of writing a blog on some passion or hobby or even starting a newsletter4 Learn to quotleadquot and quotdoquot since quotmanagingquot while important will increasingly play a smaller role When talent can take any assignment When there is nobody to keep waiting outside your office since there is no office and you are a square in a Zoom call whose big office building that was supposed to impress is in the cloud what is a manager to do When quotcheckingquot on people is truly defined as what it is which is quotincreased frictionquot and quotunnecessary controlquot it will be those who can lead inspiring teaching listening showing the way forward and those who can do that will be followedPeople will follow people and not titles The modern workspace is real The future will not adapt to us We need to adapt if we are to have a thriving futureClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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How to Thrive in the Modern Workspace

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Rishad Tobaccowala

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