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“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Tolstoy’s opening lines to Anna Karenina ring true for families as well as organizations.
And digital workplaces are no different.
If you look at organizations that lead the way to a positive future of work, you see consistent themes. These leaders use similar terminology as they talk about how we need to adapt.
As we’ve listened to these pioneers, here are the four themes that come up again and again.
1. Intentionality
Digital workplaces are fantastic. They reduce commutes, free up your work schedule, and let you collaborate around the world. But a digital workplace is not better than an office-centric workplace in every way.
The physical office gave us a lot of good things for free. Throw 20 people in an office for three months and you’ve got instant culture. Collaboration is easiest when everyone is right next to each other. Innovative thinking happens when people can instantly bounce ideas off each other.
Spontaneity and serendipity are non-native species in a digital world.
Great digital leaders must be intentional about how they build their digital workplace. They have to put in more work than office-centric leaders.
We often say leading a co-located team is like managing a forest. For the most part, you just need to stay out of its way and it will grow fine. But leading a digital team is like growing a garden. You’ve got to put in more effort, prepare the soil, pull the weeds, and water regularly.
Leaders in office-centric workplaces are often project managers who also complete annual appraisals. But leaders in a digital workplace are there for the people. They have to anticipate issues and remove barriers.
Bryan Brenner of First Person Advisors said leaders need to “start with a focused mindset on how to help people intentionally, to help them make sure they get the resources they need. It’s being very other-people focused, and it’s finding little ways to add something to their daily life that makes a difference.”
Collaboration also takes more intentionality. The loudest voices and fastest processors dominate office-centric collaboration. Digital collaboration opens the door for people who are often left out. Documenting decisions and setting agendas makes work better, but it takes more effort.
Kristen Nunery of myCOI said, “We miss the human connection, the office, but being digital, we have to really increase our level of communication with the team. We have to be very intentional about that. We have to bring fun into team meetings and team conversations.”
Mike Reynolds of Innovatemap said, “A lot of awesome conversations and ideas that may have happened in the office would have happened serendipitously, or with an accidental conversation or in idle time when someone’s thinking about something and just reaches out. When we went digital, we had to acknowledge that there was a gap. And so we’ve had to be way more intentional about it as a team.”
Culture often takes the most work as it is the hardest thing to ‘grow’ in a digital environment. Speaking of their transition to digital, Seth Morales of the Morales Group said, “You have to be really intentional about cultivating this new type of culture, and empathy is a big ingredient part of that.”
Digital workplaces don’t get better on their own. They take intentionality and hard work.
2. Agency
Agency means having the power to choose what is best for you. Digital workplaces can offer agency at a scale that office-centric workplaces can only dream of. Work isn’t one-size-fits-all, and great digital workplaces embrace this.
Offering agency to the humans in your workplace requires leaders to admit three things:
- They don’t always have the right answers
- All the people in the organization are functioning adults
- Options are possible
As digital organizations scale, there is more and more that leaders don’t know. The sooner they give up centralized decision making, the better. Author Chuck Blakeman says we are still hung over from the Industrial Revolution which taught us that people are stupid and lazy. Chuck says, “If people are stupid and lazy, the only solution you have is to find the very few smart and motivated ones, lord them over the stupid and lazy ones, and thus, management was born. We need to move past this hierarchical organizational design that we inherited from slavery through the military into the factory system. The pyramid scheme needs to go away.”
Sarah Noll Wilson says, “A human-centered workplace is where people are able to do work how they want to, when they want to, and that there’s an incredible sense of agency. It is moving away from the old style of command and control, to more self-management.”
Many organizations treat people like they are completely incompetent. Doug Kirkpatrick reminds us that the people we work with are adults who make big decisions in their life. If we give people the right information, they will likely make a good decision without any oversight. But the more authority and information we withhold, the worse the decisions are.
Scott Burns of Structural says, “We all seek agency in everything we do. What people give you in return is much more than what you give up.”
Digital workplaces can offer unbelievable options that were never available. Work from anywhere. Work at a convenient time. Use the tools that you like.
Paul Miller of Digital Workplace Group said, “Organizations have discovered that people actually want options and choices. So, it’s not that everybody wants to come to a certain specific workplace every single day at exactly the same time. But it’s also not that everybody wants to work from home all the time.”
Author Nir Eyal says the effects go beyond the individual. “When people feel a lack of agency, when they feel a lack of control, and they start feeling these symptoms of anxiety and depression disorder, that feels bad, that creates more of these internal triggers that they are desperate to escape from. So, what do they do? They call more superfluous meetings. They send more emails that don’t need to be sent. And not only do they distract themselves, they distract everybody else in the work environment in a desperate attempt to regain the agency and control that they are missing.”
In a digital workplace focused on agency, people don’t ask for permission. They have access to the information they need and clearly understand the goals. They communicate their intent and collaborate with others to get the work done.
3. Value of time
In top level digital workplaces, time is the most valuable resource. You can always find ways to get more money, but time is unavoidably finite. How you spend your time is how you spend your life. The end goal is not to get more efficient with our time, but to spend only as much time as is necessary on work.
At great digital workplaces, every decision asks the best use of time for the humans involved. They understand the four work modes and make sure people don’t feel obligated to spend all day in Available mode.
Great digital workplaces look for technology that saves people more time. Software should reduce the time humans spend on tasks, or enable them to get more done in less time. They abandon tools that try to distract you or grab your attention.
Collaboration looks different when you prioritize for time. More communication is asynchronous and allows people to comment when they are ready.
There’s still a role for synchronous communication like meetings, but they are considered sacred. People come prepared and are engaged. They document decisions so they don’t forget what was decided later.
Leaders focus on freeing up the time of the people on their team and giving them more agency on how they use it. Productivity measures shift from being active to actually achieving objectives and results.
This is the spirit behind concepts like the four day work week. Andrew Barnes told us that over 80% of millennials would trade salary for time.
4. Human-focused
AI, robots, and machine learning could be the best thing that ever happened to humans at work…or the worst.
Throughout history, most companies used technology as a way to maximize profits. The positive or negative effects to humans was a side effect.
If these emerging technologies continue to serve profit maximization, things look grim for Team Human.
Great digital workplaces reranked their values to put human wellbeing at the top. Maximizing profits then becomes a side effect. Every decision considers what is best for the humans who work here.
These digital workplaces heartily embrace technology that:
- supports humans in their work
- augments human ability
- allows humans to work less
- makes human work easier
- frees humans to focus on other tasks
Technology either serves or partners with humans. It should never become the overlord, demanding how someone spends their time.
Digital leaders think about how best they can care for and maintain the health of their teams. This includes reducing chronic stress, and looking after mental, physical, social, and spiritual wellbeing. Leaders are students of humanity and focus on keeping their people in the best state of mind and body.
Digital workplaces recognize that while humanity is an inclusive term, some humans have been historically oppressed for a long time, and we all have an obligation to fix this.
Sound familiar?
If your company is trying to make the leap into the future of work, these four characteristics are a great place to start. The next time you have the chance to make a decision for your company, ask yourself:
- Have we intentionally addressed gaps?
- Can we give individuals more agency over this decision?
- Is this the best use of everyone’s time?
- Does this benefit the humans who work with us?
You don’t have to copy great organizations exactly, but if you embrace the power of a digital workplace, you’ll likely look pretty similar to those who lead the way.
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Tolstoy’s opening lines to Anna Karenina ring true for families as well as organizations.
And digital workplaces are no different.
If you look at organizations that lead the way to a positive future of work, you see consistent themes. These leaders use similar terminology as they talk about how we need to adapt.
As we’ve listened to these pioneers, here are the four themes that come up again and again.
1. Intentionality
Digital workplaces are fantastic. They reduce commutes, free up your work schedule, and let you collaborate around the world. But a digital workplace is not better than an office-centric workplace in every way.
The physical office gave us a lot of good things for free. Throw 20 people in an office for three months and you’ve got instant culture. Collaboration is easiest when everyone is right next to each other. Innovative thinking happens when people can instantly bounce ideas off each other.
Spontaneity and serendipity are non-native species in a digital world.
Great digital leaders must be intentional about how they build their digital workplace. They have to put in more work than office-centric leaders.
We often say leading a co-located team is like managing a forest. For the most part, you just need to stay out of its way and it will grow fine. But leading a digital team is like growing a garden. You’ve got to put in more effort, prepare the soil, pull the weeds, and water regularly.
Leaders in office-centric workplaces are often project managers who also complete annual appraisals. But leaders in a digital workplace are there for the people. They have to anticipate issues and remove barriers.
Bryan Brenner of First Person Advisors said leaders need to “start with a focused mindset on how to help people intentionally, to help them make sure they get the resources they need. It’s being very other-people focused, and it’s finding little ways to add something to their daily life that makes a difference.”
Collaboration also takes more intentionality. The loudest voices and fastest processors dominate office-centric collaboration. Digital collaboration opens the door for people who are often left out. Documenting decisions and setting agendas makes work better, but it takes more effort.
Kristen Nunery of myCOI said, “We miss the human connection, the office, but being digital, we have to really increase our level of communication with the team. We have to be very intentional about that. We have to bring fun into team meetings and team conversations.”
Mike Reynolds of Innovatemap said, “A lot of awesome conversations and ideas that may have happened in the office would have happened serendipitously, or with an accidental conversation or in idle time when someone’s thinking about something and just reaches out. When we went digital, we had to acknowledge that there was a gap. And so we’ve had to be way more intentional about it as a team.”
Culture often takes the most work as it is the hardest thing to ‘grow’ in a digital environment. Speaking of their transition to digital, Seth Morales of the Morales Group said, “You have to be really intentional about cultivating this new type of culture, and empathy is a big ingredient part of that.”
Digital workplaces don’t get better on their own. They take intentionality and hard work.
2. Agency
Agency means having the power to choose what is best for you. Digital workplaces can offer agency at a scale that office-centric workplaces can only dream of. Work isn’t one-size-fits-all, and great digital workplaces embrace this.
Offering agency to the humans in your workplace requires leaders to admit three things:
- They don’t always have the right answers
- All the people in the organization are functioning adults
- Options are possible
As digital organizations scale, there is more and more that leaders don’t know. The sooner they give up centralized decision making, the better. Author Chuck Blakeman says we are still hung over from the Industrial Revolution which taught us that people are stupid and lazy. Chuck says, “If people are stupid and lazy, the only solution you have is to find the very few smart and motivated ones, lord them over the stupid and lazy ones, and thus, management was born. We need to move past this hierarchical organizational design that we inherited from slavery through the military into the factory system. The pyramid scheme needs to go away.”
Sarah Noll Wilson says, “A human-centered workplace is where people are able to do work how they want to, when they want to, and that there’s an incredible sense of agency. It is moving away from the old style of command and control, to more self-management.”
Many organizations treat people like they are completely incompetent. Doug Kirkpatrick reminds us that the people we work with are adults who make big decisions in their life. If we give people the right information, they will likely make a good decision without any oversight. But the more authority and information we withhold, the worse the decisions are.
Scott Burns of Structural says, “We all seek agency in everything we do. What people give you in return is much more than what you give up.”
Digital workplaces can offer unbelievable options that were never available. Work from anywhere. Work at a convenient time. Use the tools that you like.
Paul Miller of Digital Workplace Group said, “Organizations have discovered that people actually want options and choices. So, it’s not that everybody wants to come to a certain specific workplace every single day at exactly the same time. But it’s also not that everybody wants to work from home all the time.”
Author Nir Eyal says the effects go beyond the individual. “When people feel a lack of agency, when they feel a lack of control, and they start feeling these symptoms of anxiety and depression disorder, that feels bad, that creates more of these internal triggers that they are desperate to escape from. So, what do they do? They call more superfluous meetings. They send more emails that don’t need to be sent. And not only do they distract themselves, they distract everybody else in the work environment in a desperate attempt to regain the agency and control that they are missing.”
In a digital workplace focused on agency, people don’t ask for permission. They have access to the information they need and clearly understand the goals. They communicate their intent and collaborate with others to get the work done.
3. Value of time
In top level digital workplaces, time is the most valuable resource. You can always find ways to get more money, but time is unavoidably finite. How you spend your time is how you spend your life. The end goal is not to get more efficient with our time, but to spend only as much time as is necessary on work.
At great digital workplaces, every decision asks the best use of time for the humans involved. They understand the four work modes and make sure people don’t feel obligated to spend all day in Available mode.
Great digital workplaces look for technology that saves people more time. Software should reduce the time humans spend on tasks, or enable them to get more done in less time. They abandon tools that try to distract you or grab your attention.
Collaboration looks different when you prioritize for time. More communication is asynchronous and allows people to comment when they are ready.
There’s still a role for synchronous communication like meetings, but they are considered sacred. People come prepared and are engaged. They document decisions so they don’t forget what was decided later.
Leaders focus on freeing up the time of the people on their team and giving them more agency on how they use it. Productivity measures shift from being active to actually achieving objectives and results.
This is the spirit behind concepts like the four day work week. Andrew Barnes told us that over 80% of millennials would trade salary for time.
4. Human-focused
AI, robots, and machine learning could be the best thing that ever happened to humans at work…or the worst.
Throughout history, most companies used technology as a way to maximize profits. The positive or negative effects to humans was a side effect.
If these emerging technologies continue to serve profit maximization, things look grim for Team Human.
Great digital workplaces reranked their values to put human wellbeing at the top. Maximizing profits then becomes a side effect. Every decision considers what is best for the humans who work here.
These digital workplaces heartily embrace technology that:
- supports humans in their work
- augments human ability
- allows humans to work less
- makes human work easier
- frees humans to focus on other tasks
Technology either serves or partners with humans. It should never become the overlord, demanding how someone spends their time.
Digital leaders think about how best they can care for and maintain the health of their teams. This includes reducing chronic stress, and looking after mental, physical, social, and spiritual wellbeing. Leaders are students of humanity and focus on keeping their people in the best state of mind and body.
Digital workplaces recognize that while humanity is an inclusive term, some humans have been historically oppressed for a long time, and we all have an obligation to fix this.
Sound familiar?
If your company is trying to make the leap into the future of work, these four characteristics are a great place to start. The next time you have the chance to make a decision for your company, ask yourself:
- Have we intentionally addressed gaps?
- Can we give individuals more agency over this decision?
- Is this the best use of everyone’s time?
- Does this benefit the humans who work with us?
You don’t have to copy great organizations exactly, but if you embrace the power of a digital workplace, you’ll likely look pretty similar to those who lead the way.
