Different ways of working – what are you wanting to change?
We have been adding articles to our website on how we work and on topical business challenges for several years now. Feedback has been positive although I recognise that we are all busy people and sometimes it is easier to read a LinkedIn post or scroll through your Twitter account. This led me to think about how business practices and ways of working are evolving at pace, particularly since the advent of the recent pandemic. I began to canvass feedback and, in some ways, I was quite surprised to learn that our articles are still popular, even though they take a little longer to read than less detailed social media posts. So, what should I be doing differently to make the most of the technologies and media choices available to me?
I concluded that we need to retain our presence in the market and reiterate our service offer at every opportunity. And it soon became clear that some of our existing clients remembered us for what we used to do, rather than the much broader range of services our coaches deliver daily. Any suggestion by me that the articles may have run their course was met with disappointment. It seems that we frequently provide “food for thought” and encourage people to think a little differently about their challenges. I am extremely pleased that recent LinkedIn prompts, as well as my articles are keeping us connected, and I have concluded that they should not be discontinued anytime soon.
This in turn got me thinking about what our colleagues retain about us as their co-workers. Do they remember us as the head and shoulders they have been chatting to for the past eighteen months or for the projects we have delivered together despite a pandemic? And do we now think of work as a series of interactions via Microsoft Teams? My sense is that some managers have suffered virtual meeting fatigue and crave the less regimented interactions that have popularised working from home. They are keen to experience the hum of collaboration and the need to take a step back when they overhear a disappointing conversation. In other words, they are ready to ditch the sometimes-one-dimensional management by screen in favour of some real time, in-person interaction.
The notion of back-to-back meetings is not a new phenomenon, although it could be argued that during the pandemic we have developed more of a one-dimensional operating style while working. Guilt somehow creeps in when the diary shows daylight between appointments. Home schooling and other caring responsibilities aside, perhaps we have suspended (albeit temporarily) the need for multi-tasking and real time collaboration:
- What has been your experience?
- Has working in parallel given way to working in series (once again)?
- Have thinking time, ideas generation and preparation been kicked into touch?
- Have you missed being a butterfly?
- Why not share your observations with us?
- What have you learned about yourself and how you work?
- Do you prefer to work in series or in parallel?
- What have you enjoyed most of all/least of all?
- What will you change about how you work?
- How will you work differently with your colleagues?
- What is your career goal?