Covid-19. Some of the challenges and how I can help
You should read this article if you've newly made whole teams of people home-based.
I've spent the last week proactively helping my clients work out what actually changes when they newly make whole teams of their people home-based. I'm doing this because focussing on ensuring their people have the capability to work effectively from home in a safe manner is not enough, yet this is where most thinking seems to be being directed.
By requiring people to be permanently home-based for an indeterminate length of time we're actually asking them to socially isolate themselves from their work community at the same as as asking them to socially isolate themselves from their family and friends communities. Have you asked yourself what the consequences of this are for your organisation's throughput, quality, productivity, performance or supply chain? And when do these consequences kick in?
I’m modelling what’s likely to happen in organisations who have newly made whole teams of people permanently home-based for an indeterminate length of time. My analysis suggests immediately predictable, negative consequences are likely include a slip into child mode, resistance to change, reduced accountability and increased instance of either doing what shouldn’t be done and / or not doing things which should be done. Loss aversion means most people will be focussing on what they can no longer do in terms of how work actually gets done.
Lack of critical thinking and problem-solving skills means at best people will raise these as problems for managers to solve, who’ll quickly get further bogged down [or say they are] in operational minutiae and firefighting when what we need them doing is increasing quality and productivity. Preventing backsliding isn’t enough, we need managers helping their organisations to properly pivot into a new world of work.
For managers who are used to and who rely on proximal and ad hoc contact to know what’s going on, and make and implement decisions, this is all going to be bad news. It has potential to start bad and get worse, as low trust, poor line management, poor accountability, poor collaboration in the grey areas between interdependencies, unwillingness to be transparent about problems and poor ability to deal with ambiguity make everything worse.
Managers new to being based full-time at home and also new to managing people who are new to being based full-time at home need tactics to prevent losses like degradation in current quality, productivity or performance.
Your line managers are going to get things wrong and they’re not going to want people to know they’re getting things wrong – especially if they don’t know how to put things right.
They’re going to need on-going, psychologically safe support to help them see and identify the things they need to do differently, own and cope with the changes they need to make, and help to do all this on a continual basis to make they are solving the right problems in the right way to ensure the right work is being done by the right people at the right time.
Such defensive strategies are necessary but if we stop here we miss something really important. What we asking people to do is make a big change. Many established ways of working no longer apply so people are expecting consequent changes to the WFH change. This means you have an opportunity to change other things at the same time.
What, if changed, would benefit your business? How could the shift to WFH be the pivot to making that change? Take your organisation's culture for example. If many of your established ways of working no longer, or could no longer apply, then 'the way we do things round here' could also be changed, which means you have an opportunity to redesign your organisation's culture.
In other words you could be using this change to develop strategies to maximise gain and help your organisation thrive. Get this right and you might be able to use this opportunity to actually improve quality, performance, collaboration and employer or supply chain relationships or to increase throughput. All you need are the right systems thinking processes and the 'right' change leadership skills.
Russell L. Ackoff is widely recognised as a pioneering systems thinker. Are you familiar with his work on errors of omission and commission? I love it and it's hugely relevant to you right now.
What are you setting in motion that you shouldn't be?
What are NOT setting in motion that you should be?
I can help you and groups of your managers find sensible, pragmatic answers to these two questions. What you'll end up with is:
A new set of rules and expectations which you and your managers can use to set new expectations with their staff. I.e. the new way the work is to get done so that current performance levels don't take a hit, and
An management action plan which if implemented enables the organisation to thrive not merely survive.
If you'd like to explore how we could work together you can get me at candyperry@concinnityltd.com or ring me on 07710427646