Future of Work Keynote Speaker
Hanging on the wall is a framed picture which says “Don’t look back, you’re not going that way”.
The CEO in question is one of the most inquisitive, hungry and driven leaders I’ve had the pleasure of working with.
Others might do well to pay attention to that sentiment when it comes to the future of work.
In this article, I’ll share what I hear from senior leaders, what the research suggests, and some simple yet powerful ideas when it comes to the future of work and building the teams today needed to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.
What I hear from leaders who set audacious goals
Each week I am very fortunate to spend time with senior leaders at some of the world’s most ambitious companies - some of these are hyper growth scale ups, some of these are global blue chip organisations and some are hungry entrepreneurs who wish to make an impact on the world. I share these not to brag, but to give you context for where the insights, ideas, and suggestions are coming from.
None of the leaders I speak to are interested in small incremental growth. They are all about ambitious big bold goals. And further, they are all what I would describe as people first. Leaders who recognise that in order to get results you must people first and then the results will follow after that. I learnt that lesson the hard way which I cover in some detail in the book Be More Human - Re-thinking the Rules of High Performance Teamwork.
The messages that I regularly hear time and time again are these:
We’re not agile enough
we need to be able to adapt and change faster and we need to get each person on the team to take responsibility and to lead themselves
We’re not resilient enough
we need to collectively accept that change is the only certainty and that we each need to be responsible for being more resilient when things don’t go our way. We need to learn faster, we need to have more humility and be prepared to try and fail at more things in order to find the right way forwards.
We need to undertake digital transformation
our markets are being disrupted by competition and we know that we can’t stand still. The world is moving to digital and we have a lot of work to do to get there and we are missing crucial skill sets and need to change the way we work and the way we think about a digital world.
Our teams are experiencing a massive range of issues
from financial anxiety to mental health challenges to navigating the challenges of hybrid and home working and to keeping our team engaged together and motivated.
If you’re experiencing one or more of these at your organisation then you are not alone.
What the data shows
Figuring out these questions is clearly a prize worth winning.
MIT Research found that agile firms grow revenue 37% faster and generate 30% higher profits than non-agile competitors. Harvard Business Review reported that resilient firms consistently outperform non-resilient ones.
And that creating the right culture and engagement is a challenge across the board: Deloitte research found that 87% of organisations cite culture and engagement as one of their top challenges.
This very much highlights that the traditional approach to Leadership and Teamwork Development isn’t working and needs a rethink.
We’ve been using old ideas to solve new problems
Sitting right at the heart of the future of work is the future of leadership. The future of leadership looks very different as this article outlines and suggests three things that leaders can start to do differently:
Why does this need rethinking?
Deloitte Human Capital Trends found that despite billions spent annually on Leadership Development, 90% of the programmes simply did not work. Harvard Business Review found that the majority of training in today’s companies is ineffective, the purpose, timing, and content of the training is flawed, and even worse that over 70% of employees reported that they didn’t have mastery of the skills needed to do their jobs.
Build The Team Today to Tackle Tomorrow’s Challenges
There are many things that ambitious leaders can do to build the teams needed to tackle the challenges of tomorrow. Just a few of the ideas I share in my talks on the future of work and the future of leadership:
Start the week in a different way. Rather than building a to-do list, build a Who list. As in who are you going to be this week? What’s the identity that you need to develop to tackle the challenges you will face. Empower yourself and your teams to think differently in order to get different results.
The small things are the big things. Building teams is about obsessing over the goal and noticing the small details. Tell people what they do well. Build each other up. Share what you struggle with and where you excel. Encourage others to do the same. The micro-interactions and how you show up become the habits become the culture become the way that things happen.
Build the culture which creates psychological safety. This is a huge topic in itself and warrants much exploring. It’s creating the environment where it’s safe to fail and to learn. It’s creating a space where we can speak up, where we can experiment. Far too many numbers-driven organisations have a culture where people don’t feel safe to speak their truth and those organisations are literally squandering the creativity and energy of their single most important resource: their people.
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