If you are a leader, you have a hard job.
Whether you’re in the C-suite or a recently promoted manager, you have a lot on your plate. Fighting fires. Balancing priorities. Working toward the ambitious goals of your company, organization, or team.
Plus, you’re often asked to solve problems where there’s no obvious answer, let alone a “right” one.
Like “return to work.”
Leaders all over the world are trying to figure this out. They come from organizations with different technological abilities, different kinds of work, and different norms. Some organizations are bureaucratic. Some are agile. Some are distributed and others are centralized. Some are rigid. Some are chaotic.
I’ll come out and say it right here: I don’t know how you should return to work.
But I do believe that teams should work in a way that supports their creativity and helps them advance their clearly defined objectives. I think this is more important than an arrangement built around face time.
But what this looks like depends on the culture and context of the organization.
To zoom out a bit: I think the return to work is an example of the continual change and need to adapt that leaders at all levels face.
It’s natural to think in terms of one monolithic solution with a “go live” date. But when I’ve talked with leaders about this, I’ve tried to encourage flexibility.
I think that the question deserves a process instead of a solution.
Here’s what some elements of a healthy process might look like:
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Engage. If you set aside the idea of a “right answer,” then you can get curious about the response to a change. “How would it affect you if we did XYZ?”
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Consider a combination of flexibility and constraints. Have different groups negotiate with each other around what they need and what they can provide.
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Be local. Let teams solve these problems in ways that work best for them—while helping to highlight the ways that cross-team and cross-business unit work can impose additional constraints.
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Support leaders in this journey. One of the toughest jobs of a leader is to help their teams resolve competing commitments; the transition to in-person work is but one example of this.
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Distribute innovation and centralize learning. Create a way for leaders to brainstorm and consult with each other, so that leaders can try things, get feedback, and share their wins (and misses).
You’ll notice that this process emphasizes engagement over top-down thinking. It seeks to help leaders influence and be influenced without getting stuck on the idea of the right answer.
By focusing on a combination of business outcomes and by understanding how others experience the problem, we can make tremendous progress in a short time.
It can even be fun!
P.S. A couple of weeks from now, I’ll send you some info about a course I’m launching on how to grow your influence at work by engaging with others in a different way.
Stay tuned—and if there’s someone you know who would find this interesting, send them this and let them know that they can subscribe here!
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