The Great ReDesign: 3 Ideas to Build the Future Workplace

In their new book “Work Without Jobs,” Jesuthasan & Boudreau open with a brainteaser, asking readers to imagine they are given a box of tacks, a candle, and a match.

THE QUESTION: How do you attach the candle to the wall and light it without dripping wax on the floor?

THE ANSWER: Deconstruct the box into its parts, attach the box to the wall using the tacks, and attach the candle to the bottom of the box.

In experiments, people who receive the tacks inside the box can’t easily solve the problem, while those who see it already deconstructed into its parts can quickly see the solution.

““In the dynamic work environments of the future,” they write, “organization dilemmas closely resemble the candle puzzle. It’s time to take the tacks out of the box…Work needs to be redesigned with a new operating system.”

— WORK WITHOUT JOBS

The word “Re-Design” stands out to me as a salient idea and a call to action.

Will the next chapter of workplace evolution be “The Great Re-Design”? I believe so, and I believe now is the time to take tangible steps to translate the dialogue that has been ongoing for so many months into action.

Moreover, I am passionate that data + tech tools are an overlooked lever.

At the moment, we fully understand how data + tech have changed the nature of work.

But we’ve spent less time considering how data + tech can help us build the next-gen hybrid workplace.

This summer, I set aside time to reflect on what a tech-centric workplace redesign would look like in the context of my leadership style.

I have three working ideas to guide my priorities and actions over the last few months of this year. …

First, I believe we have a golden opportunity to disrupt the convention that ‘work’ must look like an 8-plus-hour dash from one virtual or hybrid meeting to the next, with nary the time for a bathroom break.

I know based on feedback from my own leadership team that many of us spend a significant amount of time in meetings every day, but often feel like nothing has been accomplished. We wonder why we need to attend a series of meetings where the same materials are presented over and over, or why meetings often feel like a one-way monologue?

If we really step back and take stock, it is remarkable how many leaders at all levels have accepted calendars jammed with wall-to-wall meetings as an immutable part of the hybrid workplace.

As part of the Great Re-Design, I believe we can and must take back our time by becoming ruthless about driving meeting efficiency. I see two paths to accomplish this: fewer meetings and shorter meetings.

>>> FEWER Meetings: The current default for many is that every topic deserves a meeting, and every meeting needs to be an hour long. Today’s leaders have a tremendous opportunity to become much more proactive about questioning how many meetings are truly required.

I am working diligently to reserve my live meeting time for a diminishing group of interactions that really require them. This includes topics when there is true information sharing, particularly when an interpretive lens is required to understand the information, or when that information is sensitive.

I am also interested in using tech platforms like Headroom to maximize meeting efficiency through AI.

>>> SHORTER meetings: If a topic does merit a live meeting, moving to shorter meetings of 15- to 30- minutes can help cultivate focus & productivity.

I’ve put shorter meetings into practice by requiring pre-reads for meetings and encouraging my leadership team to carve out time to digest content in advance. This removes the added time of presenting material and allows us to dive right into discussions on business decisions.

Meetings that go beyond 30 minutes are exceptions on my calendar, except for talent development conversations.

This forces us all to be disciplined about the purpose and agenda of the meeting. In almost every case, a well-planned quarter hour sprint can be as effective as an hour-long meander through the topic.

Re-imagining the workday cadence is an interesting example of choosing NOT to use virtual meeting tech just because we have it. In the rush to explore and adopt these applications, the balance tipped too far in favor of making every topic a live meeting.

I love the idea that part of the Great Re-Design can include restoring that balance to recast the ‘workday’ as a variety of tasks, rather than a monotonous block.

BUT, what will we do with all of our time if we aren’t in meetings? (Said no leader, ever…)

Concurrent with maximizing meeting time, I am interested in how to redesign work to include more time for asynchronous collaboration.

Asynchronous simply means ‘not in real time.’ The idea behind asynchronous (or asynch) work is that team members can continue the thread of a conversation over hours or days without all being present in the same physical or virtual space.

Asynchronous work facilitates balance by freeing individuals to plan some of their work schedule in a way that best fits their personal needs.

It also creates space for the focused work and deep thinking that today’s competitive environment requires. I believe the beautiful, blank calendar spaces created by shifting to asynch collaboration can be an advantage for any organization.

Here again, I am exploring how to leverage tech tools to facilitate asynchronous work, including brainstorming, idea exchange, and content development. I am interested in platforms like Bubbles, which makes interesting use of asynch video messaging to facilitate conversations across time and space. (And I am sure there are many more like this one.).

Further, I would like to see broader trial and adoption of platforms like Miro, Trello, and Asana that allow people to input, review, and refine ideas in visual space – without the need for a live conversation.

While the tech tools responsible for so many of our interruptions started out as a way to boost productivity, there is growing evidence that they may be doing the exact opposite.

No matter which tech platforms enable it, successful implementation of asynch work time requires a leadership culture where practices like scheduling quiet work hours – during which people can decline meetings (see above!) – and silencing notifications is not only accepted, but openly encouraged.

**#3: Get Serious About Designing the EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE**

You undoubtedly spend a lot of time thinking about your omni-channel consumer, but what about your omni-channel employees?

We know that tech defines the employee experience in the hybrid workplace, and we know that employees who are happy with their tech tools and processes are much more engaged and more loyal than those who are not.

Yet, I am not sure that many organizations have really given the employee experience – which I call your PeopleX – it’s due.

I am a strong advocate that part of the opportunity to Re-Design our workplace conventions must include a PeopleX refresh.

The good news is, we’ve been down this path before, and we can certainly take a page from our customer playbooks.

We should start by using our increasingly sophisticated data capabilities to understand how employees experience their work day and the broader organizational culture – and how we can improve them.

Some call this “People Analytics,” and I love this term and the sentiment behind it.

Embracing People Analytics can be as simple as fielding simple, weekly pulse surveys to informally query employees. This can encourage the candid feedback and dialogue that can be harder to glean in the hybrid workplace and open up the lines of conversation.

At PepsiCo, we used People Analytics from research we conducted among our teams to design our Work that Works model – an individually tailored approach that empowers teams to determine what works best for them based on their individual daily work activities, priorities, and preferences.

People analytics can also be more involved, such as building a bespoke BI application to help your leadership better understand employee behavior and sentiment. Such dashboards can flag things like lack of engagement and dissatisfaction early on, before they build to more significant issues.

I’m intrigued by the idea of applying consumer concepts like “cart abandonment” or “conversion” to understand where employees are experiencing digital friction – and how to address it.

In an adjacent space, I have my eye on emerging tools like metaverse job fairs and virtual onboarding sessions to help create richer and more interactive spaces for hybrid employees.

Whichever end of the People Analytics spectrum makes sense for your organization, the key is to act now.

Do what you can to tap into the goldmine of employee experience data that is available to help leaders engage and retain employees, and ultimately grow their bottom line.

Where From Here ?

“Whatever specific actions we choose, now is undoubtedly the time to take the tacks out of our workplace box. To rethink fundamental concepts like leadership, culture, and organization, and build a “new operating system” for the workplace.”

The great news is, we have the tech and the data tools at our disposal, and we have the opportunity to put them to work to re-design our organizations for the better.

I am striving to put some of these into practice to make the last quarter of this year – and the new year that follows – as productive and positive as possible. Will you join me?