RealWork - not NewWork?

Some thoughts on overcoming the buzz & start enabling our organizations & institutions to survive

The status quo

Today, end of 2019, there are many buzzwords and outright bullshit being pushed about these buzzwords.

From AI (no its not intelligent as in a sci-fi movie, but its able to interpret data, „learn“ from it and adapt to achieve very specific goals), Blockchain (I’ll spare you the dilemma for another time) to NewWork - there seems to be more misunderstandings about the fields we think we face or have to face in order to ensure our organizations and institutions are able to survive.

Do we really need „New Work“ or is it a buzz created through the software industry that is always looking to fill more positions than there are qualified people and therefore also investing heavily into employee satisfaction to keep those few qualified in the field.

Does a bank, an industrial corporation or an organization trading goods have the same challenges and needs the exact same solutions?

Of course some technology fields, especially in the digital world, are accelerating their result output in an increasing manner, challenging us as a part of organizations and institutions to even grasp if it involves any consequence for us.

At the same time, where it does touch our strategic or operative realities, the speed expected from us to deliver first results is also increasing. And it seems noticeably less fruitful to plan and discuss internally than to create and get feedback from outside/actual users.

Accelerating our speed from insight to market being one aspect of the challenges we face, doing this in a way, that does not insult the intelligence of our partners, employees and customers seems another challenge.

Some organization are able to demand colleagues to be more flexible and adapt, while „leading“ them in the same „hierarchy“ and with the same mindset of the 1960s...

Or spending millions on communication efforts of their service, while cutting service staff to such a degree, that a customer can neither reach the organization other than staying in a call for 20 minutes nor getting a successful solution or even a contact, that is able to understand the problem in the first place.

The very well suited emphasis of quantitive reporting for the 1920s-1960s styled assembly line industry, seems very inadequate for an age, where we need us and our colleagues to adapt quicker and bolder than ever before.

You loose markets before you have defined your useless KPI.

So is „NewWork“ today - the amalgamation of office design, a somewhat empowerment of few (digital) people in an organization and new concepts or at least fancy roles & titles - a solution?

Originally possibly termed by Frithjof Bergmann who (of course) mainly focussed on the digital world and emphasized the need for a higher degree in the freedom of action for people in organizations than was or is allowed for, today.

But freedom of action is the exact opposite of hierarchy or control through KPIs.

As the buzz about NewWork is so rich and the danger of falling into the same pit, I would want to focus in „RealWork“ as a term, hoping to allow anyone to stop the buzz as soon as it appears.

Because while the challenges are real, we need to start adapting all together (including the board and executives) rather than asking some to change and we need to do it not only quickly, but prepare all ourselves, that there is no final solution.

A race has started, that needs us to research, plan, act, reflect, iterate and repeat the former … for ever - actually a joyful thing as it challenges our own intelligence and education...

It's not a transformation, it's an epochal change.

And unlike transformations, we do not know, where these changes will lead us to.

But we can manage the change with RealWork.

P.S.: I may continue these thoughts...if they seem interesting to anyone or keep bugging me enough, to take the time to write (I rather speak, than write) ;-)