Tag: work (page 1 of 1)

Workfront and the future of work

 

I'm in Orlando Florida this week with the Workfront team and their partners and customers for their annual Leap conference. It's my privilege to participate in a panel session on the future of work, and to deliver a session with the more grounded title – making work suck less!

As you can see from the stack here, the first too common affront I identify and tackle is what I generally call the 'X steps to heaven' crowd. Those authors and companies proffering clickbait that teases with some relatively short sequence of steps needed to take you from zero to hero – in this context, going from a dysfunctional to awesome organization.

Bullshit. Life is complex and society is complex and all organization is complex, and authors of this sort of crap are either ignorant at best or disingenuous at worst. Complexity is a natural product that cannot be simplified – we can only aspire in this digital age to navigate it more simply.

I then go on to identify the lessons we might learn from Mother Nature, the necessity to sustain mutual value for all stakeholders, and some of the hazards we must avoid along the way, not least corporate surveillance.

Last night we were at the Magic Kingdom, and this evening we're dining at Epcot. Who said work has to suck?! :-)

Thanks for having me Workfront.

Toward a Model of Work Redesign for Better Work and Better Life

Leslie Perlow

Toward a Model of Work Redesign for Better Work and Better Life (PDF), abstract:

Flexible work accommodations provided by employers purport to help individuals struggling to manage work and family demands. The underlying model for change is accommodation – helping individuals accommodate their work demands with no changes in the structure of work or cultural expectations of ideal workers. The purpose of this article is to derive a Work Redesign Model and compare it with the Accommodation Model. This article centers around two change initiatives – Predictability, Teaming and Open Communication and Results Only Work Environment – that alter the structure and culture of work in ways that enable better work and better lives.

Leslie A Perlow, Erin L Kelly, Work and Occupations, 2014 41: 111, DOI: 10.1177/0730888413516473

Photograph of Leslie Perlow. Source, Harvard Business School.


I posted recently about my experiences curating a Flipboard magazine. One dislike is the inability to 'flip' a URL for a PDF. So in this instance, I've created this post for the sole purpose of flipping it to Social Business Design magazine.

If you missed the link to the PDF above, here it is again.