Organisational Development | New Work

"New Work" - what is behind the "megatrend"?

From Sabine Walter, Head of netzwerk managementberatung | coaching

"New Work" is a development that is occupying more and more companies and bringing about a change in corporate culture. But what is "New Work" - a megatrend or an important development in our understanding of work? In this article, we look at the topic and answer four questions:
Where does "New Work" come from? What is behind it? Why is it necessary to further develop our understanding of work? How is "New Work" changing the corporate and management culture?

Background: Where does "New Work" come from?

"New Work" is the result of three developments: Knowledge society, global urgency to solve social problems, digitalisation.

We are located at the The beginning of the knowledge society. The age of the production society is coming to an end. Complexity and the speed of change continue to increase. Social problemssuch as those of various wars, poverty and environmental degradation, can only be solved globally and in cooperation between politics, science and business. This also leads to a change in corporate responsibility. Social Business is the keyword. Profit maximisation is losing importance bit by bit, solving social and ecological problems by entrepreneurial means is gaining ground.

These two developments go hand in hand with increasing Digitisation, i.e. an era in which more and more activities that were previously carried out by humans are being taken over by machines. This leads us to rethink the meaning of work and redefine what it is to be human in working life: "New Work" is born.

Definition & Content

What does "New Work" mean?

In order to understand what characterises "new work", the new understanding of work must always be seen in the context described above. The central questions around which the new understanding of work revolves are:

• Where can we as human beings create meaning through our actions?
• Where will we humans still make the difference in the future?
• Where do we humans add value alone or in combination with machines and AI?
• What does the environment have to be like for us to achieve this added value?

A central answer to the first three questions is Innovation.

Innovation - the focus of future human performance

Our societal problems, the solutions to which will determine how we live together as humanity in the future and which planet Earth we will leave to future generations, are very complex and can only be solved through the cooperation of many nations, through the cooperation of business, science and politics, and through the cooperation of all stakeholders. through intelligent innovations solvable.

This moves Cooperation and coopetitionThe focus is now even more on the cooperation with competitors.

Innovation requires cooperation.

Cooperation only succeeds when there is strong trust among the people who work together, in addition to a very clear common goal. This trust is shaped both by each individual, but also by the cultures of the organisations from which people come.

"New Work" thus calls for a change from a culture of fear to a culture of trust in companies and organisations.

This culture of trust is shaped by two essential elements: the self-confidence of each person and the relational trust that is placed in each other. Executives are equal in this cultural change triple demand. Yours The task is to build up their own self-confidence, i.e. confidence in their abilities - irrespective of status and role - to give them the benefit of the doubt and to strengthen the confidence of their staff.

How does that work?

There are several ways to help build the self-confidence of others. Here are the main ones:

• Employ people according to their strengths and talents
• Provide security through clear goals and at the same time leave room for design; this increases the self-efficacy of the individual
• Recognising potential and actively promoting growth
• Understand errors as part of development processes and Fault tolerance live
• Delegation
• Valuing people for who they are
• give sincere appreciation
• Decouple the value of a person from performance; i.e. see all people in an organisation as equal and treat them as such.

Innovation requires freedom

The innovation process includes various phases, including a creative phase. What framework does creativity need in order to emerge and grow? The international consultancy Steelcase surveyed almost 5,000 workers in six of the world's largest economies and received the following responses (selection):

• More time
• More free space
• More freedom to experiment
• Less micro-management
• Makerspaces
• a working environment that inspires
• More decision-making power
• More confidence
• Recreational moments
• More exchange in the team

This freedom in time, thought and space, which requires creativity, requires not only trust, but also a different management style ahead. Leadership about a common purpose or a goal for which everyone is burning, instead of leadership about detailed key figures. Leadership about what and why instead of how. Giving up control and allowing accountability. This requires self-confidence, relational confidence and process confidence on the part of the leaders.

Innovation requires diversity

Creative exchange thrives on different perspectives, different experiences, complementary skills, different cultures ... on diversity.

However, diversity can only develop and be used as an opportunity if people feel emotionally secure in a group despite their differences. This basic trust in the group, i.e. the feeling that each individual can show himself or herself as he or she is, without this causing a loss of belonging, esteem or security, is more likely to be present if someone was already born and grew up with an unshakeable trust. This is not always the case. That is why it is such an important element of leadership to strengthen one's own self-confidence and that of others.

The result of a trusting cooperation in a diverse group is also a constructive dispute culture as cultural element of the innovation process. The aim of constructive debate is to overcome differences and redefine a common denominator - always with the common goal, the good of the team and the success of the cause in mind.

Cultural implications

"New Work" leads to a changed corporate and leadership culture

Many companies have recognised that work is changing and are further developing their understanding of it, the significance and role of employees in the company and, as a result, their corporate, communication and leadership culture.

Like any development, this is a process that takes time. What should you pay attention to if you want to develop your corporate, communication and leadership culture?

Culture of trust as a central anchor

Probably the most difficult challenge is to find a common understanding within the company. Anchor a stable culture of trust; often even replacing the still prevailing fear culture with a stable trust.

Define a purpose that inspires

In the last 70 years, most people worked to earn money. This attitude has changed in recent decades. The demand to shape and do something meaningful is growing. Many companies already realise that the young generation in particular cannot be inspired by pure numbers or high company profits: "Come and join us, young talent. We have the goal of earning as much money as possible. For that we need you." That is no longer attractive. A company is much more attractive if it understands how to solve a real problem through intelligent services and products.

Companies need to ask themselves:

• What do we want to leave behind for posterity?
• What problem do we want to solve?
• What social contribution do we want to make with our business model?

Once the purpose has been found, it must be clearly communicated. The goals set by the Kienbaum, a management consultancy, conducted the "Purpose study" shows that there is still a need for action there. This is because the majority of employers (60%) cannot define the purpose of their company. ad hoc name.

A purpose that inspires and excites not only increases employer attractiveness. It also releases intrinsic motivation.

Establish goal clarity and promote team goals

Goal clarity is the be-all and end-all in any kind of leadership. Goals should be SMART (specific, medible, attractive or aaccepted, realistic and termined) and transparent. Conflicts of goals can be avoided if the goal-setting process is collaborative and goals are openly communicated.

In order to promote cooperation, especially in the transformation to "New Work", we recommend team goals instead of individual goals.

Allow for a higher self-efficacy of employees

The Steelcase study mentioned above underlines once again: Employees want more freedom and decision-making authority. More trust. Less micro-management. Employees want to contribute with their work to the success of the big picture, to the purpose. This requires that they also have the space to make this contribution on their own responsibility. This is also a cultural change in many companies.

The extent of this cultural change depends on how the company is organised and how decision-making processes have worked in the past. In agile organisations, decision-making responsibility is already handed over to teams. This results in more robust and sometimes faster solutions, as multiple perspectives and broader experiences are included in the solution finding process and the "bottle neck" boss is no longer needed.

In order for teams and employees to accept this extended responsibility and use it productively, a high level of tolerance for mistakes is required in addition to trust, clarity of goals, clarity on decision-making scope and transparency.

Decision-making in agile organisations

Establish a learning culture, open up spaces for experimentation

Learning and experimenting need time and space. Time without deadline pressure. Creative spaces and makerspaces. But above all, a learning culture needs trust. If there is a lack of trust, employees will hardly leave their own comfort zone and try out new things. What can you do concretely to promote learning and experimentation?

• Think about how learning can take place in daily work and outside of daily business.
• Promote interdisciplinary teamsThe aim is to find solutions from different perspectives and with a broad and diverse range of experience.
• Create experimental spaces or make use of external Makerspaces.
• Welcome mistakes.
• Live a Constructive and appreciative feedback culture. 
• Support knowledge transfer. Knowledge is for everyone and not an instrument of power or a unique selling point.

Above all: As leaders, live out continuous development, and be open about your own strengths and weaknesses. Nobody is perfect.

Abolish silo thinking, demand cross-departmental work

Cooperation will only be possible if silo thinking is abolished, especially at the management levels, and cross-departmental work is exemplified and demanded. This raises the question of a changed remuneration system in many companies. One possible solution is: The remuneration of divisional and individual results is dropped; an exclusive participation in company results is introduced.

Recognising work-life blending as a matter of course

Since in the future more and more machines will do work that was previously done by physical labour by humans, our work becomes more and more a thinking activity. Thoughts are free and, just like thinking, not bound to physical spaces. As science has proven many times, we humans think better when we move.

The spiritual work will thus merge more and more with our everyday life. This also means that the merging of private life and work is increasing. We are, we think, and we are effective. And this is especially true when we are passionate about something or burn for something, e.g. the corporate purpose.

So it increasingly doesn't matter where and when we do our work. It will not matter where we live to be part of a community. Instead, trust, a common purpose, regular exchange and mutual inspiration and appreciation will become more important for belonging. We already have the technologies we need to overcome physical distance.

Work-life blending as an element of "new work" will increasingly determine whether talented people choose to work for a company and are also committed to it when their life situation changes, e.g. due to starting a family, the desire to travel for a while or to live abroad.

Conclusion

"New Work" is an attitude and for some already a self-image

Like agility, "new work" is first and foremost an attitude. Like agility, it has contributed to sustainable business success over the last 70 years. Now, the urgency to develop this mindset is only increasing.

Solving real problems through a business model, dealing with each other in a trusting manner, giving space to commitment and allowing know-how and expertise to become effective is not really new. Leadership at eye level that creates clarity, radiates appreciation, promotes cooperation and exchange, and welcomes lateral thinking has always been successful and will continue to be successful in the future.