Stop Behaving Like an Employee!

The modern workplace demands a different way of working.

Stop behaving like an employee!
The modern workplace demands new ways of working. Technology has enabled the 24/7 ‘always on’ workforce:

• The Volume of stuff reaching us by email, phone, screen and social interactions has increased exponentially.
• The Velocity at which that stuff flies at us has increased exponentially -the “empty in box” is a distant memory.
• The Variety of attention-grabbing stuff is greater than ever before, and its pull is almost irresistible.

These three ‘V’s (V3) are symptoms of the problem faced by modern workplaces. – best described as an inability to choose, with the associated feeling of being a hamster on a wheel-lots of energetic work effort, little progress.

Workers are still using old, ways of working which are“well past their use by date”;

• Waiting for choices to be made for them.
• Expecting priorities to be communicated to them.
• Assuming that bosses at all levels know the pressure they face, the overwhelming workload expectations.

But how? Who has the plans that show workloads and capacity?

Most people in the workplace are living in the inbox; like Sisyphus they are shovelling the incoming into the ‘sent’ box only to find twice as much’ incoming’ arriving as they do so.

“We have so many choices, yet we are not choosing!”

• Are you filtering stuff so that your attention goes to the most important activities or are you dealing only with the seemingly urgent?
• Are you managing your stuff so that you have quick and easy access to what you need, when you need it, how you need it, where you need it, and with whom you need to work with? Are you clear on why you need access to it?
• Are you able and confidently taking action, in the moment, to move stuff to the next logical place, so that you are making progress with what matters most?
• Are you taking responsibility for your attention, access and actions (A 3). or are you behaving like an old school employee and waiting to be told?
• Do you have visibility of your workload, your capacity? If you don’t, are you expecting someone else to have this information?

“There is no information overload, there is only a failure to filter” Clay Shirky

Modern workplaces demand that you take responsibility for your work product, for negotiating realistic expectations, so that you can collaborate effectively with plans based on reality. Because, whilst you receive the benefits of being an employee, you are expected to operate more like a self- responsible sub-contractor.

This is the new “way of working” that is really needed in today’s workplace.

At Think Gray we help people create the conditions that empower flourishing at work, to pay attention to what matters most, to take action that makes progress on important work and have access to what you need, when you need it, where you need it, quickly and easily.