New Work - almost everyone talks about it, the topic fills event programs, magazines and various online media. Countless self-proclaimed experts preach the message of salvation of a better working world, in which self-realization, work-life balance and grassroots democracy are the only things that matter. It is often forgotten that in the end it is all about creating value for customers and going the extra mile for them. The fact that we operate in an international competitive environment in which it is not enough to put down ties, wear sneakers and drink latte macchiato in order to survive in the long term is also often ignored. If a business manager demands overtime or an extraordinary effort (as happened last year, for example, at Elon Musk, who explicitly asked his employees to work overtime because the Tesla 3 production was not running as desired), this quickly calls the New Work fundamentalists to the scene. They then complain about how this appeal is in complete contradiction to the principles of New Work. In the following I would like to break some New Work myths that I encounter again and again in my project work.
1. New Work = leisure-time optimization
Nonsense! Fundamentally, New Work has much more to do with self-determination, creating meaningfulness, and charting the circumstances and preferences of people’s individual lives. As Frithjof Bergmann put it so beautifully, it has to do with what is really, really important. And wouldn’t it be great if that were a part of our working hours and not only of our leisure time? When I think about my father-in-law, for instance, who is a conductor in Shanghai, I know he is constantly thinking about classical music. Is that work? Somehow it is. Does it create meaningfulness? Yes. And when I think back to the founding of my own company during the rough New Economy days, working weeks of 72 hours and night shifts were absolutely normal. Was that then not New Work? For me, at least, it was the most meaningful thing ever – doing my own thing. Did I not have any work-life balance? The more valid question here is how you define your individual work-life balance. And if, in the case of Tesla, you devote all your energy to the realization of an idea that is beyond question fantastic and motivating, then I would say that is highly compatible with New Work. What I believe is missing, especially in Germany, is company founder personalities that are as visionary as an Elon Musk – but that is more the subject for another article.
2. New Work means devoting only 30% of your time to your job
That is a beautiful vision that many people dream: working less. But that has nothing to do with New Work. The idea here is ultimately to bring together two things: something that we enjoy doing, that we would perhaps even do during our free time, with the thing that we get paid for. If these two things come together, why work less?
When the machines come and take over our tasks, 30% working time is a possible scenario, just like the unconditional basic income. However, all technological developments in the past have generated enough new activities that people have eagerly grasped. Let’s hope the jobs are the ones that make us happy.
3. New Work means everything is virtual
I have picked this point because the discussion of New Work – especially in the surroundings of large German corporations – quickly seems to boil down to mobile and virtual work. Not only an extreme abridgement, but one that is in part meaningless. Yes, it is important for employees and managers to have the opportunity to do their work with mobile devices and free of any constraints of location and time. And that includes the regulatory frameworks (co-determination, laws) as well as the required IT equipment. If, however, you ask about the examples of success in the USA that people like to point out or the founder stories in Asia that are now the subject of so much hype and you want to know who works at home and does not come into the office, you will frequently hear this answer: “Our employees like to come into the office – voluntarily. Physical presence is absolutely essential for creativity and social interaction.” One client summarized this as follows: “Digital also needs analog” or “Digitalization gives us a chance to see one another more frequently.” What is much more important here is not to confuse presence with control. New Work does mean establishing a culture of results – uncoupled from the mere control of physical presence. It does not mean mobile working at any cost, but only where it makes sense.
4. New Work = working in an open-plan office
For heaven’s sake! We are very often confronted with this myth from the co-determination side when the realization of New Work projects is the subject. Open-plan offices are deadly for creativity, concentration, and (if done badly, i.e., battery cages) for social interaction. Open-space elements, however, can be absolutely sensible, depending on the work being done. The important goal during the design of a working environment in line with New Work criteria is to create spaces that are appropriate for the differing activities and activity clusters of the employees, which range from concentration to collaboration to creativity and relaxation. In other words: the diversity of the environment plays a role here as well – and that can at times be at home or while on the go.
5. New Work: Total democracy here
Yes – up to a certain point. The aim is the elimination of rigid hierarchies, the securing of agility, and creation of antifragility to resist ongoing shocks from the outside. In many organizations, the issue is less the lack of units that come up with great new ideas (e.g., labs), but more the failure to realize these ideas with determination and to make decisions. Even though McAfee et al. in their new book want to hand decision-making over to machines (among other reasons, because of the strong bias behind human decisions), I consider a clear, fast, and pragmatic decision to be absolutely critical for success in today’s times. And in larger organizations, this means that the founder or CEO has the final say in an otherwise democratic decision-making process.
Conclusion
I see New Work as a thoroughly concrete topic and this question: What form does work take in the age of digitalization, and how can the New Work dimensions flexibility, agility, individuality be imbued so optimally that they generate added value?
I frequently observe that the subject of New Work tends to concentrate on a social-romantic or purely internal view (organization, processes, corporate culture, ...) and loses sight of what companies want to achieve – added value for customers. That is why clear customer orientation is for me a core element of successful New Work concepts – instilled in all organizational units, processes, and work structures. This precludes as well, for instance, large headquarters organizations. Have you ever thought about what would happen if your organization’s headquarters were suddenly reduced tomorrow to a skeleton crew of only a few key people (let’s say 10%)? Probably nothing. And possibly a lot of busy-work processes would disappear, activities that may possibly do nothing more than slow down business. But that is also a topic for another article. (See also Company ReBuilding with the inclusion of the Zero Overhead principle.)
And we should always keep something else in mind when talking about New Work, namely, the current driver of the discussion: digitalization and technological progress. All the discussions about meaningfulness of work should be supplemented by a focus on this question: How can we utilize the impressive advances in the direction of robotics, artificial intelligence, analytics, 3-D printing, etc., to our benefit and create a life concept in which we coexist with these developments and avoid creating life models in which we close ourselves off from digitalization? Ultimately, technological developments will offer us the magnificent opportunity to realize New Work ideas and to ensure their harmony with (personal) interests of employees and managers.
Many thanks for contributing to this article to Marc Wagner.
