WFH
We played a family board game by Zoom last night.
(There’s a sentence I never expected to write.)
Anyway. Good news. It was a draw. Everybody wins! Joy unconfined.
As we all learn to work differently, at least for a time, learning to play nicely so that everybody wins is going to take some effort.
“I need all of my staff to be working from home by tomorrow. Fix the IT for me. Do it now!”
“Yes we do expect you to work remotely, home-school your six year old, and join the important strategy session this morning”.
“Well if nobody else can join the call, I’ll just take the big decision anyway and you’ll all have to live with it”.
“Your career-critical interview is going ahead remotely this afternoon. Yes, we know your kids are at home and your partner is unwell. Deal with it!”
And so on. And so on. And so on.
Time is of the essence. Everybody’s in a rush. We don’t have time to play nicely right now.
Well yes. But no. Because if we don’t stop to think about how we are going to work together during this time, it will come back to hit us later. Perhaps much later. Or perhaps very quickly.
Rushed decisions will backfire.
Suppliers and customers will remember how we treated them.
So will employees. And colleagues.
So let’s all draw breath.
Let’s try very hard to play nicely. And even if takes a bit longer, see if we can play a game in which everybody wins.