Conversations around returning to the office or continuing to work from home are increasing. To help in the decision-making, codify your work between the Redwork of getting things done and the Bluework, which is about decision-making and collaboration. Use the way you have codified the work to help you think about where you would like to do that work.
This little corner of our house here in Scotland has become my working environment for the last 15 months. And from here I’ve been working with organizations as far away as New Zealand through to New Hampshire, from North Carolina to North Hampton. I’m hearing conversations now about the future of work and where work is going to take place.
Is there going to be a return to the office or his working from home changed everything?
Well, one way to think about this, in terms of what’s best for your organization, is this idea about Redwork and Bluework. So Redwork is all about execution. It’s about getting things done, about delivering to the customer working on the product. And Bluework is more about the decision making that we need to do. It’s about getting insight and perspective. It’s about working together and collaboration. And that might help us think about where we need to do that work.
So unless there’s a kind of significant technical gap in terms of somebody’s competence or clarity to do a job, do they need to be in the office having somebody looking over their shoulder? Equally in terms of Bluework, which is about, inherently, collaboration and working together, evaluating, planning, getting insight and perspective – is that based on online or together, where we can also build that type of connectedness, which we know is essential in a team?
So our Nudge to you this week is codify your work between the Redwork of getting things done, and the Bluework which is about the decision making and collaboration. And to think about how that helps you think about where you want to do your work. I’m Peter Russian. This is your Leadership Nudge from a small corner of an office in Scotland.
