Category Archives: Change

How do you figure out what you want to do?

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This is the chapter (in my book 12 Things to Consider When Opting Out) that I’m most reluctant to write. It’s also the question I get the most from people who long to opt out of their jobs or careers. The reason I’m reluctant is that I tell myself, and others, that I am not, nor do I want to be, an opting out coach. Instead of helping people opt out, I want to help organizations become places where employees won’t spend all their time longing to leave.

At the same time – the more I think of it – one doesn’t exclude the other. Yes, we need to work with organizations and their working cultures, but we also need to remember the power employees have to be firebrands and agents of change.

Most people I talk to who have opted out, don’t realize what their role is in the grand scheme of things. For them, opting out is more often than not a personal journey towards coherence, authenticity and wellbeing. They don’t realize that they also play a role in changing the way we understand work. 

In addition, organizations, like people, seldom change unless there is a pressing need – unless they have had that lightbulb moment and have realized that something just has got to give. Employees opting out can therefore be an important part of that wake-up call for organizations. Employee retention is strategic for multiple reasons and if people start leaving, organizations will have no choice but to take notice.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that I can be both. Helping people understand what they want to do, how they want and need to organize their work, and what they are and aren’t willing to give up, is actually part and parcel of my greater mission: changing working life as we know it. 

So how do you go about figuring out what you should do next? 

People often ask me what the men and women I have interviewed in my research started doing after they opted out, thinking that maybe they could try it too. Unfortunately, there is no instant, easy formula for opting out and in. Every opting out and in journey is individual and personal and some people opt out of jobs that other people long to opt into. 

There are, however, things to consider and first steps to take:

Not so much what but how and with whom: 

One thing I have found is that it isn’t actually so much about what you do but rather how you do it and with whom. The people you surround yourself with are key. You may have a job doing something you love, but if your colleagues are difficult to work with, you will most likely be miserable. On the other hand, if your colleagues are great, you will most likely love working with them even if it isn’t your dream job. So sometimes it’s not what you’re doing that is the problem, but where and with whom. Or maybe you love what you’re doing, it’s just the way you are expected to work that isn’t working for you. Maybe you just need to think about how to organize your work and what your terms are for you to be able to continue doing what you’re doing. 

What have you really liked about your previous and current jobs?

One thing I have done in the past when I have really felt like I needed to do something else but not known what, is to make a list of all the things in my current and previous jobs that I have liked or loved doing, that have felt meaningful, that have given me energy, and that I wished I could do more of. It provided me with important clues as to what kind of jobs I would be interested in or what my next steps might be. You can try it too!

Knowing what you don’t want is essential:

Make another list, this time of things you definitely don’t want to do. This may seem negative, but it is actually essential to know. 

What is important to you?

What are your values, what is important to you, what are and aren’t you willing to give up? This is central for creating a lifestyle where you can live and work on your own terms, and something that came up in pretty much every narrative I collected for my opting out and in research.

Try something new:

Do something differently or try something new. Anything. If you never do anything differently nothing is ever going to be different. Take a course, learn a new skill, explore new things to figure out what you like, start taking a new route home from work, join a book club or some other endeavor where you can meet and talk to people… It’s hard to imagine things beyond what we know, beyond our current lifestyles and ways of working. Talking to others and getting new impressions is key to finding out what else is out there. And tell people you’re looking for new opportunities. Tell them you haven’t figured it out yet. You never know where it may lead.

Consider starting small:

You don’t have to take the leap right away. I know, once you’ve decided you no longer want to do what you’re doing, staying is hard and the lure of the clean slate is strong. But you don’t necessarily have to take a giant leap. You might want to stick around if you have a secure income and until you know what you want to do. You can start small on the side to see if it may be something you want to pursue or make a career of. Also, keep in mind, all hobbies are not meant to become work. Some things are nice to keep stress free and not be dependent on to make a living.

Don’t stress if it doesn’t go as planned:

…or if you change your mind. Sometimes we make choices we regret. But that doesn’t mean it was a failure or a waste of time. That is just life. Maybe the timing was off. Maybe the setup was wrong. Maybe you realized the grass really wasn’t greener on the other side. But you did something and learned important things about yourself. This is life, and with the risk of sounding cliché, it’s a journey not a destination.

This blog post is from a new book I’m working on: 12 Things to Consider When Opting Out

Have you just asked?

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When difficult things happen at work, or when work stops working, leaving will often feel easier that sticking around and working it out. I’ve seen this in my research, and other studies have found this too. Quitting can be easier than confronting an employer with whatever the problem is. 

In a lot of cases this is completely understandable. If you’ve been discriminated, for example, or unfairly treated somehow, it can be daunting and costly both to your health and to your wallet to go up against an organization. Removing yourself from the situation rather than staying and hitting your head against the wall may indeed feel like the only rational choice.

But sometimes it’s not that. Maybe you’re simply so fed up with working the way you do that you just feel like you need to leave. Or maybe the way or how much you work is unsustainable. Or maybe something is going on with your boss or a colleague that is just driving you up the wall. 

You’re reluctant to raise whatever the issue with your boss. Maybe you don’t want to seem like a trouble maker. Or maybe you don’t feel like it will do any good and you don’t want to burn any bridges. It feels hard to have that conversation and you’re so reluctant to do it that it just feels easier to find something else to do instead. 

But finding and starting a new job is generally no walk in the park either.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: leaving isn’t a quick fix. 

The Great Resignation is a term that was coined when the Covid-19 pandemic triggered people to think about what work was and wasn’t doing for them. People started opting out in numbers we had never before witnessed. This you’re probably familiar with. What you may be less familiar with is that there was a study done in 2022 by Workplace Insight that found that 43% if those who quit their jobs as a part of the Great Resignation wave, actually regretted their choices and felt that they would have been better off in their old jobs. 

The reasons were reportedly things like missing co-workers, familiarity, comfort, and salary. These results could of course be problematized further, which they aren’t to any greater degree in the report. For example, we often tend to look back on past experienced with rose-tinted glasses if our current situation isn’t great. So, we need to remember that there was a reason why they left: they weren’t happy with their situations regardless of whether or not they regretted their decision afterwards.

Either way, even though we can probably assume that about half of those asked were happy with the change, the 43% that regretted their decision should probably have had that difficult conversation with their employer.

Should you?

What would happen if you did have that conversation?

What I’ve found over the years when talking to people about opting out, is that there are a lot of people who actually do have that conversation and are surprised by the positive outcome. 

Managers don’t generally want people to leave; employee retention is important for many reasons. If a manager is aware that you’re thinking about leaving, they will most probably be interested in knowing what would make you want to stay. So, if you approach your employer not only with what the problem is but also with ideas of what would make everything better, you’d think that most managers will at least hear you out. 

Besides, another thing I have found in my research is that you really can opt out without actually leaving. No, I’m not talking about quiet quitting – the phenomenon where people scale down their work so that they don’t do more than they absolutely have to. 

No, what I’m talking about is a change of mindset. 

A woman I once interviewed did exactly this. She loved working for her employer, but the way she was working was just unsustainable. It was taking a toll on her health and it was also affecting her family. She realized that something had to give or she would not be able to continue working there. 

She tried having that conversation with her boss, but he just wasn’t receptive. He was probably overwhelmed too…

She finally decided her only option was to quit and that finally woke everyone up. They didn’t want her to leave so they listened to her suggestions and she was able to continue working for the same employer, but on her own terms. 

She did opt out – she opted out of a certain, expected way of working and pursuing a career – but she also stayed.

So, are you thinking about opting out? It might very well be the right decision for you. But if you’re not sure, and if there is a lot about your job that you do like, maybe you should think about whether or not there is something that would make you want or able to stay. And if there is, ask! After all, if you already have one foot out the door, you really have nothing to lose.

This blog post is from a new book I’m working on: 12 Things to Consider when Opting Out

It isn’t just you

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As some of you may know, I’ve started working on my fourth book (while still working on my third book, which I guess is typical of me but a gal’s got to do what a gal’s got to do….). I’m using the opting out blog to get it written and I’ve started publishing excerpts of each chapter every month. This month is chapter two. 

The funny thing – or maybe not so funny – is that I’ve been so frustrated lately. I decided several years ago that an academic career wasn’t for me. I felt that the age-old structures and practices that make up the academic world make it so frustrating to work there, that if I could, I would rather work elsewhere. I felt like I had choices, so I did. 

But then I got sucked back in. There is a lot that I really appreciate about work in the academic world – the intellectual freedom and challenge, my colleagues, my students, the space to write… But lately the structures and practices have really had me reeling. 

Like most people, I’ve been second guessing myself. I have seriously been wondering if there is something wrong with me since I can’t help but let the structural realities, that I really can’t do very much about, bother me so much. I’ve gone so far as to ask friends and family if they think there is something wrong with me since I get so worked up. I mean everyone else seems to be doing just fine, right?

Then I sat down to write my blog post and start the second chapter of my book. I went to check my table of contents to remind myself what the second chapter was going to be about. I opened the word document and there it was. It said, It isn’t just you.

The world works in funny ways and just as I was doubting myself, an earlier version of me told me exactly what I needed to hear. I chuckled and thought to myself that I really need to listen to myself more often. 

It’s true though. This is something I hear again and again and one of the main findings of my research. When people struggle, they will often wonder if it’s just them. And you know what, more often than not, it isn’t.

The feeling that something is detrimentally wrong or that you can’t do this anymore can be a very lonely feeling. Everyone around you seems to be doing just fine while you’re filled with self-doubt and anxiety. And herein lies a clue. Everyone else seems like they’re doing just fine, but looks can be deceiving. 

I’ll bet you seem like you’re doing just fine too!

One reason we know so little about how others are doing, is that most people don’t feel like they can tell others at work when they struggle. There is very little room and patience in a lot of organizational settings for weakness or failure, which is terrible really. It is only when we can show our vulnerability, be allowed to fail and learn from our mistakes that we can really do great things at work. Organizations talk so much about employees reaching their full potential, but ironically, in a culture where vulnerability is frowned upon, we fall short. Research has shown that psychological safety and the ability to really be oneself at work, is key when it comes to creativity, innovation and, yes, reaching one’s full potential. 

What it means is that in a culture where we don’t feel safe to be vulnerable, we are also generally not very outspoken about what is really going on with us because we don’t want to risk being conceived as a trouble maker, not good enough or not having what it takes. 

In my research I have found that this is especially true for women. In a world where gender inequality is still very much a thing, women generally have to work so hard and be so good in order to be able to compete for the same jobs as men. And if they have children, there is yet another dimension. 

Having children is often considered an asset for a man, something that develops him as a person and makes him a more responsible and reliable employee. For women, on the other hand, having children can be a career limiting move. When women have children, their dedication and priorities are often questioned. As a result, they may be discriminated or ’mommy-tracked’. That is why a lot of women avoid talking about their children or any issues they may have juggling children with a career, especially at work. Not talking about it means that they have no idea anyone else is going through anything similar, which, in turn, has them feeling very isolated in their struggles but also completely oblivious of the fact that they really aren’t alone. 

And if there is anything I have seen in my research, it is that we actually do share similar experiences and struggles. All of us, both men and women. A lot of the things that we struggle with are not, in fact, individual issues that can be solved alone, but structural ones (that cannot be solved individually but we are still expected to). 

Another reason people don’t air their frustrations may be that they don’t feel like they have a lot of choices. That is one reason why most people dream of opting out but don’t actually take the step: they have trouble even imagining an alternative to what they are doing now. And if they don’t feel like they have much choice, they are bound to keep their heads down and make the best of it. You simply do what you have to do to cope. After all, people don’t generally make drastic career decision unless pushed and they don’t opt out unless they feel like it is something they just have to do because they realize that the thought of staying is scarier that jumping into the unknown.

But regardless of what the reason is, if you feel frustrated, know that you are most probably not alone. 

If every atom in your being is telling you that something just isn’t right, then it probably isn’t, at least not for you.

And if you’re an employer, you need to make a point of talking to your people. Only if you know what is really going on, can you make it better. And don’t be afraid of opening a can of worms. Not knowing, and potentially having an explosive situation on your hands because your people are secretly frustrated, is much worse in the long run. 

Trust me.

This is an excerpt from a new book I’m working on: 12 Things to Consider when Opting Out

Opt out or lean in – is that really the question?

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Do you remember about 10 years ago when Sheryl Sandberg, who was the COO of Facebook at the time, published her book Lean In? I think it was, in part at least, a response to the debate on women opting out, especially to the voices that celebrated the women who left high-powered careers that they felt no longer worked for them. There were a lot of people who thought of opting out as an emancipatory act, while others were very critical of women leaving the careers and power positions that feminists had fought so hard for them to have. In her book, Sandberg called on women to lean in instead and make a difference, encouraging them to dream big and overcome obstacles in order to achieve their full potential. She felt that too many women weren’t doing this and she wanted to encourage women to take their rightful seat at the table. 

Sandberg did have many good points. Women do experience obstacles that prevent them from taking a seat at the table. However, due to issues of discrimination, many women can’t get a seat no matter how much they lean in. These are important issues that need to be discussed and I applaud Sandberg for championing women and encouraging them to succeed. 

But, as a result of the book, people starting thinking about opting out and leaning in as opposites. Maybe this isn’t so strange considering that the opting out debate, until I joined it, had solely been about women who leave high powered careers to become stay-at-home moms. People thought opting out was about leaving the paid work force altogether.

It is not.

What I have found in my research is that people with careers rarely opt out to stop working altogether. Opting out isn’t about dropping out. Nor is it necessarily about downshifting, quiet quitting or doing less. It can be, but mostly it’s not about the amount of work but rather having more control over when, how and when we work. It’s about choosing to leave a certain mainstream way of pursuing a career to work and live on different terms. 

People who opt out generally do so because they come to a point where they realize that they just can’t go on the way they have. Something happens that makes them see that the way they have been working just isn’t worth it and needs to stop. It can be health reasons, not being able to be there for loved ones, a clash of values at work, an identity crisis or anything really that provides a light-bulb moment that acts as a catalyst for change. It’s like the jolt that Anthony Klotz talks about in his book Jolted.

Contrary, however, to many of the types of jolts Klotz describes in his book, the people who opt out haven’t generally thought about doing it before they actually get that light-bulb moment. None of the people I have interviewed in my research dreamed about opting out nor did any of them plan to. They were all working on their careers in earnest when they realized that something had to give. In other words, they didn’t lack ambition nor the desire to have a meaningful job or career. 

Nevertheless, they opted out. 

Another thing that has been abundantly clear in my research is that not only isn’t opting out about people who don’t want to work or ‘lean in’, it really isn’t ’just’ a women’s issue either. Opting out is rather about our workplaces, our working cultures, and the expectations that we place on our employees, regardless of gender. Having said that, experiences of work are very gendered as we, in part, place different expectations on men and women. But opting out as a phenomenon is not limited to any one gender. 

Opting out is about people. It is about people who no longer want to or can work the way they have. It’s about leaving in order to create lifestyles and solutions of work that are sustainable and it’s about doing so on your own terms.

Opting out is about opting in to lifestyles and solutions for work where you have more control over where, when and how you work. It is also entails thinking about what is important to you and what you are and are not willing to give up.

In her book, Sandberg wrote, “I have written this book to encourage women to dream big, forge a path through the obstacles, and achieve their full potential.” And then later, “I hope they [my children] end up exactly where they want to be. And when they find where their true passion lies, I hope they both lean in – all the way.”

This really is not all that different from opting out and in. In fact, I would argue that this is what a lot of people who opt out and in do. They forge a path where they can finally work or live to their full potential without the constraints of a very rigid career ideal or model. 

So yes, you can both opt out and lean in. 

If you have opted out, or if you’re thinking about it, don’t listen to the people who tell you that you’re wasting your career. There are many ways to forge a career path. If there is one thing I have learned during my own career(s), it is that there are many ways to reach the same destination. You don’t have to tread the expected path. You can make your own way and create a path and a life that works for you. We are all different, why would we all want to do things in the same way?

So contrary to what many people would have you believe, opting out does not mean dropping out or giving up on yourself or your career. It might just turn out to be a very strategic career move. Only you can know.

So no, opting out or leaning in really isn’t the question.

This is an extract from a new book I’m working on: 12 Things to Consider when Opting Out

12 things to consider when opting out

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It was at least a couple of years ago, maybe more. I was on an island in the Finnish archipelago on my annual summer holiday. One night I woke up with a start. I had dreamed about my next book and, in my sleep, I had come up with the best title. But there I was, in the middle of the night. I didn’t have single thing handy to record this amazing idea. No pencil, no note pad, no phone… not even a crinkled tissue. And you know how it is, if you don’t write it down, by morning it will be gone. 

The title was 12 things to consider when opting out. 

Well, funnily enough, I managed to will myself to remember what I thought was a catchy title and I fell back asleep and actually continued dreaming about it for the rest of the night so that, come morning, I did actually get up and write it down. Needless to say, I wasn’t very well rested…

So, this has been a book that has been on my writing to do list ever since. It fit perfectly in my plan. For the past few years I have been turning my research on opting out and in into a series of books. My first book, Opting Out and In, is on women opting out and it takes a slightly broader societal look at the phenomenon. My second book, Men Do it Too, is on men opting out and it focuses more on work and careers. My third book, that I am working on as we speak, is about what organizations can and need to do to create workplaces that people won’t long to leave. 12 things to consider would be a perfect fourth. It would take an individual approach and be for people who dream of opting out, which, according to studies, has turned out to be most of us.

At the time of the dream, I was still working on my second book, so 12 things to consider simply had to get in line. But I was excited about it and I started jotting down ideas and came up with a preliminary table of contents. I mean, I didn’t even know if 12 was the right amount. Did I even have 12 things to say about the topic? And it turned out that I did. 

But like every creative, I get filled with doubt at times. It this this really what I should be focusing on? Is this any good? Do people even want to read this? (This is the reason my mantra is ‘keep going keep going keep going’. You just have to trust the process.) And as I’ve been working on the book for organizations, I’ve started to wonder, do I even want to write this book?

After all, I’m always telling everyone that I don’t really want to coach people in opting out, I want people to have working lives that they won’t constantly long to leave. Besides, those who do dream about opting out and would be the potential readers of my book, maybe they don’t want a well-researched book of all the rational things they need to think of before opting out. Because if faced with the sense of urgency that the situation leading to opting out can entail, you may not necessarily have the time nor the patience for a sensible book on opting out. You just want to do to it, you just need to do it because you know that you simply can’t work the way you have anymore. 

So, this has been my dilemma. 

Imagine my surprise when an editor I’ve been in touch with recently mentioned a book that was just about to be published at the time, which, based on the description, seemed to be a book on opting out from an individual perspective! I threw myself on my computer to preorder the book and by now it has been published and I have it in my hands. It’s a book titled Jolted: Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why it Matters by Anthony Klotz, the very person who actually coined the expression ‘The Great Resignation’. 

You might think that I was bummed that Klotz seemed to have beat me to it, that is, written a book for people who dream about opting out. But you would be mistaken. My initial reaction was relief; I’m off the hook. I thought, ‘wow, I don’t have to worry about whether or not I want to write the book anymore.’ But to tell you the truth, now that I’m actually reading it, I realize it isn’t actually the book I was planning to write. It’s good, but different. So maybe I should just stick to my original plan. 

In the meantime, I thought I would share with you the table of contents I developed after the night of the dream. I’m playing with the idea of just going ahead and writing this book right here on my blog. Maybe my next post could be chapter one? What do you think?

Chapter One: Opt out or lean in – is that really the question?

Chapter Two: It isn’t just you

Chapter Three: Have you just asked?

Chapter Four: How do you figure out what you want to do?

Chapter Five: Not everyone will get it and that’s okay

Chapter Six: There are many roads to the same destination

Chapter Seven: What is success anyway?

Chapter Eight: What about your partner?

Chapter Nine: What will this mean financially?

Chapter Ten: Nothing is forever

Chapter Eleven: Creating sustainable solutions for work

Chapter Twelve: Being a part of the change

Can change happen from the inside or is opting out the only option?

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My mission is to change working life as we know it. 

It is high time that we do. Studies have shown that stress-related mental health issues have sky-rocketed in the past few decades and that more than half of all global workers are unhappy in their work. Ever since the pandemic people have been opting out of their work and careers in numbers never before witnessed and many of those who haven’t actually opted out, dream of doing so. 

It is clear that something has got to give.

I opted out of a career myself about a decade and a half ago to start working on a PhD. It wasn’t something I had planned – although I had been dreaming about doing something else. I came to a point when I realized that I just had to do something about my situation. Going on the way I had was out of the question, and I needed to create a lifestyle for myself where I could live and work in a way that worked for me. It wasn’t easy – opting out never is – but in hindsight, it turned out to be a good choice. Haven’t regretted my decision for a second. 

Still, ever since I started researching opting out, it has been pretty clear to me that I don’t want to be an opting out coach. I don’t want to dedicate my life to helping others opt out too. I don’t believe that is a sustainable solution. 

Opting out isn’t easy. It’s not something people do on a whim. Most of the time it happens because a person just cannot continue living and working the way they have. It is a time of crisis, of turmoil and of searching, and, despite what influencers and the like may tell you, there are no guarantees that a person comes out of a crisis better and stronger. I don’t think we should idealize crisis as the catalyst for change it can be.  

That’s why, instead of helping people opt out, I have made it my mission to help create workplaces that people won’t feel a need to leave. I want to be involved in creating workplaces where people can thrive instead of being the sites of suffering that so many workplaces are today. This is what my research has been about. I mean, we know a lot about why people leave, but what do we really know about how to organize work so that they won’t long to leave? 

These are some of the questions my research provides answers to and I’m writing a book about it as we speak. But lately, I have been wondering if I’ve actually gotten it all wrong. Can we change workplaces from the inside or is opting out necessary? 

I remember a few years when I first met my friend and colleague Birgitta Wahlberg. She is an incredibly inspirational woman. She is a researcher and activist and she is key in changing our understanding of and laws on animal rights. She is a firebrand and an iconoclast. I met her when she was giving a talk about the shocking treatment of animals in the food industry, and she said something profound. She said that there are two ways society can change, either through crisis and devastation which forces change, or by planning and implementing the change in a controlled fashion before everything crashes. She pointed out, however, that unfortunately humanity tends to choose the former. We tend to not make big changes until we are absolutely forced to.

I think about this often. I mean, this is also it is true for individual opting out processes. People seldom opt out until they experience some sort of crisis that pushes them to do so. But does it have to be that way? And more importantly with regards to what I’m trying to achieve, does it have to be that way for organizations?

Part of the problem is that we need a systems’ shift. We need to redefine how we think about work, and we need a change not only our practices but also our actual understanding of work and of how we organize work. 

When people come to listen to me talk about my research, they generally agree with me. They agree that something has got to give. But then they go back to their organizations and it’s business as usual. It’s as if they know on an intellectual level that we need change, but they are so caught up in the system and their everyday work that being the change just isn’t on their horizon. Also, in this competitive economy, where organization work hard to survive, it is hard to be the one to break the pattern and do something differently. 

So, the question I’m struggling with is, am I naïve to think that we can do this? Can we change working life as we know it in a controlled fashion before everything crashes and burns? Do organizations even want to? 

The thing with change is that it simply doesn’t happen unless you experience some kind of light-bulb moment that makes the change feel absolutely crucial. This is what a crisis does. And acute environmental issues or health issues do among others don’t seem to be providing the light-bulb moment organizations need. But, maybe and increasing number of people refusing to stay can? A lot of people researching opting out seem to believe so. 

There are of course organizations that are already doing great things. But on the most part it is still business as usual. 

So, tell me, have I got it wrong? Can we inspire organizations to change working life as we know it? Can we create change from the inside or is that just not disruptive enough? Or should I rather be putting my energy on coaching people on how to leave? 

What do you think?

Here’s what’s wrong with the debate on remote work

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Ever since the pandemic, the debate on remote work been both fascinating and frustrating to follow. 
 
Before the pandemic, remote work was practically unheard of. Some organizations allowed it do different degrees, but on the most part it was rare. Then when the pandemic hit everything changed overnight. People weren’t allowed into the office and all of a sudden work that had been considered impossible to do remotely turned out not only to be possible, but actually worked quite well. People realized, that working from home offered a lot of flexibility and now, post-pandemic, most employees don’t want to stop doing it – at least part of the time.
 
Employers, on the other hand, feel differently, which really isn’t very surprising. Research has shown that managers found remote work during the pandemic to be much harder than other employees did. They couldn’t fall back on old management routines but had to come up with new ways of managing their teams when team members were no longer right there in front of them.
 
Now, post-pandemic, organizations have been trying to call their employees back to the office with varying success and some have even abolished the possibility of working remotely altogether. Employers argue that face time is crucial for innovation and development as well as for new recruits, which is true, but getting people to want to come into the office is still challenging. Some organizations set rules for when you have to be in the office, but no matter what they decide, people still aren’t happy. 
 
The on-going debate has been very black and white. Is remote work good or bad? Should people be allowed to do it or not? Yes or no? There are arguments for both sides that are valid, but the debate doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere. That is because it’s missing the point.
 
First of all, one problem is thinking about remote work in terms of how we used to think about work when everyone came into the office. Yes, it is true that innovation suffers if people don’t engage enough with each other. But this isn’t actually a problem of remote work, but rather an issue of leadership. If people work remotely, we need to make sure we create opportunities for collaboration and innovation. This is fully possible. We need to make sure we have routines for including new recruits in the community so that they feel welcomed and become part of the team. It doesn’t happen automatically just because we’re in the same building, but it certainly doesn’t happen if we don’t consciously make it happen when working remotely.  We need new routines for leadership and organization. Just like during the pandemic, we – both managers and employees – need to do things differently to make it work. 
 
The other thing that frustrates me is how organizations go about deciding what their policy for remote work should be. It seems that no matter what they decide, people are unhappy. What strikes me is that most organizations fail to see that remote working practices and policies are a question of organizational culture and any changes made with regards to ways of working should be treated as any organizational change. 
 
In order to get people on board with change you have to involve them in that change. On the one hand, you have to allow them to create their own understanding of why the change is necessary and, on the other, you have to let them be a part of the solution. If they actually feel the need to change and have been involved in developing new solutions and routines, they will naturally also be committed to them. 
 
The same goes for remote working practices. Those of you who grapple with this, have you talked to your employees about it? Have you asked them what their needs are? Have you involved them in thinking about what it is you want to achieve as an organization or as a team and what they best way to go about it is? It’s not just a question of how many days to work on and off site. It’s a question of what needs to be done how to best create solutions to achieve that. 
 
Some say people simply don’t want to come into the office anymore, but this really isn’t true. It’s just that they don’t want come in if they don’t feel like there is any point. People have seen what a positive impact working remotely can have on their lives and their wellbeing. 
 
Experiences change us and we can’t go back to the way it was before the pandemic. We can only move forward. Remote and hybrid work are here to stay in one form or another, and that is not a bad thing. They are an excellent way to provide employees with more flexibility and to create sustainable lifestyles and solutions for work. Office work isn’t a thing of the past either. 
 
We can figure this out, but we need to think about work a bit differently than we’re used to.

A time of crisis is a moment of reckoning

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I think we can all agree that we live in a time of crisis. The crises we face are many, they are serious, and they are all interconnected. 

The environmental crisis – climate change – is perhaps the biggest of all because without a planet there is no us. It’s also arguably the first crisis that literally affects everyone, every country and every person on this globe, and as such it is a crisis that we have to solve together. This can be frustrating and difficult because everyone doesn’t seem to think that this crisis is serious, serious enough to give up comfort, economic growth or profit for, or that it affects them. But that is an illusion. 

It affects all of us regardless of where we live in the world, whether it’s about lands becoming unlivable, wars that are fought over diminishing resources, mass migration to countries that aren’t seeing the worst of it yet, or just bees dying which inevitably will mean that we won’t have food.

We’re also seeing a crisis of democracy. I think we’re all acutely aware of that, whether or not we think it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Because the world is exactly that polarized at the moment that there are people who really think it’s a good thing. 

The US is on everybody’s minds, lips and social media feeds at the moment, and the things that are going on there are hard to even grasp. This is also a crisis that affects all of us; it’s not just a domestic issue, nor is it a phenomenon that is unique to the US.

This rise of populism and easy answers to difficult questions is a phenomenon we’re seeing in many different countries around the world. Populist political parties are gaining traction mainly because a lot people are just sick and tired of the status quo. 

What’s going on in the US and in many other places around the world is in other words a symptom of something. We need to take it seriously, not ridicule and antagonize those who think differently, and do our best to understand why some people are just so sick and tired that they don’t even believe in democracy anymore. Because even though democracy isn’t perfect, it’s the best system we have and we need to protect it. It’s vulnerable and can be destroyed if we don’t stand up for it. 

Another crisis we’re seeing is a crisis of the work place. There’s a lot of suffering in the organizational and corporate world. People get sick, people die. People are also leaving their jobs and careers in numbers never before witnessed. There are a lot of people who just don’t want to do it anymore. They feel like the cost to their health, to their families, and to their lives is just too high.

So what do we do? Well, as I said, a crisis is a time of reckoning. It’s a time of change and reinvention, and a time when anything is possible. The balls are up in the air and we need to decided where and how we want them to land. It’s time to change the way we think about work. It’s time to change the way we think about a lot of things.

Change is hard though, especially when it craves a new way of thinking. That’s why it often takes a crisis for change to really happen. But I believe we can do it, if not for any other reason than that we have no choice. 

The pandemic showed us that we really can rethink things completely and change at a drop of a hat when we have to. And we are already seeing some interesting initiatives that redefine how we think about work. 

The four-day work week or six-hour work day is one example. When we have been doing something in a certain way for as long as we can remember we start seeing it as a truth. But truth be told, the five-day, 40-hour work week is actually a relatively recent phenomenon.

The four-day work week questions what we think we know about efficiency, productivity and dedication. Research has shown that we really aren’t very efficient or productive if we work very long days. It’s not the best use of our time. On the contrary, a shorter week or a shorter work day allows us to be more efficient because we don’t get as tired and we have an easier time combining work with other areas of life. This has been tested in a number of different countries and test results have been very positive. So positive that some organization haven’t looked back since. 

We live in a world where we idealize constant growth and efficiency. Still, resources are finite, both our personal and our planetary ones. We can’t always be efficient; if we don’t pace ourselves we burn out. If we do pace ourselves, it opens up possibilities for creativity, creative thinking and new solutions. Not to mention mental and physical wellbeing.

I know, in a world where organizations struggle to stay competitive, it’s hard to be the one leading the change.

But it’s time, it has to be done.  And we can do it!

P.S. If your organization is doing something different that challenges current thinking – anything, big or small – let me know, I’d love to hear about it!

You can prioritize people and still be very successful

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I’m working on a book again. It’s another book on opting out, but this time it’s out of an organizational perspective. More specifically, I’m writing about what organizations need to do to create working environments that people won’t long to leave. Because studies have shown that a lot of people do. A lot of people dream about opting out.

The situation isn’t all bad. There are of course organizations that do great things and there are a lot of people who are happy in their jobs, that’s true. But it’s also true that organizations can be places of profound suffering. In the past 30 years or so, mental ill-health has skyrocketed, the main reason being work-related stress. Main factors include constant cost cutting and reorganizations, as well as work that is dehumanizing and where people are disrespected and not valued. Did you know that there is something known as Blue Monday? Apparently, people are more likely to have what is thought to be stress-related heart attacks on Mondays than any other day of the week. 

So, this book that I’m working on right now is part of my personal mission to change working life as we know it. 

While doing research for my new book, I stumbled across another book that made a really big impression on me. It’s a book by Rob Chapman and Raj Sisodia called Everyone Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family.

Rob Chapman is the CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, a large American industrial company. When he became CEO of the company, he “threw away” traditional management practices like the ones you learn in business school and replaced them with what he calls “a truly human leadership”.

This spoke to me right away because I spend a lot of time telling anyone who will listen that business is personal (contrary to popular belief) simply because it’s about people. And people are personal. Companies love to say that their people are their greatest resource, but honestly, it’s a bit problematic to think of people this way. It’s kind of dehumanizing if you think about. 

Chapman gets this. His thinking is, why do we treat people at work differently than we do people we care about? If we say things at work that we wouldn’t say to our own children, for example, why do we think it’s okay to talk that way to someone else’s child? Chapman’s point is that everyone is someone’s child and everyone should be treated as such. Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect. 

According to Chapman, fostering a people-centric culture is to truly care about every human being whose life the company touches, be it employees, employees’ families, customers, suppliers, business partners… A people-centric culture is about including everyone (not just the very talented, everyone is needed and everyone wants to contribute), keeping them safe and sending them home fulfilled. It’s about respect, it’s about trust, it’s about listening to people, and it’s about treating everyone the same no matter where in the organization they are. 

This people-centric culture was implemented during a financial upswing and things were going well for company. Then when the financial crisis of 2008 hit it was really put to the test. Companies were laying people off everywhere to survive the sudden loss of business, but not Barry-Wehmiller. They were reluctant to do it because layoffs have a profound negative affect on people’s wellbeing. It’s affects them, their lives, their health and their whole families. Not only that, it also really affects the morale of those who don’t lose their jobs, which also affects business. So, they just really didn’t want to have to do that. 

What did they do instead? Well, they thought about what a family would do in a time of crisis. They wouldn’t kick some of the family members out to cut costs. Instead, they would all come together and pitch in in any way that they could so that everyone could make it through the crisis. And this is what they did. They treated the company like a family.

One thing they did was that they decided that everyone had to take a four-week furlough, including members of management. They had a system where everyone was allowed to take the time off when it suited them best. Also, if someone felt they wanted to or could afford it, they could take over some of someone else’s furlough if someone couldn’t afford taking that much time off without pay. When employees realized they weren’t going to lose their jobs, everyone pitched in and people felt committed to do what they could to save the company. They made it through the recession without letting a single person go and they came out of the recession strong, and also faster than the economy as a whole. Already in 2010, they made record earnings and decided to write every employee a check for the salary that they had given up to save the company. 

By the way, did you know that regular restructuring, downsizing and layoffs is a relatively recent phenomenon? It isn’t something companies started doing systematically until1990’s. I’ll leave you with this quote:

“Rightsizing, de-layering, business reengineering, streamlining… these are some of the other euphemisms for the now-routine business practice of eliminating jobs to improve profit. Downsizing has become a reflex response to business adversity…to preserve financial performance, raise investor confidence, and boost share price. We know of one company that deliberately over-hires when times are good so it can let people go and get a bump in the share price when it wants to… Simon Sinek puts it this way: “In the military, they give medals to those who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that other may gain. In business, we give bonuses to those that are willing to sacrifice others so that they may gain.””

                                                               (Chapman & Sisodia, 2015: 95)

If you want to hear Bob Chapman talk about this in his own words, google him. He’s all over the internet. 

If we all know something has got to give, then why is it so hard to change?

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All the years I’ve been researching, writing and talking about opting out and in, sustainable solutions for work and work place wellbeing, I’ve never come across anyone in the organizational world who doesn’t think all this is of the essence. I’ve been at it for a while now, and the whole time my work has been received as timely and important and with great interest. 

Still, even though there is a lot of consensus regarding this, people continue struggling with the same issues at work and more and more of them dream of opting out. 

Okay, before you say anything, I do know that not everything is the same. The pandemic showed us that we can change when we have to and there are a lot of organizations that now provide their employees with more flexibility regarding where, when and how they work. Also, some organizations have started prioritizing mental health more and now have routines and policies in place to support that. 

Nevertheless, there are a lot of organizations that don’t. Some may talk the talk but not walk it, and some – all too many – don’t even talk it. 

Why is this? Why is it so hard to change?

Well, one of the main problems is that the way we understand work; and what we know to be a ‘good’ way of working or organizing our work has become something of a truth. When things have been in a certain way for as long as we can remember, we tend to think that is the natural way for them to be and it becomes hard to even imagine doing things differently. It is simply the way things are done. 

But let me let you in on a secret. The way we understand work isn’t a truth. It isn’t a law of nature, it has been invented and implemented by us and not even that long ago. It’s actually quite a recent invention. 

The current career ideal was developed as a result of industrialization and the prosperity many nations experienced after World War II. Employees were expected to be loyal to one employer and career advancement involved an upward movement in the organization in a timely fashion, brought about by promotions. As mainly men started working in the industries, some argue that the career wasn’t created for one, but one and a half people: the man with the career and the wife who took care of everything he didn’t have time for because he was so tied up at work. 

Although a lot has changed in society since then, this is ironically still the career ideal today: the timely upward movement and the expectation of complete dedication and devotion to work. Anything else it considered suspect, at least if you want to advance to the upper echelons of corporate hierarchies. 

But guess what, we don’t have to organize work the way we do! There is nothing natural or predetermined about it. We can reinvent why we work, how we work and how much we work. 

The problem is just that in order to change we have to want to change. And not only that, we also have to realize that we need to change. We have to have that lightbulb moment. Until we do, and if it’s going well enough, it’ll just feel easier to continue the way we have.  

So how do we do that? How do we get people and organizations to see the light? Do we have to wait until things get so bad that there will be no choice but to change?