My Top 5 Articles of 2021
I Wrote. You Voted. (2021).
As we start 2022, none the wiser of what it will look like as we did at the start of 2021, I thought I would take a look at the top 5 articles I wrote during last year which grabbed people’s attention.
I have listed the top 5 based on the number of reactions the articles received on Linkedin rather than the number of views. That is, I have counted the ones readers took the time out to like, celebrate, support, love, found insightful or made readers curious.
NUMBER 1. Your Talent is Leaving You. The Time for Action is Now.
This article explored The Great Resignation - a term coined by Anthony Klotz in May 2021 to refer to the significant number of people who are currently leaving their jobs and plan to leave their jobs post-pandemic.
By the time of writing this article, the term was in extensive use and was not limited by industry, demography, or geography. Despite the research and significant findings, employers were still skeptical that employees would leave.
In March 2021, Microsoft said that 46% of employees globally are planning to move to another employer. In April 2021, 4 million US workers quit their jobs - a 20-year record.
I also provided readers with the potential cost of turnover in their organisations based on the Microsoft number. The numbers were scary.
The four actions I suggested organisations and their leadership need to take to stem the exodus were:
Offer flexibility
Provide a great employee experience
Build leadership capability to lead high-performing hybrid teams
Invest in employee wellbeing
NUMBER 2. Hybrid Working - Your Greatest Opportunity - Don't F*** It Up!
Perhaps it was the provocative title that sparked people's interest but I also think it was one of my most important messages of 2021.
My message was that the pandemic has afforded organisations with one of the greatest opportunities they may ever encounter. A chance to reimagine and reinvent the way in which we work and reap the benefits of increased productivity, profitability and happy, engaged employees to boot. Instead of doing this, most organisation were responding with knee-jerk reactions, procrastinating or just hoping the whole thing would go away.
I listed 5 f****-ups I had seen so far.
One rule to rule them all. This explored the reactions of organisations like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Barclays, who said "everyone back to the office. Period." This “back-to-the-office” response was a “bums on seats” mentality fuelled by managers who do not trust their employees to work when not in their line of sight
Hybrid with decree. Organisations were saying they were adopting a hybrid model of working and then decreeing the days that employees had to be in the office. When you decree the days that an employee has to attend the office, the flexibility and independence of the true hybrid model are abolished.
Everyone remote. Remote work does not work for everyone. The everyone remote decree is along the same lines as everyone in the office. Many people thrive on in-person interaction with colleagues and clients and feel isolated when working entirely remotely. Others are more than happy to work independently for the majority of the time.
No thought. I think the biggest f***-up was the knee-jerk reaction and wild declarative statements such as those from Cathy Merrill – CEO of Washingtonian Media – in an opinion” piece for the Washington Post which started with "“I am concerned about the unfortunately common office worker who wants to continue working at home and just go into the office on occasion.”
Wasting time. The final of my hybrid f***-ups was the most common and the most dangerous for organisations.Although we kept talking about the “future of work” there was (and is) no time to wait. It is a phrase that is breeding complacency. The time is now.
NUMBER 3. The Next Disruption is Hybrid Work. You Are Not Ready.
In this piece I explored the seven hybrid work trends every business leader needed to know as revealed in Microsoft's first annual Work Trend Index called “The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work — Are We Ready?”
The seven trends were:
Flexible work is here to stay.
Leaders are out of touch with employees and need a wake-up call.
High productivity is masking an exhausted workforce.
Gen Z is at risk and will need to be re-energized.
Shrinking networks are endangering innovation.
Authenticity will spur productivity and well-being.
Talent is everywhere in a hybrid work world.
At karenferris.com my response to the question “Are We Ready?” was - and still is - a resounding “No.”
Number 4. Change Management = Oxymoron
The premise of this article was that constant change is here to stay and it is changing.
It is not going to slow down. It is only going to get faster. It will get increasingly unpredictable and uncertain. The next big thing is just around the corner. It might not be a pandemic but I bet you won’t see it coming.
Therefore, you cannot ‘manage’ change. You cannot manage what you don’t know. So how can you ‘manage’ unprecedented change?
I argue that you can’t. You can only ‘adapt’ to it.
That makes 'change management' an oxymoron.
Becoming truly adaptive to change and resilient in the face of it is an eco-system of 5 I's.
Information, instruction, interactions, interventions and integrations
NUMBER 5. Hybrid Leadership - Effective Meetings
As a leader of a hybrid team your ability to run effective hybrid meetings where some of your participants are physically co-located whilst others are remote will be paramount to employee engagement and team performance.
The added complexity of hybrid meetings means they are easy to do badly and hard to do well. Do these things.
Ask "do we need it?"
Plan it
Facilitate it
Digitise it
Enable it and enjoy it
Welcome to 2022
I look forward to sharing more insights and thoughts with you in 2022 and I would love to hear from you too.