Live to work or work to live, paid or unpaid,
work is the main act on the stage of life.
Work is a performance in a production. To create and manage a business is to design the work people do on that 'stage'. For a startup, getting it right at the beginning builds future success. Changing the work people do now creates shifts, some seen and others unnoticed, at every level of the business. Either way, design is a big responsibility: it creates tomorrow's work and opportunities.
It's about experience design!
People write their own scripts, their own stories of work. People have rich 'inner work lives'. Between these stories and the decisions and designs that shape them, we can learn the lessons of how to make 'great work.'
This is true from founders and solopreneurs to big corporates.
Why should we care? Making sense of what's happening now isn't easy! Learning real-time is where success is found. For all of us, the work people do is what keeps the doors open. People doing ‘great work’ is what will grow your business in the long term.
People & place professionals
For people to be truly productive, the activities that people do at work, the places they work in and ways they work must hang together. More often than not, the 'threads' of work form a messy bundle. Work Design aims to make that bundle fit for purpose and to keep it that way. The challenge for you, the change manager or human resource person, the architect, interior designer, product designer, supplier, or facility manager, is to pull everyone's efforts together to get the best outcome.
Boards & senior executives
You're a founder, an executive and you need to make good decisions quickly. You also need to be sure that your team can do the same. Decision making demands that you understand risk and uncertainty. Planning demands that you know enough of what's going on now to avoid unwanted surprises. Plans only slightly out of step with the world inside and outside your business can lead to dark days. Real time metrics - narrative data from your own people - will give you the winning edge you need.
Career makers
If you've discovered that your kind of different doesn't map to the standard path forwards in life, welcome to the club. A lucky few of us have family, friends and supporters keen to find out how our talents can be put to good use. Some of the crew are excited and hopeful as they try out for jobs in businesses of all shapes and sizes. Talent helps; it does pay to remember that our quirks need to be accounted to make that job stick long term. Pick up some skills in life and career mapping and be ready to set up for an awesome ride. Business owners, get to know what it takes to make work a reality for someone who has something different to offer.