SPECIAL COLLECTION
FROM THE LEADERSHIP ARCHIVE
Up-to-date ideas and strategies for leaders coping with the still-shifting transformation of the workplace.
How Work Will Work in the New Normal
CONTENTSSPECIALCOLLECTION
How Work Will Work in the New Normal
1 Why Workplace Hierarchies Matter in Skill Transformation By Katherine C. Kellogg
4 Remaking the Workspace to Boost Social Connection By Martha Bird
7 Turbulent Times Demand Dynamic Rules By David R. Hannah, Christopher D. Zatzick, and Jan Kietzmann
13 Picking the Right Approach to Digital Collaboration By Paul Leonardi
21 Why Pivoting People Is a Strategic Priority By Curtis L. Odom and Charn P. McAllister
25 Figuring Out Social Capital Is Critical for the Future of Hybrid Work By Jennifer J. Deal and Alec Levenson
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Why Workplace HierarchiesMatter in SkillTransformationKatherine C. Kellogg
While new research suggests that workplace hierarchies can impede
learning efforts, there are strategies to bolster the success of training
initiatives.
With the increasing availability of sophisticated analytics,AI, and robotics, corporate leaders are reconfiguring theirworkforces to meet changing technical demands. Indeed, by2022, 54% of all employees will require significant upskilling,according to the World Economic Forum.
But leaders engaged in workforce transformation arerunning into unexpected roadblocks as they attempt to keeptheir employees’ skills in sync with rapid digitization andautomation. The introduction of new technologies into theworkplace often upsets existing status hierarchies based ontenure, role, or expertise — factors that dictate the amountof respect, assumed competence, and deference an employeereceives from others in the organization. Upsetting
fundamental status hierarchies can impede learning,particularly when senior employees perceive that thosejunior to them are benefiting the most from a workforcetransformation.
With co-researchers Jenna Myers from the MIT SloanSchool of Management, Lindsay Gainer from Mass GeneralBrigham, and professor Sara Singer from StanfordUniversity School of Medicine, I studied corporate leaders’efforts to transform the technical skills of employees at fivedifferent primary care sites over the course of nearly twoyears. Frictions between digital natives at the junior leveland their more senior coworkers initially led employees tostruggle to pick up the skills they needed and slowed digitaltransformation efforts. When junior employees benefitedmore from transformation than did senior employees, thiscreated backlash, especially among more senior employeeswho saw their status undermined. But at sites where leaderssystematically attended to existing workplace hierarchiesduring skill transformation, employees were more successfulin learning digital, critical thinking, and communicationskills.
Our new study found that corporate leaders who areengaged in skill transformation need to be mindful ofworkplace hierarchies during three types of skill
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transformation: upskilling, reskilling, and “newskilling.”Here’s how.
1. U1. Upspskkiilllinlingg.. Upskilling initiatives target employees whoneed additional technical training to remain relevant andcontinue to deliver value. Leaders can personalize learningfor these employees by providing peer-to-peer training innew technologies and related work processes.
Most leaders’ first inclination is to choose as trainers thoseemployees who seem best able to grasp new ways of working.Often, these employees are those who have grown up usingdigital technologies and are on the lower end of theorganization’s hierarchy — which can ultimately result insenior employees feeling slighted. This trainer-selectionstrategy might seem to be the most efficient, but it can in facthinder learning.
Instead, leaders should create peer training programs thatrotate both senior and junior employees through the role oftrainer. While this may not seem to be the most efficienttraining method, the alternative is likely a recipe for failure.
2. R2. Reseskkiilllinlingg.. As sophisticated analytics, AI, and roboticsautomate many existing jobs, the workers who formerly didthose jobs will need to learn entirely new skills rather thanmerely add to their current skill sets. Many employers arethus attempting to rapidly retrain employees to enter newroles such as technical customer support or IT supportrather than trying to hire new talent in a tight labor marketfor technical skills.
We found that employees who have held their positions formany years — and have been well rewarded for their efforts— were more concerned about uncertainty around jobs,skills, and future qualifications than were employees whohad recently joined the organization. The more junior-levelemployees often saw reskilling initiatives as opportunities tolearn valuable technical skills while keeping their day jobs,rather than as a threat to their authority and control over keyresources.
Leaders can more effectively accomplish reskilling whenthey speak to these different interests and concerns —security versus advancement — when selling employees onthe training. Leaders may also need to emphasize to front-
line managers how to handle such concerns whileencouraging their front-line employees to stretch beyondtheir comfort zones in order to stay current and competitivein the job market.
3. N3. Neewswskkiilllinlingg.. When corporate leaders adopt newtechnologies that automate various kinds of work, some jobsand tasks are eliminated while others emerge. Many newroles involve technologies that require considerable work todevelop, implement, maintain, and change over time. Forinstance, digital marketing firms have introduced the role ofsearch engine optimization manager, high-tech companieshave introduced the role of data scientist, and professionalservices firms have introduced the role of AI translator tocommunicate the value of predictive analytics tools tovarious groups in the organization.
However, the introduction of new roles that help withtechnology development and implementation often requiresa redesign of existing roles that more experienced employeescurrently fill. If experienced employees perceive new rolesas threatening to the relevance of their hard-won expertise,their desire to maintain their high-status positions mayoutweigh their acceptance of role redesign.
Leaders can most effectively introduce new roles byestablishing separate meeting spaces for supporters ofchange across status positions to develop new roleexpectations. Separate meeting spaces can play a critical rolein facilitating the experimentation needed for role redesign.When defenders of the status quo are present, supportersof change are often uncomfortable trying out new tasks,discussing nontraditional ideas, or challenging the existingorder for fear of retaliation, as defenders of the status quomay try to quash experimental efforts before they get offthe ground. Spaces that allow for interaction among less-powerful group members, apart from everyday activities,can better support transformation by facilitating thequestioning of traditional activities and the development ofnew ones.
By attending to existing workplace hierarchies during skilltransformation, leaders can best ensure that theirorganizations and employees gain the skills they need tocompete amidst rapid digitization and automation.
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About the Author
Katherine C. Kellogg is the David J. McGrath Jr. Professorof Management and Innovation and a professor of businessadministration at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
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Remaking the Workspace toBoost Social ConnectionMartha Bird
Our relationship to space is a complicated one. Space is oneof those terms that many of us sense we grasp but struggleto describe with any precision. It is often imagined in termsof an imprecise distance, as in the space between objectsand people, or a quantity, as in, “How much space is lefton my hard drive?” or “Is there space in the living roomfor a desk?” Space is the subject of scientific practice as wellas an opportunity for galactic travel and exploration. Ourdefinitions of space really depend on where we’re comingfrom. And, let’s face it, most of us simply take space forgranted — something that surrounds us and to which wegenerally pay little notice.
As a number of social scientists have convincingly argued,space is not merely a static, inert dimension in which “stuff ”is placed and organized. Space is known to us by virtue of thesocial interactions that make it visible: Space is both deeplypolitical and unquestionably social. 1 Keeping six feet apart
while practicing social distancing brings the relational,interpersonal quality of space front and center. It is also areminder that our space is shared; my air is your air, and
what I do affects your space, and vice versa.
For those of us fortunate enough to have been able toconduct our work within the relative safety of our domesticspaces over the past year, there has been a general sense ofdisorientation and a blurring of work and home life.
Many other people, however, have had no choice but to getup every day and go to a place of work. Think for a momentabout the kinds of proximities that onsite caregivers,teachers, health care providers, delivery people, transitworkers, and store clerks face daily due to the necessarydensity of their workspaces. They must contend with theirinability to distance much from other people and theconsequent anxieties that this likely instills in them — atthe workplace and in the (often public) transportation routesrequired for them to get to work.
The past pandemic year has magnified inequalities. In manycases, it has been the most vulnerable and marginalized —particularly Black and Brown people and women working inthe service sectors — who have continued to do the essentialface-to-face work that those of us working from home havebeen able to safely avoid. We’ve benefited from the very workthat has put others at risk. We’ve safely retreated while othershave carried on. In this sense, immobility has become a formof privilege as mobility has become one of risk.
Of course, racial and gender inequality aren’t new stories.What is new is how our spatial awareness has changed as aresult of spending the past year negotiating altered spaces.Also new is the growing awareness that one group’s “newnormal” is another group’s “business as usual,” with all theinequities it entails.
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What will business as usual look like in the post-pandemicoffice? Will some of us continue to use our private spacesas workspaces? Do we need to be in the same place as ourcolleagues to take advantage of the creative frictions thatphysical colocation is known to encourage? Or can we get bywith a curated combination of remote work and in-personwork, as the popularity of hybrid arrangements suggests?
Prioritizing Human
Connection
In the January 2021 report “Shaping the Future of Work fora Better World,” global commercial real estate company JLLpredicted that accelerated digital workplace transformation,coupled with an emphasis on the worker, will “address boththe rising expectations of the workforce and the growingimportance of human connection.” Future workspaces willneed to be more flexible, less centralized, and more people-centric to both attract and retain the best talent whileensuring that these workers are energized and creative bothwhen working remotely and in person.
In fact, in conversations about what we’ve missed most aboutthe offices we left behind last year, a persistent theme hasemerged: We’ve missed our colleagues. We miss theopportunities for chance interactions with people we knowwell and those from other teams we may know less well.
Especially for people new to a company, the ability tonetwork and connect in person is critical to building whatMark Granovetter, a sociology professor at StanfordUniversity, identified in 1973 as weak ties — those casualacquaintances who move us outside our established andfamiliar “strong tie” networks. 2 Weak ties offer us the
opportunity to learn and expand, and in fact most peoplelearn about and get their next job through such connections.
Reshaping Boundaries
Physical boundaries between work and domestic life haveshifted radically for many; so too has our perception ofwhat’s needed for productivity and collaboration, as has themeaning of “the office” itself. These shifts necessitate arethinking of what kinds of activities are most suited to
colocation and which ones are best left to more privatevenues, whether a home office or a third space. A simplereset to pre-pandemic policies based on outmoded notionsof face time and presentism are no longer assumed nor, inmany cases, desired or sustainable.
The time has come for more nuanced approaches toworkplaces as ecosystems rather than discrete physicallocations. We need to be asking ourselves and, moreimportant, asking our employees what kinds of experiencesbenefit from what kind of spaces — a question that can nolonger be treated as though “one size fits all.”
The process of reimagining office spaces introduces critical,overarching questions: How will our imaginations aroundthe concept of workspaces and the evolving use oftechnology support our work practices? What do today’stransformations suggest about what it means to be human atwork?
Within this flux, one fact remains: People are social animals.Personality traits of introversion or extroversion aside,people need people. Advances in digital tools asintermediaries for enabling connection are not enough.Serendipity, while not a new concept in workplacearchitectural design and planning, will become a morepressing one as hybrid approaches limit workers’opportunities for in-person interactions. Leaders will needto anticipate and shape the kinds of social moments thatenable richer, more meaningful human connections in ouroffices and work lives.
About The Author
Martha Bird (@anthro_tweeter) is a business anthropologistat ADP focused on understanding the cultural contexts ofwork and workplaces.
References
1.1. In his book “The Hidden Dimension” (Anchor Books, 1966),anthropologist Edward T. Hall developed his theory of proxemics, arguingthat human perceptions of space, although derived from sensoryapparatuses that all humans share, are molded and patterned by culture.
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See also D.B. Massey, “Space, Place, and Gender” (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1994).
2.2. M. Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal ofSociology 78, no. 6 (May 1973): 1360-1380.
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S E T T I N G P O L I C Y
DAN PAGE/THEISPOT.COM
Over the past two decades, business leaders have been confronted with a
great deal of upheaval and uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic is but
the most recent of such events; organizations have also contended with
a global financial crisis, significant technological changes, and major
political-economic developments, including Brexit and trade wars, thus
far in the 21st century. In the future, challenges such as social unrest
driven by income inequality, and severe weather caused by climate
change, are predicted to cause even more chaos.
These events all signal a much more dynamic environment for busi-
ness. Yet many of today’s organizational practices and processes were
created for comparatively predictable and stable circumstances, with the goal of optimizing long-term effi-
ciency and effectiveness. Recent developments have revealed that many of these practices are ill suited to
today’s unpredictable and volatile times. The popular expression “the new normal” describes exactly that —
Turbulent Times Demand Dynamic RulesCircumstances can change rapidly — organizational rules should be designed to change along with them.BY DAVID R. HANNAH, CHRISTOPHER D. ZATZICK, AND JAN KIETZMANN
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Dynamic Rules Begin With the Right MindsetThe prerequisite for organizations to move from an
organizational culture that favors traditional rules
to one that embraces dynamic ones is a shift in
mindset. Without this change in mindset, the other
steps necessary for the creation of dynamic rules —
increasing employee involvement in their design,
embracing experimentation, and enacting rule
audits — either will not happen or will not go well.
There are two critical differences between the
mindsets needed for traditional and dynamic rules:
who is involved in making and changing them, and
what is taken into account when determining their
success.
First, a traditional rules mindset focuses on con-
trol: Managers tell employees what to do, monitor
employees to make sure they obey the rules, and
impose sanctions on people who fail to follow
them. The traditional mindset views those in upper
management as rule makers, acting independently
from those who must follow the rules.
In the dynamic rules mindset, those in upper
management are collaborative facilitators, working
together with employees to create and modify work
requirements. Managers recognize that employees
are subject-matter experts, with hands-on, practical
knowledge that managers often do not possess.
Employees are invited into the rule-making process.
For instance, leaders at Valve Corp., a billion-
dollar software company with headquarters in
Bellevue, Washington, were concerned about the
work-life balance of their employees, so they consid-
ered implementing an overtime ban. Had they
adhered to a traditional mindset, they would have
simply enacted the ban and ensured that it was ad-
hered to. Instead, they consulted with employees first
and discovered that the ban would have unintended
and negative consequences. (More on this below.)
The second difference between traditional and
dynamic rules mindsets is that rule makers with a
traditional mindset are frequently unaware of or
even unconcerned with the entirety of the impact
their rules have on those who have to follow them.
Instead, there is a narrowed focus on the behavior
that a rule’s requirements are meant to effect. As
long as that behavior is shaped in desired ways, the
policy is perceived to be a success. A traditional
The authors have developed their ideas about dynamic rules
based on observations of how businesses
have coped with the challenges posed by
the COVID-19 pandemic, and on their previous
research in three areas:
Rule compliance among employees in high-technology
organizations.
Effective organizational communication and
employee involvement during times of change.
Increasing employee autonomy enabled by
mobile and social technologies.
THE
ANALYSIS
an era characterized by uncertainty that needs to
be met with new organizational perspectives and
practices.
To prosper in dynamic times, businesses need
to change their approach to rule-making and ad-
herence. During the pandemic, some companies
stuck to their established rules, to their detriment.
For example, the world’s largest pork producer,
Smithfield Foods, continued to operate with
employees working in close quarters without
protective barriers. Many employees came to work
sick to earn the “responsibility bonus” the com-
pany awarded to workers who did not miss any
shifts. The company was forced to shut down mul-
tiple plants following COVID-19 outbreaks and
was later fined by the U.S. Occupational Safety and
Health Administration for violations in South
Dakota and by Cal/OSHA for violations in
California. In contrast, many meatpacking plants
throughout the world modified their rules to in-
crease social distancing on production lines and in
break rooms, provided paid sick leave, and prohib-
ited the use of temporary workers, all of which
helped them continue to operate safely.1
It seems self-evident that when faced with a
crisis, organizations should simply modify their
policies. But, as the example above illustrates, not
all of them do. Rules are often designed to address
a specific issue, and their purpose and require-
ments are intended to remain constant for years to
come. Further, when managers approach rule-
making from a traditional, top-down perspective,
they generally don’t consider the impact of those
requirements on the people who must follow
them. This greatly limits their ability to refine or
improve business practices to meet new demands
as conditions change. Hence, rules that were once
effective can become dysfunctional, often linger-
ing for many years and becoming entrenched in
organizations’ ways of doing things.
In order to function effectively in the new,
more dynamic normal, organizations must
change how they design, implement, and monitor
their policies and procedures. In this article, we
provide a road map for creating dynamic rules —
defined here as rules that are built to change
through collaboration, experimentation, and
learning.
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S E T T I N G P O L I C Y
mindset in effect assumes that whatever problems
traditional rules cause are outweighed by their ben-
efits to the organization. In contrast, a dynamic
rules mindset includes a genuine intent to under-
stand the full impact of policies, including their
potential detrimental consequences.
This intent is what led Valve managers to consult
with employees before they implemented their new
rule banning overtime. Employees reported back
that working overtime is sometimes necessary to
meet important deadlines, so in those instances,
they would still feel obligated to continue working.
However, if the new rule was put in place, they
would have to hide what they were doing. The orga-
nization’s leaders realized that the ban wouldn’t
have prevented overtime; it would only cause the
experience to be even more stressful because em-
ployees would have to covertly break the rule.
Instead of imposing the new ban, Valve’s leaders
collaborated with employees to monitor how much
overtime was being worked. Both parties agreed
that some overtime would be functional, but too
much would be an indication of a fundamental fail-
ure in planning that needed to be addressed. This
collaborative approach to rule-making helped pre-
vent a problem before it even started. Continuing to
engage with their front-line workers will help orga-
nizations such as Valve to be more responsive in
dynamic times.
Like canaries in coal mines, employees will be
the first to notice the effects of rapid environmental
changes, especially when their work is negatively
affected. Further, employees may be able to antici-
pate problems with newly imagined rules even
before they are put into practice. When employees
are invited into the rule-making process, their feed-
back can lead to the creation of new policies, or to
the modification or even removal of old ones.
In order to transition to dynamic rules, leaders
must help spread the correct mindset throughout
their organizations. However, changing mindsets is
difficult, especially in large, bureaucratic compa-
nies. We’ve identified three specific steps that leaders
should take to facilitate that shift: (1) Increase em-
ployee involvement in rule-making, (2) embrace
rapid experimentation, and (3) enact rule audits.
Increase Employee Involvement in Rule-MakingMany companies have benefited from employees’
greater involvement in organizational strategies and
actions. One famous example involves Amazon
software engineer Charlie Ward, who, through a
suggestion-box feature on Amazon’s internal commu-
nication system, proposed the idea of a free-shipping
service that later became Amazon Prime. It is now
widely accepted that employee involvement is an
essential aspect of organizational innovation and
new product development initiatives. The same is
true of organizational rule design and management.
Transparency and communication are essential
for workers to join managers in a collaborative
effort. Rules involve a purpose (the reason the rule
exists) and requirements (what must be done to
comply with the rule). Too often, organizations
offer employees only a cursory explanation, if any,
about the purpose of rules and instead focus on the
requirements that they must follow.
To create dynamic rules, leaders need to do more
to explain their purpose. Put another way, leaders
should share the big-picture goal with employees.
Leaders can explain why a rule is being created, what
its proposed requirements will be, and how those
requirements serve the purpose of the rule. By
opening a dialogue with employees about the entire
situation, leaders can express empathy for any extra
effort that will be involved in policy compliance and
achieve a higher level of commitment.2
Another critical aspect of this process involves
enabling employees to share their thoughts about
Like canaries in coal mines, employees will be the first to notice the effects of rapid environmental changes, especially when their work is negatively affected.
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rules without fear of penalty. Many employees care
a great deal about rules because their work is
shaped by them on a day-to-day basis. They may al-
ready talk a lot about policies and processes and
their ideas on how to improve them. However, in a
traditional setting, these conversations often take
place in informal ways — in break rooms with col-
leagues, at home, online, or in the pub.
Managers should invite workers to share their
thoughts about rules. Recognizing the relevance of
the employees’ expertise and involving them in rule
management can lead to a virtuous cycle where
employees and managers create better and better
policies. When employees see their ideas being con-
sidered and used, they become more engaged and
more likely to support dynamic rules in the future.
Google’s research on the critical role of psycho-
logical safety in its teams is pertinent to these issues.
When team members feel that they can take risks
without feeling insecure or embarrassed, they are
more likely to speak up in ways that enable their
team to achieve high performance. Similarly, if em-
ployees feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and
concerns about rules with organizational leaders,
they are more likely to share their perspectives hon-
estly and openly. This sense of psychological safety
is also fundamentally important to leaders’ ability
to incorporate new, diverse voices that reflect dif-
ferent levels, positions, locations, and backgrounds
in an organization. By doing so, organizations will
get immediate feedback from the front lines, which
is critical for adaptation in dynamic times.
Embrace Rapid ExperimentationOrganizations often need to move quickly when im-
plementing new rules in a dynamic environment.
Rather than spending months crafting the “perfect”
rule, organizations need to develop one that is “good
enough” and roll it out with the full understanding
that it will be updated and improved over time,
based in part on the feedback from employees. Such
an approach builds on the successes of rapid proto-
typing — or rapid application development, in
software engineering — that places less emphasis on
planning and more emphasis on an adaptive pro-
cess. A similar process can start in one department,
for instance, to test and build an infrastructure for
rule experimentation across the organization.3
SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU
To illustrate the importance of rapid rule exper-
imentation to the effective creation of dynamic
rules, consider the negative example of Yahoo’s ap-
proach to policies around working from home.
Before 2013, Yahoo, like many other technology
companies, permitted its employees to work re-
motely. Marissa Mayer, who served as Yahoo’s CEO
from July 2012 to June 2017, is perhaps best known
for the infamous rule change that prohibited em-
ployees from remote work, ostensibly because
having everyone working in the office would in-
crease communication and collaboration. Many
employees felt betrayed by that rule change, argu-
ing that they had joined the company with the
expectation that they could work from home. What
has transpired since then has been a disaster for the
company, culminating in Mayer being named one
of Fortune magazine’s most disappointing leaders
in 2016, and her resignation as CEO in 2017. It
seems likely that if Yahoo had experimented with
its rules around working remotely, it could have
learned how they were really affecting the chal-
lenges around collaboration and autonomy that
had plagued the company for years.
Enact Rule AuditsCompanies trying to shift to a more dynamic way
of operating should conduct a formal rule audit.
Similar to a financial audit, which involves an in-
tensive examination of the financial state of an
organization, a rule audit evaluates a company’s ex-
isting policies. The goal is to assess whether existing
rules need to be updated to fit the organization’s
current environment.
Since most organizations have numerous rules,
we do not recommend that leaders examine every
rule on the books. Instead, the first step is to iden-
tify rules that are the most disruptive for individuals
and the organization. Ideally, an organization will
be able to assess this at both the systems level and
the individual level.
At the systems level, organizations may have ac-
cess to objective assessments of compliance burdens,
such as the amount of time spent filling out paper-
work. At the individual level, such objective
assessments could be complemented by more sub-
jective ones, such as surveys and interviews. For
example, managers could ask employees which three
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rules cause the most disruption to their work. Rules
that are identified as disruptive by multiple employ-
ees could then be subject to additional investigation.
Once disruptive rules have been identified,
managers should scrutinize each one’s purpose and
requirements. A rule’s purpose should be both clear
and useful. Sometimes it will be explicitly stated in
writing, whereas at other times it may be inferred
by other rules within a document, web page, or
handbook. Sometimes managers may have diffi-
culty identifying a clear purpose. Alternatively,
managers may uncover the purpose but conclude
that it is no longer useful to the organization, which
can happen when rules stay unchanged and unex-
amined for many years. When managers learn that
a rule’s purpose is either vague or not useful, in
many cases they should discontinue it. On occa-
sion, they may decide that it is still useful and opt
to clarify the purpose instead.
Next, managers should uncover all the behavioral
requirements for complying with rules. This should
include both explicit requirements and tacit ones
that may not be formally specified but are enacted in
practice. Managers and employees should then con-
sider the degree to which the requirements actually
support the rule’s purpose. For example, many of the
rules implemented by the Transportation Security
Administration following the 9/11 attacks have been
derided as “security theater” because they are
disruptive to travelers and to airport operations but
do not actually make air travel safer.4 A policy that
is disruptive and serves no useful purpose should
be discontinued.
If a rule has disruptive requirements but serves a
useful purpose, then the focus should shift to re-
ducing the disruptiveness of those requirements
through the process of rapid experimentation.
Managers should explain to employees both the
purpose of the rule and how the requirements are
intended to serve that purpose. They should then
listen to the feedback employees provide and ex-
periment with changes. Managers may decide to
eliminate some of the requirements or change
them to make them less disruptive or more useful.
They should continually assess the benefits and
costs associated with those decisions, even if they
decide to remove a rule entirely. During these
changes, leaders must always ensure that they are
engaging with employees who are affected by and
knowledgeable about the policies and their impact.
Throughout the entire rule audit, leaders and
managers should emphasize the mindset that is es-
sential to dynamic rules: the mindset of learning.
Rather than telling employees that they must follow
certain practices and that they will be monitored to
ensure compliance, managers should explain what
they hope to accomplish and ask employees to help
them understand if those goals are being met.
Encouraging employees to share feedback about the
consequences of policies and emphasizing the col-
laborative nature of the process should lead to a
more functional set of organizational rules.
Rule audits could be enacted on a regular basis
within organizations, but a particularly good time
to conduct one is in response to or in anticipation
of a major organizational transition or environ-
mental shift. For example, the automotive giant
Daimler recently initiated a complete overhaul
of its culture to support the transition to highly
automated operations using advanced digital tech-
nologies. A major goal of this change initiative
is to develop a new mindset that builds agility
through employee involvement and collaboration.
In particular, this change streamlined policies and
processes, revised the personnel system, and estab-
lished new working methods, all geared toward
increasing transparency, flexibility, openness, and
involvement. Of course, this type of culture change
takes years to implement, but by embedding
changes in revised policies and processes, Daimler
Rule audits could be enacted on a regular basis within organizations, but a particularly good time to conduct one is in response to or in anticipation of a major organizational transition or environmental shift.
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is prepared for ongoing change. As one change
leader within Daimler noted, “The industry is un-
dergoing a transformation, and Daimler is in the
process of redefining itself. … We are co-designing
the future ourselves.”5
ORGANIZATIONS WILL BE better positioned to
succeed in dynamic times when they embrace a
mindset where leaders and employees work together
to understand the purpose, requirements, and full
impact of rules. By emphasizing experimentation
and learning, managers and employees can collabo-
rate to anticipate and identify disruptive policies and
change them to be less problematic and more effec-
tive. For example, many organizations are currently
struggling with rules about remote work. While
some companies, such as Reddit, are encouraging
workers to move anywhere they want with no pay
cut, others, such as Microsoft, and Twitter, have said
they will permit such moves but reduce compensa-
tion to reflect the corresponding reduction in cost
of living. Needless to say, this is an ideal time for
management to experiment with their rules and
incorporate feedback from employees.
A dynamic rules mindset will have benefits
beyond helping to create a more functional set of
rules. Relationships between managers and em-
ployees may improve as they move from being
adversaries in policy compliance to partners seek-
ing to create effective rules. Leaders may find that
the time they had spent monitoring and enforcing
rules can be better spent elsewhere, and in their
conversations with employees they may arrive at an
improved understanding of how work is actually
carried out. Employees may feel more valued and
appreciated as they contribute to the development
and revision of policies. They will be more likely to
buy into and adhere to rules, experience less dis-
ruptiveness from them, and be more satisfied and
committed to the organization.
Finally, we expect that dynamic rules enhance
an organization’s ability to anticipate and cope
with environmental changes. When managers and
employees embrace experimentation and learning
in the creation and reformulation of rules, they
build plasticity into the organization’s structure,
processes, and practices. This type of flexibility is
essential in the turbulent times that seem to be the
norm now. Because change is only becoming more
substantial and unpredictable, organizations that
build dynamic rules will be better prepared for
what lies ahead, whatever it may be.
David R. Hannah (@daverhannah) and Christopher D. Zatzick are associate professors of management and organization studies at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. Jan Kietzmann (@7_dials) is associate professor of innovation and information systems at the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria. Comment on this article at https://sloanreview.mit.edu/x/62406.
REFERENCES
1. See, for example, S. Marshall and C.C. Unger, “Treating Workers Like Meat: What We’ve Learnt From COVID-19 Outbreaks in Abattoirs,” The Conversation, Oct. 13, 2020, https://theconversation.com; and M. Molteni, “COVID-19 Makes the Case for More Meatpacking Robots,” Wired, May 25, 2020, www.wired.com.
2. For a discussion on how to increase employee sugges-tions, see M. Parke and E.N. Sherf, “You Might Not Be Hearing Your Team’s Best Ideas,” Harvard Business Review, June 4, 2020, https://hbr.org.
3. M. Luca and M.H. Bazerman, “Want to Make Better Decisions? Start Experimenting,” MIT Sloan Manage-ment Review 61, no. 4 (summer 2020): 67-73.
4. M. Tonar and E. Talson, “Is the TSA Really Necessary?” Forbes, Jan. 28, 2019, www.forbes.com.
5. “Change the Game — but How? Leadership Develop-ment,” Daimler, accessed Dec. 14, 2020, www.daimler .com.
Reprint 62406. Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2021.
All rights reserved.
As employees contribute to the development and revision of policies, they will be more likely to buy into and adhere to rules, experience less disruptiveness, and be more satisfied and committed to the organization.
SPECIAL COLLECTION • HOW WORK WILL WORK IN THE NEW NORMAL • MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 12
Many software solutions promise to facilitate teamwork — but what suits close-knit colleagues may not help those who need to make connections across the organization.BY PAUL LEONARDI
C O L L A B O R AT I O N
Picking the Right Approach to Digital Collaboration
Consider this paradox about
digital change: Although it
increases the need for collabo-
ration in organizations, it also
makes collaborating more
difficult. In my research and consulting work,
I’ve observed that this happens for three
key reasons.
First, it becomes harder to identify the right
internal partners. In many organizations in the
thick of transformation, particularly agile work
environments, employees are given greater
latitude to make important decisions on the
ground. But when they need help completing
tasks or solving problems to execute those
decisions, they often aren’t sure where to turn
for support, because they lack a broad
understanding of who has what expertise in the
organization. Thanks to technology, people
can connect with coworkers across an array of
specialties. However, research shows that they
tend to focus on the information, ideas, and
skills held by the colleagues around them —
those in their work groups, for instance, or
those who sit in close physical proximity.1
That may be evidence of an attempt to rein
in an overwhelming field of potential
collaborators because employees have no
clear sense of which colleagues know what. DAN PAGE/THEISPOT.COM
SPECIAL COLLECTION • HOW WORK WILL WORK IN THE NEW NORMAL • MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 13
C O L L A B O R AT I O N
When people narrow their attention in that way, it
undermines the benefits of digital connectivity, but
it’s understandable. Given how frequently and fluidly
people move from project team to project team (pos-
sibly from week to week), they don’t often build the
relationships that would allow them to map out the
expertise in their companies. And failing to find the
right experts can easily lead to work duplication and
missed opportunities for efficiency and innovation.2
Second, it’s harder to get coworkers to say yes to
requests to collaborate — even experts who would
be ideal collaborators if they had the time, energy,
and resources to commit to yet another emergent
team. In a dispersed, agile workplace, persuasion
and influence are essential to securing needed re-
sources. But it’s tough to persuade people to join
your project if you have never worked together
closely and have not developed trust.
Third, given that lack of close connection and
established trust, it’s also harder to develop the kind
of common ground that facilitates productive in-
teraction. The issues that people care about, the
technical languages they speak, their modes of
problem-solving, and their goals tend to diverge
greatly when they work in different locations, spe-
cialize in different domains, and are responsible for
different outcomes. It’s particularly challenging to
bridge the gaps in understanding if they don’t know
many people in common. The less employees know
about each other’s motives and knowledge bases,
research shows, the less inclined they are to share
knowledge with each other.3 This can lead to more
mistakes, slower project completion, and, in many
cases, less innovative outcomes.
When digital change makes collaboration more
difficult, companies become more siloed. But we’re
not talking about yesterday’s “top-down” silos,
where formal organizational boundaries divided
employees into separate functions or business
units. The silos in transforming companies often
arise as people do their work, and they are based on
their differences in knowledge, geography, and
goals. You can bust the top-down silos with cross-
functional teams or a matrixed reporting structure,
but those organizational solutions don’t apply to
silos that emerge from on-the-ground work.
To bust those, you’re better off using digital
collaboration tools. Unlike email, chat, videoconfer-
encing, and data repositories — channels through
which people communicate — digital collaboration
tools are platforms upon which employees use vari-
ous channels to interact, watch others interact, and
gain a deeper understanding of where knowledge
l ies. (Common platform examples include
Basecamp, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Jive, Chatter, and
Workplace.) Such tools are designed to help people
work together and learn from one another by creat-
ing threads of conversation and places to exchange
information. My research shows that those platforms’
primary benefit for collaboration goes beyond
knowledge sharing: They provide a window into who
knows and does what in the organization, and into
how people make decisions and do their work.4
Over the past decade, I’ve studied and consulted at
more than two dozen companies that have reaped
this benefit — many of them unexpectedly — as
they’ve turned to digital collaboration tools to
streamline operations, integrate knowledge, and
enable remote work. I’ve observed two basic types
of collaboration needs inside these organizations:
collaboration among coworkers who interact
frequently on teams or in other ways (the regular
collaborators in one’s inner loop) and among co-
workers who are dispersed across the company (the
sporadic collaborators in one’s outer loop). These
sets of needs require different types of tools. We’ll
discuss why, but first let’s step back and think about
how digital collaboration can make expertise more
Given how frequently and fluidly people move from project team to project team, they don’t often build the relationships that would allow them to map out the expertise in their companies.
SPECIAL COLLECTION • HOW WORK WILL WORK IN THE NEW NORMAL • MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 14
visible in an organization, since that’s really the
“killer feature” they provide.
Making Expertise VisibleA common obstacle to collaboration among spe-
cialists or geographically dispersed colleagues is
that their work is often invisible to one another. We
typically see the outputs of others’ work — models,
prototypes, reports — but not all the thinking and
decision-making that went into producing those
outputs. At best, we end up guessing at what was
done (if we give it that much thought). At worst, we
fail to see the richness of insight and expertise that
our colleagues have and that could be available to
us if we only knew to reach out.
Digital collaboration tools not only provide a
space for employees to work together but also make
that work and its history visible to other people
within the company. Third-party observers can pick
up on bits and pieces to re-create the context in
which the original interactions occurred, see which
colleagues offered their expertise to solve problems,
follow the logic of the decision-making, and better
understand how and why things were done.
That depth of insight is much harder to gain if
you see only the output of people’s work and try to
reverse-engineer it by making assumptions about
why it came together as it did. I’ve found that when
employees can participate vicariously — through
social tools, after the fact — in the construction of
the model, prototype, or report, their ability to
learn from their colleagues and make that
knowledge actionable increases dramatically.
Connecting Two Types of CollaboratorsDigital collaboration tools serve two main
constituencies within a company. Regular
collaborators interact frequently, often on projects,
and rely on one another to complete their day-to-
day work. Typically, employees know their regular
collaborators relatively well. These colleagues can
be team members, project sponsors, managers, or
mentors. Sporadic collaborators seldom interact and
do not know one another well. They are not
teammates but may have knowledge or information
that is directly applicable to one another’s projects.
An employee’s sporadic collaborators might
include coworkers who occupy similar positions in
different business units or people who work on
similar problems in different regions or functions.
The best tools for solving the collaboration
problems created by digital change will depend on
the type of collaborators involved.
Teamwork platforms for regular collaborators.
Since people tend to work on many project teams
(often several at once), they’re continually collabo-
rating with a variety of coworkers on myriad tasks. It
can be hard to keep everything straight. So working
effectively with one’s regular collaborators requires a
teamwork platform that allows employees to engage
in persistent chat about tasks and goals, to look at or
work on documents simultaneously, and to tap col-
leagues’ knowledge and resources when problems
arise. Such platforms — which include task manage-
ment tools as well as social enterprise tools — help
people follow the streams of action on their teams
and leverage networks across projects.
Following streams of action. To collaborate
productively with people in their inner loop, em-
ployees need to stay up to speed on what these
coworkers are doing day to day and why they have
made certain decisions. Otherwise, it’s difficult to
develop an accurate sense of what teammates bring
to the table, to get people to say yes to requests, and
to establish common ground.
Take this example: At a large research laboratory
in the central U.S., a network engineer we’ll call
Regular collaborators need a teamwork platform that allows them to engage in persistent chat, to work on documents simultaneously, and to tap colleagues’ knowledge and resources when problems arise.
SPECIAL COLLECTION • HOW WORK WILL WORK IN THE NEW NORMAL • MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 15
C O L L A B O R AT I O N
Cindy was working simultaneously on three project
teams, each of which included coworkers from
across the laboratory.5 Most of her teammates were
in functions different from her own, and none had
an office in her building. One problem Cindy strug-
gled with was losing focus on project A when some
task from project B or C demanded her attention. “I
just could never keep up with where the teams were,”
she told me. “It would take me two days to get back
into the swing of things after coming back from an
emergency on another project, and my team would
be mad at me. I was slowing them down, and I wasn’t
being a good contributor.”
Once she began using her organization’s new
teamwork platform, Cindy found that she could
more easily catch up on the interactions and
conversations that her coworkers had in her
absence. “I am able to reconstruct the context of
what went on,” she said. “I can see why they decided
to go in one direction rather than another, and I
can see what the arguments and objections were
that led to that decision. That means I can ask the
right questions. … It allows me to jump right back
into the action and be a strong contributor.”
No one can be everywhere they are needed all the
time. But by following the various streams of action
on their projects — the tasks, conversations, and deci-
sions that have occurred, in sequence — employees
who aren’t present in real time for important activities
can step back into the flow later and engage produc-
tively. The live archive of action streams is also a script
of sorts; it helps people figure out when and how to
engage most successfully in their ongoing collabora-
tions. They can see what worked and what didn’t and
tailor their own actions accordingly.
By following the streams of interaction in which
her coworkers were enmeshed, Cindy better
understood who had expertise in which areas. This
knowledge enabled her to make targeted requests
for ideas and advice when needed. Because she was
asking coworkers for help with issues they felt they
could easily solve, they were more likely to say yes to
her requests (and to the requests of others who also
closely followed streams of action on the company’s
teamwork platform).
Executives at Cindy’s organization reported to
me that using the teamwork platform led to more
than a 20% increase in on-time project completions,
which translated into more than $50 million in
additional revenue.
Leveraging networks across projects. A second
major advantage of teamwork platforms is that em-
ployees can build and leverage networks of regular
collaborators across project teams. Several recent
studies have shown that making such connections is
critical for innovation and efficiency.6 Team perfor-
mance hinges not only on how productively
members work together but also on how much in-
formation and knowledge from outside the team
they can bring in and apply to the project at hand.
Suresh, an engineer at a global automotive com-
pany, discovered this when he tapped his cross-team
network to address some problems with simula-
tions and testing. Suresh worked with four product
teams to increase the crashworthiness of the com-
pany’s bestselling SUV. (Each team focused on a
different brand variant.) When the organization
began using a teamwork platform to help employ-
ees collaborate on projects, he was able to follow
colleagues’ interactions across teams in real time.
That’s when he noticed that coworkers on two
of the teams were having the same difficulties
getting his simulation model to correlate with the
results of physical tests. So Suresh connected those
coworkers with Tim, an engineer who worked on a
team that was not having the correlation problems.
Tim was willing to talk to the other two engineers
because Suresh was able to explain the problem in
detail, having closely followed these engineers’
streams of action on the teamwork platform. Based
on Suresh’s explanation, and after reviewing the
teamwork platform himself, Tim realized that his
work shared many commonalities with that of the
other engineers and that his insights would be
useful to them. In short, he found common ground
with them. Using the collaboration platform,
members from the three teams discussed the issues
and together developed a solution to fix them.
To Suresh’s surprise, a colleague from the fourth
team then entered the conversation, saying he had
been experiencing the same difficulties and was
delighted to see that the other teams had worked
out a solution. With the problem fixed on the three
teams that were struggling with it, the company
estimated that it saved more than $10 million in
design and testing costs.
SPECIAL COLLECTION • HOW WORK WILL WORK IN THE NEW NORMAL • MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 16
If networks are critical to the movement
of knowledge and information in the digital
age, teamwork platforms may be the ultimate
facilitators for regular collaborators: By allowing
individuals to connect people in their inner loop
who would otherwise not come into contact, these
platforms make it easier to coordinate knowledge
and action, bringing collaboration’s many benefits
within closer reach.
“Broadcast” platforms for sporadic collabo-
rators. Employees in most large organizations do
not have many meaningful relationships with col-
leagues beyond their regular collaborators, aside
from a few ties with friends or mentors in other
parts of the company. And relationships have be-
come even more insular because of the silos that
have formed as byproducts of digital change.
A second category of digital collaboration
tools — platforms that essentially “broadcast”
information about employees’ expertise and
internal resources — can address that problem
by allowing people to create a roster of distant
connections that can be activated as needed.
Employees who use such tools also advertise their
own expertise, showcase their projects, and pro-
mulgate corporate norms simply by doing their
work within a forum that’s accessible to colleagues
across the company. Broadcast platforms help
people overcome collaboration problems in two
ways: by enabling them to develop metaknowledge
(knowledge about who knows what and whom in
the company), and by creating “social lubricant” so
they can more readily approach colleagues they
don’t know well — or at all — for support.
Developing metaknowledge. Companies have
tried many tactics over the past half-century to
help employees develop metaknowledge about
outer-loop colleagues. Some of those tactics have
been technological, such as creating employee
directories or adopting knowledge management
systems. Others have been organizational, such as
building communities of practice or establishing
rotation programs that move people from division
to division to broaden their knowledge of the com-
pany. But the critical problem with both kinds of
approaches is that they place an undue burden on
the people who have knowledge that others need.
They must take time out of their work to codify
their expertise in a way that might be useful to
someone else and then disseminate that to those
who may be interested. Since all of that involves a
fair amount of guesswork, it’s not terribly surpris-
ing that the evidence suggests that these strategies
for helping employees learn who knows what and
who knows whom don’t work well.7
Broadcast platforms change the game by making
tasks and projects visible beyond one’s regular
collaborators. When regular collaborators commu-
nicate in the course of doing their work, they
generate clues about what they are doing and how.
That puts the onus on sporadic collaborators to in-
terpret those clues to find the experts they need.
Consider this experiment at a large financial
services firm. Two large groups of employees —
the marketing and operations divisions — were
given a survey to assess their metaknowledge about
coworkers in their respective divisions. Both
groups scored horribly. On average, employees in
marketing could accurately identify only 4% of
what their marketing coworkers knew and only 2%
of who they knew. The numbers were nearly iden-
tical in the operations group. Marketing was given
a broadcast tool to use for six months. During this
time, employees communicated with their regular
collaborators on the platform. They weren’t
codifying their knowledge; their communications
represented the normal discussions that they had
in the course of their project work. Because those
Broadcast platforms help collaboration by providing knowledge about who knows what and whom, and by creating “social lubricant” so people can more readily approach colleagues they don’t know well, or at all.
SPECIAL COLLECTION • HOW WORK WILL WORK IN THE NEW NORMAL • MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 17
C O L L A B O R AT I O N
interactions took place on a broadcast platform
rather than through email or private instant mes-
sages, they were available for employees across the
division to see. Colleagues who weren’t involved
directly in the work began to respond to these
posts with their own questions, ideas, insights, and
stories. Over this same period, the operations divi-
sion didn’t use the platform.
At the conclusion of those six months, employees
in the two groups took the survey on metaknowl-
edge again. Those in marketing improved their
ability to identify “who knows what” by 33% and
“who knows whom” by a whopping 88%. There was
no improvement in the operations group. What
happened in marketing? As one employee observed,
“I just started to see the kinds of things people were
doing and I got a sense for the kinds of knowledge
they had based on their work. I also saw who re-
sponded to them and what kinds of things those
people said, so I now have a better sense of who the
people those people talk with are.”
This increase in metaknowledge across the mar-
keting division led to reductions in work duplication
(for instance, by enabling employees to reuse code
and to leverage existing analysis by consultants in-
stead of re-creating it themselves). It also boosted
innovation (for example, by facilitating the exchange
of new ideas for products and the development of
more efficient organizational processes). These are
exactly the types of outcomes one would hope for
when tapping into the knowledge of sporadic
collaborators.
Creating social lubricant. Knowing what and
whom other people know is not enough to make an
outer loop useful. Employees must be able to ac-
quire knowledge and resources from their sporadic
collaborators by getting them to devote time and
energy to help them. How can they do this if they
don’t know them or don’t interact with them
regularly? Here again, broadcast platforms come in
handy because they provide material that facilitates
new social relationships. This social lubricant
comes in two forms: work-related and non-work-
related information.
When employees read posts on broadcast
platforms, they learn about the kinds of work
others do in the company. Mario, a staff member in
the financial planning and analysis department of a
large software-as-a-service company, recounted
how he used information about the work done by a
sporadic collaborator to get some financial figures
he needed. As Mario explained, for several months
he had seen posts by a colleague in a business unit
located in another country: “Every post she made
referenced this acquisition project the unit was
working on. When I was asked to provide some
inputs into a possible acquisition, I thought she
could be helpful, but I didn’t know her at all. So I
sent her a message saying that I’d been following
her posts about the acquisition in her unit and I was
impressed by how much she seemed to know about
it and wondered if she might be able to help me.
She responded in a few seconds and we got on the
phone. It was immensely valuable.”
What Mario picked up from those posts was
information he could use to start a conversation
with someone he didn’t know at all who worked in
a very different part of the company. That initial
conversation led Mario to follow this coworkers’
posts even more closely. Today, he says, “I definitely
feel like she is someone I can turn to if I need help,
even though we don’t interact regularly.”
Using broadcast platforms to share and learn
non-work-related information can also turn
distant colleagues into sporadic collaborators.
Starting new relationships is hard. Think about
going to a party: It’s much harder to strike up a
meaningful conversation with someone if you
In one group, increase in metaknowledge reduced work duplication. It also boosted innovation by facilitating the exchange of new ideas for products and more efficient organizational processes.
SPECIAL COLLECTION • HOW WORK WILL WORK IN THE NEW NORMAL • MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 18
know nothing about them; it’s much easier if the
host tells you that the two of you are both soccer
fans and love the same team. Broadcast platforms
serve the function of the attentive host in the digi-
tal workplace.
Senior leaders at a large multinational telecom-
munications company understood that principle.
They encouraged employees from various divi-
sions to regularly post interesting facts and updates
from their personal lives on the company’s broad-
cast platform — as they would normally do on
Facebook or Instagram. The idea was that if em-
ployees could find coworkers with shared interests
or similar backgrounds outside of work, they might
feel more comfortable reaching out to those people
about work-related matters. Although employees
initially felt odd posting what they called
“Facebook-like” content on a workplace tool, man-
agement encouraged and even modeled the
behavior. Soon, the broadcast platform’s algorithm
started linking people who had similar nonwork
interests. The company found that when employees
had discussions about food, sports teams, movies,
and fitness, they became more likely to ask one an-
other work-related questions too. As one employee
who had connected with a coworker over their
shared love of independent movies noted, “Talking
about movies with her made me feel comfortable to
ask her for advice on some tricky work matters.”
Many times, employees need a little conversa-
tional support to approach a distant colleague and
turn that person into a sporadic collaborator. Both
work- and non-work-related content on broadcast
tools can provide that social lubricant to make such
conversations happen. Importantly, employees are
able to maintain lightweight relationships with their
sporadic collaborators by following their posts and
commenting on them at times when they don’t
need their help. Doing so makes reaching out when
they do need something feel less transactional and
more organic. In large organizations in particular,
this also helps employees feel connected to their
organization and to see themselves as members of
that community.
ALTHOUGH THE TWO TYPES of digital collabo-
ration tools — teamwork platforms and broadcast
platforms — make it easier to overcome obstacles
to collaboration with immediate and sporadic col-
laborators, not all employees will see such value
from day one. It takes time for records of people’s
interactions to accumulate on both types of plat-
forms, so employees who work in companies that
are launching them will not reap their benefits
immediately. Employees must keep using these
platforms, though, so that the content will grow
rapidly and become useful for the organization.
Of course, their employers have work to do as
well. With prodigious amounts of data generated
on both teamwork and broadcast platforms,
organizations can begin to use algorithms that code
employee communication and behavior patterns
into particular categories of action, sort those
categories, and perform complex computations
that link categories together. It is only in the past
several years that the computational power and
development of mathematics undergirding AI and
machine learning algorithms have progressed far
enough to make meaningful analyses of such vast
amounts of employee data. Companies could
benefit more from such analyses by using AI to
combine these patterns with new data sets (like
employee turnover or performance data) to test
assumptions about certain relationships, learn
autonomously from these tests, and make
predictions about future employee behavior.
Yet as organizations increasingly use algorithms
to sort through the glut of digital data on worker
One platform started linking people who had similar nonworkinterests. When employees had discussions about food, sports teams, movies, and fitness, they became more likely to ask one another work-related questions too.
SPECIAL COLLECTION • HOW WORK WILL WORK IN THE NEW NORMAL • MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 19
C O L L A B O R AT I O N
interactions, it is essential to remember the risks
associated with collecting, storing, and analyzing
all that information. For one thing, employees
can be unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged by
the way AI turns such data into predictions. For
another, the organizations adopting digital collab-
oration platforms aren’t the only ones that can
profit from analyzing the data generated: Most of
these tools are cloud-based applications. Contract
rights give vendors access to some or all of the digi-
tal exhaust produced. The vendors can then use
their own algorithmic modeling to create macro-
level digital footprints of their business customers
and the people who work for them — and sell
those predictions to other companies. They can
also use the data to improve their own technolo-
gies in ways that allow them to collect even more
digital exhaust.8
This means it’s incumbent upon companies to
determine what level of vendor access they will
build into their contracts. One could decide that
allowing vendors to access data improves the
product and is in the best interest of all users. Or
one could decide that organizations paying for the
tools and services should be entitled to own their
own data and metadata so that vendors are not
profiting off them twice. With either choice,
companies must be transparent with their
employees about who has access to their data and
how it will be used.
As with the introduction of any new initiative,
digital collaboration tools need to be implemented
carefully by senior leadership. But the effort is
more than worthwhile. These platforms enable
employees to find the right partners for their work,
persuade those partners to help, and establish the
common ground necessary to make their collabo-
rations run smoothly. Getting people to use the
tools so they will see the benefits in practice and
deploying advanced algorithms and AI to discover
any fruitful collaboration patterns that emerge are
critical management tasks in this dawning age of
digital business.
Paul Leonardi (@pleonardi1) is the Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He advises companies on how to use the data enabled by new technologies to lead digital transformation.
Comment on this article at https://sloanreview.mit .edu/x/62302.
REFERENCES
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2. P.M. Leonardi, “Social Media, Knowledge Sharing, and Innovation: Toward a Theory of Communication Visibility,” Information Systems Research 25, no. 4 (December 2014):796-816.
3. L. Argote and Y. Ren, “Transactive Memory Systems: A Microfoundation of Dynamic Capabilities,” Journal of Management Studies 49, no. 8 (December 2012): 1375-1382.
4. P.M. Leonardi, “Ambient Awareness and Knowledge Acquisition: Using Social Media to Learn ‘Who Knows What’ and ‘Who Knows Whom,’” MIS Quarterly 39, no. 4(December 2015): 747-762; P.M. Leonardi, “Social Media and the Development of Shared Cognition: The Roles of Network Expansion, Content Integration, and Triggered Recalling,” Organization Science 29, no. 4 (June 2018): 547-568; P.M. Leonardi and S.R. Meyer, “Social Media as Social Lubricant: How Ambient Awareness Eases Knowledge Transfer,” American Behavioral Scientist 59, no. 1 (January 2015): 10-34; and T.B. Neeley and P.M. Leonardi, “Enacting Knowledge Strategy Through Social Media: Passable Trust and the Paradox of Nonwork Interactions,” Strategic Management Journal 39, no. 3 (March 2018): 922-946.
5. Names in this article have been changed to ensureindividuals’ and companies’ anonymity.
6. J. Cummings and C. Pletcher, “Why Project Net-works Beat Project Teams,” MIT Sloan Management Review 52, no. 3 (spring 2011): 75-80; and N.B. Ellison, J.L. Gibbs, and M.S. Weber, “The Use of Enterprise Social Network Sites for Knowledge Sharing in Distributed Organizations: The Role of Organizational Affordances,” American Behavioral Scientist 59, no. 1 (January 2015): 103-123.
7. P.M. Leonardi, “The Social Media Revolution: Sharingand Learning in the Age of Leaky Knowledge,” Informa-tion and Organization 27, no. 1 (March 2017): 47-59.
8. Management professor Shoshana Zuboff has written eloquently about how vendors monetize digital exhaust and use it to construct digital footprints that predict and shape our behavior. See S. Zuboff, “The Age of Surveil-lance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power” (New York: PublicAffairs, 2019).
Reprint 62302. Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2021.
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Why Pivoting People Is aStrategic PriorityCurtis L. Odom and Charn P. McAllister
To best prepare their organizations and workforces for post-pandemic
changes, leaders should think through a set of critical questions.
Just like post-pandemic physical workspaces will needrevising, so too will the skill sets and capabilities of ouremployees. Yes, leaders absolutely need to reimagine theworkplace, but organizations cannot lose sight of the peoplereturning to those spaces. Focusing solely on redesigning theworkplace or offering flexible work arrangements (such asremote or hybrid options) without considering employeeswill hamstring organizations by leaving their people in thelurch.
If new strategies cause changes to our workplace, then thosesame strategies certainly warrant a closer inspection of ourworkforces — both leaders and employees. The pandemicmade it necessary for companies to make strategic pivotsto adapt to rapidly changing environments. To meet thesenew demands, they must also pivot the people within theirorganizations. Pivoting people refers to a form of talentmanagement that focuses on retraining employees so that
they can fill those jobs or roles most closely aligned with anorganization’s strategic direction. Preparing employees now,through reskilling and upskilling, will allow organizations tomove forward without forcing their employees to adapt onthe fly — or, worse, to fail.
Focusing on Skills and
Retraining
As the economic recovery from the pandemic gains speed,the emergence of new jobs created explicitly to supportorganizations’ revised strategic directions are inevitable.There are several reasons why it is important for companiesto prioritize employee retention and retraining rather thansimply recruiting new talent for these positions. The costof hiring is often prohibitively expensive. In addition,institutional knowledge is hard-won and difficult to transmitin the short term to new employees via traditionalonboarding. And finally, showing loyalty to employees islikely to increase their own level of commitment to yourorganization. 1 Yet, before retraining employees, it is
incumbent upon leaders to both understand and clearlydefine their organization’s new direction.
What Is My Organization’sNew Direction?With the sheer amount of commentary on the future of the
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workplace being published in leading business outlets, it istempting to jump on the bandwagon and incorporate themyriad recommended changes into your organization. Butit’s important to remember that no two organizations are thesame. This is a mantra that all leaders should repeat overand over in this period of change — change that will be bothrapid and expected, by both employees and customers.
Thus, we recommend that you set aside all the literaturetelling you where to go next (this article included) until youcan answer this question: What is my organization’s newdirection? When you know the answer, that is the time togather additional information and to focus on the followingquestion related to leadership.
Do We Have the RightLeaders in Place to DirectUs?Good leadership is always important, but it is especiallycritical during a change in strategy. Pivot-ready leaders willbe competent communicators and discerning decisionmakers prepared to identify shortcomings in the plan andthe people. The workforce needs to change (quantity, quality,and location) to align with the organization’s changingstrategic direction. To do so, certain skills and competenciesare required. Below are five leadership competencies ofutmost importance to those leaders looking to move theirorganizations forward.
1. S1. Sttrrucuctturaural al annaallysiysis.s. Organizational structure has longbeen under the purview of the executive. Junior and evenmidlevel leaders rarely find themselves with the authorityor perspective needed to change the underlying structure oftheir organization. Now, in this time of fluctuation, whenemployees may work in new locations or in new positions,all leaders must keep their eyes open and recommendchanges to the structure of the organization that might leadto greater efficiencies.
2. C2. Coonnttextextuuaalizinlizing cg chhaannggee.. Change can be scary, and boththe major and minor shifts in the organization have thepower to elicit fear and frustration from employees who
might feel left out of the process. Leaders need tocontextualize these changes and focus on the purpose — thewhy — rather than just the how. Take the time to explainexactly why the organization will return to in-personoperations instead of remote (or vice versa). When leadersput the focus on the purposes of changes, followers willpull with the organization instead of being pulled by theorganization.
3. B3. Buiuildinlding rg reellaattioionnsshihips.ps. Maintaining a sense of communityamong staff members and other stakeholders anddeveloping and maintaining relationships across theorganization can keep employees and managers motivatedand morale positive. Leaders who build these relationshipsare more likely to be seen as likable, a quality that researchshows accounts for much of leaders’ favorability ratings fromsubordinates. 2 The best leaders want the lines of
communication between them and their employees to beopen; strong relationships built on trust and mutualunderstanding will do just that.
4. Em4. Embbracinracing emg emppaatthhyy.. Reskilling employees was a challengeeven before the pandemic. The time and effort required bythe employee to acquire a new skill set (often at the expenseof one they had already achieved mastery over) can becumbersome and draining. Add to this the fact that theremight be conflict if people in some positions are allowedto continue working offsite while others must return to in-person operations. Good leaders will listen to and try towork with employees. The pandemic turned the worldupside down over a year ago, and turning it right-side upmay be just as stressful. Taking the time to listen to thereasons and rationale behind employees’ concerns about theupcoming changes to the organization and to their positionsis how leaders demonstrate empathy and a genuine concernfor their people.
5. P5. Pererssoonnaal rl resiesilienliencece.. Being a leader and a helpful presenceby keeping employees connected and optimistic is not onlychallenging but also leaves little room for personal balance.Leaders need to take care of themselves as well. Maintain abalanced schedule despite the increase of virtual meetings.Manage your time for collaboration, planning, andproduction by setting boundaries between your work andpersonal lives. Actively working toward balance will help
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ensure that leaders remain ready to help the employees theyserve.
Do We Have the RightWorkforce in Place?At this juncture, with an idea of the coming changes andstrategic direction for the next normal, companies andleaders must ask if they have the right people, with the rightskills, to make that vision a reality. If an organization needsto turn right but the talent only knows how to turn left, thenit may be time to pivot your workforce. Instead of forcingyour organization to make three separate left turns just tohead in the correct direction, pivot your workforce to alignyour organization more quickly with your new strategicdirection. Assess the skills needed in the critical roles of theorganization not only for now but looking ahead for the nextthree to five years.
Where Do I Focus My Effortsto Maintain EmployeeEngagement as theOrganization Pivots?Employees are interested in answering two questions: “AmI going to have a job?” and “Am I going to like the job Ihave?” Any change in strategy that propagates changes tothe workplace will make employees wonder whether theirrevised organization has a place for them. If someone isgoing to have a place, it’s incumbent upon leaders tocommunicate that fact.
The second question is whether employees will like theirpotentially “new” jobs. Will the pivot in strategy move themaway from what they loved about their previousresponsibilities? Further, will a change in venue — fromwork to home — be something they want? Likewise, if theirvenue does not change, will they be able to accept a return tothe workplace?
How Do I Communicate Thisto My Employees?The key to maintaining employee engagement is constantand bidirectional communication. Ask questions. Listen tothe answers. Provide information. Listen to people’sconcerns. This approach was easier when conversationshappened naturally; quick chats in the hallways or in theminutes before a meeting started allowed everyone to catchup and build camaraderie. With the potential for large-scalechanges, leaders need to get ahead of the rumors, and asSimon Sinek popularized, start with why.
Leaders need not have a concrete plan for their pivot beforebriefing their subordinates. This approach certainlyunnerves those leaders who feel it is their responsibility tomap out the way forward in its entirety. Yet, if leaders knowa pivot is necessary, this may be the time to explain to theentire organization why it is necessary. This approach givesemployees the opportunity to join the leadership in movingtoward a goal. Additionally, brave leaders will seek feedbackfrom those who will be doing the footwork associated withpivoting. Employees may see something leaders do not, and,if given the opportunity, many will feel empowered to sharethat information.
Additionally, leaders should embrace one-on-one leadershipwith their direct reports. Use short meetings, eitherimpromptu or scheduled, to maintain your personalconnections across your team to avoid feeling disconnectedfrom your employees. Make time to connect with them ina way that is both meaningful and genuine. This is not thetime for delivering news about upcoming changes but ratheran opportunity to listen and understand employees’ currentchallenges, fears, and aspirations.
The workplace will be different when the world reopens,but one constant is the people within organizations gettingthe work done — whether in person or from home. To bestprepare your organization, consider how to pivot yourpeople now, so that when the redesigned doors to yourphysical office building open again, everyone knows not onlywhat they are doing but also where the organization is going.
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About the Authors
Curtis L. Odom is an executive professor of managementin the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at NortheasternUniversity in Boston. Away from the classroom, he is themanaging partner at Prescient Strategists, a distinguishedprincipal researcher at The Conference Board, and a councilmember of the Forbes Coaches Council. Charn P. McAllisteris an assistant professor of management in the W.A. FrankeCollege of Business at Northern Arizona University andcoauthor of Political Skill at Work: How to Influence,Motivate, and Win Support (Nicholas Brealey Publishing,2020).
References
1.1. C. McAllister and G. Ferris, “The Call of Duty: A Duty DevelopmentModel of Organizational Commitment,” in “Research in Personnel andHuman Resources Management,” vol. 34, eds. M.R. Buckley, J.R.B.Halbesleben, and A.R. Wheeler (Bingley, England: Emerald Publishing,2016): 209-244.
2.2. M. Martinko, J. Mackey, S. Moss, et al., “An Exploration of the Role ofSubordinate Affect in Leader Evaluations,” Journal of Applied Psychology103, no. 7 (July 2018): 738-752.
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Figuring Out Social Capital IsCritical for the Future ofHybrid WorkJennifer J. Deal and Alec Levenson
The networks of employee relationships have been depleted during the
pandemic, but companies can address this by focusing on three key areas
in their return-to-work plans.
For many companies, the early months of the pandemic andthe transition to remote work led to a jump in productivity.Despite the uncertainty and volatility of the global crisis— not to mention the seemingly constant Zoom calls —many teams were enabled by a strong foundation of socialcapital that had been established by previous long-termcollaboration and in-person interactions.
Established social capital made it relatively easy to shift toremote work without losing a sense of the largerorganizational context. But over time, organizations shift inthe way they function — even ones where many employeesare working remotely — as the economic situation evolvesand teams are disbanded and reformed to address changing
competitive landscapes.
An unfortunate side effect of persistent remote work duringthe pandemic has been that social capital networks withinorganizations have weakened, making it harder for peopleto maintain the same high level of productivity. Concernabout this phenomenon was voiced early on, in May 2020,by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who noted that peoplehad been very productive initially following the quick shiftto remote work but that “maybe we are burning some ofthe social capital we built up [while not working remotely]in this phase where we are all working remote.” What wesaw collectively in the following months of last year andcontinuing into this year is that the social capital depletionwas and is real.
When thinking about returning to the office — whetherin person full time or a hybrid model — we recommendthat leaders think strategically about how their plans addressthree key areas: strengthening weak ties, building socialcapital in new teams, and onboarding employees.
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Why Weak Ties Matter in
Organizations
The fabric of an organization’s social capital erodes if it isnot shored up with consistent interaction that develops andbuilds on weak ties. Strong ties can form among long-standing team members, where common work and a sharedhistory help create more lasting bonds. However, these typesof ties are not isolated to one’s team or business unit; often,common interests with others in the organization createopportunities for more frequent interaction. Withinorganizations, weak ties may develop between people whorarely interact with each other or who don’t share commonwork, responsibilities, or interests. These are people whodon’t rely on each other professionally or socially but seeeach other in the hallway or at the proverbial water cooler inthe organization.
At the beginning of the transition to remote work, alreadyestablished ties (both weak and strong) facilitated continuedeffectiveness, quick decision-making, and adjustments thatsupported teams’ productivity. After a few months ofworking at a distance, however, most weak ties had eroded,although individuals continued to have strong ties withthose they worked with directly. These strong ties enabledteams and work assignments to proceed in the new normalof remote work and highlighted how strong ties withinteams facilitated work regardless of where it happened.
When employees switched to working from home, manymanagers were concerned that the lure of laundry and dishesand the lack of anyone looking over employees’ shoulderswould result in reduced productivity. Instead, employeeswere pleased with their increased productivity as theybenefited from a nonexistent commute and fewer of theregular interruptions and distractions one might encounterin an office.
But as their time out of the office lengthened, team membersbegan to feel more isolated and realized that interacting withcoworkers they were only acquainted with was somethingthey missed. Formal meetings didn’t provide the same typeof connection, context, or understanding of what washappening in the organization that the hallway
conversations in between in-person meetings had provided.
One advantage of the physical workplace is that informalinteractions between people with weak ties support asignificant flow of information in organizations. Whileconnections among people who have strong ties havecontinued throughout the pandemic via technology,interactions across weak ties have suffered significantlybecause there are fewer easy ways to initiate these oftenchance encounters when working remotely.
What has become clear is that the joy in the efficiency ofnot being forced by context to have these side conversationsisn’t necessarily improving organizational efficiency, becausethese side conversations end up being the catalyst that helpsorganizations move more quickly and easily. What waslargely hidden from view before is now highlighted by itsabsence: When people aren’t having hallway and watercoolerconversations, a lot of relationships that normally formthrough serendipity stop forming. These side conversationsthat help organizations move more quickly are facilitated bythe weak ties that build up over time among people whohave frequent, repeated, incidental interactions with oneanother — the kind of interactions that happen when peopleinhabit the same space but don’t happen when they do not.
This presents an issue for organizations, because the socialcapital held in weak ties supports work across silos, groups,and organizations. It turns out that the “informalorganization” is largely constructed of the weak ties thatneed frequent strengthening to retain their functionality.Leaders need to think about how they’re going to improvethis social capital and, if employees are going to continueto work remotely, how they’re going to invest in the socialcapital of weak ties, not just the social capital involved inintact or changing workgroups.
Forming Teams in the New
Normal
One side effect of the coronavirus crisis is a forcedexperiment for most organizations in onboarding new teamsremotely. Examples from this past year suggest that whenteammates can’t convene in person for a first meeting,having everyone online for that initial meeting can level the
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playing field and create a more equitable environment thanwhen some members are physically colocated and others areremote. In fact, many members of new teams have told usthat this past year, they felt truly integrated into a new teamfrom the beginning for the first time.
Another important aspect of team onboarding, getting toknow one’s teammates, has also seen some positive sideeffects from the virtual environment. In order to get workdone, teams have been forced to coalesce when none of theteam members are together face to face. For global teams,this has been a particularly advantageous learningopportunity. According to one leader we spoke with who isfrequently a part of global teams, this process has served asan equalizer, because everyone has had to meet online andno one has had to travel. This leader felt that new employeeswere more fully and quickly integrated into the team becauseeverybody was meeting in the same way.
It’s possible that newly formed global teams will want tobegin the teaming process remotely post-pandemic, so thateveryone has a similar opportunity to contribute. Whilepeople might complain that that approach is suboptimal,given that most global teams don’t meet face to face as awhole before work begins, this more equitable approach mayin fact result in stronger performance.
Onboarding as a Critical
Component of Workforce
Development
One concern for organizations is the loss of implicitknowledge transfer from established employees to thosewho are onboarding through regular interactions in theoffice. While new employees can learn technical processesand systems via virtual onboarding meetings, it is muchmore challenging to pick up on subtle subtext, politicalnorms, and insights into organizational behavior withoutbeing able to observe it daily in person.
This is a difficult situation for all new employees, and itis particularly problematic for young people entering theworkforce. As we know from our research, those who arenewer to the workforce often must contend with squaring
their outside expectations of how an organization is run withtheir eventual understanding of how it actually functions ona day-to-day basis. 1
An online onboarding environment also does not facilitateyounger employees having incidental interactions withleaders at other levels and in other departments. As a result,this cohort of the workforce risks missing out on a crucialpart of their organizational career development: first-handobservation of the subtleties of how organizations run andhow leaders act and interact with others. For this reason, webelieve that it is critically important to get young people intothe office alongside their older peers, who can help mentorthem and improve their knowledge of the organizationalcontext.
Part of the issue with remote onboarding for young peoplewho are new to the workforce is that they don’t know whatthey don’t know about how organizations work. Newemployees who do have more substantial organizationalexperience should have a better idea of what they don’tknow; although they may miss the implicit knowledgetransfer, they likely have a better idea of what questionsto ask to fill in the gaps between formal onboarding andimplicit knowledge. Such employees have a better idea ofwhat information about organizational norms may bemissing from a virtual onboarding process and can seek outthe information they think they need.
Principles to Think About
With the Return to Work
As companies begin to strategize their post-pandemicplanning — whether it is a return to mostly in person,remote, or a hybrid mix of the two — there are a fewprinciples that we recommend leaders consider whenmaking decisions about return-to-work procedures.
ThinThink ak abboouut tt thhe oe oppppoorrttuniunitties ties to deo devveelolop wp weeaak tk ties.ies. Westrongly recommend that leaders prioritize theopportunities for employees to develop weak ties. Whilethere are obvious efficiency arguments for bringing peopleback only to work in teams that have specific work theyneed to accomplish together, leaders need to think about
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the benefits weak ties have for the efficiency of the overallorganization. Therefore, when planning how and when tohave people in the office, leaders need to include time thatboth allows groups who work together to interact face toface effectively to get work done and facilitates interactionsamong those who don’t necessarily depend on one anotherfor work. Maximizing the opportunity for the developmentof weak ties to improve the social capital of the network ofthe organization is important both for the employees whowere in place before the pandemic and for new employees.While it is especially critical for those new to theorganization, in truth everyone — and especially theorganization overall — benefits when they have theopportunity for incidental interactions with others.
MMaakke oe onnlinline te teeaam fm foorrmmaattioion a sn a sttaannddaarrdd.. Another area werecommend that organizational leaders think about verycarefully is how teams form. This means preparing for afuture optimized for flexibility and hybrid workenvironments. Rather than returning to the status quo whereteams, even ones that may not work together regularly inperson, form via face-to-face kickoff events, it is arguablybetter to have new teams meet wholly online in thebeginning.
We know of one division within an organization that hasmade the decision that all team meetings where everyonecannot be face to face will now be held online. Rather thanhaving part of the group together in a room in person whilethe rest of the group is online, they’ve found that the teamfunctions better, and all members of the team can contributemore equally, when every individual attends the meetingvirtually on their own screen. We encourage leaders to thinkabout how they can maximize contributions of all teammembers, regardless of where they are.
SSuuppppoorrt yt yoounungger emer empploloyyeees in tes in thhe oe orrgaganizanizattioion.n. Companiesand leaders have many considerations ahead for theiremployees in a time of hybrid work, but they should be sureto prioritize younger onboarding employees’ developmentin their return-to-work planning. These employees haveunique needs in a remote environment and will needproactive support and mentoring in order to gain theirfooting in the organization when daily observation,apprenticeship, and face-to-face interaction may no longer
be the norm.
We recommend that any in-person solutions leaders comeup with include the opportunity for young people to interactboth with one another and with older, more experiencedmentors. While it is important that new employees bondtogether as peers, it is also critical that they have the chanceto develop relationships with established staff members whocan provide real answers to their questions aboutorganizational norms and culture.
Organizations must continue to balance managing the manyongoing effects of the pandemic while at the same timetransitioning to a work pattern that includes more in-personcontact. In the end, organizations and employees will bemost productive if they can leverage all that has been learnedin the past year about effective remote work and focus in-person work solutions in the areas that need the mostsupport.
About The Authors
Jennifer J. Deal and Alec Levenson are both senior researchscientists at the Center for Effective Organizations in theMarshall School of Business at the University of SouthernCalifornia (@CEOusc). Dr. Deal (@JenniferJDeal) is acontributor to The Wall Street Journal’s “Experts” panel onleadership, and her research and consulting focus on thehuman side of work. Dr. Levenson’s (@alec_levenson)research and consulting work optimizes organizationalperformance through work design, analytics, and strategictalent management.
References
1.1. J.J. Deal and A. Levenson, “What Millennials Want From Work: Howto Maximize Engagement in Today’s Workforce” (New York: McGraw-HillEducation, 2016).
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