Many of us assumed that by now, years into the pandemic, we’d have settled on new structures, practices, and processes for hybrid work. But we haven’t. Instead most companies are stuck in a transitional phase, where little is resolved. Why is it taking us so long to work this out? Because, the author writes, the new world of hybrid work isn’t simply about determining whether everybody should come back full-time to the office. It’s also forcing us to test long-held assumptions about how work should be done and what it even is.
The changes to workplace practices and norms that we’re contemplating could be more significant than anything that’s happened in generations, Gratton writes, and we may need years to fully sort things out. So it’s time for leaders to start thinking differently about the problem and approach it just as they would any other major change in how they do business—by asking tough questions and learning deeply. Gratton surveys recent research on the pros and cons of hybrid work and offers leaders some fundamental questions they can use to guide their organizations into this new phase of redesigning how we work.
I still believe that’s true. But figuring it out will take time—perhaps longer than we expected. That’s because reimagining work is complicated. As we move into the fourth year of the Covid era, organizations and employees alike are finding themselves in an uncomfortably liminal state, unmoored from past ways of working but lacking a sense of how best to move forward. There’s still so much we just don’t know.
As I’ve thought about this problem and the opportunities it presents, I’ve found myself returning to a model that was described decades ago by the organizational psychologist Kurt Lewin. The model predicts that when organizations are faced with an external threat, such as a merger or a new competitor, their firmly established assumptions and norms are put under pressure and begin to “unfreeze.” What follows is a period of uncertainty and transition, during which new assumptions and norms take shape. Eventually they “refreeze.”
That’s what’s happening now, on an enormous scale. When the pandemic hit, our long-standing structures, practices, and processes all unfroze. Old ways of working fell away; we discovered new options for remote and hybrid work; and as Covid restrictions eased, we began to discern which of those options might be worth hanging on to…
