9/9/2020 Coronavirus has transformed work but risks snuffing out a creative spark | Financial Times

Special Report Future of the Workplace

Opinion Future of work

Coronavirus has transformed work but risks snuffing out a creative spark
We adapted fast to remote working — now we must fight for moments that drive innovation

LYNDA GRATTON

© Getty Images/EyeEm

Lynda Gratton MAY 21 2020

The future of work is now — at least that is how it seems. We have ticked lots of boxes
in recent weeks . . .

More working from home — tick. Working flexible hours — tick. Fewer commutes —
tick. Less time in face-to-face meetings — tick. Fathers spending more time at home
with their children and family — tick. Becoming more like a “digital native” — tick.
Reaching out to our communities — tick. Executives empathising with employees’
domestic situations — tick. We have also had experiences we had not expected: home
schooling our kids, physical separation from our friends, only virtual meetings with
colleagues.

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9/9/2020 Coronavirus has transformed work but risks snuffing out a creative spark | Financial Times

During this short period of time we have altered a host of attitudes, behaviours and
skills which will inform our future. To get a sense of the evolution of these attitudes,
since March 17 (day one for me) I have kept a diary, written a series of columns, ran a
number of webinars, and polled executives every week or two. Here is what I have
found.

Many of us have been amazed at how quickly we became digitally agile and how our
home-based technologies have (mostly) held up. Indeed, in a poll I ran on March 18 as
part of the London Business School webinar series, only 2 per cent of the 3,000
participants responded “I find the technology frustrating”. I wonder if even five years
ago we would have had the same experience. These digital lessons have created
competencies and attitudes that will be the foundations for how we adapt in the
future.

We have also learnt a great deal about home

working and deepened our understanding of
The most popular individual circumstances. Working from a
response ticked in the home office alongside a working partner (as I
poll was ‘I miss the social am) is not the same as being a working
interaction of the office’ parent with home-schooling responsibilities.
Nor is my experience the same as being
crammed into a small apartment with others.
We have learnt viscerally what studies have shown: that home workers can be more
productive if — and only if — they have an undisturbed working routine and a
functioning home office.

Along the way many of us have realised how much we missed contact with others. In
my March 18 poll the most popular response ticked was “I miss the social interaction
of the office” — and that has only increased since.

How will these experiences, discoveries and feelings inform our adaptation in the near
future? There is certainly much we do not know. But we do know that a damaging
economic contraction is certain, and so inevitably strategic business focus will be on
cost savings and productivity. It is that subtle combination of adaptation and
productivity that must be the target of executive action.

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9/9/2020 Coronavirus has transformed work but risks snuffing out a creative spark | Financial Times

It is clear that executives must act fast to build fair and reasonable working practices.
That will mean tackling the challenge of remote working by supporting the creation of
home offices, understanding the particular situation of each employee and enabling
those with caring responsibilities to establish blocks of time in which they are “on”
and “off”. We all need to become more sophisticated in how we use our new-found
digital tools and skills so as not to be overwhelmed by the “always on” approach many
of us have taken.

What of productivity? We have very little

hard evidence of the impact of the pandemic
We all need to become on this. My hypothesis is that, when faced
more sophisticated in with accelerating deadlines, the dismantling
how we use our new- of some bureaucratic processes and widening
found digital tools and of new digital skills, productivity may have
skills so as not to be increased in some jobs — and certainly not

overwhelmed decreased to the extent we might have

imagined. We are an adaptable species and
our capacity to work round situations when
under pressure is extraordinary. In a poll I
ran on May 7 with executives from 42 companies in 19 countries I heard pretty much
that — 47 per cent believed that productive collaboration seemed stronger.

What concerns me is not short-term productivity but the threat to longer-term

creative and innovative capacity. Here’s why. Small, fast-moving and digitally-enabled
virtual teams are able to exploit the knowledge held among members that fuels speed
and productivity. Yet this is rarely the route to innovation. Instead innovation comes
from “novel combinations”, the basis of which are serendipity and chance encounters.
These encounters are often face to face and rarely structured — they are the “water
cooler” conversations.

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9/9/2020 Coronavirus has transformed work but risks snuffing out a creative spark | Financial Times

Paul Nurse structured the Crick Institute to promote creative collaboration between different 'tribes' of scientists © David Parry
That is why, for example, when Nobel laureate Paul Nurse created the organisational
structure of the Francis Crick Institute in London, he deliberately brought together
more than 1,300 research scientists in a single building. As he told me last year: “It’s a
discovery process, getting different tribes working together, being truly creative.”

Before the pandemic, face-to-face encounters were the norm. For perhaps a couple of
years to come, they will become a rare and precious asset. The challenge we face now
is learning how to make the very most of these. To ensure that in a world that
desperately needs creativity and innovation, we do not inadvertently stifle it.

Lynda Gratton is professor of management practice at London Business School. Her

most recent book (co-authored with Andrew Scott) and out this month is “The New
Long Life — a Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World”.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2020. All rights reserved.

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