Transcriber:

When I moved from New York

to Boston in 1989,

I completely lost my sense of direction.

It wasn't me, though,

it was those winding,

nonsensical Boston roads.

Urban legend has it that in Boston,

they paved over cow paths

to form the very roads we have today.

Now, if you're an urban planner

designing a city from scratch,

you would not base it

on how the cows wandered.

And if you think about it,

that's exactly what we've done with work.

Hundreds of years ago,

in the industrial revolution,

people left their homes

to perform repetitive tasks

in the fixed time and place

of the factory floor.

And when knowledge workers

entered the scene,

we kept the same model,

this time with fixed job descriptions

and fields of cubicles from nine to five.

Even globalization and technology

did little to change the dynamic.

Fixed time, place and job descriptions

are the cow paths of work.

And like cow paths for roads,

it just doesn’t make any sense.

I've been challenging and changing

how companies work for the past 15 years,

starting with my own company,

Boston Consulting Group,
and then with dozens of other
Fortune 500 organizations.

And I have to tell you

something amazing happened to work

during the tragedy of COVID-19,

especially those first weeks and months.

If you remember,

all the low-value work disappeared.

It didn't matter
what your job technically was.

People just worked together

across silos and even companies

to get stuff done wherever,

whenever, however it was needed.

Leaders simply had to trust their people.

They didn't have time

for endless steering committees

or death by PowerPoint.

We just needed to trust people to deliver,

and they did.

So I'm on a mission.

A mission to bottle
these great work practices

and not go back to the old ways.

And yes, of course, I want

to get rid of endless back-to-back zooms

and loneliness and days

that blend into evenings.

But we have to make sure we don't go back

to the rigid, structured, bureaucratic,

sluggish ways that sucked

the joy out of work.

And I have to tell you,

the future of work

is not going to be created
with top-down, opinion-driven edicts

from senior leaders

whose day-to-day realities

don't match those of us dual-career,

time-pressed and income-pressed people.

Of course, senior leaders want to go back.

That worked for them.

But they have to recognize

that for 18 months now,

their people experienced unprecedented

agency, control, flexibility,

trust and accountability.

And people don't want to go back.

And it's this difference in perspective

from senior leaders and their people

that's one of the main reasons

driving so much backlash

to all these return-to-office

announcements over the past months,

with employees venting on social media

and quitting in what’s being called

the “great resignation.”

And employees, I don't blame you.

But before you take

to social media and walk,

try talking to your leaders,

tell them what you loved

about the past 18 months.

Tell them what you want to keep.

They might be more receptive

than you think.

And leaders, let me share three tips --

rather three must-do’s --

to get the future of work right.

Number one, trust your people.

Millions of workers and employees

have proved their trustworthiness

since March 2020.

But even with that,

so many leaders want to go backwards.

As part of the work I do,

I've spoken with hundreds of leaders

over the past 18 months,

and I get some really crazy questions.

One is, "Well, Debbie, how can I tell

if my workers are productive

when they're working from home?"

And I can't help but say,

"Well, how do you know

they were productive

when they were in the office?"

Just because you could see someone,

doesn't mean they're productive.

Or I have to love this, "You know,

when it's safe to go back to the office,

we're going to let people

work from home two days a week,

as long as it's not a Monday or Friday

because we don't trust them

not to slack off and take long weekends."

What does that say

about the culture of trust?

Will there be abusers?

Of course, but they'll be a tiny few.

So why make rules for the vast majority

who've earned your trust every day

for the past 18 months?

A trusting culture will not only attract,

retain and motivate your people,

it'll also save you

a lot of time enforcing rules.

So that's number one.

Trust your people.

Number two, be data-driven.

We all have our opinions

about how work should be done,

and the more senior we are,

the more we're convinced

that our opinions are not just opinion,

but they're fact, they're truth.

But one thing COVID’s taught us

is that people are so different.

I have genetically identical

17-year-old twin boys, Abraham and Boaz,

and I emphasize the point

"genetically identical,"

because these two guys

could not be more different.

Abraham really struggled

when school went online.

He did everything he could

to engineer outdoor,
socially distant get-togethers

because you can't call them

playdates when the boys are 17.

(Laughter)

But his brother, Boaz --

Bo was loving life!

"Ma, this is fantastic!

I don't ever have to leave my bed!"

My boys couldn't be more different,

and so are your workers,

so we must get data.

How? Well, try this.

Get some of your best people

together and ask them,

"What did you love about

these last 18 months?

What did you hate?

If we were to give you a magic wand

and you could create

the perfect work environment for you,

what would your days,

weeks and months look like?"

And then experiment. Yes. Experiment.

So many people are saying COVID's been

the biggest work experiment ever.

I beg to differ.

I'm not a scientist, but I know

that prospective experiments

have hypotheses, control groups,

data collection,
learning loops and revisions.

We didn't do that.

And so now’s the time to experiment.

And we don’t have to wait

until it’s safe to go back to the office.

We could do it now.

Take two teams that do similar work,

let one flex and work whenever

and however they need,

and another, give them fixed times.

You want them online

and you want them working.

And then measure.

Survey them every week.

Everyone says people are oversurveyed.

People are not oversurveyed

when it comes to this topic.

They want to have their opinions heard.

So ask them, "How's it going?

Are you delivering value?

Are you able to collaborate well?

How's your work-life balance?
What do you love? What do you hate?"

And take those learning

and spread them around.

This is new for all of us.

We're not going to get it right

the first, second,

third or even fourth time.

But together with conversation

and data, and experiments,

we're going to learn our way

to a better future of work.

So that's number two.

Number one, trust your people.

Number two, be data-driven.

Here's number three.

Think beyond the schedule.

Guess what? The future of work

is not two days

that you get to work from home.

This is our chance right now

to reimagine, reduce, replace

or even eliminate things

like long commutes,

endless meetings
with too many people there,

recurring meetings that never go away,

synchronous work, silos,

command-and-control leaders,

administrivia --

that's my word for the low-value stuff

that clogs our calendars.

In other words, we could stop

contorting our lives around work,

but we could actually reshape work

to better fit our lives.
So that's number three.

Think beyond the schedule.

And guess what, a lot of companies

are getting it right.

Take Dropbox, for example.

Before COVID, Dropbox only had

three percent of their workers

working from home.

They're now moving forward

with a remote-first model

and trying to push

as much asynchronous work as possible.

And to help collaboration

with their model,

they're setting core collaboration hours

that very slightly by time zone,

so they have four hours a day

when you know everyone is online

in case you need to collaborate.

One of my favorite examples

is the Mr. Cooper Group.

And Mr. Cooper Group's been described

as a mortgage giant no one's heard of.

A lot of their workers,

a large percentage,

are call center operators.

And like many, in the first days of COVID,

they got them all home

safely and successfully.

And guess what?

They were more productive,

and they were happier.

But even with that data,

many on the leadership team

wanted them back in the office

as soon as it was safe to do so.
They just couldn't imagine
call center work

being done from home permanently.

Well, that's where Kelly Ann Doherty,

their amazing Chief

People Officer comes in.

When Kelly Ann and her team

presented their recommendation

for a home-centric working model,

she got a ton of questions.

"Well, Kelly Ann, what about

onboarding and training?"

She said, "Of course, we're going

to get people together for that.

Home-centric doesn't
mean we're never together."

"Well, what about day-to-day

coaching and mentoring?"

"We're experimenting with software

that allows managers

to do that even better."

"Well, what about culture?

Communication? What about --"

And she just stopped them

It was a moment, and she said,

"I know you all

want to go back to your offices.

So do I, but we have to take a minute

to walk in the shoes

of our call center operators.

They are loving the flexibility.

They're saving real money

by not commuting,

and we know this is

a high-turnover population.

Imagine if one of our competitors

is more flexible than us.
How many people are we going to lose?"

And with that, Kelly Ann and her team

had the leadership team on board.

They’re moving forward

with a home-centric model,

and they're investing

in upskilling all of their managers

to be able to coach,
mentor and manage their teams remotely.

And now they're taking

it one step further.

They're tapping into

more flexible talent pools,

like military spouses,

who need a ton of flexibility

when their spouses are deployed.

In other words, Kelly Ann

and the Mr. Cooper Group

are urban planners of the future of work.

They're trusting their people.

They're using data.

They're thinking beyond the schedule

to not go back to the old cow paths

of call center work.

They're making work better

for them, for the company,

the customers and their people.

This is our moment, right now,

to together with our people and our teams

design a future of work

that's more engaging,

more productive and more humane.

Thank you.

(Applause)