The virus has changed the very nature of work for many people – they are working at home.
Companies realize that many of those at home will continue to do so. It saves on office space and associated costs. It reduces the number of people at work to allow others to distance themselves; making the environment safer.
Those people at home are more autonomous. What does that mean? You have to trust them differently than before when we were able to watch them and help them make decisions.
But, many people are not fully trained to be autonomous. I work at home and spend at lot of time on zoom. I call people often and can’t find them as easily as I did in the past when they worked in an office. What are they doing?
In 1981, I found Ryuji Fukuda in Japan and published his book Managerial Engineering. In it he used an analogy: visualize people in a boat, 20% are rowing hard, 80% are coasting with them and 20% are overboard, not rowing at all.
Which of those can be autonomous. Which one are you?
Management of autonomous people is totally different. How do you know measure their performance? Do you care how they use their time?
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