Work Different

CHAPTER 1Goodbye Employees, Hello Contributors

Work Different

By the time businesses (kind of) (sort of) figured out how to navigate the pandemic, approximately 50% of the worldwide workforce found itself, as Steve Jobs might have said (with his creative use of grammar), working different.¹

For those who had already worked remotely—be it at home, at a café, or in a local park near a router from which WiFi could be easily stolen—it was just a matter of rearranging their schedule. Work‐from‐home newbies, however, had to set up their workspace, upgrade their technology, and figure out how to simultaneously make their daughter a grilled cheese sandwich while leading an international Zoom meeting. The truth was that we humans all learned to be more enterprising, while enterprises started to become more human.

Looking back, this all seemed simple, even quaint.

Back then, not so much.

Those who had to work in an office during the pandemic were faced with challenges of their own. When do I wear a mask? How often should I get tested? How close is too close? If I'm exposed to the virus but I don't have symptoms and I've tested negative multiple times, should I stay home?

Again, today, that all seems relatively simple. Again, at the time, not so much.

But clever companies adapted. (We like to think we adapted well because we like to think we're clever.) Adaptation was not only born out of necessity, but also because there was a real opportunity to innovate and to accelerate our thinking ...