The following excerpt is transcribed from The Future Of Now event that took place on 11 March 2021.

Key points

• In today’s work environment, we can start by asking what it might look like to be in a world where work wasn’t a place where people are disengaged, but rather a place where we get to wake up and live our best and ideal day.
• As you begin to understand how you work and when you work at your best, you can then look more closely at what you find meaningful and why.
• It is important to acknowledge that we don’t have the same focus and attention skills as everyone, nor do we have the same type of energy in terms of managing it, directing it, and being discerning with it.

 

Speaker

Jonas Altman

Jonas Altman is a writer, facilitator, and coach on a mission to make work more human. He’s the founder of the design practice Social Fabric where helps individuals and teams do their best work. Altman is the author of the Amazon bestselling book SHAPERS: Reinvent the way you work and change the future and his chronicles have appeared in The Guardian, Quartz, Fast Company, and The Sunday Times. 

 

What is meaning and why meaning at work matters

“Meaning took me to a different place, because meaning binds time. It takes the past and the present and the future and puts them into this beautiful concoction.”
— Jonas Altman

 

In a 2017 Harvard Business Review Meaning and Purpose at Work Report, 2,285 professionals across 26 industries were surveyed for the purpose of analysing and quantifying the value of meaningful work. One of the findings from this survey saw that more than nine out of ten employees were “willing to trade a percentage of their lifetime earnings for greater meaning at work.” More specifically, 23% of their earnings.

In today’s work environment, we can start by asking what it might look like to be in a world where work wasn’t a place where people are disengaged, but rather a place where we get to wake up and live our best and ideal day. What would it look like to have time for family, friends, collaboration, and creativity to perform at your very best?

 

Designing meaning

The modern way of working has created a ‘productivity paradox’ where we are overworked and overwhelmed in the name of increasing productivity, yet see stagnant or even declining levels of productivity instead.  

The eudaimonia machine, developed by David Dewane, has been determined as the architecturally ideal office concept for “deep work” — designed for occupants to move through designated spaces as they follow the flow of inspiration, conversation, research, light work and deep work. However, many of us are likely not in the position of re-doing our office layouts. 

Individually, we can take steps towards design meaning by creating the following habits to optimise our time and energy:

• Stop checking your phone when you wake up.
• Embrace nap time.
• Let go of the ‘inbox zero’ mentality.
• Avoid multitasking.

We can then take an audit of our energy by noting how we wish to spend our time. This starts by asking:

• What attitude do we take towards our work in our day? 
• How competent are we in those things that we set out to do? 
• What resources, both inner resources and access to support and external resources, do we have?
• What creative constraints have we put on ourselves?

From a more biological level, our cortisone, testosterone and melatonin levels can also affect how we work. Understanding their natural flow throughout the day, along with your chronotype can also help identify the different levels in activity and alertness in the morning and evening. On top of this, chronobiology can also help you understand your natural internal clock and when you work at your best.

 

Finding meaning

“[It is] about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying”.
— Studs Terkel on Working

People are increasingly choosing companies that offer meaningful work, value alignment, and supportive, healthy workplace cultures. As you begin to understand how you work and when you work at your best, you can then look more closely at what you find meaningful and why. Ask yourself: 

• What has my attention?
• Why do I do what I do? 
• How can I scale what I do or make a bigger contribution? 
  • What support and resources do I need to lean on? 
  • What do I need to skill up in or experiment with to make a bigger contribution?

 

Our sense of self

It is important to acknowledge that we don’t have the same focus and attention skills as everyone, nor do we have the same type of energy in terms of managing it, directing it, and being discerning with it. Therefore, it is critical that we start by managing our energy, which is related to finding joy and meaning, then look at our capacity to express ourselves through our work, or our sense of self. 

As the world shifts and changes we should use this as a signal to adapt and evolve in our practice. To find meaning at work, it has to be more than a means of survival. At a base level this means that we need to accept that it is about the journey, and the practice of work. Not the ever shifting destination of a title or salary.

 

What examples have you observed from companies that are making life better to support and nurture their Shapers? Some of the trends you have observed?

JA: There’s a leadership style, which is, eyes on hands off, and when there’s no workplace, it’s very hard to have eyes on unless you’re overcompensating with Slack, and emails. That type of trust goes a long way and these are all becoming what tech companies call results-oriented work environments. A lot of tech companies have been pioneering this for a long time, but I think it’s something that a lot of companies can adopt. 

Another thing is seeing vulnerability as a strength. The idea that we know what Quarter Three is going to look like, seems absurd to say. Right now, Israel is opening up (after pandemic lockdown) and booking gigs, my friends have booked gigs to go out and party in London, and people in Miami are going on Spring Break. But in other places in the world, this isn’t happening and there are still companies barely staying afloat. So, not being tone deaf and sense checking the well-being of the individual, what the team needs in terms of resources, and also whether the organisation is sailing in the right direction.

What are the key trends you have observed from companies since the pandemic?

JA: In many ways, a company is mimicking an organism. This is not for every company, but as companies scale, they may contract and become fearful and risk averse. In that case, they become a very hard place to create a container for doing your best work, for making your best contribution or for allowing people to be themselves. It’s almost like you’re in a relationship, and there’s emotional or toxic energy. Then what happens is that smart and talented people leave.

On the other side of this, we see companies looking at this period as creative destruction. So like the Great Depression, or the great recession of 2008, they see it as a perfect time to disrupt, pivot, realign, reassess, and reveal. This opens them up to ask and answer questions like ‘Why is it that you do what you do and how can you do it better?  ‘ or ‘How can you create systems and structures that are able to adapt, evolve and be fluid?’ 

That the tension between reliability, predictability, openness and fluidity is what I see the smartest companies doing.

When you coach teams and individuals to have the ‘genuine’ conversation to find alignment and purpose in what they do, beyond the grind, where do you start?

JA: I always start with a check-in or icebreaker because people are people. 

There’s someone I know who was doing consulting work or coaching, and all of the men in this company were sitting on one side of the table. Then just by the simple act of holding a tea ceremony and creating a space for the team to see that, it changed the frequency. The next time they sat down, people would sit next to each other and open up. So that level of a psychologically safe space has to be created, otherwise everything will fall flat. 

After that space is created, there is one little hack called local rules, which are the non-negotiables that can be lived at a local level, even if the organisation doesn’t have the same. Examples of this might be rules like, ‘At all costs, we value openness over secrecy’ or ‘We value championing networks over hierarchy’. It creates little implicit agreements that in some ways cascades across the team. 

So that’s one hack. But I don’t think there’s any one size fits all, because what works for one company doesn’t always work for another.

I’m not gonna say Facebook is the most evil. I know several people who work there, and I think they try really hard, but some of the choices that are made from how it operates and what its effect is, needs some rethinking.

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About The Future Of Now series

Our goal at More Space For Light with The Future of Now (FON) series is to build a community of like-minded passionate professionals. We intend to bring together like-minded professionals to share, inspire, and explore new opportunities for growth. So you can discover new ways of working to bring back into your organisation.
     

   

More about the organisations connected to this event

• morespaceforlight.com.au – A strategy and innovation consultancy specialising in both in-person and/or remote workshops, design programs and Design Sprints.
• MURAL.CO – a remote collaboration whiteboard. With this platform you will supercharge your remote and in-person meetings and workshops.
• hacker.exchange – a global education company that is supercharging the next generation of startups & leaders.