Napoleon Hill once said “Focus on the possibilities for success, not on the potential for failure.”
Corona has permanently changed the world of work and a large part of these changes will remain with us even after the end of the pandemic. In addition to the question of the “where” of the physical workplace, the main thing to deal with is the “how” of our future cooperation.
The new world of work, dubbed ‘home office’, is in all likelihood the new normal, because in the history of mankind it has never voluntarily regressed. The work that is decoupled from the physical workplace will remain, no matter how long we as a society still have to deal with the corona virus, ”says Vladislav Vodatinskij, CEO of business consulting and project management company ENGINEC.
Remote work as new business model
In business consulting, Vladislav Vodatinskij has extensive knowledge and expertise. ENGINEC, a German consulting company, was the brand under which he began his entrepreneurial career. His area of expertise is business counselling.
It’s his mission to provide European companies with the greatest business advice and show them how to operate a profitable business. According to him, any project must be launched with a clear vision and drive. You’ll never succeed at anything unless you’re driven. Set short- and medium-term goals so that you are well-versed in the facts and the strategies. That will make your route to attaining your goals much simpler.
Work with the accessible resources under the offered market to get information of your capabilities.
All new businesses and start-ups had difficulty acquiring supplies and conducting research during the epidemic. A virtual working and consulting model was born. Vladislav gives remote consulting to companies worldwide who need his assistance in digitalization and automation projects.
Vladislav’s clients now have the option of getting business-related consulting without having to travel to a consultant’s office (or virtually). Many individuals were assisted by this, since many who were struggling throughout the epidemic were given a ray of hope.
Vladislav prospered in his own consulting firm by being available remotely or virtually, not just for the benefit of his clients, but also for his own business.
Numerous others have benefited from his market-related advice, and he hasn’t slowed down yet. In addition, he continues to serve as a resource for customers in need of market-related and budget-friendly guidance. He’s your go-to guy for business-related questions that can’t be dealt with remotely.
Home office: companies have to adapt
While some are happy about the new flexibility and the time savings due to the lack of commuter times, others see the delimitation of work time and the final mixing of private life and work with mixed feelings. Entrepreneurs are already thinking about the optimization potential of the office space: At least 20 percent reduction is in the room. At the same time, however, employers are afraid of losing control and worry about the efficiency of their organization.
Much is still unclear – simply because we haven’t had much experience and because we mistakenly view the current work structure as a temporary state. A few key changes can already be observed today:
- A new role for employees: In most companies, work organization is still hierarchical and Taylorist. The boss thinks and the employees act on instructions. This goes hand in hand with the fact that a manager is the central information and delegation hub. In the new, decentralized work structure, this role is difficult to carry out, especially when the course of business is very dynamic. In practice, this leads to the currently well observable density of coordination, which in some places gives the feeling that day-to-day business is dominated by countless small-scale video and telephone conferences and that the actual added value is being neglected. The current situation accelerates changes in the organization that are necessary anyway: new organizational charts, process processes and job profiles.
Organizational units must learn to focus more on the delegation of roles and responsibilities and, instead of narrow limits in compliance, allow broader powers of attorney so that employees can make decisions more freely within the scope of their roles and responsibilities. - A new role for management: The management of daily work is consequently changing from ad hoc and on-demand dynamics to a more stable, more independent work culture. In this world of work, management places a stronger focus on regular communication (status calls, coordination meetings, jour fixes, etc.) so that the flow of communication in the organization remains upright – apart from operational decisions that are the responsibility of the employees themselves.
The core tasks of management are now the planning of resources, i.e. the budget, capacities and framework conditions. At the same time, the manager is free to take on new areas of responsibility that are becoming more and more important. - A new leadership culture: The current change in the personal influence of executives condenses a trend that has been observed for a good ten years. Managers are challenged in their empathic role, the functional role (“servant management”) is reduced to the activities described above. This makes it all the more important to pick up, integrate and activate employees emotionally in the dislocated work structure. The sense of togetherness, the social bond of colleagues, the activation of talents and the team performance dynamics are undeniably the focus of the skills and activities of executives.
In practice, this consolidation of trends that can already be recognized beforehand means that the Corona crisis gives managers the chance to position themselves well for developments that would soon have required their attention anyway: The change from leadership to individually coordinated influence on employees with the objective to keep active, motivated and efficient team members in the work flow.
“Even if Corona has brought many changes faster than we would like, this crisis can help us to develop companies further and make them fit for the future,” says Vodatinskij.