Goodbye, past work. Hello, new work era

It’s time we stopped trying to drag work back to what we used to know and figure out a new way forward.

“I hate it…” she whispers to me.

We’re leaning in over coffees and talking about her new contract. The contract that held so much promise, the one that she’d taken because it was her chance at her dream job.

She’d decided to leave freelancing. The freelance hustle had become wearying. The kids were grown enough now, and she was ready for her next challenge. A contract was a nice way to step out of one world and back into the other. 

It was oh so promising on paper and during the interviews. She’d finally be able to be the leader she’d wanted when she was a young creative. To build a workplace she could be proud of with an innovative and supportive culture.   

Unfortunately, it hasn’t panned out that way.

Instead, my friend describes it as a Burton-esque parody. She’s surrounded by scarcity and a lot of “you gotta want it” cultural rhetoric to justify haphazard and contradictory decision-making. She’s urged to “act like a leader”.  This means ignoring challenges, promoting busy work, and focussing on presenteeism. Working from home “sends the wrong message.” Meetings are the only oasis from the stress of disorganisation and chaos. So much so, they no longer drive the project forward and provide a place to pretend things aren’t crumbling.

Together they huddle, hurtling towards an unreachable deadline, fuelled by overtime, blame, and she’s hating every minute.

“The people are lovely,” she tells me, “I hate seeing what it’s doing to them.”

Even though she’s bloody good at her own job, and gets told continuously she’s “our saving grace”, she still feels powerless. The leadership structure is such it means she can’t make a change.

She’s tried to help, making suggestion after suggestion. Younger workers look up to her, and she feels a sense of duty and a growing sense of guilty shame.

Even her desire to create something wonderful has waned.

“I’ve got my kids to think about,” she says, almost in apology, as she counts down the days.  

The scariest part? Her experience is one of four similar conversations I’ve had with freelancers in the last six weeks.  

She’s far from alone in this story.

Image: dawn photo of the sun rising at Windang beach.

We forgot to notice work has changed  

The approach might be the same, but work isn’t what it used to be. How can it be?

Very few organisations (or people for that matter) have unpacked the trauma of the last five years of major workplace disruption via natural disasters, the pandemic, and lockdowns. We refuse to acknowledge the recession, let alone what it’s like to live and work during late-stage capitalism. Inflation is yet another kick in the guts. And we are ill-prepared for the rate that technology is evolving, or that marketing and social media are devolving.

People, let alone organisations, aren’t equipped to deal with this level of uncertainty.   

Everything – and everyone – is changing.   

Meanwhile, the workers, made up from the dreamers, the doers, the people who do the job but don’t really want to make it their life’s work, the workaholics, the perfectionists, the slackers, the careerists, the bullies, and the bullied; each share a common problem- this is not the way work is meant to be.

We fell in love with work only to have work stay utterly indifferent, even a little malicious, in its dealings.  

Problems beget problems, and levelling up just unlocks even more levels.

There’s only so much ducking you can do when work keeps throwing lemons.

Am I saying work is doomed? No.

Am I saying we’re too exhausted to recover? I, the bobble-headed optimist, don’t believe that either.

But we’re definitely overdue admitting there is a problem. And some good old fashioned reflection, relief, and action planning.

The work we knew is gone. Ironically, we have to rework what it means to be working.

While we’ve been teetering on the edge of varying degrees of earth-shattering calamity, our relationship with work stopped meaning what it used to.

I’ve seen this before in my work with death literacy and disability. There’s a change in the landscape of thinking. You cannot unknow what you now know about life’s meaning.

There is acceptance, too, that you will never get back pre-crisis you. You have to integrate this new version of you. Relearn a shed load of stuff.

And roll with it anew.

That’s a lot to contend with. But if we’re already having our asses handed to us, it also begs the question, what have we got to lose?

Questions to ask yourself:

·       Have you unpacked what your organisation experienced with the natural disasters, pandemic, lockdowns, forced remote work, or inflation yet? Or modified what you’re doing to withstand change like that?

·       Are you making choices to get by, or because you see the purpose behind those decisions?   

·       Are you telling yourself stuff like, “it will go back to normal, eventually?” What is that holding you back from doing?

·       Are you leaning on workers and/or asking them to work a certain way out of habit?

·       Are you managing worker frustration, or are you creating it as a manager?

·       Are you embracing what workers need or are you stuck in resistance mode?

I want my friend (and the many other freelancers I know) to not fear your workplaces and to feel excited about working for you. And to have that initial excitement become validated so they can continue to be inspired to work for you.

Let’s admit our fascination and frustrations with concepts like quiet quitting, slow productivity, working from home, parallel jobs, the gig economy, freelancing, and workplace flexibility are indicators our relationship with work is begging for change. Instead of leaning heavily on out-of-date playbooks, let’s embrace change.   

If you want to see how you can make that happen, reach out to me. I want to work out with organisations that want to zoom out, use a little compassionate enquiry, and facilitate a change to work better with freelancers and contractors (and later, other employees) to build a culture we all need.

I’m experimenting with building a model – and I need organisations brave enough to experiment with me.

Get in touch if you want to build a new era of working alongside me.