ORLANDO, Fla. — The pandemic has lasted for 714 days, but it takes only 66 days to form a habit, speaker Heather McGowan said in “The Adaptation Advantage: Thriving in the Great Reset” at the recent Convenience Retailing University in Orlando, Fla.
“We’re not going back,” she said.
The pandemic made us question where we work, said McGowan, a Forbes magazine contributor and future-of-work strategist. “Will it continue to be a common place?” she asked. “Maybe it will be a common virtual place.”
In a slide pointing out who works, it showed the workforce is getting older, more diverse and more female. For instance, in 1994 those 55 and older comprised 12% of the workforce. By 2024 they will comprise 25%. Similarly, white non-Hispanics were 76% of the workforce in 1994 but are expected to be 60% in 2024. Women, who were 30% of the workforce in 1950, made up 47% in 2020.
However, because of women bearing the brunt of having to stay home during the pandemic due to child-care issues, there are 10 million academic degrees “sitting on the sidelines due to women not working,” she said.
DEI
Related to this data is how people think about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). “It was an HR strategy, but now it’s a business strategy,” said McGowan, who showed a slide of Fortune 500 companies, with Casey’s General Stores checking in at 371. While this ranking always showed financial data, now Fortune is partnering with a company called Measure Up to include diversity and inclusion metrics, she said.
“Investors want that information now because they know that if the inside of the organization looks like the market you’re serving, you’re likely to be more successful,” she said. “Study after study after study has proven that, whether it’s in teams trying to solve a problem, or at leadership levels making decisions, or board levels, you need to look like the market you’re serving. It’s interesting that Casey’s is 371 in financial but 256 in Measure Up, so they’re doing pretty well there,” she said.
Another slide asked, “What is work?” McGowan answered that humans are going through the greatest velocity of change in human history, driven primarily by exponential growth in technology.
“When the pandemic first came out in early March [2020], I wrote an article in Forbes that this might be the greatest catalyst for business transformation in history,” she said. “I thought change would accelerate and time would compress. I didn’t realize how much it would. We’re in person now, some might be streaming, but do you realize that the technology you’re using is 10 to 20 years old? Digital transformation is simply human transformation. The tools are out there. I spoke to a CIO group, and they said the tools are easy, it’s the humans that are hard. That’s true. That’s why digital transformation is human transformation.”
The pandemic in some ways has compressed time and accelerated change, and the automating of tasks is projected to increase 50% by 2025, she said. While vaccine development usually takes 15 years, the Covid-19 vaccine took just 10 months. “How? We were motivated and had worldwide collaboration,” she said. “Collaboration and technology will be an ongoing theme.”
High Performance
Segueing to how people work, McGowan brought up a Google study examining what makes the highest-performing teams, studying 180 groups over two years.
“The No. 1 determiner of success was those who can establish ‘psychological safety’—they had a huge advantage—which is the ability to say, ‘I need help,’ or, ‘Respectfully, I question the direction we’re going,’ or, ‘I see things differently,’ or, ‘I think we need to stop and rethink where we’re going’. ”
In addition to psychological safety, there are other keys to the success of a team:
- Dependability—“Everyone on the team is accountable and no one’s checking out,” she said.
- The mission or project is clear and not ambiguous. “It has meaning and potentially will have an impact on the world,” she said.
- The project connects to the individual team members’ values and sense of purpose.
“But,” McGowan said, “psychological safety was essential.”
McGowan then showed a slide of a Guinness world record of 47 people on a surfboard in Long Beach, Calif., in 2015. They lasted just 12 seconds.
“This is what work is going to feel like: My movement affects your movement, your movement affects my movement, we’re balancing together, we’re inextricably linked,” she said. “That’s how we have to start thinking about work.”