The future of work is coming to an office near you all too soon. We must prepare. And please, no more of these little #hacks like an app that reminds you to water the plants. No. #WorkHacks are fundamental, profound.
Here are 10 #WorkHacks to embrace and own. Then, lead others through them. Click the headlines for the full story on each.
1. #WorkHacks – Create Serendipity By Reducing Bathrooms
Serendipity implies things happening due to forces beyond your control. Yes, but no. You can create serendipity in your workplace through office design.
2. #WorkHacks – Be Kid Curious
Curiosity is the child’s genius – in their intrigue with understanding the world around them, they make new synapsual connections unique in the world.
As we age, most of us lose the ability to remain curious. Instead, we learn patterns and repeat them, unquestioningly. I shared Peter Matthiessen‘s bewitching hope that we can all become seekers.
So, how do we ‘become seekers’?
3. #WorkHacks – Socialize
This one is simple. The Cluetrain Manifesto got it dead right 15 years ago: “All markets are conversations.” It will be several more years before all businesses understand this, but why not get ahead of the curve and get involved?
“Participation changes people fundamentally,” Cluetrain counsels, so be prepared to work differently, be prepared for new, uncharted journeys, perhaps even quantum change.
4. #WorkHacks – Choose to Belong
Similar to ‘being social,’ choosing to belong is about moving out into the world and finding interesting nodes in your network, and then doing something about it. Coalesce around an idea, a belief, a movement. Make something happen, enact change – with partners in crime.
Doing so with others, you are much more likely to succeed than working alone, atomized and isolated from your network of goodwill. The lone genius is overrated.
This @gapingvoid cartoon is probably the one that has had the most influence on my career. Reading it was an ‘Aha!’ moment – I need to work out loud, reach out to like-minded souls, participate and ask for help. It is not all up to me – it is up to the network.
6. #WorkHacks – Get Some Hustle
I have written about hustle before. Just as you need to get into the flow of ideas and networks, you need some hustle to strike when the opportunity arises. Hustle and flow is a great combination of attributes to possess – and is a basic tenet of the TMWK Manifesto.
7. #WorkHacks – Think Like Millennials
#WorkHacks are about preparing for the new work place, one which is social, networked, entrepreneurial. Millennials will fit right in – the future of work is their workplace. So, the rest of us should think more like Millennials too. So they do not destroy us.
8. #WorkHacks – Learn To Learn
In one generation, knowledge workers have lost their mind! Researchers have even found that Millennials have rewired neural mapping – whereas old geezers like me map a neural pathway to where we store knowledge in our brain; a Millennial uses the same neural pathway mapping to recall where they can go and find that data again (i.e. on the internet). They have outsourced their knowledge management circuitry.
Attention, Class!
- Learn
- Unlearn
- Relearn
- Repeat.
9. Chaos is something many of us should learn to embrace, to move toward. It’s tough, because many of us also tend to think like this:
Please radically improve everything but don’t change anything.
But, as Eric Shinseki says,
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
10. #WorkHacks – Put Yourself First
Putting yourself first is not about ego, not about me-me-me. No. It is about moving out into the world with conviction and self-awareness, to confirm to others ‘This is how I add value.’
What are your #WorkHacks? How will you survive the end of times?
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