Big Ideas, Big Dreams - Nick Bloom
Economic Spotlight Series
This is the final episode of my ‘Big Ideas, Big Dreams: Economics Spotlight Series’. It’s been a series designed to explore the big economic ideas that have fuelled my big dreams for the world, in the hope that they can do the same for you too.
In this final episode I am so excited and absolutely delighted to share an interview I recently recorded with Professor Nick Bloom.
Nick Bloom is Professor of Economics at Stanford University and studies management practices. Over the last 20 years his studies have included remote work, including more recently a focus on hybrid work. He became very well-known following the early days of the pandemic lockdown because he was one of the few researchers with robust insights about working from home. His 2017 TEDx Talk was an important, accessible study, as we all scrambled to learn how to make the most of working from home and stay productive while office spaces were off limits.
The big idea and big dream - working from home as a win-win-win
Nick Bloom’s big idea and big dream is that we have more economies across the world enabling successful work from home. In the interview you’ll hear how incredibly rare it is for an economist to witness a win-win-win, which is how Nick describes hybrid work. It’s a win for organisations, as they save money, stay productive and competitive, find it easier to attract and retain the people they need, to name just a few benefits. It’s a win for employees because there’s a lot less wasted time commuting, there’s flexibility to manage life’s demands and family commitments, with increased participation rates among women, ethnic minority groups and people with disabilities, showing that more people can access quality work. Finally it’s a win for society and the planet, because we have lower emissions with less need for travel and smaller communities thriving beyond the core of the city centre.
I’ll leave you to watch and listen to the interview yourself. There are so many insights Nick shares in this conversation. I’ve no doubt you’ll be inspired by what you hear and it will ignite your drive to want to lead for a better future of work for you and your workplace too.
How might this big idea influence your work?
People matter
One key insight I took from my conversation with Nick was the importance of people is growing inside the top businesses of the world. Working from home is here to stay and is likely to grow over the medium term, as new technology emerges to make our virtual and asynchronous experiences of each other something beyond our imagination. The knock on impact means that we urgently need new ways of engaging and leading people and their performance, which puts people leadership and HR in a higher intensity spotlight than we’ve ever seen. In our conversation, Nick highlights that the role of Chief People Officer, or Head of HR, is increasingly in the top five most important roles in the USA’s top organisations. This is a long-term trend with implications for the HR profession as well as every people leader. Understanding how to lead when proximity is no longer the default is an exciting, and potentially daunting challenge for all of us.
Coordination matters
An immediate and practical point that came from our conversation is that hybrid needs coordination if it’s going to be successful. So many of us are working in a hybrid way, but the results are a bit ‘meh’ - six or seven out of ten. It’s OK but it’s not exactly producing the kind of win-win-win that we know could be possible. This is what so much of my work is about, because people and leaders want to make it better, they just need some guidance to make it happen.
Performance matters
Finally, if we can manage performance based on outcomes, not inputs or presenteeism, then we really will unleash the power of new flexible ways of working. So many organisations have tried to make this shift in their performance framework over the years. In my experience, the performance management policy will often talk about managing for outcomes, but the reality is much harder to put into practice. Moving goal posts, a scope of work being far too vague, changing priorities, multiple priorities making everything and nothing the priority, all play into failing to meaningfully manage performance based on outcomes. In the absence of clarity of outcomes, the only things left to manage are proxies for performance, such as hours worked or presence felt. This is one tough nut to crack if we’re really serious about a better future of work.
Questions to explore
As you listen to the interview and read the highlights, you’ll have questions emerging for you in your work. Here are few to get you started that you might also want to share with your team:
How well is flexible work going for us on a scale of 1-10?
What is one thing we could do that would nudge our score higher up that scale?
Is flexible work a win-win-win for us at the moment? (Organisation - Employees - Planet & Society)
Which of these is winning or losing and what can we do about it?
Are we ready for flexible and hybrid work to keep growing?
How Nick Bloom has impacted me and my work
As I said in the interview:
“Nick's work has been incredibly influential for me as a workforce strategy and flexible work specialist. I reference him a lot in my book and in my work. My clients, my friends and family all know about him because of how often I drop his name into our conversations. I've been creating this big ideas, big dreams, series of articles, spotlighting economists who have a big idea that's inspired something important for me and my dream, which is all about leading for a better future of work. The point of the series is to share some important economic ideas and the hope that others will also be inspired by them. I wanted to have this grand finale to this series by interviewing you, Nick, so I'm absolutely delighted to be talking to you.”