People have foretold the future of work as long as there’s been a modern notion of work. I’ve been writing and thinking about it for decades, and I can tell you there has been more change in how we work in the last three months than we’ve seen in the last 20 years.
The pandemic made change a necessity, not a choice, and most of us didn’t have the luxury of time to find and share best practices in the new ways of doing work. That’s why we started Go Forward To Work. GF2W is a community of business leaders sharing their best practices for improving organizations and teams. This is for all of us. Huge swaths of our social fabric have changed permanently, and we would be wasting a massive opportunity if we merely shrugged off the pandemic and hunger for social justice and return to bad old habits at work. A lot of companies got a taste for remote work and, guess what, they like it more than the real thing. Business leaders we’ve spoken with acknowledge the challenges but are discovering new avenues for better collaboration, more accountability, more creativity, and growth.
Through stories, videos and community sessions, GF2W will unearth real practices and examples you can put to work immediately. GF2W is open to contributions from business leaders in every job category -- leadership, engineering, product development, sales and marketing, human resources, and IT -- as long as you're dedicated to improving high-return practices. We’re also looking for volunteers to contribute ideas, articles and video stories that provide concrete examples of going forward to work. Every story or video on GF2W will deliver at least one “aha moment” or a bit of a roadmap toward developing or improving high-return practices. We want to celebrate the doing, not the pontificating and BS.
GF2W will be supported by partners, but this is not a profit-making or ad-driven venture. Partner support will go toward underwriting the effort to explore and research more deeply into specific areas of work. Partners will benefit their brand by surfacing their best ideas and expert contributors in the areas that matter most to them. For example, a software firm that powers customer service and call centers will be sharing what they know about improving customer engagement in a virtual world, or an HR agency focused on diversity could contribute insights into how to use remote work as a great equalizer. Partners will help drive the conversation and participate in content creation and online conversations, and we’ll look to write pieces together.
We’re excited about the possibility of making a difference in the world through this site and helping others be of service through the program. Anyone willing to give up their time at a time like this to help others should be celebrated. A driving principle behind this is something I call co-elevation, the state when we're committed to a mission, in this case transforming the future of work, and we're committed to each other.
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