Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (The Who)

Photo by Kiana Bosman on Unsplash

As you know, I'm a big fan of Seth Godin. I even used one of his quotes as my positive close yesterday (when someone tells you what you need to hear, instead of what you are hoping to hear, you've found something priceless).

A recent post of his was very on point, given our working from home situation. 

He had this to say:

There are three ways to tell if people are hard at work in an office:

1. the boss can watch them go to meetings. And they can watch each other in meetings as well.
2. the boss can watch them sit at desks in an open office.
3. we can make promises to each other and then keep them.

It seems as though only the third one is a useful, long-term way to allow us to do our best work together. The first two can help along the way, but if a meeting or an open office exists as a convoluted way to do surveillance, you’re probably wasting precious energy and trust.

And while transferring our work to home makes #1 even easier and #2 irrelevant, I’m still lobbying for #3.

This aligns to one of my core beliefs: that if you employ good people - get out of their way and let them do what they are good at.