Intent, Policy, and Behavior
It’s not uncommon to see discrepancies between corporate policy, the intent of the policy and the actual behavior of the leaders who are charged with implementing the policy. Jan Johnson and Jeff Leitner have studied this phenomenon in their work on the power of unwritten rules in shaping human behavior. I was thinking about their work as I recently participated in a panel discussion titled, “The New Geography of Work”, hosted by the Northern California Chapter of CoreNet. The discussion was fascinating, mostly thanks to the contributions of our moderator, Robert Teed of Integri Group, and the smart panel members, Kate Lister of Global Workplace, Chandler Bonnie of Dropbox and Irene Thomas Johnson of JLL.
A couple of the key takeaways: 1) it’s not easy to design and implement a new workplace strategy, especially one that is radically different, and 2) it’s incredibly important for leadership to “walk the walk” in support of the new approach. A great example of this is Dropbox. Here, we have a company that in 2019 was office-first with nearly a million square feet of office space (in San Francisco, alone). Now, just 3 years later, the company is what Chandler calls “virtual first”. You get the picture - - - a physical office is not the first place the employees show up to work. But getting here was not as easy as making the decision and sending a memo. Instead, it involved a deliberate, years long, discovery process that engaged all facets of the organization. And once they settled on the approach, the real work of training and implementation began and remains ongoing. Dropbox employees continue to learn about their new workplace every single day. Without sponsorship at the highest level, this type of radical shift has the potential to create far more harm than good.
Another striking aspect to our conversation was the mostly hopeful and optimistic expectations for the distributed workplace to deliver better results in the context of DEI. Panelists spoke about how greater flexibility in how employees work is opening up the field of candidates to include individuals who would have otherwise been unable to compete. More access, more competition, more flexibility…what’s not to like? As we continue down the path of defining the future workplace, I’ve no doubt mistakes will be made. But when intention, policy and behavior are aligned, when the organization goes all in on making it happen (however “it” may look to them), new solutions will have a positive ROI. In contrast, the worst outcomes will reflect a gaping chasm between what the company states as its workplace strategy and how its leadership actually works.