Creativity and the Work Week

tl;dr: Stuck in an industrial age mindset, we are.

During the Industrial era, everyone had to show up at the exact same time and stay for the same amount of time.

It’s difficult to build a car if people work at different hours.

In the Knowledge era, however, the link between time and value is broken. Sadly, however, the paradigm of the “9-5 work week” still persists for many. Too many.

I’ve been saying to my Gtmhub team now for a year, “I don’t care where or when you work, I care about the outcomes.”

That doesn’t mean, of course, that there are times when people don’t need to be working synchronously and having calls or whatever, but it does mean that I want people to be freed up to do their best work when it works for them.

There’s a woman on the team whose nickname is “Night Owl” because she is most effective late at night…Great. I’m happy for her.

What’s more, I WANT and NEED people to take time away from a computer when they are “not working.” (That’s another fallacy, that time in front of a computer=work). In reality, time away from the computer may be the best time to identify a creative solution to your thorny problem.

Yesterday, as part of our father-daughter trip to Minnesota, we visited the inspiring Bakken Museum, which is all about innovation and inspiration.

I saw a sign there that encapsulated what I’ve been thinking about:

In the world of creativity and innovation, sometimes it’s time AWAY from the work that is actually most important. And the fact that, during that time, you have the opportunity to reflect, asking a bigger question.

Yet, for many, our idea of “work” is constrained by time.

Eventually, this shift will be self-evident to everyone in the Outcome Era and we’ll wonder why we ever thought “hours” were the way to measure “value” when the input is Knowledge and what matters are outcomes, not physical labor and output.

Until then, the organizations that recognize the opportunity for transformation, whatever their structure, will gain a competitive advantage.