Worknado - Reimagining the ways we work to live

I have just pushed the button on my new book - Worknado - Reimagining the way you work to live. It is currently available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The preface is below.

Then came the Worknado…

There is a quiet rumbling, rolling like a gathering thunder through our workplaces, our homes, and our lives in general.

The Worknado has been building for a while, and now it is here. 

This book looks at the rising forces of change in our workplaces, intermingled with insights from years of experience managing people and seeking to understand the secret languages of the workplace. 

Ever since our societies carved an ambition beyond subsistence living, work has become our obsession, largely dictating our standard of living and our sense of identity.

For generations, our concepts of work have conformed to patterns built largely off parameters set in the industrial age to balance employee and employer needs. Heavy inertia has anchored the workplace status quo.  

As we move deeper into the 21st century, the mood for change is palpable. The rigidity of our workplace systems and the long-accepted conventions of employment are being seriously questioned.

The most obvious driver of this is the digital native “Millennial” generation, with a different mindset and a profound scepticism about the type of lives accepted by their parents and grandparents. 

But the mood for change is deeper than that. It goes to older people with fresh energy who are not willing to fade away from society. It captures women who are no longer prepared to accept lip service around equality.

It comes from men and women watching their lives slip away as they feel trapped and soulless. It emanates from parents watching time stealing childhoods and never giving them back. It arises in professional occupations where bizarre and illogical expectations have emerged around very long hours and “face-time” in the office.  

While the rumblings of dissatisfaction are not new, between 2020 and 2023 they grew louder and closer. The COVID-19 pandemic finally gave us permission to discuss different ways of working and living without feeling like Oliver Twist’s orphan Oliver asking for more. As a result, we are having real conversations about part-time work, multi-jobs, jobs that stretch across different vocations, working from anywhere and creating workplaces better tuned to multi-generations. 

I started writing this book long before the pandemic. COVID-19 has merely added a booster rocket to forces that were already building around us.  

We stand at a crucial historical juncture blessed with a real opportunity to enhance human life and grasp a different, better future. Work as we know it may never be the same again.