by Andrea Granelli
The concept of long CoVid - the consequences on the health of those infected with CoVid, i.e. the problems that persist even after the acute symptoms have disappeared - it is not only a dramatic novelty of this particularly subtle disease, but it is also a powerful metaphor that reminds us that the impacts on the world of work of social distancing and the future risks of new pandemics, combined with an increasingly powerful and widespread digital revolution, will be not only lasting but also progressive release.
We know well that the digital, combined with organizational transformations, had already made the boundaries of companies much less defined and more porous. Now - after this long period of forced social distancing - the difference between employees, temporary workers, consultants, freelance and suppliers is even more unstable. Above all, the need to launch radical transformation processes in companies to adapt to increasingly changing markets is not only transforming change into a new form of permanence, but is continuously requiring - almost stabilized - external reinforcements to the change processes ( digital designers, organizational designers, competence assessors and trainers, coaches, ...).
For these reasons it is an understatement to speak of smart work that, in this period, has generally been expressed in working outside the office with a little support of digital tools (sometimes the telephone and some standard application on one's PC was enough) and basically doing what had always been done.
The question that is being raised, however, is conceive more or less long moments of work outside the office, often not even in the same place, carrying out activities with colleagues that were not necessarily done before. It would then be appropriate to start talking about "digital nomadism", Which is based on two important capabilities:
- make the most of the new digital platforms and the potential of the data world;
- knowing how to work - anywhere - without losing efficiency and effectiveness.
This form of work will require rethinking many operational practices, such as meetings, and above all having a new sensitivity to manage one of the most valuable resources that the company assigns to a manager: the weather, his and his collaborators. That increasingly precious time, which digital tools have promised to expand but which, instead, has become increasingly compressed. He grasped this dynamic with acuity Elias Canetti in The province of man: “Everything became faster, so that there was more time. There is less and less time ”. Time that smart work has made even more scarce and perishable with endless (and often useless) meetings without pauses.
