The New Fatigue - what is this all about?
Not sure about you but there is something different about the current situation (Feb 2021). I wrote about the 7B’s as our responses to lockdown and I believe still that viewpoint stands. However, there is something new, right now, which is different it is a mistiness, a malaise, fatigue, sapped, brain fog. To be clear, this is not a loss of motivation, depression or other mental issues - which are all very real and getting to everyone but I am talking about something else.
In 1996 (web 1.0) the market discovered the opportunity for an online market, everyone took their physical business and replicated it exactly (give or take a bit) to work in a web browser. On-line arrived. We quickly worked out that this was an unmitigated disaster as a user experience, operationally and back office was a mess. Come 2001 post-crash we had stopped taking off-line thinking and plonking it on-line and saying to ourselves, this is fab. We started digital-first.
2020 we were forced to take the remains of all offline ways of working and stuff it online - meetings, innovation, communication, management, reporting, selling, socialising, dating, laughing, onboarding, education, training - everything else we did in person and face to face.
We have just replicated the 1996 sorry mess - we imaged that we could take what was offline and stuff it into the tech available and it would be magic. My fatigue I am sure is because it has not been designed digital-first, to be specific I mean the workflow, UI and UX. Starting from “what work is needed” and not starting from “does this great scalable platform do the job!”
Perhaps we need to stop, look in the mirror and say to ourselves: “look this pandemic is not going away.” Then we need to work out what work needs to be done and how we can do it digital-first rather than pretending it is all ok and that we can ignore it as we will all go back to normal - please no. Just expecting everyone to buckle down and get on is no longer a good strategy.
I ask three questions
Is this working for us? - No it is not working, the malaise, fatigue and brain fog are a clue. We got away with it for a time, but this is not a long term solution
Who is us? - those working from home but the work is more than working at home, we have lost our connectedness, bonding and togetherness
Of whom are we asking the question? - Senior leadership and Directors who owe a duty of care and responsibility. It is now obvious that we have to reimagine work starting from digital-first for all those aspects of our working lives that we had left as they were too hard and difficult.