Lynda Gratton, a professor of management practice at London Business School and the founder of HSM, the future-of-work research consultancy, is known for her work on organisational behaviour. And, in her latest book, Redesigning Work: How to Transform Your Organisation and Make Hybrid Work for Everyone,published by Penguin Business, she offers a four-step process to success:

1) understand what matters

2) reimagine the future

3) model and test, and, finally,

4) act and create.

WorkLife spoke to Gratton to glean her top tips on working trends that will shape the world by the end of the decade.

You spent most of the last summer writing Redesigning Work, why is this book important now, and what are the main takeaways?

We have been experiencing the greatest global shift in work for a century, and it’s come at a time when much was already transforming. What we wanted from work and from companies had already dramatically shifted. Redesigning Work is fundamentally a call to action: To cultivate and trial new ideas, to listen to new perspectives, and, crucially, to make the leap from the rhetoric of ideas to the action of creation and implementation.

I’ve created a playbook to support organisations on their journeys of redesigning work. Speed was so important because we realised that for it to make a difference, it had to be in people’s hands as they were making decisions about hybrid working — and I figured that around about now leaders would be thinking: ‘What are we supposed to be doing, what are my options?’

A couple of key points are really resonating with readers. First, leaders can’t just keep thinking about the place; we’ve also got to think about time. Experiments around time are beginning to emerge, such as the four-day week and job shares. Secondly, there are no best practices. The design of work, it’s a process you have to go through, and each company’s got to design their unique signature.

What advice would you give to leaders about how to be bold?

They need to engage with the four steps I talk about to understand what their people want and what their networks want.

When people said, ‘We want to go back to the office because of serendipity and the water-cooler conversations,’ they talked about networks. Employees are looking inwards and at social pioneers. And leaders are looking outwards and saying: ‘What is everyone else doing?’

First movers will influence them, but they also need not lose sight of their inward-looking employees. There will be bumps along the way, but as, Satya Nardella, executive chairman and CEO of Microsoft, said the other week, this is a ‘learning process’. Risks have to be taken, and things will go wrong, and this is why a design mechanism is crucial. As long as you keep focused on the questions: How are you going to help people do their jobs better? Or how are you going to serve your customers better? That will be your guiding light.

What do you think the world of work will look like by 2030?

There are three interest areas right now. One of them is these ecosystems of talent. More people ask themselves: ‘Why am I not working as a freelancer, or starting my own business?’ I believe fewer people will work in conventional jobs and want more control. For me, job sharing is an exciting area to watch — more interesting than the four-day week. Secondly, how will technology enable alternatives to physical, face-to-face meetings?

The metaverse concept is fascinating, and I will closely follow virtual reality experiments. Finally, I think the rise of flexible working will allow neighbourhoods and communities to flourish and be more robust. Ultimately, having neighbourhood friendships is vital for being a resilient human being.