Invaluable Insights from Your Recent Past: Reviewing 2021

What a year. Another one. We don’t want to dwell on it. Just like 2020, we’re so ready to move on! But not quite yet. We are at a critical juncture and to move forward successfully it is important that we gather and synthesize data first to inform our futures.

When so much is in flux, when so much has changed and continues to evolve, it is vital to glean what understandings we can about the new business and work environment and pay attention to our changing sentiment over the last 12 months. These recent experiences are the most relevant ones we can learn from to prepare well for 2022 and beyond.

Productive Progress

Let’s first recognize that we are in a better place in many ways in relation to the pandemic, even though it doesn’t feel like it at times. What’s more, we have made substantial, positive adjustments to our business operations, and our mindsets and approaches have also shifted. After short-term pivots in 2020 to deal with emergency conditions, during 2021 we eventually acknowledged our current and ongoing realities and took a much longer-term perspective.

• Have you registered and absorbed the significance of these changes?
• Did you notice how digital integration has affected your customers’ interactions and behaviors?
• How did you strategize future business opportunities considering new pathways, options, and configurations based on recently implemented technology?

The multidimensional transformation of business and work has been ramping up over years affecting the nature, type, arrangements, and organization of everyone’s work. Primarily a function of increased digitization, the Future of Work arrived, catalyzed but not caused by the pandemic, manifested by: extraordinary interconnectedness, faster-paced business developments, and customers’ unpredictable changes in behavior, to which we have had to respond with rapid prototyping and frequent updates.

Every company and every worker needs to transform for this new era and you can gain valuable insights from your recent business experiences to ensure your approach and practices are fully updated in three key areas: Predictability, Preferences, and Perspectives.