John Bell
What does the future of work look like? And how can leadership at companies across the spectrum find ways to advance and adapt to the ever-changing workplace?
Embracing technology and careful talent development strategy are some answers to overcome hurdles businesses are facing, according to John Bell, who is president and chief strategy officer of NextNow Digital.
Bell presented his findings to business leaders from across the state at the Economic Forum of Albuquerque on Wednesday.
Bell, before NextNow Digital, helped lead the digital marketing transformation of Travelers Insurance, a Dow 30 company, and was a global managing director with Ogilvy, where he guided global businesses such as Ford Motor Co. and American Express on how to use social media to build a brand.
Bell has identified five “near-term” realities that will affect businesses and which he said are woven together by two things: digital transformation and leadership.
“We have a real chance to be bold — to redesign work in a way that is more humane and future-proofed. So be prepared to be courageous, experimental and take risks,” said Bell, citing the London Business School professor Lynda Gratton.
Design collaboration
Bell said when he thinks about designing a concept to foster collaboration, he thinks of it in three “different kinds of buckets.”
The first bucket, he says, is methodology — in other words, using proven methods of productive collaboration.
Another way of approaching collaboration, Bell said, is through augmented spaces. By this, he means creating work spaces that make employees more productive.
Digital tools, too, can help kickstart collaboration, he said.
“And it’s about digital tools and testing and adopting those right tools that actually make for great online and offline collaboration at the same time — not either or but both,” Bell said.
Though many people use these tools already — Miro and Zoom — Bell said they can help kickstart collaboration in a hybrid environment.
Frictionless onboarding
A second near-term goal, Bell said, is frictionless onboarding. What does that mean?
“It’s about accelerating new hire time productivity, which has a monetary value for all businesses. It’s about communicating and demonstrating culture to a group that’s distributed — that may never have come into the office, depending on when they were hired,” Bell said. “And also, it’s about engaging top talent and subject matter experts inside the company to train and nurture and mentor those newcomers.”
Bell cited the use of PlusPlus — an onboarding tool used by Netflix — and how that product has streamlined the hiring process for the streaming company.
Cultivating talent
Developing talent is important because the deficit of workers is expected to grow even larger in the next decade, Bell said, adding that the best hires aren’t necessarily those who check off all the boxes.
“For me, it’s about choosing wisely — hiring people with the right temperament and the willingness to learn,” Bell said. “Because we can put them in a position as an employee to always be learning.”
But how can you retain and train talent?
Bell pointed to Salesforce Trailhead, which is a platform that helps with training and certification of employees in sales, data and marketing. On a more local level, CNM Ingenuity—the nonprofit arm of Central New Mexico that specializes in job training—has helped train the local workforce in a variety of skills, Bell said.
“In just two-to-three years, they’ve produced 204 jobs, skilled up to 187 employees and added over $9 million of annual wage-earning power locally,” Bell said.
augmented labor
Have you heard of those Domino’s self-driving delivery robots in select cities? Well, don’t be afraid that they’re taking away jobs from the workforce.
Bell said companies should embrace augmented labor — which includes stuff like Microsoft’s HoloLens that the company has equipped line workers with to deliver instructions on the assembly line — because it can help in “giving them extra tools and data to simplify and empower them to do more and provide more value in their business.”
Diversity and inclusion mandates
Bell said many companies tend to have diversity and inclusion initiatives embedded in them, either formally or informally.
Bell said a DEI mandate has become a top priority for companies because the “next generation of employees want a just workplace,” Bell said.
He cited data from McKinsey & Company, a management consulting business, that shows women typically deal with microaggressions more than men — from being interrupted to having judgment questioned.
There are tools to track biases in diversity, Bell said. For instance, Textio and Workhuman are tools that track biases in written text.
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