Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Alison Hill & Darren Hill, Wiley, $27.95.
Being a pragmatist is defined as being efficient, logical, businesslike, down-to-earth, hard-headed. Pragmatic leaders focus on the practical, by viewing the entire picture (barriers included) to get to the end result. It’s a linear, practical way of thinking and “doing”.
One success story comes from Alison and Darren Hill, founders of the award-winning behaviour and motivation strategy company, Pragmatic Thinking. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, their business, an advisor to Fortune 500 and ASX 200 companies, went from being co-located to distributed overnight. They built excellence in functioning as a hybrid team with a commitment to performance as strong as since its inception. Having triumphed in this transition, they now advise their clients on how to set hybrid teams up for stunning success. How we work is changing, so here’s to finding a new way.
Having teams operate in a ‘distributed’ or work from anywhere (WFA) fashion is not new, and nor was it solely born from the global pandemic. Yet the sheer impact of COVID-19 and the overnight call to remote and distributed work practices reshaped workplace behaviour and standards so significantly that, in time, we may speak historically about the events of 2020 as being as disruptive for workforces as the invention of the printing press and the personal computer.
What exacerbated this significant change was its sheer speed. The suddenness of overnight isolation-based crisis responses from organisations left many leaders, teams and businesses floundering. Many are still battling with leadership and cultural skills that were built on face-to-face connection rather than virtual.
This book makes for enlightening reading. As Alison and Darren Hill put it: “Regardless of whether you’re still struggling to adapt, you’ve had some wins but feel a lot of unrealised potential is still there to tap into, or you’re flying and just looking for a few handy tips to take your game to an elite level … be assured, the framework and methodology that underpin this book are grounded not only in behavioural and psychological sciences, but also in lived experience.”
The requirement of organisations to offer and adapt to WFA practises as a regular option is now here forever.
