Whether we’re talking about a horse pulling a plow across the field, a father pushing his cart through the grocery store aisles, or an Olympian throwing the shot-put, work is the means by which we turn the sun’s energy into the resources that make life possible. And yet, in the midst of our conversations about the future of work, it seems few of us have pondered the very nature of work.
In physics, work transfers energy from one place to another or from one form to another, and is a vector quantity that has no direction. For a constant force, it is the product of the force strength and the displacement induced by that force. The unit of measurement for work is the joule. Lifting a 100-pound weight one foot twice does the same amount of work as lifting it four yards.
We might define work in more abstract terms, such as the effort it takes to overcome a force acting on a body that’s at rest or moving at a steady speed. Work can also be the change in the potential energy of a mechanical device, the thermal energy of an engine, or the electrical energy in an electric motor.
Work can provide a sense of stability when other areas of our lives are rocky. It can also challenge our mental muscles, and it can give us a sense of accomplishment that bolsters our identity and self-worth. When these feelings are balanced against the other ways we use our time and energy, they can help us maintain a healthy sense of well-being.
However, when these qualities are taken to extremes, work can become a source of cynicism and bitterness. We may remember the times it took unjustly, the passions it snuffed out, and the people it hurt, and we might grow to see it as something to be feared and avoided, not a place where hope and opportunities abound.
Redefining work is not about reskilling to complete new tasks or adopting a different management style, although those can be important steps in the right direction. It’s about creating an environment in which workers are free to continually identify and address unseen problems/opportunities, and in doing so they can generate greater value for themselves and their employers. This requires a fundamental shift in how we think about the future of work, and it starts with cultivating capabilities like curiosity, imagination, intuition, creativity, and empathy. If these are the building blocks of an organization’s workforce, it can shift the future of work conversation from one centered on fear and adversity to one that focuses on hope and opportunity for everyone involved. That’s how we’ll capture the potential of this incredibly powerful vector.
