Work is a fundamental human activity that creates and sustains wealth, and provides people with the opportunity to fulfill their needs and aspirations. While it’s often a source of frustration, struggle and disappointment, work also brings immense fulfillment and joy to people. It’s the ability to achieve goals and create a positive impact that motivates many of us to keep pushing ourselves beyond our limits. Hard work also helps to develop character and self-discipline, and can help to foster new skills that open up career opportunities and possibilities that we might not have considered.
A common understanding of work is that it is a force that causes an object to change its state from one state to another (for example, from motionless to moving). However, this does not describe the real nature of work. In physics, work is the transfer of energy from one object to another, and is a change in the amount of mechanical energy that an object has. The SI unit for work is the joule (J), and it is defined as the dot product of Force and Displacement: W = F * S or F * s*cos(theta) where the force and displacement are vectors with magnitude and direction respectively.
When a person throws a ball, for example, they are doing work on the ball as it moves forward. This work changes the amount of kinetic energy the ball has, which gives it its speed. Work is never something that an object has, but rather is always something that is done to an object.
The concept of work is important because it can influence our perspectives and assumptions about the world. For example, if we view work as a way to acquire wealth, then we may feel resentful of those who have more than we do, even if they have earned their money honestly. But if we view work as an opportunity to create value and improve the lives of others, then we may feel more appreciation for the contributions of others.
For many, the idea of redefining work means empowering frontline employees to spend more time on tasks that aren’t routine or automated. This may require organizations to change their management systems, work environments, leadership capabilities and compensation practices. Redefining work may also mean rethinking the kinds of problems that frontline workers should be tasked with solving, and imagining solutions that don’t yet exist for unmet needs.
All of this requires leaders to cultivate the capabilities of curiosity, imagination, creativity, intuition and empathy, which are not traditionally associated with management or the workplace. But more than anything, redefining work will require leaders to take a leap of faith that they can trust their employees and allow them the freedom to pursue work that is truly meaningful to them. In doing so, they will unleash a torrent of innovation and value creation that could not be replicated by automation alone. And perhaps, in the process, they will change themselves as well.
