‘Not cutting down on hiring, but want to end WFH’ said the headline of a story quoting the MD of TCS [Bus Std 21 Feb 2024]. It left me wondering, what is going on? It seemed like yesterday when all the IT majors were singing songs of praise for the #WorkFromHome practice. There were even reports that said that many companies were planning on moving to #WFH on a permanent basis. A few of us saw challenges along the way. This columnist had penned a column in this paper pointing out the importance of ‘Employer Branding’ and how WFH may come in the way of building a corporate culture, an essential glue in the employer retention and branding of companies [Bus Std Oct 12, 2022].
Let us be clear, none of us expected that WFH would really work. As an adjunct faculty at a leading B School I was blown away by the way the faculty and students adapted to the remote way of teaching and learning. In the corporate world too, especially in the ITES sector, WFH was a life saver. It saved jobs. It also saved companies. An admirable job was done by the IT majors to help their employees adapt to the new way of working. And it seemed to work. It seemed to work so well that many leaders were ready to pronounce the death of the office and end of high priced commercial real estate.
And then all that changed.
We will not get into why the mood has shifted and there may be many reasons. What I want to examine is the way we can all get caught in what Gartner calls the ‘Hype Circle’. Gartner is a technological research and consulting firm based in the US. I came across this term while reading the book ‘Angel Investing’ by Sanjay Kulkarni. While investing in start ups angel investors need to watch out for the Hype Circle, says Sanjay.
Any new idea goes through what is known as Diffusion of Innovation; the first set of consumers who adopt the idea are the innovators, then come the early adopters, then the early majority, then the late majority and finally the laggards. Many ideas don’t go beyond the innovators and early adopters. Geoffrey More spoke about the need for new ideas for ‘Crossing the Chasm’, the idea has to attract the early majority, if it doesn’t it will die an early death in the chasm between early adopters and early majority.
If a technological idea is hot, Gartner’s research says it can get caught in a Hype Circle. The first stage is the Innovation Trigger; the new idea gets a proof-of-concept story and becomes the darling of media and investors. Often the idea is yet to prove its financial viability. Then comes the Peak of Inflated Expectations; the idea has several success stories that get glorious reviews, the failures don’t get much exposure and many companies rush in to adopt the new idea. Then comes the rude awakening or the Trough of Disillusionment; interest starts waning, bad news gets written about, investment dries up or stops, a few survivors struggle to find a stable ground to move on. Then comes Slope of Enlightenment; companies figure out how the technology can be of help to them, second and third generation products come in, companies start funding pilots and new hope or green shoots are noticed. Finally comes the Plateau of Productivity; the new idea gains acceptance, broad market applicability gets established and a new phase of growth starts.
While Gartner’s Hype Circle was created for tech products and ideas, I think it is equally applicable to any new concept. Ideas like ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning], cloud computing, and several other innovations went through the Hype Circle. Currently Gen AI is possibly going through the same circle. Coming to WFH, friends from the US and Europe tell me that it is nothing new. My good friend Rajendran Pillai has been an avid WFH veteran for over a decade. But his job could be done remotely sitting in Minneapolis while his company was headquartered in the East Coast of the US. And he was a senior executive who did not need constant supervision.
I don’t think WFH will vanish. We will see WFH emerge from Trough of Disillusionment to the Slope of Enlightenment this year. Companies will figure out how they can continue WFH in a way that it doesn’t come in the way of supervision and mentoring. WFH practices will get tweaked to ensure that it aids in the creation of an engaging corporate culture and a much in demand employer brand. Hybrid models will emerge. The hype will be over. The real work or as they say Plateau of Productivity will emerge.
Appeared originally in Business Standard Feb 2024