Instead of talking about the future of work, we should discuss ‘modern work’.

Focus on aligning values rather than looking for a cultural fit in order to facilitate collaboration. Employee onboarding can be tightened and escalated at scale using the Build, Measure, Learn loop.

During his presentation at People Edge 2022, Dom Price, Chief Futurist at Atlassian, discusses the importance of retiring organisational charts and replacing them with aligned values.

We can remove friction from tasks through cross-functional team collaboration by unlearning the way it’s always been done.

Setting appropriate boundaries as a leader facilitates meaningful work without contributing to burnout. Lead by example and reflect regularly on your role.

 

Key Takeaways:

  • Retire organisational charts: It’s not about cultural fit, it’s about values. Values are an integral part of employee experience. Are you going to challenge the way we work? Are you going to speak up? Are you going to add to our teams? Are you better than the average?
  • The flow of work: In a distributed workforce If you want employees to have a good experience and to be engaged, make the work they do easy. Not in terms of simplicity but take away the friction that adds to that work. Embed cross-functional collaboration and cross-team collaboration.
  • Leaders Learn to Learn: prepare for the future skills that will be required and learn how to unlearn habits and rituals from the past that don’t work anymore. Unlearning is the secret to success. It removes old systems and allows for new cognitive pathways to learning.
Contributors
Dom Price Work Futurist and Visionary at Be Luminous
Dom Price is a Work Futurist, team obsessive, and Partner at Be Luminous and someone who has lived the chaos of scaling... More

Dom Price is a Work Futurist, team obsessive, and Partner at Be Luminous and someone who has lived the chaos of scaling a business from the inside out. Joining Atlassian as employee #600, Dom stayed for 12 years as their resident Work Futurist, helping grow the company to over 16,000 people globally. That’s not theory – that’s scar tissue.

Dom operates at the intersection of tech and humans, and his mission is simple: upgrade the human operating system of how we work. Because as he’ll tell you, “a fool with a tool is still a fool… you’ve just made them faster.” In a world drunk on AI and the next shiny solution, Dom is the pragmatic voice asking whether your people are actually set up to use it well – driving change that’s sustainable, not just spectacular.

As a keynote speaker, Dom doesn’t trade in polished frameworks or borrowed wisdom. He shares real, lived experience the messy, hard-won kind which is exactly why he’s in demand. Less thought leader, more battle-tested practitioner.

Co-creator of the Atlassian Team Playbook, TED speaker, and advisor to C-suite leaders globally. Dom believes that work and life should be about thriving, not just surviving. A keen traveller and veteran of 53+ countries, he calls Australia home. Manchester made him. The rest? Still very much in progress.

 

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