This Is a Chance to Reinvent

By now, most everyone who follows business and economics concedes that we're likely in a recession. While it's unknown just how deep things will go and what it will mean for individual sectors and businesses within them, it's important to note that it presents opportunities as well as challenges.

One of the things I've always maintained is that the business world, and the U.S. in particular, needs to refocus the way it thinks about work. Although the majority of American workers are now white-collar or "knowledge" workers, the way we go about our day largely reflects an approach that's rooted back in the industrial age. We have set work days, devise uniform policies that treat large groups of workers alike and don't really have any systems in place to reward superior individual contributions, apart from one-time "atta boys."

Worse still, refusing to change the way we think about work has led to many outmoded models that reflect increased costs. While sales professionals and client-facing personnel are often out of the office as part of their duties, we cluster everyone who has administrative or management tasks into expensive office space that accounts for one of any company's largest expenses.

There are some companies that have shifted away from this model, particularly companies that are based on the "freelance" consulting model, like Axiom Legal; that said, there's no reason more can't adopt it. Now's a perfect chance to do just that and not only bring about a scenario that's a lower-cost environment, but one that's more productive as well. Study after study points to increased productivity gains when more flexible work arrangements are adopted, pointing to a scenario that's truly a win-win for everybody.

Since it's usually the case that by the time an economic downturn brings a panic-like scenario, such as we're seeing even today on the world market stage, there's a good chance that we'll be in this mode for a while. Let's not miss this opportunity to stop talking about superficial methods of streamlining and gaining efficiency and truly taking a look at the way we look for the better.