Good morning.
A quartet of top tech CEOs–HP’s Enrique Lores, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Accenture’s Julie Sweet and Intel’s Bob Swan–met with members of the Fortune CEO Initiative yesterday to give their view of how the pandemic will change the future of work. All agreed the changes in store are huge. “We are in a point of time which is really going to be defining for our lifetimes,” Lores said. “The most unprecedented situation–a massive experiment at scale,” agreed Nadella. “The largest behavioral change at any one time in history,” said Sweet.
Yet they cautioned it’s too early to say precisely what those changes will be. The crisis has led to an “acceleration of the future,” said Swan. “But clarity of the future? Not so clear.”
A few takeaways:
–Collaboration has to be reinvented. “We are burning up a lot of social capital built up when people were working together,” Nadella said. How to rebuild that capital while people are apart is a challenge.
–The crisis has accelerated digital transformation but training must accelerate as well. “There will be real displacement in the workplace,” said Swan, and companies have a critical role to play in “addressing the disconnect.”
–Worker well-being needs more focus. “We can’t just measure productivity in the narrowest way,” said Nadella.
–And perhaps most importantly, the nature of leadership must evolve. “As leaders, we all have changed. We all have learned how important it is to lead with empathy and build a different level of trust with our employees,” said Lores. “How we build into this digital acceleration the opportunity to be more responsible businesses is absolutely critical,” said Sweet. “The role that purpose and social responsibility is going to play (must increase) as technology plays a bigger and bigger role,” said Swan.
More from the conversation here. Other news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
