The Working From Home (WFH) revolution which has transformed British society could offer important lessons in bringing about massive cultural change. 

Far too often transformations fail, dragged down by inertia, poor communication, a lack of understanding and buy-in and dogged resistance. WFH cut through everything, quickly. 

Lesson one: have a clear and unequivocal need. The coronavirus pandemic, the key reason for the shift, was easy to understand, widely shared and immediate. 

Keep the need simple. All too often leaders appear to delight in complexity. 

Lesson two: understand what staff want. While Covid kicked off this shift in working patterns, it has persisted. 

According to the ONS, homeworking increased substantially across the UK – although there are Government efforts now in play to reverse this. 

Understanding why staff would want what a transformation might offer is vital. Leaders who sell the benefits are more likely to garner attention, interest and motivation. Some of this is guessable – reducing travelling time, enabling flexibility and giving staff more daily control over their time are broadly predictable motivators. 

But there is no shortcut to asking staff what they actually want. What they don't want is massive uncertainty, no future and having to look for a new job. 

Lesson three: get the enablers in place. Zoom and Teams make working from home possible. 

Pre-Covid early adopters had to rely on far less sophisticated systems – conference phones and mobile phones plagued by not-spots. Advances in technology changed that. 

Understanding what would be needed to make the vision (need/want) possible and putting it in place early, can help massive change come about. 

It's about removing barriers so that the massive energy needed in the early moves towards change are not dissipated by predictable barriers. 

Lesson four: know what will get the big-hitters and influencers in the change camp. This was a no-brainer at the start of Covid; it was Government-mandated. But as we moved into post-Covid, WFH was supported by key figures (until it wasn't). 

And again, we're back into want territory. Understanding how big hitters might benefit from your change programme is critical; what's potentially in it for them? 

Some might be persuaded by an appeal to the greater good or the bottom line, but not all wants are virtuous. Nor does it matter. What matters is what is important to them. Tee this up before you launch.  

Lesson five: make it look real. Most of us are fairly simple creatures; we rely on proxies for the real world to make sense of it. We might decide on the quality of a restaurant only by looking at how busy it is, how clean the loos are and whether the staff are friendly rather than solely on the food. Proxies provide us with the mood music that frame our world experience. It's why early wins and landmarks matter in change programmes (also known as ‘low hanging fruit'). 

Again, ask staff a simple question: What would convince you that our new vision for the organisation was real? The answers could provide clues about how you can make the change appear to be working. A transformation promising more opportunities for advancement for all staff might boil down to ‘let me into key meetings and listen when I speak, don't just nod and ignore me'. 

Lesson six: learn and flex. WFH has morphed into a more flexible hybrid model with staff now demanding changes to working days, hours per day, locations and access to technology as a right. Gen Z workers are increasingly picky. And why not – it's their time, intellectual capacity, skills and motivation that they're selling. Change programmes that are able to be flexible can maintain goodwill and delivery longer term. 

Lesson seven: keep going. We've all encountered organisations embarking on transformation programme relaunches. They can be like buses. But if the compelling change matters, keep at it. Don't stop because it gets tough. It will. The resistance to returning to the office is driven by those who were sold the vision and are now baffled about the obsession with ‘presenteeism'.  

The WFH change shows that massive cultural change is difficult but doable. Like most things in life, it worked because it put staff needs and wants front and centre.