An ISACA member, it is a mandatory requirement that I earn twenty Continuing Professional Education points a year to maintain my membership, and with the intention of collecting my first point for the above-mentioned purpose, I attended Stephanie Mehta’s ‘The Next Normal’ which influenced me to think about dynamic workplaces and its connection to creativity and sustainability through technology.
Stephanie Mehta’s emphasis on the inevitability of synchronous existence between business services and technologists come from the emergence of new concepts of work management, the overall increase in hybrid working in offices adhering to the new rules associated with remote working, and the quick reconfiguration of offices into dynamic workplaces. Although dynamic workplace is not a novel idea in 2022, as its evolution began a few years ago, fostering creativity – an underused soft skill in businesses essential for enhancing productivity and efficiency – has become the need of the hour. This observation also implies that over-reliance on monocultural teams and a lack of diversity in collaborative projects could pave the way for underperformance automatically. Speaking from experience, Stephanie Mehta pointed out that multicultural teams, if lead and guided properly, lead to success as the new ideas or perspectives brought to the table could result in high performance because of greater understanding between team members, efficient coordination, and higher levels of trust among the members. The idea that women can not only find their voices in their profession with creative solutions but can also rewrite the rules of business inspires me as it translates into new opportunities.
The collective responsibility of sustainability walks hand in hand with creativity or innovation. Identified to be an urgent need with the future of the planet depending on sustainability, Green Information Technology or Environmentally Sustainable Computing is continuing to provide products and services that benefit the environment. Creativity has been used by technologists to manage supply chains, minimize carbon footprints, to reduce energy usage etc. Therefore, the ‘Next Normal’ is nothing but including all the members in culturally and linguistically diverse teams to arrive at creative and sustainable solutions in dynamic workplaces using the collaborative platforms and other products and services offered by advanced technology.
The ‘Next Normal’ extends beyond hybrid working and workplaces to employees who are becoming more and more multi-disciplinary and multi-professionals.
A Writer's Exposé 