Working from home: This book tells managers how to replace command and control with trust

The Covid-19 pandemic which began in 2020 has forced the greatest shift in management and leadership practice for over 200 years. The old ways of leading by command and control were forged in the Industrial Revolution in order to control and manage hordes of workers, but what worked then was never going to be effective for leading highly paid professionals who work remotely.

The pandemic has forced leadership to move from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. Those changes were coming anyway – the pandemic merely hastened their arrival.

We are now in a new world of work. The changes brought about by the pandemic were not temporary, but a completely new paradigm shift. We can no more go back to the old ways of working than we can uninvent computers and the internet.

The pandemic and the move to hybrid working have accelerated changes that have been underway for decades. The biggest change to leadership has little to do with technology and everything to do with the shift of power in the workplace.

In the past, the boss had all the power. Unskilled workers in a one-factory town had nowhere else to go. But over time, the unskilled worker has morphed into the…

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