It was not so long ago that employees did not have to think a lot. They were assigned tasks, which they completed according to priority. This world still exists – parallel to the newly emerging agile work. The old working world was safer in some respects. Little self-initiative was required of the employees, but a great deal of obedience. In the concept of New Work, employees act on an equal footing with managers, and teamwork is emphasized. It is not only about salary, but also about vocation and meaning.

Employees should take responsibility

In the new world of work, employees solve conflicts independently and constantly develop themselves further. Lifelong learning is the motto. Such changes require a completely new logic of thinking and acting, a new mindset. After all, a person who assumes responsibility must act quite differently than someone who performs tasks according to instructions.

Agility on command? Absurd!

Many companies are committed to transformation and agile working in order to remain flexible and competitive, introducing “agile values” or trying to see if a little Scrum or Kanban can help. In many companies, it is thought that new thinking can be poured out on managers just because the board of directors has declared “We want to become more agile”. An attempt is made to command the new mindset of self-responsible cognitions and actions with old means – the absurdity is obvious!

New work is much more and different than the old instruction. It’s politics!

The concept of “New Work” Frithjof Bergmann. For him, work means developing his own creativity and personality – and thus freeing himself from wage labour: For him, work is an action that happens independently, freely and in community. With this he finally sketches a counter-model to capitalism and the old model of classes and dependence.

So far only the philosophical consideration of a meaningful life

Because, such a free society should serve all people. Against the background of the loss of work orders in the low-wage sector, the new work favours its high level of education and clearly shows us that we must start with the training of people in order to counteract this, so as not to create multiple precarious existences, or, as Yuval Noah Harari puts it, to produce a “class of useless people”. For a counter-model to capitalism, in which autonomous individuals act and cooperate in a meaningful way and in community, education is needed. Even more: It takes joy in learning, motivation and patience.