The gates are open.

One of the things that Covid-19 has done is to leave a vast number of gates open. Most of us brought up and trained to be managers in an industrial era are familiar with the notion of gatekeepers. We were taught that a gatekeeper is anyone who blocks the way between us and the key decision-maker within a target organisation. They might be receptionists, admin assistants, departmental heads in HR or similar. Equally, the gatekeeper might not be a person, but an organisational dogma, like trying to talk to politicians reliant on business donations about climate change.

By definition, for gates to exist, there has to be an enclosure that they protect - a physical or organisational space. Pre-Covid, the very nature of offices provided lots of gates, and managers who relied on them to keep the people who did the actual work neatly organised, visible and "protected" from outside influence. Technology was already changing that, but Covid has blown it wide open. With many people working from h…