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Organizational change: Shifting communication culture from real time spoken to async, writing-based.

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The current tensions between knowledge organizations their thought worker staffs over office presence didn’t start with the social distancing public health measures taken in response to the 2020 viral pandemic. They began decades earlier in the 1980s and 1990s with the widespread adoption of personal desktop – and later laptop – computers.

Those tools gave desk workers what Apple founder Steve Jobs called a “bicycle for our minds.” That freed them from relying on handwritten memos that were typed up and later, word processed. Memos, projects, financial documents, project and plans could now be created independently.

Then in the following decade came the mass market Internet. It effectively created bicycle lanes for all those new bicycles and personal communication devices like mobile phones and a decade later, smartphones.

Those bicycle lanes allow information to be created, collected, analyzed and decisions based upon it wherever a thought worker could “pedal” their devices. The paved concrete and asphalt motor vehicle lanes that once physically transported workers to centralized, commute in offices were no longer needed. Even meetings can be conducted without being seated around the traditional conference table.

For knowledge organizations, this is an enormous shift requiring adjustment. That transition from the pre-early 1980s office hasn’t been an easy one. That’s why organizations only gradually implemented it over four decades until the pandemic’s public health measures forced their hand.

That forcing function is generating the pushback we are seeing presently in the form of “return to office” mandates requiring everyone to commute into the office five days a week. But it goes against the longer-term trend wrought by the rapid advances in information and communications technology. They’ve come so fast — and to a head in 2020 – that organizations are undergoing what futurist Alvin Toffler termed “future shock” in his 1970 book of the same name.

Perhaps the most critical adjustment knowledge organizations must navigate on the bicycle lanes lies in their communication culture. In earlier decades when everyone gathered in centralized commuter offices, the communications culture was largely spoken more than written. Hence, lots of meetings. That supports a mindset that knowledge work requires co location so people can speak to one other face to face real time, whether in meeting rooms or passing by another’s desk on the way to the restroom or break room.

The spoken communication culture remained in place as organizations shifted meetings to videoconferences during the pandemic, leading to “Zoom fatigue” from hours of back-to-back online meetings. Here, the bicycles operated like their analog counterparts like when used by children to meet up in real time at a friend’s house.

But that’s not the best use of the digital bicycles and bike lanes. It’s using them like analog devices and not the digital ones they are, facilitating written and asynchronous communication. One company has outlined a communications framework that could serve as a framework knowledge organizations can use and modify as needed.

This is not to say real time spoken communication isn’t valuable. It certainly is and honors our human nature as social beings. However, it must be intentionally organized and conducted and not the default mode as it was in the pre-digital era.

Knowledge organizations suffer “future shock”

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In 1970, futurist Alvin Toffler coined term “future shock.” It occurs when the future arrives too quickly for people and organizations to adapt to it. Consequently, they get out of sync with the onrushing change in their environments, leading to maladaptive behaviors such as:

 • Crisis-Driven Decision-Making – Reactive rather than proactive approaches to industry disruption (e.g., panic layoffs, rushed technology investments).

• Over-Centralization & Micromanagement – Leadership tightens control in response to perceived chaos, stifling innovation.

• Resistance to virtual work — A rigid preference for traditional centralized commuter office-based operations, despite clear benefits of decentralization.

• Internal Conflict & Cultural Breakdown – Generational clashes between leadership and younger, more digitally native employees.

Two related major forces of change are affecting knowledge organizations. Both have been building over the past five decades or so and have reached critical inflection points in the past few years, accelerated by public health measures taken in response to the 2020 pandemic.

The first is advances in information and communications technology (ICT) that has decentralized knowledge work out of commute-in offices in metro areas. Microcomputers and personal communication devices like smartphones allow knowledge work – researching, reviewing, analyzing and communicating information to arrive at decisions on how to use it – to be done most anywhere. Beforehand, that required dedicated office space and meeting rooms — and staff to commute to and from them.

The second is housing costs and transportation systems in metro areas. Housing tends to cost more nearer to their centers, increasing demand for more affordable, lower cost housing more distant from them. That in turn boosts demand on transportation systems that could in earlier decades enable knowledge workers to rapidly commute from homes located far from centralized commuter offices but no longer have adequate capacity to do so.

Knowledge organizations can overcome future shock, build resilience and adjust to change that shows no sign of slowing down. This requires them to assess and examine the evidence supporting how they conceptualize how their work is done, how their value proposition and strategic advantages are created and the best means to sustain them.

It takes courage to challenge long held assumptions and thinking. This isn’t an easy task for many knowledge organizations since for many, their foundations are built on a pre-digital era where ICT played a far less prominent role. But the benefits are many, allowing them reduce internal tensions and move forward more confidently and with greater capacity to adapt to the changing world of knowledge work. Help is available.

The customer service model and government offices

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The Trump administration’s offer this week to federal employees to either do their jobs in government offices or resign effective later this year reflects a conceptualization of public sector knowledge work similar to that expressed by some state governors who imposed similar personnel rules over the past few years. It likens it to customer facing services people receive in brick-and-mortar locations like retail stores. These locations must be necessarily be staffed during business hours.

Some government services – state motor vehicle departments and health clinics – fit that description. But much of what government does is plan and make decisions on how to allocate public resources and deliver them through government programs. They are what Roger L. Martin would describe as “decision factories” as he termed them in a 2013 Harvard Business Review article.

Prior to the 21st century, these activities were nearly always performed in vast cube farms, closed door offices and meeting rooms in government owned or leased buildings centralized in Washington DC and state capitols.  

Advances in information and communications technology since then have diminished the need for these locations to allow staff to share, analyze, discuss and plan while seated together in these offices. Personal computers and devices and the Internet generally work as well outside of these locations as within including residences, thus eliminating the need to travel to a centralized commute-in office for most forms of knowledge work.

But when they are used in a knowledge worker’s home, a cognitive dissonance occurs, particularly for those who are not digital veterans (early adopters) or younger generations of digital natives. Prior to these ICT advances, the home was clearly for personal time and relaxation – not working. Daily activities were defined by the space in which they occurred. Home is home and offices “workplaces.” That distinction is no longer so sharply defined.

Making the conceptual shift away from those sharp distinctions is difficult, requiring an adjustment in thinking that can be challenging for both public and private sector organizations.

Office presence controversy overlays larger question of how knowledge work managed, organized.

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The controversy over attendance in centralized commute-in offices is currently centered around return to office (RTO) policies and when knowledge workers should be in them.

Advances in information and communications technology since the 1980s are virtualizing and decentralizing knowledge work, making when and where it’s done less relevant. Knowledge workers can develop their ideas, analyses, projects and plans and collaborate with others most any time and any place.

The trend developed slowly. Offices had been in place for many decades before and were still being built as ICT developed and matured. For knowledge organizations, they were the primary place staff work was done.

Social distancing measures taken to tamp down COVID-19 pandemic infections in 2020 suddenly accelerated what had been a very incremental trend with about 95 percent of knowledge workers commuting into offices each workday. Now that many more have worked outside of the cube farms of analog edifices of office buildings since then, circumventing time sucking commutes has taken the place of potentially dangerous viral infections. They are questioning the need for them as digital ICT replaces the analog scheme of transporting knowledge workers to them.

Some organizations including Amazon, JP Morgan, AT&T and most recently the U.S. federal government have adopted strict RTO policies that some have cautioned pose organizational risk for the attraction and retention of knowledge workers. But these organizations don’t necessarily see that as a negative but rather a positive with separations even welcomed and encouraged.

That raises the larger question how knowledge work in organizations is defined: what it is and who is needed to do it. This extends beyond RTO, “remote” or “hybrid” knowledge work itself. It’s about how it’s organized and accomplished.

Virtualization and decentralization of knowledge work requires organizational communication, cultural transformation

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The virtualization and decentralization of knowledge work requires knowledge workers to learn new ways of working. Primarily, learning to work without communication in the same time and place as they did when they commuted daily to centralized commuter offices.

The learning curve they face became painfully apparent during the public health restrictions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic. Knowledge workers continued to work as if they were in person at a commute in office through video conferencing platforms. Soon “Zoom fatigue” set in with back-to-back meetings filling each day.

The meetings were necessary because of a dominant real time, spoken communication culture. Some organizations continue to maintain this culture and concluded that once the pandemic was no longer a threat, staff should once again commute to the office so they could continue meeting face to face and in real time.

Advances in information and communications technology has deemphasized the need for synchronous, co-located knowledge work in a centralized, commute in office space. Knowledge organizations are now adjusting and adopting new tools and practices. In order to do so, they are shifting from a spoken to written communications culture. A recent Washington Post story highlights social media platform Bluesky.

Employees write proposals that the team debates, looking for holes in ideas. They gather in person one week a quarter and in smaller groups throughout the year to foster collaboration. “When somebody tosses out an idea, I say, ‘Write a proposal!’” said Paul Frazee, Bluesky’s chief technology officer, who said the company’s way of working makes him confident in remote work indefinitely. “In some ways, this was the only way we could do this,” added Rose Wang, Bluesky’s chief operations officer.

Another company cited in the Post story is Atlassian, an Australian software company that specializes in collaboration tools designed primarily for software development and project management. Atlassian has a “culture of documentation,” based on “shared documents, messaging systems and video to help employees capture meetings and comments and collaborate even though they may workat different times,” the newspaper reports.

According to the story, Atlassian has reduced its officespace and reinvested the savings in bringing employees together. This is another critical component of the shift to a virtualized, decentralized style of knowledge work, recognizing the social nature of human beings. The human mind is very capable of competently performing thought work alone. But people also need to feel connected to others, something that has to be intentionally cultured and doesn’t necessarily exist even in organizations where staff works regularly in a cube farm.

Thought work doesn’t require a centralized commute-in office

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As knowledge or thought work as it’s called becomes virtual and is done outside of centralized commuter offices, some knowledge organizations nevertheless believe it must be performed co-located, factory style. According to Roger L. Martin, knowledge organizations are indeed factories – “decision factories” as he termed them in a 2013 Harvard Business Review article.

The process of reaching decisions involves a lot of thought work and analysis that by definition is not tied to a physical location in time and space. That’s because it occurs in the brains of thought workers. In teams and project work groups, they share information and exchange ideas and insights as they move toward decisions.

Sometimes that involves in person brainstorming sessions with Kanban and white boards in smart conference rooms. But in most organizations, that’s not a daily activity that requires knowledge workers to commute to an office daily and incur the personal expense of the commute. They can do their work from their homes or other nearby location without the need for them to climb into a vehicle and travel to an office, often distant from their homes.

Tipping point: Virtualization and decentralization of knowledge work disrupting traditional concept of employment

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Under the traditional concept of employment, an employer sets the conditions of employment: When, where and how the work is to be done by employees. That is colliding with the virtualization and decentralization of knowledge work. Advances in information and communications technology (ICT) over the past five decades have rendered time and place far less relevant. Knowledge work can now be done most anywhere and at any time.

This shift didn’t happen overnight but over the past five decades. Its sudden acceleration since the 2020 pandemic follows a pattern where meta change grows slowly and then reaches a tipping point. That tipping point is now at hand. Some knowledge organizations are navigating it without much trouble while others are struggling to adapt as the former centralized office-based model gives way.

Employment in knowledge work as it has been understood will likely be reformed. That understanding included an expectation that because knowledge work was confined to a particular time and place, knowledge workers must expend their own time and resources in order to physically occupy that designated space and time.

That expectation is naturally now being questioned. Knowledge workers owe a duty to perform their work to the best of their ability for the organizations that retain them. Nothing more can be reasonably expected of them. And that includes a school/classroom like attendance policy that does nothing to further their efforts or the missions of the organizations they serve.

Virtualization of knowledge work could portend major downsizing trend

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As knowledge work is virtualized and decentralized out of commute in offices with modern information and communication technologies, some organizations are questioning their space needs. And concurrently, apparently also their staffing levels. They are doing so by adopting mandatory office attendance policies as a condition of employment. Those who don’t show up face being asked to resign or be terminated.

A big question going forward is once those positions are vacated when their former occupants depart is whether they will be filled again or eliminated.

If the latter, the virtualization and decentralization of knowledge work also portends a new era where organizations no longer permanently employ large numbers of knowledge workers, concluding they can fulfill their missions with significantly reduced staffing levels. This is a critical issue since for most organizations, human resources and office space make up their biggest overhead expenses.

This has substantial implications. It could redefine knowledge work as primarily project versus employment based where knowledge work is delineated by a set job description and duties. That in turn could lead to increased use of consultants, contract staffing and professional service firms that many knowledge organizations are already utilizing.

The knowledge work diaspora

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Knowledge work — also referred to as thought work — aims to develop information into actionable plans and reach decisions about them. For private sector organizations, that includes product or service development, marketing strategy and planning logistics and access to resources. For governments, it’s how to implement public policy and develop programs and budgets to support them.

None of these functions necessarily require knowledge workers to gather regularly in dedicated office space though they might find it beneficial to gather on occasion, perhaps in a day or week-long intensive Kanban or brainstorming session as well as to strengthen social bonding among team members. With communication and collaboration possible from most anywhere to perform these functions, a physical space now must demonstrate that benefit since the traditional office it is no longer the default setting for knowledge work. Nor is it practical or cost effective for large numbers of knowledge workers to regularly commute to one.

This fundamental shift in knowledge work has produced a knowledge work diaspora out centralized commuter offices. It’s upending our concept of knowledge work. Some knowledge organizations that have traditionally viewed their workforces like factory parts inventories are physically inventorying them in office spaces. They have done so by ordering their staff members to report to offices – referred to as “return to office” for what is effectively a census of commitment. If they are not there, they’re not counted, discounted for promotions and even dismissed. They are reassessing the size of their staffs and future office space needs since both of these have been traditionally measured by staff office presence.

The rapid emergence of AI in knowledge work adds a new wrinkle. It requires sizable space for its servers, but unlike humans doesn’t need office space. It too will hasten the diaspora of knowledge work as it was known before ICT began to change it decades ago.

This is a time of great change among knowledge workers and organizations that will require rethinking and adjustment. Or what futurist Alvin Toffler described as developing a form of postmodern literacy when he said “The illiterate of the future are not those who can’t read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Return to office tensions point to reassessment of employment for knowledge work

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“Increasing numbers of employees may leave traditional employment, choosing to start their own businesses as freelancers and contractors.“

So predicts management author Lynne Curry in a blog post today. The context of her post is tension in knowledge organizations. The source is conflict between managers’ beliefs that knowledge work – gathering and the analysis of information to reach a decision – can only be done optimally at centralized, commute in offices – and the practical experience of knowledge workers who have done their work outside of this setting with no commute necessary.

What’s noteworthy is Curry’s prediction that is the decentralization and virtualization of knowledge work is eroding the concept of employment as well. “Traditional employment” as Curry terms it means the employer determines when, where and how an employee performs their job duties. When knowledge work can be done outside of a set “workplace” or time frame, that definition doesn’t fit as well anymore. Employers operating from this framework might sense that not only are their beliefs about how knowledge work is best done are being challenged, but also their agency and authority.

In that sense, the tensions we are seeing expressed as the “return to office” debate are fundamentally questioning whether knowledge work necessarily involves employment. Or can it be done as Curry suggests on a contract basis with knowledge workers paid to complete defined projects? That would require a serious rethink by knowledge organizations of whether employment as traditionally defined continues to make sense or if another model of management would be more appropriate taking into account advances in information and communications technology over the past 30 years.