centralized commuter offices

Decentralized Knowledge Work: Transforming Organizational Management, Culture

Posted onLeave a comment

The evolution of information and communication technology over the past four decades has decentralized knowledge work. Unlike during the latter decades of the 20th century, knowledge industry organizations no longer require dedicated workplaces.

It began in the 1980s with the personal computer followed by portable computers and communications devices such as smartphones that have all but replaced the office desk phone. This digital world of knowledge work is replacing the analog high speed highways (no longer high speed due to exceeding design capacity) that physically connected knowledge workers to centralized commuter offices (CCOs). A large amount of knowledge work now gets done with texts, emails, video conferences that are independent of a CCO.

This shift occurred relatively swiftly and is transforming society and organizations. Knowledge organizations now must undergo a management, structural and cultural transformation to adapt. Some are struggling to do so and requiring staff to report to CCOs and incur the personal time and economic costs of commuting.

It’s generating conflict, attrition and degrading morale in these organizations. It’s also a maladaptive response to the transformation of how knowledge work is done. It is underpinned by outdated Theory X management philosophy and related cognitive biases.

Theory X is a management theory developed by Douglas McGregor. It is based on the assumptions that people don’t really want to work, lack ambition, only work to collect a paycheck, and need constant supervision. This theory is reinforced with how employment is defined, wherein an employer determines when, where and how work is performed.

Related cognitive biases include anchoring (knowledge work is done at one time and one place—the CCO— or it can’t truly be work). Another is the sunk cost fallacy that organizational resources invested in offices require they be used lest the value of those investments isn’t fully realized/recovered. Theory X is reinforced by the Industrial age, hierarchal command and control management structures topped by a powerful CEO. That accentuates the cognitive biases since they are held by a single leader above question.

In contrast to Theory X, McGregor’s Theory Y management model assumes that people want to work, want to take responsibility, and do not need much supervision. This lends itself to evaluating work based on outputs and a project and process versus people management approach. This organizing principle of knowledge work is described in a 2013 Harvard Business Review article by Roger L. Martin.

In today’s decentralized paradigm of knowledge work, knowledge workers need Theory Y leaders, not Theory X bosses. That means identifying strong team leaders respected by their colleagues, supporting high functioning teams and the team formation process, and following best project management principles and practices an inculcating them into the organization.

Those teams decide where and how often they meet in the same location or if they meet in person at all. The meetings serve an end – working on the project or social bonding – and not meeting for the sake of meeting. There may or may not be a dedicated workplace.

To navigate this rapidly changing environment of knowledge work, organizations must adapt and transform. Assistance is available. To schedule an initial consultation, email [email protected] or call 707-414-8179.

At its core, return to office debate about redefining knowledge work

Posted onLeave a comment

Personal computing and communication devices and the Internet have decentralized knowledge work and made the daily trip to centralized commuter offices (CCOs) obsolete. Knowledge workers discovered its irrelevance and enjoyed recovering personal time spent commuting during the public health social distancing measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now as some organizations demand they return to the office (RTO) on a set number or designated days of the week, many are understandably rebelling.

But the real debate isn’t about showing up in person at the CCO on a prescribed number of specific weekdays. It’s about redefining knowledge work and specifically how it’s done and managed.

In his 2013 book 2013 eBook Four Dead Kings at Work: The Decentralization and Blending of Work in the 21st Century, author Dave Rolston predicted the imminent death of the four primary tenets or kings of knowledge work in the Industrial Age:

  1. Set job duties;
  2. Managed by a single manager;
  3. Performed at one place (the CCO);
  4. At the same time (8-5, Monday-Friday).

This definition worked well before 1990 when the tools for knowledge work were at the workplace and not portable like today’s personal devices, online databases, collaboration platforms and more recently, AI chatbots.

Now, organizations and knowledge workers must adjust to the post-Industrial Age environment. That entails determining when co-located work is beneficial and when it isn’t. It also requires assessing the communications culture.

When knowledge workers were regularly in the CCO, meetings — both scheduled and ad hoc — were frequent. Even too frequent for many knowledge workers. They express a real time, speaking-based communication culture.

To fully utilize today’s communication and collaboration tools, knowledge organizations must adopt a more written, asynchronous communication culture. They also must find the right balance between this and spoken communication and when knowledge workers must be assembled to discuss and sort through complex and difficult issues that benefit from synchronous, in person discussion. That is driven more by business needs to complete reports and projects and reach decisions rather than the daily calendar.

It’s also critical that knowledge organizations keep their missions clearly communicated to staff so they can see how their work makes a meaningful contribution as this article in today’s Wall Street Journal implies.

Leased/owned office space downsizing likely to accelerate

Posted onLeave a comment

Knowledge work is currently in an awkward transition out of centralized commuter offices (CCOs) and dispersed to home offices. Many organizations have adopted what’s referred to as “hybrid” arrangements with staff working in the CCO a set number of scheduled days, typically two or three days a week. For knowledge workers, the hybrid arrangement is disruptive. The vast majority need only one workspace as shown during the COVID-19 public health measures.

A home office is that location. It provides convenient access to food and coffee that fuel knowledge work, particularly given many if not most CCOs lack on site cafeterias. In addition, workspaces are customized to knowledge workers’ preferred equipment and ergonomics. Some, for example, may prefer sit/stand desks or kneeling chairs that aren’t present in both home offices and CCOs. Finally, their most portable knowledge work tool – the brain – does not require multiple locations in order to function effectively.

The homes of some knowledge workers don’t offer a good office setting. They may not have a suitable space for a home office setup or other circumstances that make it impractical as a regular workplace. These staff need and prefer the CCO to get their work done. But they are a small minority and don’t justify the amount of office space organizations must finance. They can get by with only a fraction of their current owned and leased space and considerably reduce operating expense.

Organizational management is recognizing the trend and potential sizable cost savings and rightsizing their office space footprints accordingly. Expect this to accelerate over the next few years.

Work from home still reigns as offices plan to reopen – Los Angeles Times

Posted onLeave a comment

Human beings have not been fundamentally changed by the coronavirus, Dezzutti said, and will again seek one another’s company in busy metropolises.

“In history, there has been no pandemic or plague or natural disaster that’s killed off the city,” he said. “Our need to live and work in urban clusters, and the concentration of people and economic activity that occurs there, is just too strong.”

Source: Work from home still reigns as offices plan to reopen – Los Angeles Times

This analysis overlooks a powerful trend over the past two decades of information and communications technology decentralizing knowledge work out of urban centers. Also, high housing costs in urban areas and hours wasted commuting from more affordable outlying portions of metros that come with too high a cost for daily gathering in a centralized, commute-in office. True, humans are social beings and like to gather. But they most naturally do so in close proximity to where they live.

Pandemic hastens end of the centralized commuter office, heralds “Distributed Age.”

Posted onLeave a comment

A year after the coronavirus sparked an extraordinary exodus of workers from office buildings, what had seemed like a short-term inconvenience is now clearly becoming a permanent and tectonic shift in how and where people work. Employers and employees have both embraced the advantages of remote work, including lower office costs and greater flexibility for employees, especially those with families. Beyond New York, some of the country’s largest cities have yet to see a substantial return of employees, even where there have been less stringent government-imposed lockdowns, and some companies have announced that they are not going to have all workers come back all the time.

*    *    *

“We believe that we’re on top of the next change, which is the Distributed Age, where people can be more valuable in how they work, which doesn’t really matter where you spend your time,” said Alexander Westerdahl, the vice president of human resources at Spotify, the Stockholm-based streaming music giant that has 6,500 employees worldwide.

Source: Remote Work Is Here to Stay. Manhattan May Never Be the Same. – The New York Times

Pandemic showed work can get done without centralized commuter offices

Posted onLeave a comment

Work, too, has been transformed. Suddenly, hundreds of millions of people around the world had to figure out how to get things done without going into the office. It turns out that for many white-collar jobs, this is not just possible; it comes with a variety of upsides. Commutes, to take one example, are unhealthy—they waste time and potentially increase our sedentary time, which is associated with many adverse health outcomes, and perhaps worst of all, driving is among the most dangerous activities we undertake each day. The competition to try to avoid long commutes distorts property values and can worsen inequality, as those with money pay extra to live near centers of work, while other residents can no longer afford to live there.

Source: Three Ways the Pandemic Has Made the World Better – The Atlantic

What is the Future of Offices When Workers Have a Choice? – The New York Times

Posted onLeave a comment

Post-Covid for example, a Brooklyn or Queens resident who previously commuted to Manhattan may opt to work several days a week in a shared space within a 10-minute walk from home. Some large employers are already experimenting with satellite offices in the suburbs of cities in which they already have a downtown headquarters. The main office will remain important for most companies, but fewer employees will be expected to be there all day, every day…Offices will need spaces for specific tasks like focused work, team brainstorming, client presentations and employee training. And they will need to be more focused on individuals, even if these people work for a large company.

Source: What is the Future of Offices When Workers Have a Choice? – The New York Times

These predictions are spot on. In the coming years, knowledge work will be done in a variety of settings instead of a centralized, commute in office — a trend that began to pick up steam in the decade leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Working from home (WFH) that got a giant boost due to pandemic public health measures to tamp down indoor gathering and support social distancing will continue. It will likely be most prominent in less densely developed exurban and rural areas where walking or cycling to a shared neighborhood office space is less practical. Homes in these areas with dedicated office space and served by fiber-delivered advanced telecommunications services will be in demand.

In more densely developed urban and suburban neighborhoods, shared office spaces within reasonable walking and cycling distance should prove popular once vaccines have developed herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2, particularly among households lacking dedicated office space or whose makeups aren’t ideal for WFH.

Traditional office spaces will remain relevant, but repurposed from regular daily workplaces to support the group activities that Dror Poleg lists in his article. These workspaces can be equipped with smart presentation rooms that can’t easily be emulated for interactive large group activities — at least not yet — with online real time platforms like Zoom. For smaller organizations with smaller office space footprints, conference facilities can support these functions. Finally, these co-located activities don’t have to occur on a set basis but only when the need presents such as kicking off a strategy or project or working through a challenge that requires a focused, group effort.

Pandemic rapidly accelerated virtualization, decentralization of knowledge work

Posted onLeave a comment

The viral pandemic that closed down centralized commuter offices (CCOs) in the first quarter of this year accelerated a trend toward working outside of the CCO. The trend had been slowly growing in the previous decade or so, allowing knowledge workers to work in their residential communities during some or all of the work week.

The pandemic and the lockdowns instituted by state and local governments demonstrated to knowledge organizations that they could conduct their business without a CCO. Prior to the pandemic, the question was to what extent could their staffs work outside of the CCO and specifically how many days of the work week and which days. That forced organizations to adapt in how they communicate and collaborate, make decisions and coordinate and complete project using digital information and communications technology as the medium for those fundamental activities of knowledge work, replacing the analog mode of the cube farm.

Freed of the time sucking and often stressful daily commute to the CCO, knowledge workers have seen the quality of their lives improve, having more time for exercise, sleep, home cooked meals and family. For knowledge organizations, now that they’ve seen they can function without a CCO as their workplaces, they are beginning to address the larger question of the future role of their offices.

The issue is shifting from teleworking to virtualization. Organizations that were already partially virtual at the start of the pandemic with staff working only part of the week in the CCO and then shifting to the full work week with the pandemic are now examining whether to go fully virtual and dispense with the CCO altogether.

Others that were less further along on the trend line at the start of the year with staff only occasionally teleworking outside of the CCO are considering expanding telework while retaining the CCO. As they expand teleworking and their cultures and management practices adjust, over time these organizations could also begin to question whether it makes sense for them to virtualize and begin to migrate out of the CCO, realizing significant cost savings.

Confronting a large budget deficit ahead of the start of the fiscal year that began July 1, California Gov. Gavin Newsom called out the potential savings in his proposed fiscal year 2020-21 budget:

Historically, state government has been slow to adopt modernizations in the workplace. But the COVID-19 pandemic has forced a massive experiment in telework and allowed state managers, led by the Government Operations Agency, to rethink business processes.

This transformation will allow for expanded long-term telework strategies, increased modernization and delivery of government services online, reconfigured office space, reduced leased space, and when possible, flexible work schedules for employees.

The virtualization and consequent decentralization of knowledge work out of CCOs will have major implications in the decades following the 2020 viral pandemic that will reshape modern economies relative to labor markets, land use and real estate and transportation.

Metro areas developed like solar systems with CCOs as the stars at their centers with housing development and transportation systems orbiting around them. Their gravitational influence was weakening before 2020, diminished by information and communications technology that made them less relevant. Information and communications technology became the medium of knowledge work, allowing information to be processed and communicated virtually anywhere. No longer is it necessary to move the knowledge worker daily in motor vehicles to a set location during fixed time frames to accomplish that.

The pandemic hit like a huge gravitational wave, rippling through metro area “solar systems,” disrupting the gravitational tug of the CCO and scattering knowledge workers onto their own trajectories. Knowledge workers residing in the outer exurban regions of their solar systems were suddenly freed of the long super commute daily orbit to the solar center and back home again.

Some knowledge workers and their organizations realize than can exist in other “solar systems” — less densely populated smaller metros and towns free of commute congestion and where the pace of life is slower and the cost of living lower.

Looking back, the 2020 viral pandemic will be seen as a major event providing a tremendous boost for the rapid reformation of modern society.

Zillow survey suggests housing preferences could be upended in a post-pandemic America, leading to major questions about the future of dense metro cores

Posted on

SEATTLE, May 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Where people choose to live has traditionally been tied to where they work, a dynamic that through the past decade spurred extreme home value growth and an affordability crisis in coastal job centers. But the post-pandemic recovery could mitigate or even produce the opposite effect and drive a boom in secondary cities and exurbs, prompted not by a fear of density but by a seismic shift toward remote work.

Source: http://zillow.mediaroom.com/2020-05-13-A-Rise-in-Remote-Work-Could-Lead-to-a-New-Suburban-Boom#Closed

This is consistent with a long tern trend I discuss in my recently published eBook Last Rush Hour: The Decentralization of Knowledge Work in the Twenty-First Century. Before the maturation of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) that enables knowledge workers to work from most anywhere with good Internet connectivity, the length of the commute to the office was a paramount consideration in terms of where people chose to live. ICT has reduced its importance since it shrinks time and distance. The personal computer is the automobile of the information economy and the Internet is the highway.

The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and social distancing out of centralized commuter offices (CCOs) demonstrated to knowledge workers and their their organizations it’s no longer necessary to commute every workday to a CCO.

We’ll see varying degrees of migration out of CCOs in the coming years. Some will continue to be used part of the week or as meeting spaces for larger gatherings. Other organizations will opt to go fully virtual and shut down their offices.

NYT: Big Apple facing inflection point on centralized, commute-in offices

Posted onLeave a comment

But now, as the pandemic eases its grip, companies are considering not just how to safely bring back employees, but whether all of them need to come back at all. They were forced by the crisis to figure out how to function productively with workers operating from home — and realized unexpectedly that it was not all bad. If that’s the case, they are now wondering whether it’s worth continuing to spend as much money on Manhattan’s exorbitant commercial rents. They are also mindful that public health considerations might make the packed workplaces of the recent past less viable.

“Is it really necessary?” said Diane M. Ramirez, the chief executive of Halstead, the real estate company, which has more than a thousand agents in the New York region. “I’m thinking long and hard about it. Looking forward, are people going to want to crowd into offices?”

Once the dust settles, and companies make their decisions, New York City could face a real estate reckoning.

Source: Coronavirus Live Updates: Top Health Experts Paint Bleak Picture of Pandemic – The New York Times