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

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.

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

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.