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Knowledge work has been slowly decentralizing for decades. But since COVID pandemic, it seems like just the past few years.

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Many knowledge organizations have been blindsided by the rapid decentralization of knowledge work. It is disrupting the usual manner of knowledge work as it has been done for decades: commuting daily to a centralized office location. That commute is no longer necessary. Knowledge work no longer requires the physical transportation of knowledge workers to an office building. Thanks to information and communications technology advances of the past five decades, the centralized, commute in office has become obsolete.

Knowledge organizations are struggling to adapt to this change. It’s been building since it was first predicted in the mid-1960s by futurist Arthur C. Clarke and as high speed highways began to exceed design capacity the following decade. But from the perspective of many knowledge organizations, it arrived with suddenness and surprise amid public health measures to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. That has left many knowledge organizations unprepared and facing future shock from too much change at once. This has led to negative consequences including:

  • Staff surveillance and “coffee badging;”
  • Lowered morale and engagement;
  • Loss of top performers and future leaders;
  • Negative social and news media accounts;
  • Difficulty planning staffing and space requirements.

The good news is knowledge organizations don’t have to navigate the shift alone. They can adapt and do so in a manner consistent with their values and mission and thrive in today’s decentralized, virtualized world of knowledge work.

Help is available.

Decentralized Knowledge Work: Transforming Organizational Management, Culture

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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.

Aligning work, outcomes key challenge facing knowledge organizations — not office attendance

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The state of knowledge work has reached an accelerated transitional phase of virtualization and decentralization, beginning with the broad adoption of information and communications technologies (ICT) in the 1980s and 1990s. This megatrend has been sped up by the public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today’s knowledge work is largely digital, obsoleting analog highways and office buildings. It’s also less tied to what author Dave Rolston dubbed the four dead kings of work: one job duty, supervised by a single manager and performed at a set time and location. Knowledge organizations must now quickly plan how to navigate this paradigm shift relative to the mission and needs of their organizations. They can start by asking themselves these basic questions:

  • To what extent can the organization’s work be accomplished virtually and asynchronously? Who does the work and how is it organized?
  • What work requires co-located staff working in real time and how does this support the mission? How often, where and how and most importantly what are the expected benefits and outcomes?
  • Is the organizational culture like that of a think tank where staff regularly convenes in person to spitball ideas and white board or Kanban them? Or is most thought and planning work done individually?

For many, it might be a mix of this type of synchronous joint brainstorming and async, not bound to time and place, considering the best and most creative thought work often gets done and ideas and solutions to tough challenges bubble up when doing other activities such as exercising, walking the dog, housework and even sleeping.

Should they host two to four week seminars like that of a university where newer staff are tutored by more senior staff? What physical spaces would be most economical for these? Many organizations will find they don’t need dedicated spaces; smart ad hoc co-work locations will do.

It’s imperative organizations address these questions rather than adopting an arbitrary schedule wherein staff commute to an office location a certain number of days or on designated days of the week, referred to as “hybrid.” As coffee badging is showing, this approach isn’t sustainable. Staff morale will suffer if team members feel they are going through the motions without purpose other than to show up at a designated office site. It also fuels resentment, with staff feeling that their personal time is being wasted by unnecessary commuting.

Underlying these questions is a bigger question with major implications: Is the Industrial Age employment model outdated for today’s knowledge work along with its wage and hour requirements and state mandated workers compensation insurance? Does it really make sense with so many knowledge workers working in their own homes rather than a centralized commuter office?

The same question applies to employer medical benefit plans given reform of individual medical insurance in 2010 with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act designed to make it easier for individuals to purchase their own plans. Both it and state workers’ compensation laws could benefit from a thoughtful review and updating.

Workers’ compensation insurance mandates on employers could be narrowed to apply only to occupations that require on site duties that pose clear injury risk, saving knowledge organizations money spent on premiums. The Affordable Care Act mandate on large employers to offer group medical benefit plans conflicts with reforms aimed at boosting non-group plans. For now, getting around the mandate would require knowledge organizations to rethink whether their staffs should be classified as employees going forward given the change in the nature of knowledge work.

Some knowledge organizations — information technology companies in particular — tend to hire and fire en masse. Instead of employing, they should consider fully migrating to using contract staff and self-employed people and putting key personnel on retainer. They can be formed into teams to work on short term projects of a year or less as well as longer term initiatives. These outcome based models of knowledge work offer a great adaption to Rolston’s dying kings of work and offer knowledge organizations greater flexibility and significant overhead savings.

Roger Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management, suggested knowledge organizations – which he termed “decision factories” in a 2013 Harvard Business Review article – can avoid the cycle of mass hiring and firing by restructuring into flexible teams to work on defined projects rather than hired as permanent employees based on a written job description. That coincides nicely with both Rolston’s assessment of the changing nature of knowledge work as well as its accelerating virtualization.

Apple and Google want to force remote workers back into cubicles. That friction could lead to a job exodus

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But who has to come back to work — and when and where — is proving fraught as millions of workers face having a new way of living and working ripped away by managers requiring them to show up in person, or else. That tension could mean some workers leave for companies offering more flexibility and the ability to shed burdensome commutes in favor of time with family and friends.

McCracken said some people he interviewed said “it feels like they’re putting their hand in my pocket, that they’re taking two hours from me that I had learned to use for myself” that would now flip back to wasted commute time.

Source: Apple and Google want to force remote workers back into cubicles. That friction could lead to a job exodus

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

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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.

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“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 forced organizational change, shattered Industrial Age boundaries defining knowledge work

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Pandemic social distancing restrictions served as an organizational change intervention, forcing knowledge industry organizations to reassess their cultures and beliefs about how work gets done. Pandemic restrictions virtually overnight switched off the gravity that pulls knowledge workers into a centralized, commute-in office workspace. As those restrictions are lifted amid mass immunization campaigns, knowledge organizations continue to confront these fundamental questions.

For most knowledge organizations, their cultures are strongly rooted in the belief work is being definitively performed when people are present in the office, reinforced by social connections made there and functions such as group lunches and celebrations. The organizational hierarchy is visually represented and reinforced in the office layout, with managers assigned corner and window offices and the rank and file in cubicles on the inside of the floor. A knowledge worker’s manager is clearly identified on the organizational chart. Clocks on the wall define when work is expected to be done.

A decade before the pandemic, author Dave Rolston in his 2013 book Four Dead Kings at Work predicted the death of these anchors that traditionally defined the boundaries of knowledge work in the Industrial Age: 1) One centralized workplace; 2) A single manager; 3) Performing a single defined job and pay grade; 4) At the same time each week.

The pandemic hastened their death requiring organizations to flex or abandon them. The elimination of the centralized office workplace and the erosion of the 8-5, Monday through Friday work time diminished the first and last of the kings, bookended by the daily commute. After more than year of foregoing commuting, knowledge workers have realized the enormous personal time burden it imposes, taking time away family, community, and health promoting behaviors such as adequate sleep, exercise and home cooked versus takeout and restaurant meals. Not to mention clothing and transportation costs.

This realization within knowledge organization has major implications for where knowledge workers will live in the coming decades and for traditional urban planning predicted on centralized settlement and development patterns forming sprawling metro areas requiring ever longer commutes.

The era of the daily gasoline-powered car commute coming to close in Golden State

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California is known for its bad air quality and freeways packed with gasoline powered automobiles, particularly during commute times. And long distance “super commutes” spurred by its high housing costs. That is poised to quickly change over the next couple of decades.

Public health restrictions to control the SARS-CoV-2 viral contagion accelerated the trend of knowledge workers working from their homes some or all of the time rather than in a distant commute-in office building. Now California Gov. Gavin Newsom set in motion a plan to transition the state to electric vehicles over the next 15 years and ban the sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035.

Knowledge workers might still go to team meetings and other business functions but get there via electric vehicle or public transit on some days each month. This is major change and it’s happening relatively rapidly in a leader state.

Shift out of centralized commuter offices a long term trend

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What will COVID do to housing? Home builders, city planners and market watchers say the jury is out on whether the COVID-19 pandemic will in fact prompt deep long-term changes in Sacramento communities. Will more Sacramentans move to the suburbs or to the hills for elbow room, figuring they may no longer have to deal with a congested commute to downtown offices? Will home prices continue upward, making home ownership increasingly elusive for many? Is it time for home builders to chop up their open-floor plans and begin building sound-proofed offices and home gyms? Or will the COVID era fade by next spring if a successful vaccine arrives, sending state workers back to downtown offices, people back to fitness centers for their workouts and families and friends back out to restaurants, bars and clubs? “Is this just a 2020 thing, or a 2025 thing?” University of the Pacific economist Jeffrey Michael said.

Source: Coronavirus, home prices send Bay Area families to Sacramento | The Sacramento Bee

It’s actually a 21st century thing. Information and communications technology advances are replacing the roads and highways of the 20th century when knowledge workers needed to commute daily to centralized, commuter offices (CCO). No more. They can begin their workday as soon as they get up and have a cup of coffee rather than an hour to two later after arriving at the office.

This is a long term trend. Public health infectious disease control measures put in place with with current pandemic accelerated it. The gravitational pull of the CCO was already weakening.

Working against the trend is a persistent belief that the best knowledge work requires knowledge workers to be in the same place every day — the office. Face to face communication is important since knowledge workers like other humans are social beings. Reinforcing those social connections however does not require a centralized workplace and the hassle and time suck of the daily commute since meetups can be most anywhere and anytime that’s convenient. What’s needed now as this story suggests are homes with dedicated office space. Also neighborhood co-working centers within walking or cycling distance. Performing knowledge work in the 21st century need not involve turning the key to a motor vehicle or boarding public transit as it did in the 20th.

State of California must overcome ingrained organizational culture, IT challenges to successfully navigate transition to virtual work

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Two factors have accelerated the State of California’s more than three decades in the making shift to virtual work:

  • The 2019 installation of a chief executive who unlike his predecessors has lived most of his life during the information and communications technology (ICT) revolution that brought about personal computing devices and Internet-based advanced telecommunications.
  • A global pandemic that made dense occupancy “cube farm” office environments decidedly risky for the spread of a novel communicable disease.

Without these factors, the state would have likely continued uninterrupted with its entrenched organizational culture where putting in hours at the office is regarded as both “work” and earning one’s future dollars in what’s become a rarity for most workers: a defined benefit pension plan with medical benefits. That culture has resisted virtual work for decades notwithstanding policy promulgated dating back to 1988 by both the Governor’s Office and the Legislature.

Management guru Peter Drucker is credited with the organizational behavior maxim that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It similarly makes a meal of public policy since culture is reinforced daily by group expectations and norms whereas policy merely exists in written form that’s meaningless without organizational buy in.

As The Sacramento Bee’s Wes Venteicher reports, Gov. Gavin Newsom has directed the 75 percent of state workers currently working outside of their state offices due to pandemic disease control measures put in place in March to continue to do so on either a full or part time basis as the state begins to reopen.

Going forward, Newsom’s revised budget summary for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2020 notes contagion control measures implemented by his administration “has forced a massive experiment in telework.” It directs state agencies to develop “expanded long-term telework strategies” and to “rethink business processes.”  

A 1990 report on a state telework pilot project begun in 1985 recommended managers and staff be trained to think in terms of work results rather than work processes. That’s a huge challenge for an organization where the key process metric is time spent in the office. Standing present for duty in the office is also a component of the state’s preferred command and control management style. That way managers are prepared with a team standing ready in case someone higher up or very high up in the chain of command wants something pronto.

It’s unlikely more than three decades of fraught history with telework can be changed overnight, even by a global pandemic and the worst budget shortfall in the state’s history. Another challenge for the state is to put in place a robust and secure cloud-based IT infrastructure that can support virtual work on an ongoing basis given IT modernization has not been its historical strong suit.

One of the most favorable factors in this transition is the promotion of millennials into management roles. Unlike generations before them, they grew up with information and communications technologies. They know from experience they enable knowledge work and setting policy – the mainstay of government work – possible outside of the centralized, commute-in offices of their parents’ generation. As well as the traffic congestion and air pollution they generate that kicked off the state’s 1980s telework pilot project to help reduce it.

Pandemic previews, hastens arrival of the last rush hour

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The social distancing brought on by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic offers a preview of the benefit of decentralizing knowledge work and will hasten the arrival of the last rush hour. Prior to the pandemic, only a small but growing percentage of knowledge workers spent most of the week working outside of centralized, commute-in offices (CCOs). With the closure of offices to slow the infectious disease outbreak, many more are now forced to do so. They may have grudgingly accepted daily and often long commutes as part of the job. Working outside of a CCO demonstrates they can still get their work done without the daily commute. Instead of turning a car key to start their workdays, they turn on the lights and their computers.

The reduction in commuting is also demonstrating how the automobile-oriented transportation infrastructure built up in starting in the mid-20th century is supposed to function per its original design. In metro areas, that infrastructure is overloaded with cars well beyond that specification, rendering it an inefficient means of getting people to CCOs. Over the decades, more highway lanes are added and public transit funding increased in the hope of improving transportation efficiency. But the effort and billions of dollars spent has largely been futile. The rush hour congestion remains and for too many, it takes too damn long to get to the CCO and back home again.

Freeing up personal time otherwise sacrificed to the commute brings into sharper focus the cost of daily commuting to CCOs. Working in the same space with co-workers has its benefits. Some info tech companies see it as essential to creativity, allowing for the spontaneous sharing of ideas. Having other workers around helps spark that, they believe. It likely does but with a tradeoff that’s not adequately recognized. In congested metro areas and their high cost of housing, bridging the distance daily between knowledge workers’ homes and the CCO with mid-20th century technology comes with a big price. There’s personal time lost every workday that could be used exercising, spending more time with family and friends as well as money spent on transportation, business attire and meals outside the home.

When that cost is suddenly removed from the picture and the savings realized as during the current pandemic, the benefits are also brought into clear focus – as clear as the previously fouled air in these metro areas now. Knowledge workers are learning they can share ideas and be creative without being co-located in CCOs thanks to 21st century information and communications technology.