return to office

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

Posted onLeave a comment

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.

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

Posted onLeave a comment

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.

Return to office debate and organizational communications culture

Posted onLeave a comment

The return to office controversy has been about where knowledge workers work. Due to the sunk cost fallacy, anchoring and present cognitive biases, the management of many knowledge organizations — particularly those with substantial investments in office real estate –– believe that should be in the office most of the week. On the flip side, many knowledge workers disagree, arguing knowledge work is more virtual and doesn’t fit into a factory paradigm of set daily shifts measured by office attendance.

But the issue isn’t merely about office space and cube farms and the commute to them. The larger underlying issue is how work gets done and specifically a knowledge organization’s communication culture. In some organizations, the culture is spoken. Staff talk with each other in real time, in conference rooms, break rooms, and in offices and cubicles. In others, it’s more written and asynchronous, expressed in collaboration and project management platforms, emails and chats.

Organizations whose communication culture is more real time spoken-based are naturally more office centric whereas those that are not are more virtual. The former tend to have more difficulty with non co-located work. Calendars get overloaded with meetings since those are the primary means of communication and decision making. This situation existed for decades before the public health restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic forced many organizations out of the office. Knowledge workers complain it’s difficult to get work done in a day filled with meetings; the dominant speaking communication culture interferes with more concentrated thought work. When done virtually, it leads to “Zoom fatigue.”

In some organizations, management frowns on staff informally chatting among themselves, thinking they are not getting any work done. Ironically, these same organizations argue staff must be in the office to bump into each other and talk informally, contending these activities promote collaboration and serendipitous creativity. So there’s a bit of a conflict going on between these expectations that requires organizations to engage in some honest introspection. If real time, spoken communication is truly at the core of an organization’s communications culture, management must determine how that’s best done: where, when and how often and for what purposes.

For those organizations looking to become less office-centric, their challenge is to build a communications culture based more on asynchronous written communication and select the collaboration and project management platforms that best support it.

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.