The world has changed. Why is this happening? Smartsheet transforms your work.
Recently, something troubling has been happening on the airwaves.
Although the world has largely created a distributed workforce that works almost immediately, many CEOs still believe that employees are productive and ambitious after spending five days in the office.
This is not only a major insult but also an anachronism, given the recent experiences of a large portion of the workforce.
As a CEO, I find it offensive that anyone in a leadership role is dictating the fates of employees and working culture through this lens.
Today, I appeal to you, the digital leaders who are ambitious and productive in a hybrid environment, to be the voice for reason in your organization.
It doesn’t take much to see the flaws in the argument that ambition (and we should not be talking about “performance”) equals physical presence. This argument is more about the leadership who makes it than the employees who are affected by it.
This article explains.
Gaps in Remote Work Experience vs Primordial Food
Darwinism and The Future Of Work
The Other Side of the Conversation
Gaps in Remote Work Experience vs Primordial Food
In the previous article, I discussed some of the things missing from the virtual experience. These are things that many organizations didn’t consider when they were in the middle of a pivot.
I spoke about context, observation and spontaneity as things that must be acknowledged as missing and that must be compensated for.
However, this does not mean that people should not be working in person.
It is almost like crawling back into the primordial soup we came from, if you fall back to five days per week in-person at work.
The five-day work week’s primordial soup.
I challenge the bold assumption that being on-site carries this inherent meaning. Here are the reasons:
Companies Are Diverse
It is a fact that different business models and types of businesses may have different needs. However, we can’t say that physical presence has any effect on ambition or productivity.
Boss Bias: Darwin Strikes
The only way to succeed in business was for the old school CEO to be in the office. This is their internal identity validation (psychological), and their “narrative success” given the work environment (sociological). They are the product of the environment they have lived in. We should be able to look at them with a smile and “tut tut” a little.
However, past performance does not necessarily indicate future success if the environment has changed. This is why it hurts. As with all performance management, it is just as much the fault of the reviewer than the observed, the one being reviewed. These bosses feel the need to see people in order to believe they can be productive.
Bad Math
Math is another thing I challenge. See if the traditional definition of productivity includes time spent walking through buildings in inefficient transitions between meetings.
The world has changed. Why is this happening? Smartsheet transforms your work.
Consider whether it includes lost time due to close interaction such as gossip and conflict. Also, consider whether it includes the commute and the cost of that commute as well as changes due to traffic or broken subway trains.
As I mentioned in my previous article, being present on site can have great synergistic (integrated), productivity gains for an organization. But at the individual productivity level as indicated by willingness and ability to overcome geo-presence barriers like commuting, childcare, and overall health? It is possible to prove it.
Missing data
These CEOs could, to be fair, be right