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The trivialization of place

iPass reported on the mobile workforce in 2010. They predicted "the trivialization of place will increase." That resonates with our Hookflash experience. From the report:

The New York Times had an interesting article last summer titled “Forget What You Know about Good Study Habits.” It turns out that simply alternating the room improves retention. Take this theory and apply it to the workplace, and you have to wonder how effective people are in the office. The office is a distracting place between interruptions and meetings — tons, and tons of meetings. However, working remotely gives employees a change of venue, often removes distractions, and can help them be more productive.

Work is something people do, not a place that they go. We believe that where people work will matter less and less. For numerous reasons from improved productivity to decreased carbon footprint and reduced office expenditure — a workforce that works anywhere, anytime is a boon to business.

This continues Frances Cairncross's 1997 The Death of Distance theme, where moving bits replaces moving atoms, and changes nearly everything.

As this trend continues in workplaces, three counter-themes rise.

Face-to-face is back. Agile teams know the value of quick "stand-up" status meetings for checking in. Startup Weekend throws strangers together in a big place for 54 straight hours of entrepreneurship. Meetup.com and Plancast are more active than ever. Co-working spaces are popping up in every metro. But the new 'face time' is different. We spend less time on small talk, on getting up to speed, because we already know (and can know more about) each other. We share common purpose before we show up at the same spot. And we follow up faster and more often because our social tools provide conduits for continuing the conversation after we part. Our digital experiences make the collocated ones more fruitful. Online is complementing offline, not just replacing it.

Software tools are not even close to modeling the best parts of working together in person. When was the last time you were able to get the "sense of a room" in a conference call? Has any virtual whiteboard offered the experience of standing next to someone, each with markers, drawing out your ideas? We're still lacking the richness of peripheral vision, of body language, of group dynamics, of visual thinking. One of our goals at Hookflash is to restore some of the natural conversation flow millions lost as we moved out of shared workplaces.

Bad things from offices haunt us. iPass talks about the pain of meetings and mind jolting interruptions. Virtual workplaces come with alert overloads, back-to-back calls, and everyone at work seeing your check-ins and photos. Adults are still defining work/life boundaries and learning to control what we share; sadly, our controls remain primitive. We're still surviving inbox overload and cultivating less interruptive behavior. We'd thought we'd left Dilbert's workplace behind. We haven't. It's just digital.

That said, more of us are working "remotely" or even at companies without a physical headquarters. This shifts the cost of office space from employers to workers (I miss my living room), makes it harder to be connected with coworkers in the social sense (virtual coffee breaks?), and changes how we organize our time, our teams, and our work. While office space may be less important for many, the challenges posed by the shift to virtual workplace are far from trivial.

P.S. This post was written at a pool hall, my home office and a food court. Where do you work?

Hat tip to Trent Johnsen for the topic and the iPass report.

By Phil Wolff (revived from the hookflash archives)

#hookflash #phil wolff