A Deliberate Workspace

Imagine a scenario from the pre-COVID era - You're walking down the corridor of your office floor. One of your colleagues comes the other way, and a conversation sparks out of thin air. And the outcome of that small chat can be anything - perhaps a solution to that error you were facing for the past 4 hours, perhaps the encouragement you needed to go through today, perhaps a laugh that lifted your mood, but definitely a stronger connection with the other person.

And all of this happened, not because either of you was looking for it, just because both of you happened to be at the same corridor, at the same time - Not out of deliberation, just serendipity. Think of all the other serendipitous conversations which you were a part of, at your workplace - with a confused intern, an inspiring co-worker, a distressed boss, or a stranger in the pantry; Conversations that you never thought you'd have, but are glad you had.

Fast forward to today, and perhaps we've lost this serendipity in a work-from-home environment. If the only way to reach out to a colleague is via a ping, a call or an email, digital conversations become deliberate, and deliberate conversations are focused... focused on the objective behind pinging the other person. The serendipity is lost to an ecosystem where we can no longer run into the right person at the right time unknowingly; where small-talk is tougher still because pinging someone for small-talk seems less necessary; where colleagues now work in different work-and-home environments; where we can't see each others' distressed faces to offer timely help.

Now that I need to deliberately start a conversation, and need to know what to talk about, the insights that I take away are now restricted by what I think I need to know from the other person, which may be very myopic in comparison to what I could've taken away without an agenda.

And that isn't even the biggest challenge. The worst part about a deliberate, agenda-driven conversation? It is cold... potentially devoid of the sense that the person on the other end of the line is a human-being, with their human-being problems.

Think about it - if I were your colleague and the only time we have a conversation is to discuss the upcoming deadlines, I doubt that the weekly conversation with me would be the highlight of your day. I may well be the nicest person in the team, but I would sound mundane and pedantic enough for you to rather have a conversation with your coffee cup; And if the first instinct of my team-mate is to rather not speak to me for their concerns, personal or otherwise, the validity of my purpose as a people manager would shrink by a significant extent.

Deliberate conversations in the workplace seem difficult to bond over, because minutes-of-meetings rarely capture the good moments.

In a connected world, how connected are we?

In a digital network, how should we be networking?

A point to deliberate about, in a deliberate workspace.

I look forward to your insights in the comments.