From Location to Destination: A new way of thinking about the old office

As part of the borderless mindset I recently spoke about I also brought up the idea of reconfiguring how we see, use and talk about the office space. We are living in inter-pandemic times that drive lasting changes to how we work as well as to where we work and how those two dimensions - that can be combined in numerous ways - as a result drive additional change.?

What seems already clear today is that the classic 5 days a week 9-5 job in an office building is gone for the majority of people working in the marketing and advertising community. Which is a good thing, let’s see a little later why. What also seems a given is that business travel will not rebound to pre-pandemic level. Which is an even better thing for obvious reasons and I don’t only mean the positive impact on reducing emissions. The more important fact here is that we collectively accepted that a virtual meeting is as valuable as an in-person meeting and not a display of disrespect or a less binding conversation. The new flight is a video call. The new video call is a short phone call. The new mail is a text message. It can be all so easy, the pandemic is just the needed collective reconfiguration of our conversational landscape.

WFH - Work From Here

What we see is an increase of productivity on the back of the time-savings made here in combination with more focused work time that we enjoy - in case the kids are alright - in our home offices working by ourselves. Which then provides us with a deeper sense of fulfillment when we actually get our shit done that we usually don’t get done in our office environments or on travel. Of course we miss our colleagues and the serendipity of small talk and informal exchange. Which over time reduces the initially increased productivity. But that’s not the only reason. The problem is that this all - the new ways of communication and the new ways of getting stuff done - still is a fragmentation if not a decomposition of what we are used to call the agency which here stands for the brand, its people and values as well as its physical office space. Traditionally this all manifests, yes where else, in the office space, where people, conversations, values and belonging meets. In that sense an agency is a location where its output is collectively generated.?

But this no longer holds true. With its staff spread across home offices or cities just aggregated in calls or mails there is no point of condensation but multiple points of decentralization. Suddenly the brand is just the logos on the presentation decks, the values must be carried out by each distant individual and are not amplified by a present collective. In that sense an agency now is a destination with its output generated underway.?

Aisle or Window?

This journey sentiment hits agencies ill prepared - and is also part of the current brain drain within the industry. But let’s talk about that for a minute. There are two things happening at the same time. First of all, the advertising industry does a poor job of advertising for new talents. The general advertising output is too much, too meaningless or too annoying. That doesn’t sound like an industry for which younger generations being faced with climate crisis, poor pandemic management, DEI lip services, evil industries, dysfunctional education, job uncertainties, future anxiety and an honest distrust against brands really want to work. Well, yes and maybe campaigns are not the most sustainable things in the world one could create with his or her time. And they unfortunately also come too often with this never ending circle of neckbreak timings, late feedback, tons of compromises and mediocre output against the original thought. Secondly, agencies are doing a poor job of taking their own people along their journey? and don’t really create an environment of community, culture and career that can be translated into a fragmented internet way of working. A weird extreme here was this quote the other day from a well respected marketing leader who said that if you can do your entire work from home then we can replace you with a guy sitting in India. Yes, that also says a lot on so many levels. Great guy. But it displays the thinking from a lot of people which is the even more disturbing fact here.

ROO - Return on Office

But let’s return to the new office discussion. The role of the office in the future is not giving shelter and offering internet and lightning for whatever people have to do each day. It is about offering the optimal environment for specific ways of working for a designated group of people in a defined timeframe. The office will be the location for prepared and structured team time, whereas the home office will be the location for prepared and structured focus time. And not everyone coming to the office every day offers new ways of programming the office itself. A finance person decodes this last sentence as shrinking, sub renting or moving. An operational person is identifying here nuanced needs and a multitude of opportunities to create an even more magnetic work environment. Whatever point of view one might have they all encapsulate the notion of reduced office space compared to pre-pandemic times. And a recent World Economic Forum survey showed: ? of the people around the world want flexible work after the pandemic. And ? of people are prepared to quit their jobs when they are forced back into the office full time. But isn’t that exactly what Apple and Amazon are doing? Yes, because they are a brand and a destination already that allows them to at least think in terms like this. Money businesses like JP Morgan have to connect the call back to office with steep salary increases. And agencies? Don’t have the brand nor the money but also the luxury of not having to force people back into the office. And as elaborated above, the office is not the agency anymore. Nevertheless this is a huge missed opportunity since the creative industry seems unable to be creative with itself for over a year now by not even really starting the new office conversation - apart from pure financial discussions.

Plug-In Hybrid

We spoke about the new agency being a destination and it seems the office could be part of the propulsion to keep moving forward. What we have seen in the automotive industry is the introduction of hybrid technologies that don’t fully replace the traditional systems but allow new components to be integrated and synchronized for specific and optimized use. And I believe that we need plug-in hybrid offices very soon to help us combine the old sense of an office with the new demands in a transitional era. The plug-in office allows physical and virtual team and client presence, new ways of digital collaboration both live and indirect in a seamless and error-free way. We need to identify the entirety of the new demand set and technological possibilities to add an additional power unit to our existing office space to allow fully hybrid ways of working - from the office, from home, from anywhere.