Unlocking your briefcase's story

One of my favourite 90s movies was Pulp Fiction. In that movie, a briefcase owned by Marcellis Wallace, one of the main characters, played a central role.

I recalled the movie last week, as I had to take my briefcase in for a repair. In Pulp Fiction, the briefcase contained something mysterious, but the search for the contents drove the plot throughout.

My current briefcase is a Samsonite mobile office, and the wheels had become tired of rumbling through the building site of North Barangaroo. Luckily for me, Samsonite replaced the bag free of charge (good customer service that) but it got me thinking about how, like Pulp Fiction's briefcase, the contents are both a reflection of and a driver of office life. In addition, the contents and the life they reflect seemed to have changed quite a bit over the 33 years of my PwC career.

To start with, I recalled my original briefcase (Photo by Craig Whitehead on Unsplash):

Type: classic Attaché style

Contents: folio, pens, calculator, Australian Financial Review, book, brown bag lunch, paper diary, umbrella, numerous reports or work papers 

Contrast this with today:

Type: mobile office; much more capacity than the old Attaché 

Contents: folio, pens (in fact a small stationery cache), iPad, iPhone, laptop, headset (and other laptop and I-peripherals), Bluetooth speaker, travel kit, umbrella

Quite different - and much heavier - I am sure you will agree!

But I was intrigued not by the differences in themselves but what they signified about how much live had changed. Here are a few things that came to mind:

Offices and locations are fluid

Today, when you come into the PwC office, you have not fixed address. You sit down at the nearest desk and work away. That means that you carry more of what used to sit in the office around with you. Hence the larger bag with wheels. 

The flip side is your office can be anywhere - at home, overseas, on interstate and nobody knows - as long as the wifi is good. This is very different to the offices and allocated seats of yesteryear. I like the flexibility of this new way, but I think office social life is still evolving to catch up with this fluidity.

Technology permeates our existence

Three mobile computers in one bag! When I first started, we were lucky to have three computers in an office of nearly 100 people! Many have journalled about the changes that this mobile computing revolution has had on our lives - the way we travel (Uber), eat (Menulog), communicate (about 30 channels from email and chat to social media), consume information (the AFR is online now), analyse (excel), write (word), present (power point) or research (google) have all radically transformed. 

This transformation has been mostly for the better - things are faster and easier than ever before. There is some downside though - it is very hard to disconnect and sometimes we spend more time on our screens than with our friends and colleagues. Both these things were easier back in the day.

Paper is nearly gone

Looking at the things on my briefcase, there was a lot more paper back then. A day book, diary, book, newspaper and reports. Today, we carry around whole libraries of material but almost none of it on paper. We read books on Kindle (although I do prefer relaxing with a good book still), newspapers and magazines on apps, reports in PDF and diaries on the phone. I still like my day book (although as tablet styluses get better it’s days are numbered) and PostIt notes the volume of paper is way down. If you like trees, that’s pretty good news!

Cities are more convenient

The brown bag lunch memory brought a smile to my face. These days, it is not too often that people bring their own lunch to their office (perhaps if they have retired from eating smashed avo and taken on a mortgage so they might still, according to my informal research). The reasons - perhaps Australians are better off than previously, but more likely it is the huge variety of dining options that are available just at the doorstep. Different cuisines, different price points and convenient locations abound. Not just dining options but banking, dry cleaning, shopping and other day to day experiences are available more often and over a range of hours that was inconceivable a short time ago. The brown bag is no longer required because it’s so much easier to find other options.

It still rains

The humble umbrella is a constant in both briefcases. In a way, this is comforting, because it means that we are still connected to environments that are bigger than our office locations. This reminds us that our work lives exist in a broader context. It is easy to forget this during the day; often at the cost to our ethical behaviour, our environment or important relationships like family or friends. That humble umbrella is a great reminder that even though many things have changed, a lot of important things remain the same.

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Richard Stewart OAM is a Corporate Value Advisory partner with PwC. He has been with them for 33 years in Australia, Europe and the USA, doing his first valuation in 1992. He has helped his clients achieve great outcomes using his value skills in the context of major decisions, M&A, disputes and regulatory matters. His clients span both the globe and the industry spectrum. He holds a BEc, MBA, FCA, FCPA, SFFin, FAICD and is an accredited Business Valuation Specialist with CAANZ. He has written two books, Strategic Value (2012),and Hitting Pay Dirt (2017). He is also an Adjunct Professor at UTS.