The WFH vs. Office Debate: A False Dichotomy

In the early 1980s, I used to work from home and from the office.?As a system engineer designing one of the first modern day GPS systems, I’d work from the office then take my “portable computer”, a portable terminal actually that used thermal paper instead of a CRT (screen), with a built in acoustic coupler to plug in an old style phone headset, so I could connect to the network to work on my programs in my studio apartment after I had left the office for the day.

I was what we’d call today a hybrid worker – spending most of my days in the office and then going home at night and on the weekends working away to all hours.?I built some wonderful relationships with my coworkers in our small Stamford, Connecticut office - and some not so wonderful - although all highly informative for my life experience sake.

Me and my company were also the beneficiaries of my getting lots of work done even when I wasn’t talking to peers (collaborating), to understand new ways of solving difficult problems – or taking camping trips together into the beautiful Northeastern forests to build better relationships.

And here we are nearly 40 years later – doing basically the same thing – taking portable computers with us wherever we are – smartphone, tablet or laptop – to our living rooms, conference rooms or camper vans.

So, is working from home versus the office, with “hybrid” being a version of a piece of one plus a piece of the other, a valid way to debate the future of work when the future has been unfolding in this way for decades or more??

The answer is no.?

The question itself presents us only with a false dichotomy.

One fueled by many motives including the vast and growing survey companies gleefully busy gathering and charging for "preference of place" data for companies and pundits, consultants and even some charlatans; to create content on which to build whatever serve their interests best.?

In fact it’s blindingly easy to ask black and white questions that on the surface may seem relevant but are simply distractions from understanding the multi-faceted underlying problems at the root, and then building solutions to treat the complex and causal constellation of the resulting and enduring distress.

Putting aside for a moment the complete lack of scientific and rigorous survey research methods mainly ignored today to collect such data, we are asking the wrong question.?

And when we ask the wrong question, we get the wrong answer 100% of the time.

We clearly have the ability to work from anywhere pretty well and we do!?Sometimes we don't. The place-based question has for a long while, been one of: where do you work based on a continuum during some time period?

And even then, so what exactly?

Some prefer more of one than the other – and that preference changes over time – as well as moment to moment depending on our moods and other individual differences.?There are no important insights or answers to be found here based on this faulty question first - and especially in isolation - that help us to get through our many current crises.

The underlying question that’s more relevant is: how can human beings create the kinds of relationships we need to healthily socialize which leads to meaningful collaboration based on deep and strong trust; that encourage us to help one another; and enable the formation of kinships that ultimately result in positive outcomes and life experiences no matter the place we live or work??

As discussed with Martin Westwell, a renowned neuroscientist and close friend, when most of our social encounters are mediated by digital technology, the underlying human brain-based rules of interaction change.?

Therefore, we need fresh shortcuts, new heuristics born from sense making frameworks built on current and relevant assumptions – not ones that have largely ceased to exist.?Only under these circumstances do we get to the right questions that lead to the “right” answers on how to go forward as a peaceful, civil and complex society based on shared understanding and meaning-making.

Bottom line:?The real issue at hand is the “health of a nation” – our global nation - that depends on a workforce that is not currently or generally “well” and getting less well by the day, because of the many forces and challenges of real as well as manufactured and ill-motivated pressures that have accumulated over time coupled with our very real and acute viral threat.

There are clearly times when being together is critical.?And this is one of those moments that’s true when it’s safe to do so as I wrote about last week.

But that Virtual Distance guidance is not based on some zero-sum game where there are ‘winners and losers’, one or the other, depending on which side of the place-based survey category you happen to fall under in any given time interval.

And truly great leaders and mission driven employees that hold deep respect for one another - such as those at my most inspiring client - understand the above and urgently and actively seek out ways to ask the right questions.

So it is on behalf of the things they inspire me to think about that I ask you: Imagine yourself asking the question: how can we pull together and work through relationship building and leadership models that don’t depend on old models and ways of thinking that we’ve become habituated.

Instead, let's consider how we can meet the challenge of making the paradigm shifts in our world views necessary to clear the way to viable and vitality-based actions in the face of such critical inquiries.