The Space Between...

When it comes to office space, corporate leaders now find themselves stuck in the space between the forced closure of their offices in 2020 and having to conceive new workplace approaches that (somehow) foster productivity, enhance recruitment and retention and (generally) satisfy the diverse (and conflicting) needs of the employees.  This is not a comfortable place.  Indeed, we’re finding that many corporate leaders are unwilling to take responsibility for conceiving and executing a future workplace strategy.  They fear making the wrong decision.  Who can blame them?  After all, given the extent and pace of change, it seems more likely for future oriented workplace strategies to fail than succeed.  Who wants to take on that risk?
 
Workplace solutions are heavily influenced by industry and geography.  For example, the Bay Area tech sector has been among the most aggressive sectors in adopting remote or virtual-first strategies.  Corporate behavior is a lot like individual behavior in the sense there is conformity to the norm.  When the large companies in a sector or region adopt a particular approach, the medium and smaller firms tend to follow suit.  Yet in many sectors and regions, the norm has yet to be established.  In fact, it seems like everyone is doing something different, iterating a form of hybrid or other workplace approach, the details of which are murky and therefore hard to replicate.  The overall effect is to keep us stuck here in the space between. 
 
For now, we don’t see any easy way out.  We expect to see a lot of short and medium term solutions that are made more out of risk avoidance than creative problem solving.  Yet all decisions, even a decision to effectively do nothing, have consequences (both intended and unintended).  While figuring out how to do things better may be difficult, it’s essential.  Near term wallowing in the space between will do little to address what is clearly a new mandate for the future of work.  It may feel “safe” in the moment; but, ultimately, it stands to put the organization at a competitive disadvantage and make its leadership seem out of touch.