Newsletter: Back to the Office? Let's settle this.
Ticonderoga Learning & Talent Newsletter
What's in this month's Newsletter?
Jobs and Talent
The Great Office Return Conundrum
Professional & Personal Updates
Jobs and Talent
Talent Management Lead - National Basketball Association - NYC
Reporting to the Head of Talent and Engagement, the Talent Management Lead will be responsible for the creation and deployment of progressive talent management strategies designed to advance, support and retain employees. The incumbent will develop and implement plans and solutions to achieve strategic business initiatives by assessing talent readiness through mechanisms such as: talent profiles, talent reviews and assessments and leadership investment planning. Through a lens of inclusion and user-centric approaches, the incumbent will provide thought partnership and best practices to identify, cultivate and develop emerging talent within the organization to meet the future needs of the league.
Associate Director/Director of Coaching - ExecOnline - Anywhere
We’re looking for an ambitious Associate Director/Director of ExecOnline Coaching to offer premiere Leadership Coaching and Coach-Delivered Project Feedback to ExecOnline participants. You will also become an instrumental part of the ExecOnline Coaching team by assisting in the development and implementation of new ExecOnline Coaching frameworks, methodologies, and processes with an emphasis on scale and quality. This role is ideal for someone who has experience with leadership development frameworks and processes and wants to bring their experience to a fast-growing startup that is redefining the Learning & Development space.
The Great Office Return Conundrum
Should we be fully remote? Should we make our employees come back into the office full time? Three days a week? What about collaboration and employee engagement? Will we lose people to competitors that offer greater flexibility? How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop?
To all of that I say..... yes.
If it feels like this topic has entered the conversation on a near-monthly basis since the start of the pandemic, that's because it has. The latest surge in the Great Office Return Conundrum of 2021 comes courtesy of a Wall Street Journal article quoting the CEO of WeWork, Sandeep Mathrani: “Those who are uberly engaged with the company want to go to the office two-thirds of the time, at least. Those who are least engaged are very comfortable working from home.”
Ah yes, in a world where more companies have recently shed their leases than ever before, the CEO of a company that provides workspace thinks people should find ways to work in person?! (Insert-skeptical-thinking-emoji-here).
So let's tackle this topic once and for all. Or at least until the next corporate gaffe.
First of all, Sandeep's perspective is obviously flawed (and he has since backtracked after facing an onslaught of online eye rolls). Employees that desire to come into the office might be more engaged... or they might be trying to score points with CEOs and leaders who have a warped view correlating proximity with engagement in a world of knowledge work.
Or they might just be dying to get out of the house. Or they might just enjoy the gym in their office building. Or the opposite might be true and they are far more present and productive at home. There are a myriad of reasons someone might prefer to work at an office. Or not!
I'm not even convinced engagement and time in office are correlated. Recent studies have suggested that productivity has shot up during the work-from-home pandemic. And let's be clear; most executives care about engagement because it drives productivity, which drives organizational output, which drives profit. (And rightfully so, I should add. This isn't an anti-capitalist rant—we want them to care about profit).
Every organization is different. Many should have ditched office space and gone fully remote years ago. Others should be fully in-person. The right move depends on strategy, business model, technological capabilities, human capital, organizational culture, industry regulations, etc. So let's stop making broad proclamations about what every organization ought to do about remote work. Every knowledge-work organization has to evaluate these elements in concert.
So what should your organization do? Well I can't answer that here (call me, if you like!), but here are a few hard, obvious truths about the Great Office Return Conundrum of 2021:
1) Working in-person isn't black magic. What was sub-optimal remotely won't magically get better in-person. Yes, that includes meetings. If your meetings are ineffective and tedious via Zoom, they won't suddenly become inherently more valuable because they're in person.
More conducive to creativity? Sure. Less draining? Absolutely. But therefore more valuable? Not necessarily.
Speaking of which, have you taken my six question survey about meetings? Please do!
2) A building can't save you. Organizations that feel the need to return to in-person work to ensure employee productivity/accountability/engagement/etc. were already losing this battle pre-pandemic. That's why I hear alarm bells whenever someone talks about this driving the need to get back to mandatory in-person work: It's extremely unlikely to be the solution to a problem of declining output and morale.
Here's a slightly controversial opinion: Having your employees return to working within constant physical view of their supervisors probably will drive some engagement (for a short while)... but if you're relying on a manufactured Hawthorne Effect just to get results then you're fighting a losing battle.
It probably means you don't have good metrics for measuring success or unfair expectations of job performance.
So much of how we measure success is rooted in outdated organizational theory. Not too long ago, the majority of organizations produced goods that a) had to be made in-person, and b) output produced was directly correlated with time worked. Our economy has come a long way since this Theory X management made sense, but leadership and management practices die hard (or not at all).
So if you catch yourself thinking that work in-person will inevitably be more productive and engaging for your colleagues, press pause. Last week, a friend and client recently shared with me an insightful anecdote:
"During a meeting last week, one of our executives was pushing for mandatory office work because 'everyone is distracted at home and can't get work done'. Two minutes later, her son wandered into her Zoom background and it suddenly became immediately clear to me: She was distracted at home and was dying to get back to the office. She wasn't speaking for everybody."
3) The best bet is probably to equip team leaders with discretion. Rather than try to enable company-wide or even departmentally-wide demands, give team leaders clear metrics for success and allow them to set their own standards for hybrid work.
But what about company culture!? Well, imagine a culture where team leaders are actually able to.... you know... lead their teams as they see fit. That sounds like a rather appealing environment.
Of course, my earlier caveat applies and not all organizations should opt for this approach. There are many reasonable exceptions to this broad paint stroke. That said, if you're asking me what I'd recommend sight-unseen, this would be it.
Professional & Personal News
Charlotte's language is exploding (she is now thrilled to refer to herself in the third person) and she spends hours engaged in symbolic play. She's a total goofball. She currently enjoys placing a blanket on her head and walking around our living room saying "Ghost!" She is also consistently waking up at 4:30am. Win some, lose some, I guess.
I got some really kind notes about the personal essay I wrote last month: "". Thank you to those who read it and reached out!
It looks like my new venture, Endeavorun, is finally going to kick off in August. Runners - please come!
I am thinking about leaving MailChimp behind for a different platform. Mailchimp is not great for finding old 'editions'. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
There are still a few seats open for the July 16-17 virtual open-cohort of the Extreme Presentation class that I'm teaching. Come join me!
That's it for this edition - please reach out if I can be at all helpful.
Stay safe, get vaccinated! Be compassionate and intentional.