Sorry I'm getting kicked out of this room
Photo by Alexander Grigorian.
We're walking down a hallway in an office tower in downtown Toronto. It's a bit like being on a boat, but the captain is drunk, and the horizon keeps shifting, and suddenly, we're staring at ceiling tiles.
"Sorry, sorry. One sec."
The person holding the laptop comes back into view. We are no longer in a conference room, but it's dark so it's sorta hard to tell.
There aren't enough conference rooms for the number of zoom calls. Only some of the conference rooms are outfitted with the creepy owl cameras. And those rooms host 10 hours a day of recurring meeting invites until at least 2026. Plus, if one more person tries to take a zoom call at their desk, the deep-work people nearby might actually murder them.
On this particular morning, the Future of Work is happening in a dimly lit stairwell.
A slow descent
There are so many things one might reflect on while sitting criss-cross-apple-sauce and leaning against a cinder block wall. How we got here. What this means about our ability to do our work. And do it well. And what it means when you multiply that impact across an entire skyscraper.
So many things to contemplate. But just before this meeting ends, the calendar reminder for the next meeting goes off. And that one is in-person. On a different floor. But your elevator fob is back at your desk. And because this one ran all the way up to the 30-minute mark, you're already late.
Perhaps ruminations for another time.
If this isn't you and you're laughing at the chumps who got called back to offices, we should point out that this isn't limited to our people in physical buildings.
Fully remote friends, let's talk about how often your airpods die. Or how many backup pairs you have kicking around. Or that thing where someone in a far away time zone puts an urgent meeting on your calendar, only to find it happened while you were asleep. Stings dunnit?
We're not trying to pour salt in everyone's Future of Work wounds. But if we want to understand the nagging sense, the underlying frustration, the thing that's screaming in blinky red lights.
We're gonna have to say it out loud.
This isn't working
Some of you just got visibly uncomfortable. For some of you, the idea of actually saying it at work feels very big. "This isn't working" is a statement of fact but it can seem like an accusation. Or a line drawn in the sand. Or a threat. And even if you don't mean any of those things by it, it might land that way.
"This isn't working" isn't an attack, though. It's a gift. It's an attempt to name a thing so that we can make it better. It's a sign of trust, a sign of engagement in shared goals, an investment in our working relationship.
And yes, it's also a vulnerable thing to say. Every gift is an act of vulnerability. Vulnerability because it says something about you, the giver. Vulnerability because the person you give it to might not receive it in the spirit it was intended. They might really dislike it. They might throw it back in your face.
The Future of Work conversation is full of rejected gifts. We've seen bosses throw "this isn't working" back in employees' faces as "entitlement." As "millennials." As "no one wants to work anymore." We've seen employees throw it back in their CEO's face, too, as "outdated." Or "boomers." Or "something something commercial real estate." As far as we can tell, that point-scoring hasn't gotten us any closer to the future we're all trying to build.
We know that everyone's sick of constantly redesigning the rules of work. There's this revisionist nostalgia for, in some quarters, 2019. And in others, 2021. We know that some of you have built systems here in 2023 that are working for you, and you would like them to please just stay put for a goddamned minute. We get that. But when someone tells you that those systems aren't working for them, shouting them down won't give you the peace and quiet you want.
When someone says "this isn't working," it might feel like a complaint. Like a dead-end grievance that puts you on the defensive. But we'd like to offer another perspective, especially especially if you have power in your organization. It's the first sentence of an invitation to a conversation. And the second sentence is,
Can we talk about that?
This sentence is both rhetorical and not. The question "Can we" is doing a lot of work.
"Can we," like, is this a workplace where that conversation can happen safely? Do we have enough trust to be able to talk about it like multi-dimensional humans instead of opposing teams scoring points? Is there enough good faith and empathy between us that a conversation could actually get us to a better place? "Can we," like, is it possible?
But also, once we know that it's possible, "Can we," like, "Can we please?" Like, "I'd like to."
Your answer should be yes. Yes we can talk about it. Whether you're a CEO who feels like there's something intangible missing with WFH. Or a fresh grad who feels like you shouldn't have to come into an office. Or someone in-between, taking calls from a stairwell in the dark on one busted airpod. Yes. Yes we can talk about what's not working. For each of us. Yes, let's try to figure out something better.
The coolest parts of work are when we make something better together than any of us could have made individually. Helping people do that is what gets us out of bed every day. And we're here to tell you that whatever the Future of Work turns out to be for your organization, it sure as shit won't happen if you don't talk to each other.
By all means, read what other orgs are doing. Maybe there are things you can learn from what Apple does, or Google, or Smuckers. But there's no shortcut around the conversation. Every sales person, fundraiser, marketer, product leader, and designer will tell you the same thing. You have to talk to people to know if you're actually reaching them. To know if any of your solutions actually solve the problem.
This isn't working. Can we talk about that?
If you can't say yes to that conversation, you don't have a future of work in your organization.
- Melissa and Johnathan