Returning to the Office Won't Solve This Problem
Last week one of my coaching clients called me to tell me how her first day back at the office went:
I woke up early, fought traffic commuting in, sat in my office with my door closed and my mask on all day, and went from Zoom to Zoom. Then I fought traffic all the way home and was exhausted by the time I got home to my family. My only break was braving the cold for a crappy, overpriced salad.
She is not alone in feeling underwhelmed by the state of The Return—and she is not alone. According to Morning Consult, 53% of Americans would rather quit than return to the office.
The business case CEOs have set out for returning to the office is about “enabling teams to collaborate” so that they can “foster innovation.” But if this is true: As teams return to the office why isn’t innovation being unleashed in the way we were told it would be? And why are Americans so unenthusiastic about returning at all?
The Return has become the latest frontier in a broken culture that prioritizes showing up over leveling up. We’re trapped in a vicious cycle of demanding collaboration and creativity from our people, but rewarding them for busy work.
This is not a COVID problem, but a culture problem: performing productivity is nothing new in our hustle-and-grind-it-out culture. In pre-pandemic times, it was a badge of honor to be at your desk when the boss walked the floor at 7 a.m. or 7 p.m.
In a remote existence, we’re constantly living in that walk-the-floor world: If your email response isn’t rapid fire, if you’re joining a zoom by audio-only, or if that little green light signaling “available” isn’t next to your name, you’re branded a slacker. We’ve mistaken constantly being available for doing meaningful work—and it’s crushing culture, creativity and innovation.
In fact, we’re so busy performing productivity—literally singing for our supper—that we deprive ourselves of the unstructured, uninterrupted space required to do our best work: Depriving ourselves of the time we need for deep thinking, finding flow in our work, or enabling spontaneous bursts of creativity that can only be achieved in sustained periods of quiet. Taken as a whole, in the effort for leaders to “bring teams together” and “keep organizations” aligned we are depriving them of opportunities to do their best work.
There is a reason we often get our best ideas when we are washing our hair in the morning or walking the dog late at night: Nobody ever got their more innovative idea on their 8th straight hour of meetings. Ever.
The Return will not solve the problem of our performative productivity culture. Savvy teams, however, whether remote, hybrid or in-office can ask themselves these four questions to foster a culture that prioritizes producing results over performing productivity:
When are we offline? Teams must block shared do-not-schedule times. As organizational psychologist Dr. Adam Grant notes, the research is clear on this: Carving out space to let employees work independently fosters innovation. Here’s the catch: It only works when teams design time blocks as a unit. Without a group commitment to those do-not-disturb times, they are almost never honored and can actually contribute to performative productivity culture.
Does this message need to go out right now? Before you fire off an after-hours message, consider your motivation and its true urgency. If the matter is important but not urgent, use the delay send function (available on Outlook, Slack, and GSuite) for working hours. If sending that message is to prove you’re working, you’re part of the problem. For matters that are truly urgent, pick up the phone and make a call. Pro tip: if something can be handled by firing off a message while you’re watching Netflix, it’s actually not urgent.
Which meetings can be replaced by a well-written email? Amazon is famous for banning PowerPoint decks in favor of well-written memos. Too often in our prove-I’m-busy culture, meetings are called for the sole purpose of informing: the pinnacle of performing the work instead of doing it. Informing can be done, and often done better, using the written word as opposed to a 60-minute video call. Note: If visuals are an absolute must, consider adding a pre-recorded five-minute video with your note.
Is there an agenda for this meeting? Meetings are important tools for collaboration when they are done right. Teams that care about using meetings for doing good work vs. performing it should send an agenda out 24 hours in advance including: the meeting objectives, individual stakeholder responsibilities, and any pre-read materials. If you want collaboration you must make the effort to prime the conversation. This is particularly critical for unlocking the best contributions from your introverts.
Let’s empower our people with the time to think about great ideas, solve tough problems and rest so that they can do it all over again tomorrow. Returning to work won’t solve our collaboration and innovation problems: It’s our performative productivity culture that’s the problem.
Randi Braun is a certified executive coach, consultant, speaker, and the CEO of Something Major. Get in touch with Randi via email or social (below). Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.