Reinventing “Work” as a Verb
What do you really mean when you toss around that wretched, industrial-age phrase, Work-Life Balance? I want you to pay attention to this phrase closely.
Aren’t you implying that you are less alive when you are working than doing anything else where your Life energies might find fuller expression?
Say, I ask you this innocuous question, Where do you live? Aren’t you wired to talk first about your house and neighbourhood, even though you might be spending more number of waking hours at your workplace?
By using this phrase, you’ve made it loud and clear. Work happens at one place, and life, elsewhere. Let’s be honest. It seems almost impossible to “live” at one’s place of work — there is no pizzazz, no exuberance, no love, no music. This seems to be the sad truth — You are either living, or,working.
Guess what? Times are changing. For the proverbial Rip Van Winkle, who has slept through the seismic changes happening in the world of work, here is a short, visual recap of what is happening, as illustrated in the fascinating blog Ribbon Farm.
How does work look like in the digital age? How can we build a new work ethic, which is as much a part of life, as much alive with possibilities, as anything we do at our home with family and friends?
Long ago, when scientists discovered quantum mechanics, I remember reading somewhere someone capturing the excitement in one single sentence, “’I’, is no longer a noun, but a verb”. To me, the exciting changes that are happening in the world of work, can be summed up likewise.
Work is no longer a noun, but a verb
How do we go there from here? If we want Work to be a part of Life, workplace needs to be a community, oriented with the pace and rhythms of work. How does one build a workplace community?
Let me clarify first on the term used. Please note that, by the term workplace, I am making no distinction between the world of atoms and bits. I know this may be uncomfortable for you to accept. If one wants to design for a more fulfilling, collaborative work experience, the first design principle is to stop differentiating between a physical and virtual workplace.
How do you build a workplace community? There are no silver bullets, no quick seven dirty steps to succeed. Building a workplace community is complex, because you are building an organism, a complex adaptive system, which holds several contradictions within itself.
Now, as Gall’s law makes it clear, every complex adaptive system evolves from a simple system that worked. That simple system is born from a narrative — an atomic unit of social interaction, arising from the shared experience partaken by two or more people.
Here is the thing. We’re very much conditioned by mental models which equate social software with a tool, which does something, when they actually are infrastructure, in which things are done.
How do these mental models affect the design of workplace community? That is going to be a post for another day. Stay tuned.
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