Distributed work, myths about innovation and a lack of ambition
The more time passes since the days of lockdown and mandatory distributed working, the more I realize how many organizations are lacking in ambition and vision in this area.
A growing number of companies seem determined to return to the how they worked before the pandemic, mistakenly believing the myth that having the workforce all in one place brings some kind of advantage, that it somehow drives innovation. In doing so, they often alienate workers who, in some cases, had already been learning for more than two years how to do their job optimally from home or elsewhere, and who in many cases, already accustomed to improving their performance under these conditions, do not see any value at all in returning to traffic jams and the office.
At the same time as more and more companies persist in their culture of control, extending it by installing bossware on the computers of employees who work from home, some others, unfortunately a minority, are realizing that forcing their employees back to the office is a mistake, and that innovation actually has very little to do with physical contact, and has much more to do with the ability to devote time to it. Employees who are overloaded with work will adopt survival mechanisms: they will dedicate themselves to it, and will disconnect as soon as they finish, a much more…
