Tag: information and communications technology

Buildings and bureaus: RTO isn’t only about trust and control

Posted onLeave a comment

Return to office (RTO) isn’t only about control or trust or workplaces. It’s more fundamental. It’s essentially about organizational identity.

For decades, public and large private sector organizations have defined themselves largely by how they functioned, structured in the industrial age management model as vertical bureaucracies exercising command and control management. The hierarchy is represented in the building with the building as totem. Leadership sits in the upper floors of the building and corner offices. Staff in cubicles in the center and on lower floors.

The building is at the core of organizational self concept and sense of purpose. The org may have started humbly in a garage like Apple but now a large multi building campus represents it nearly as much as its branding. In Apple’s case, for example, the modernistic circular spaceship headquarters building.

Apple founder Steve Jobs described the personal computer as the “bicycle for our minds.” That untethers the mind from time, place and distance. But the spaceship houses the bodies containing the minds of Apple employees. It’s the mothership, the corporate edifice.

Decentralized, virtual knowledge work first made possible by Apple computers and later information and communications technology (ICT) advances is at odds with that. Hence, we see resistance expressed as RTO. It really means return to the organization — get back in the building.

Or as some orgs have framed it to staff, you don’t have a future with this org if you don’t regularly appear at the building that represents it and should find another role outside of the org.

ICT has disrupted that. knowledge work no longer requires the industrial age buildings and bureaus of the 20th century or daily commuting to and from them. It’s done wherever knowledge workers are and thinking. Rapidly processed, communicated and recorded on ICT tools like personal computing and communication devices and the cloud.

The essential questions knowledge organizations face in the 21 century:

How are they defined in the post-industrial age (or “smokestack era” as Alvin Toffler termed it in his 1990 outlook on the 21st century, Powershift)? If buildings and bureaus no longer essentially define them, what does?

Since knowledge work has been traditionally defined by Dave Rolston’s four dead kings of work:

  1. One job title
  2. Performed under one manager
  3. At one time
  4. At one place

How will it be optimally defined and organized going forward?

Redefining office space use in the post CCO era

Posted onLeave a comment

Return to office (RTO) policies have created controversy, framed as a set to between executive leadership wanting staff to work in centralized, commute in offices (CCOs) and staff preferring to work in their home offices as they did during the public health restrictions during the pandemic years.

RTO mandates have been used to encourage resignations as a blunt personnel reduction strategy, sending the message if you don’t put in office attendance you don’t belong in the organization and should move on.

Another way to view RTO is future shock. As information and communications technology (ICT) and personal devices grew increasingly sophisticated and useful over the preceding four decades starting with the personal computer in the 1980s, it was becoming increasingly clear that they would disrupt the office as it had been known. No longer would daily office attendance with the often time and energy sucking commute be necessary.

The majority of knowledge organizations however didn’t adjust to this slowly emerging reality until the pandemic restrictions forced them to do so and in a space of just two years. The future of knowledge work had arrived but too quickly for organizations to adjust.

So many adopted RTO to lessen the shock. That’s not necessarily maladaptive, but a natural reversion to the known and familiar. That creates a pause to allow time to figure out how to go forward —  and not going backward per se.

What’s truly adaptive is recognizing the primary impact of ICT: that knowledge workers no longer must necessarily report to CCOs because that’s the only location where the tools they needed to work were situated. Now they are portable and can communicate easily. That requires rethinking the use of office space and determining its best and most logical use going forward.

One model that looks promising is that of Stamford, Connecticut–based Synchrony, a branded credit card issuer.

According to this item posted October 6, 2025 at Fast Company, the company’s 20,000 employees work in their home offices and at company offices “when in person gatherings occur for training, leadership meetings, innovation sessions, and culture-building events.”

That redefines the office from a regular workplace in their traditional sense to an event driven gathering venue. There, both the presence in the office and the transportation of staff to get there is defined by a specific business purpose and not just showing up. That provides a guiding vision for the post pandemic future, offering a useful template to knowledge organizations experiencing future shock.

No assembly required

Posted onLeave a comment

As information and communications technology tools decentralize and virtualize knowledge work, it challenges knowledge organizations to reconceptualize working. In the pre information economy industrial age, work and education involved assembling: in schools, factories and offices.

Now the office is optional.

Making this conceptual shift has proven difficult for many knowledge organizations. That’s because their leaders often believe assembly is essential for collaboration and teamwork. Hence, they demand staff attendance at least some of the workweek in a centralized, commute in office.

Assembly is no longer needed is when information of all forms is easily shared virtually.

Forced assembly hasn’t gone over well for staff who find themselves going though the motions of assembling, swiping their badges to create a record of attendance. Or sitting in a cube farm and having Zoom or Teams meetings with colleagues in other nearby cubicles – something they could just as easily done without making the commute trip there.

Future shock and past snapback

Posted onLeave a comment

Before advances in information and communications technologies over the past four decades, knowledge work required industrial scale centralized commuter offices (CCOs), often staffed by hundreds or thousands of knowledge workers.

Much of the staff worked processing repetitive tasks that shifted from paper to digital form that did not require centralized creation, processing and storage. Information then became portable and decentralized, moving along with knowledge workers on personal computer and communication devices and later internet-based telecommunications and the cloud.

That made CCOs obsolete as exclusive work and meeting places by making knowledge work far less dependent on time and place, allowing information to travel as text, data and video most anywhere and asynchronistically.

These ICT advances have sped up considerably in the current decade with widespread adoption of working from home accelerated by the pandemic and the emergence of generative and agentic artificial intelligence.

These changes have come so rapidly that they challenge knowledge organizations to constructively adapt to them. They are experiencing what futurist Alvin Toffler termed “future shock” in his 1970 book of that title. It happens when the pace of technological change is so rapid institutions and organizations feel overwhelmed by it and experience cognitive dissonance as past, present and future seem to merge.

Understandably so considering the as built environment of office buildings concentrated in central metro areas and connected by what were originally designed as “high speed” highways to bring knowledge workers to and from them from outlying bedroom communities.

That world of the 20th century when companies grew and staffed up and occupied offices at industrial age scale no longer easily jibes with the 21st. That scale no longer make sense when knowledge, innovation and strategic judgment are the most valuable resources, resources that no longer require large numbers of staff regularly concentrated in office buildings.

Future shock produces what could be described as past snapback. It’s resistance to the future and nostalgia for when knowledge workers regularly commuted to the office because that’s where the job was. It’s clearly seen with “return to office” expectations.

Which haven’t gone over well since knowledge workers and not their organizations have traditionally borne the costs of getting there. And once there, sitting in a cube farm doing the same activities they could do in their home offices. That produces cognitive dissonance for knowledge workers.

Knowledge organizations have been trying to reconcile the conflict between the 20th and 21st centuries with “hybrid” office attendance, having staff come in on a designated number and days of the work week. In other words, working in the CCO like in the 20th but with the current century recognition that knowledge work doesn’t necessarily require office attendance.

It eases future shock and cognitive dissonance. But going forward into the third decade of the 21 century, the shifts will require knowledge organizations make a big adjustment to a world that for many seems to have changed in less than a decade.

From workplace to gathering place

Posted on2 Comments

The return to office debate reflects a transition period away from when the tools to process, document and communicate information were located in centralized commuter offices (CCO), making it the primary knowledge workplace. Over the past few decades thanks to advances in information and communications technologies that is no longer the case.

The CCO role as “workplace” is changing from a location where knowledge work is exclusively performed to an ad hoc meeting place where knowledge workers gather for collaboration, brainstorming, social bonding, and training. Offices or some suitable location are still needed. But not every business day. Floors filled with cubicles surrounded by closed door offices have become superfluous.

The conceptual shift underlying the transition is from conceiving of much knowledge or thought work as needing a defined workplace — like a physical factory floor assembly line in manufacturing — to a virtual, much less location dependent activity.

Related is a shift in the view of knowledge workers to the time and travel expense needed to gather. Coming together isn’t a mindless commute trip anymore. It’s now more like business travel and has to be meaningful and clearly of value.

The purpose of co-located work is now emerging as dominant determinant. When and where do knowledge workers gather and for what purpose?

This transition is a big one and coming with much gnashing of teeth and confusion and disorientation that is to be expected in a shift of this scope given how deeply entrenched the office has been as the exclusive knowledge workplace. That organizational discomfort can result in resistance that makes adaption more difficult.

From Office to Output: Redefining Knowledge Work

Posted onLeave a comment

In the first half of the 2020s, two developments emerged with major implications for knowledge work.

The first is virtualization that is deemphasizing when and where it’s performed. The social distancing public health measures of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a tipping point for the longer term trend of information and communications technology (ICT) advances connecting knowledge workers outside of co-located office settings, effectively obsoleting the daily commute.

Then in 2022-23, another ICT development emerged: generative artificial intelligence accepting plain language queries and largely replacing traditional web searches, synthesizing and greatly speeding up access to online information. On its heels came agentic AI that can analyze data, set goals, and take independent actions at the direction of knowledge workers.

Both developments have the potential to profoundly alter knowledge work as we know it, which has been traditionally defined by doing defined tasks while present in a centralized, commute-in office during scheduled work hours.

One likely outcome is knowledge work will be more defined by outputs and deliverables rather than inputs and presence in an office. That could mean dispersed, small project teams that form up for the purpose of completing a project and disbanding when it’s accepted by the sponsor as complete. They may meet up in a co-located setting. Or not, depending on project needs and the team’s preference.

For the knowledge workforce, the implications are similarly sizeable. Less permanent employment by a single knowledge organization. More projectized contract work arrangements where specific subject matter expertise and experience is required. These contractors may work independently or as part of a professional services firm.

This points to a decline in employment in the conventional sense where knowledge work is defined by the terms and conditions of the employer: when, where and how work is to be done.

That in turn has implications for medical care finance in the United States where employers are mandated by state laws to pay for medical care arising from job duties and for large employers, medical benefit plans for non work-related care.

Toffler’s second and third waves colliding in U.S. federal government

Posted onLeave a comment

In his 1980 book The Third Wave, futurist Alvin Toffler depicted the long-term evolution of modern socio-economy as a series of three waves. The first was agrarian – the cultivation and sale of plant crops and animals. The second was the industrial era that began in the 18th century. According to Toffler, this wave reached its peak in the 1970s when services took on a more dominant role relative to manufacturing – the third wave.

The transitions between the waves play out over many decades and are fraught with tension between the receding and rising waves. Not surprisingly since in each, the scale of social and economic change is enormous with broad implications for how and where people work and live. The previous socio-economy and its industries and settlement patterns is remade into the next.

Toffler wrote of advances in information and communications technology and fiber optic telecommunications infrastructure that would fundamentally alter the second wave industrial era based on centralization of production in offices and factories in metro centers. The third wave, Toffler prognosticated, would instead bring about decentralization.

Second wave office work would migrate back to homes that Toffler termed “the electronic cottage.” Toffler’s prediction came just six years after fellow futurist Arthur C. Clarke issued a similar forecast, envisioning the end of commuting to urban downtown office buildings. “Men Will No Longer Commute, They Will Communicate.” And plenty of women too who have entered the workforce since Clarke’s 1964 prognostication.

Toffler’s and Clarke’s future has arrived – gradually since the mass market personal computer in the 1980s and Internet in the 1990s – and suddenly following the social distancing public health measures of the 2020 viral pandemic. Millions of office workers migrated to the electronic cottage, creating home offices and no longer regularly commuting.

The tension between the second industrial era and third information era waves is now starkly evident in the federal government and in two prominent figures of the current American administration: President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Trump is a product of the second wave and the 1980s in particular when he developed his identity as a real estate developer including office buildings. The younger Musk is more complex, a creature of both the second and third waves. He embraces technology but largely in the context of second wave transportation advances: automobiles (Tesla) and rocket ships (SpaceX).

Both men are essentially second wave industrialists. For them, Toffler’s postindustrial third wave electronic cottage doesn’t exist. It’s a dwelling, not a place to work. Working there instead of commuting to a distant office is even “immoral” as Musk put it. Consequently, the administration has ordered federal workers to report for duty at the office.

The customer service model and government offices

Posted onLeave a comment

The Trump administration’s offer this week to federal employees to either do their jobs in government offices or resign effective later this year reflects a conceptualization of public sector knowledge work similar to that expressed by some state governors who imposed similar personnel rules over the past few years. It likens it to customer facing services people receive in brick-and-mortar locations like retail stores. These locations must be necessarily be staffed during business hours.

Some government services – state motor vehicle departments and health clinics – fit that description. But much of what government does is plan and make decisions on how to allocate public resources and deliver them through government programs. They are what Roger L. Martin would describe as “decision factories” as he termed them in a 2013 Harvard Business Review article.

Prior to the 21st century, these activities were nearly always performed in vast cube farms, closed door offices and meeting rooms in government owned or leased buildings centralized in Washington DC and state capitols.  

Advances in information and communications technology since then have diminished the need for these locations to allow staff to share, analyze, discuss and plan while seated together in these offices. Personal computers and devices and the Internet generally work as well outside of these locations as within including residences, thus eliminating the need to travel to a centralized commute-in office for most forms of knowledge work.

But when they are used in a knowledge worker’s home, a cognitive dissonance occurs, particularly for those who are not digital veterans (early adopters) or younger generations of digital natives. Prior to these ICT advances, the home was clearly for personal time and relaxation – not working. Daily activities were defined by the space in which they occurred. Home is home and offices “workplaces.” That distinction is no longer so sharply defined.

Making the conceptual shift away from those sharp distinctions is difficult, requiring an adjustment in thinking that can be challenging for both public and private sector organizations.

Washingtonian staff goes on strike after CEO Cathy Merrill’s op-ed about remote work – The Washington Post

Posted on2 Comments

In Thursday’s op-ed, Merrill wrote that she had discussed the downsides of remote work with fellow chief executives and estimated that unofficial office duties such as “helping a colleague, mentoring more junior people, celebrating someone’s birthday — things that drive office culture” made up 20 percent of their work.

Source: Washingtonian staff goes on strike after CEO Cathy Merrill’s op-ed about remote work – The Washington Post

The public health restrictions that shut down centralized commuter offices (CCO) shone a spotlight on the high cost of maintaining an office-based culture. There’s the direct cost to knowledge organizations to keep all that brick, mortar and glass that house cube farms occupiable.

Then there’s the indirect commuting cost that has historically been externalized onto workers. The predominant management mindset pre-pandemic was staff chooses where they want to live. How far away that is from the office or how long it takes for them to get here Monday through Friday is not our problem.

But housing choice isn’t fully within the control of knowledge workers. High housing costs in metro cores have forced knowledge workers farther from them in search of affordable housing. That leads to longer commutes — borne directly by knowledge workers who sacrifice time that could otherwise be spent on health promoting activities such as exercise, sufficient sleep, and home prepared meals as well as in their communities and with their families.

Now that so many knowledge workers have been freed of these personal costs during the pandemic, their value has become very clear. They’re understandably reluctant to surrender the personal time they recovered. Particularly since their organizations have gone on functioning largely without the CCO for more than a year, thanks to advances in information and communications technology.

State of California must overcome ingrained organizational culture, IT challenges to successfully navigate transition to virtual work

Posted onLeave a comment

Two factors have accelerated the State of California’s more than three decades in the making shift to virtual work:

  • The 2019 installation of a chief executive who unlike his predecessors has lived most of his life during the information and communications technology (ICT) revolution that brought about personal computing devices and Internet-based advanced telecommunications.
  • A global pandemic that made dense occupancy “cube farm” office environments decidedly risky for the spread of a novel communicable disease.

Without these factors, the state would have likely continued uninterrupted with its entrenched organizational culture where putting in hours at the office is regarded as both “work” and earning one’s future dollars in what’s become a rarity for most workers: a defined benefit pension plan with medical benefits. That culture has resisted virtual work for decades notwithstanding policy promulgated dating back to 1988 by both the Governor’s Office and the Legislature.

Management guru Peter Drucker is credited with the organizational behavior maxim that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It similarly makes a meal of public policy since culture is reinforced daily by group expectations and norms whereas policy merely exists in written form that’s meaningless without organizational buy in.

As The Sacramento Bee’s Wes Venteicher reports, Gov. Gavin Newsom has directed the 75 percent of state workers currently working outside of their state offices due to pandemic disease control measures put in place in March to continue to do so on either a full or part time basis as the state begins to reopen.

Going forward, Newsom’s revised budget summary for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2020 notes contagion control measures implemented by his administration “has forced a massive experiment in telework.” It directs state agencies to develop “expanded long-term telework strategies” and to “rethink business processes.”  

A 1990 report on a state telework pilot project begun in 1985 recommended managers and staff be trained to think in terms of work results rather than work processes. That’s a huge challenge for an organization where the key process metric is time spent in the office. Standing present for duty in the office is also a component of the state’s preferred command and control management style. That way managers are prepared with a team standing ready in case someone higher up or very high up in the chain of command wants something pronto.

It’s unlikely more than three decades of fraught history with telework can be changed overnight, even by a global pandemic and the worst budget shortfall in the state’s history. Another challenge for the state is to put in place a robust and secure cloud-based IT infrastructure that can support virtual work on an ongoing basis given IT modernization has not been its historical strong suit.

One of the most favorable factors in this transition is the promotion of millennials into management roles. Unlike generations before them, they grew up with information and communications technologies. They know from experience they enable knowledge work and setting policy – the mainstay of government work – possible outside of the centralized, commute-in offices of their parents’ generation. As well as the traffic congestion and air pollution they generate that kicked off the state’s 1980s telework pilot project to help reduce it.