A bunch of my friends and clients are involved with “RTO” work – trying to plan what a post-Return to Office workplace looks like. I chat with them (as one does) and I’m beginning to develop a kind of theory about what a general pattern might look like.
Who will be back working in our HQ buildings?
The ‘Achievers’ (yes, I do like ‘The Big Lebowsky’ – why do you ask?) – folks who are on the ladder to executive leadership roles, and folks who want to get onto that ladder.
Their direct support staff will be required onsite.
The ‘Equity Lords’ – the actual executive leaders - will visit but they won’t be tied to being visibly present in the ways that the Achievers are.
The ‘Craftspeople’ who actually keep the organization running will be present in organizations where that kind of role requires putting hands on things frequently. Otherwise, they will live, well-paid, wherever they want.
The ‘Meat Puppets’ (not the band) who support the Craftspeople – the ones who run cables, mount and dismount hardware, etc. etc. will be required onsite as well.
Much of the rest of what organizations do will become glorified day labor, or as we call it today ‘Gig Work’ – and that will be onsite, at customers, or remote. Some of it will likely be hourly or piecework and will range from relatively high-skilled (I need a training dataset designed and optimized) to very low-skilled (cleaning bathrooms, cleaning data).
I see this as dystopian for about a million reasons – the primary of which is that it will be hard to switch lanes, and people will be bucketed into lanes early in their careers. We’ll lose the career serendipity that happens when someone powerful randomly meets someone powerless and identifies them as someone with potential and puts them someplace where they can develop it.
I’ll admit that some of this is cribbed from a book – not a business book, but from a novel called ‘Diamond Age’ by Neil Stephenson. I once pitched someone on starting an angel fund just to invest in everything Stephenson has written about – so I may be a fan of his.
But I’m not a fan of this hypothetical world, and I’d like us to be thoughtful, in designing our new workspace plans, not to help bring it into being.
(The building in the image foreground is 444 S Flower in Los Angeles - the ‘LA Law’ building, and one of the last buildings my dad built)
This fits with my thinking that leadership isn’t a role or a title define an organization’s structure. It is instead that “all leadership begins with personal initiative that creates impact that makes a difference that matters.” It is a function of how we live.