“Hmmmm…” I thought as I heard about Marissa Mayer’s decision to end telecommuting at Yahoo! As someone who loves to work from home, I had a hard time understanding this decision. In my efforts to be as open-minded as possible about opinions not my own (and believe me this ain’t easy, folks), I tried to understand Ms. Mayer’s point-of-view. Personally, I don’t believe Yahoo! can be saved by anyone, but is getting everyone around the same physical table the only way to give the company its best shot at survival? Is there any truth to the media soundbite “you can’t build a culture via email”?
I reflected on my own office experiences. Some of them were a blast. I made some of my very best friends of my life working side-by-side with them in the same office every single day. Many of them are still some of my nearest and dearest. Others made me want to curl up in a ball under my bed. A lot of them made me quit my job in search of greener pastures.
I don’t think Ms. Mayer’s motivation is a bad one – she wants to build a collaborative culture where innovation is a common, every day practice. The trouble is that she thinks mandating time in the office will provide that. I know there’s this old wives’ tale about innovative ideas happening around the proverbial water cooler in large corporate towers. It doesn’t happen. Offices grease the gossip mill; they don’t foster creativity.
And I have proof – Harvard said so, and therefore it must be true! Being a Penn and UVA grad, I am logically suspicious of anything Harvard says. However, I read an article that the Harvard Business Review ran in September that gave me a jolt of shock. “A study of 6,000 people conducted by the NeuroLeadership Group in collaboration with a large healthcare firm asked respondents questions about where, when, and how people did their best thinking. Only 10 percent said it happened at work.”
10 percent!? That’s Marissa Mayer’s worst nightmare. And while some may think that we need to then alter the office environment to improve that, my question is why not dump the office altogether? Why put money, time, and effort into improving something that feels beyond repair? After all, if a company’s product or service only met 10% of its revenue or profit targets, companies would bury it deep into the ground and make it the Lord Voldemort of their product line.
The HBR article goes on to explain how to increase our chances of doing our best thinking. One is to distract ourselves, giving our brains even just a short break from our problems so that the unconscious can provide a fresh perspective. Another involves planning out three goals we want to accomplish and giving yourself 4 hours of uninterrupted time every day to work on those goals. The other involves structuring our time to do our most challenging work during a time of day when our minds are most clear. None of them involve getting people into the office more often.
I’m a fan of togetherness. I like to be with people, but forced togetherness isn’t fun for anyone. It’s miserable. I’m all for bringing people together so that they can get to know one another, so that they can use one another as a resource for a challenge they are tackling. There are lots of ways to do that, some of them involve bringing people together in-person and some of them involve bringing people together through virtual networks. I’ve found the best way to foster collaboration is a combo of in-person and virtual time. Bringing people together, in-person, is something sacred. Make is purposeful. Make it matter. Do something with that time that people cannot do virtually. That’s the way to win.
Christa Avampato 