Remote work or in person work. That is the question these days.
Rather than where work takes place it is the nature of our
transactions between coworkers: Are they transactional or relational? Much of
work is things we do for our fellow coworkers. It is more enjoyable and we do
it better if it is a relational transaction (e.g. like bringing a cake to my
friends birthday party) and not transactional (a call with comcast about
bills). It's also true that many of our best friends and relationships are the
result of circumstances and not choice. Few of us choose our first college
roommate or our platoonmates in the military.
So the goal of good work culture is to provide the
circumstances that create a relationship for our work and coworkers rather than
caring about the physical location of the rest of our transactions. Do I care
where my friend texts me from to invite me to a birthday party? No. But without
some type of shared physical experience together it is hard to have a great
friendship. I really don’t want to attend a birthday party on zoom. Yuck!
Practically, I think this means that businesses should focus
on getting teams together at certain points: 1. Onboarding new teams or people.
2. When you are in a fox hole of trouble (system outages), and 3. Celebrations
(yeah, we launched a new product!). Rather than rigid rules around quantity of
face time (even though I would agree that time together matters), it should circle around specific times that help build that friendship,
trust, and fun culture that does make work better and more enjoyable.
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