“Get A Comfortable Chair: Permanent Work From Home Is Coming.”
That was the headline of an NPR story summing up the emerging conventional wisdom that the traditional office is dead.
I see the logic. Early this spring, tens of millions of American workers were told they could or should work from home to help combat the spread of COVID-19. The early returns on this unprecedented work experiment look promising.
Many workers seemed to be enjoying the increased freedom and free time, and a Gallup survey taken in late March reported 59 percent of Americans wanted to “work remotely as much as possible.” Meanwhile, many companies reported their workers are as, or even more, productive working from home than they were in the office.
Several major companies already announced their employees could work remotely indefinitely, presumably envisioning a future of happier employees and significantly reduced real estate costs. A study from Global Workplace Analytics estimated an employee working half the time from home would save the typical company $11,000 annually and save the employee as much as $4,000 from reduced commuting and work attire. Not to mention trousers and belts which in the waist-up culture of ZOOM have been replaced by something with an elastic band or drawstring.
But the death of the office, to paraphrase Mark Twain, seems to be premature. My thinking is shaped by a career-defining experience I had 40 years ago that taught me there is no substitute for the kind of person-to-person interaction you get with colleagues and customers in a workplace environment. In fact, it was these person-to-person interactions that helped us turn around one of our acquisitions.
We noticed a big problem almost instantly. The watches weren’t selling, and we had to figure out why.
A watch is a classic “push” (as opposed to a “pull”) product, which means most people don’t walk into a jewelry store and say “Give me a Bulova.” They say, “Give me a watch,” and they count on the jeweler to push them to the watch that best fits their style and budget.
Typically, the one in which the seller has the most confidence of his customer’s satisfaction.
In the early 80s, we went out to speak with jewelers to understand why they were not pushing more of our watches. And we kept hearing a slightly different version of the same troubling message.
“I think your watches have problems with their quality.”
We had to make one of the toughest business decisions I have ever made. We decided to buy back millions of dollars of Bulova inventory from jewelers and junk it, based on our face-to-face interactions with them. Then we reengineered the watches, improved the reliability and forged an entire new supplier network.
These radical moves certainly hurt at the time, but they worked. Within a few years, Bulova was once again making quality watches jewelers were proud to recommend to their customers. The company returned to profitability, it became a solid performer for Loews and ultimately in 2007 it was sold for significantly more than we paid for it.
In business school, they teach you that every organization has both formal and informal decision making processes. A formal process may be your quarterly strategy meeting or your organizational chart. An informal process may begin with an unexpected conversation you have with someone at the coffee machine or knowing who to talk to about getting things done.
Looking back, I realize my decisions about Bulova were shaped so much by informal processes. They were the culmination of countless, in-person conversations between jewelers and other constituents, and our team. They were the kind of tough discussions where you needed to look someone in the eye and read their body language to understand whether you were getting the real story or a cover story. The communication was face-to-face, not screen-to-screen. I have come to believe that the use of all one’s senses is the key to creativity and that’s where ZOOM falls short.
There is no simple way I would have ever gotten the real story by inviting jewelers to a ZOOM call.
In the months and years ahead, companies that completely do away with offices will find they miss the creativity, serendipity and honesty that is required for their people to make the best decisions.
And it appears that employees – so optimistic about remote working early in the pandemic – may be starting to have second thoughts. A Monster.com survey of Americans working from home reported 51 percent of people saying they felt “burned out” even by June, while other surveys showed increased reporting of people saying they feel lonely.
This isn’t the first time the obituary has been written for the office. Thirty years ago, Peter Drucker, arguably the greatest management thinker of the 20th century, wrote “commuting to office work is obsolete.” But remember, even George Jetson commuted to work at Spacely Sprockets.
That prediction was premature then and it’s premature now.
Even though many of the ways we work will inevitably change, companies and employees alike will soon – and in some cases have already begun to – rediscover the virtues of going to the office. Take it from me: I’m in the office again and definitely glad to be back.
This article originally appeared on Forbes.
