đź–Ľ GET THE FUCK OUT
Perception is an interesting phenomenon. Have somebody say “ork, ork, ork” before they answer how you eat soup and against better judgement they say fork. Since we don’t test for COVID-19 anymore in the Netherlands the discussion under white collar workers has been “working from home or working from the office”. Even my esteemed ex-collegae Kristel talks about it in her last podcast.
The thing that has been bugging me for months is why these seems to be the only two options. As former employer I can now confirm I did some things horrible wrong. I think we need to stop thinking about the boxes!
Employers have more issue’s than ever to get the right talent and make sure they don’t leave. When money and lease-cars weren’t enough anymore employers brought in snacks and ping-pong tables. When that didn’t comfort the employee enough there where unlimited holidays and shares. All super interesting of course but it didn’t make the actual work better. The thing you’re supposed to do 40 hours a week but do 50-60 hours.
I’ve worked with teams on apps for big hotel chains while the young millennials didn’t have any experience visiting hotels. They had no idea what an horrible experience it is to wait in line to check in while there’s a simple solution that can be made with an app. All they where thinking about was what tent to buy for the next festival. Hotels? Ok, boomer! We’ve built apps for a german sports car brand and I shit you not where we almost lost the account because we where not in line with the clientele. They where afraid we couldn’t level with their clients. That we couldn’t understand what it is to be able to buy and drive this pure metal bundle of joy.
The solution to all this was simple. Give the team the possibility to sleep in hotels for a few nights. Have them pay for it so they understand the value and reimburse it later. Have them understand why the app is a valuable part of the experience. Not only did the app become something spectacular, we also where able to help our client with so much more that we normally don’t even think about. We expended our services and kept the client on for longer than we ever imagined.
Oh and the sports car brand? Simple solution. I bought their top of the line model as a token of trust and bought a “won’t go bankrupt if they crash it” version of their convertible model for the team. Everybody was allowed to take the car. Bring it home, take it to the office and visit clients. It put smiles on everybodies faces except for the financial controller. We had a blast working for this client. We met up over the weekends to go go-karting together and all that effort showed in the product. Almost 6 years later the app still shines.
We’ve made work into something so boring and tedious that we forget what it’s all about. My wife works at a bank and it kind of bugs me that there’s no safe with stacks of money where you can swim around in. I mean, come on! I coach design teams that have never seen the Centre Pompidou. The magnificent museum where the architects Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano have put all the infrastructure on the outside. The first I saw that I understood what thinking outside the box actually means.
My point? The boxes. Home and office. During COVID-19 I missed a few things. Mostly people. Another big percentage where views. The view from Passo Manghen in Italy, the few from a run along the Seine in Paris and the look down from fjords in Norway. But what I missed most was experiences. I finetuned the shit out of my home so nothing went wrong. My tea was just perfect at 80 degrees, my screen and computer the best you can imagine and the air quality was exquisit. What I missed was walking into a store and smelling stuff. Drinking overpriced coffee that tasted bad. Visiting musea and making a picture where it didn’t look like it was jam packed with people. Going out and challenging my senses is what missed.
If you ask me, the discussion shouldn’t be about office or home-office but about the quality of work. Work becomes better if you move around. I know this is a luxury perspective and only focuses on the creative jobs but please, widen your view. I've been getting back in starting a company and what is the best feeling ever is to be inspired. I stop working when I see there's something that can inspire me on the work I'm doing right now. Tomorrow I'll be working in Rotterdam because at some point of the day there will be a viewing of the Lightyear 0. I just need to see that.
I don't have the solution yet to what we should do but there should be more than home or office.