Towards the end of ‘Lockdown 1.0’ in the UK, I wrote an article on Location Independent Working and concluded that:
“Could I work from home and never go to an office? I could probably do my job effectively but it wouldn't do my mental health any good!
Is the new way of working the right thing for society and planet earth? IMHO (one for the kidz): YES!!”
We’ve now been through various tiers lovingly known as Lockdown 1.1, 1.2, Christmas, Lockdown 2.0, Lockdown 2.1 ‘The Revenge of the Virus’ and now Lockdown 3.0 ‘The Rise of the Vaccine’.
I got together with Richard Bell to return to the topic and see what we thought now and whether my views still stood. We had a great chat covering topics including:
One person’s location independent working is another person’s location isolation
There are so many other worries and stresses in peoples lives at the moment that objective assessments of location independent working may not be possible!
Do people still need to smell each other?
Will the City and other CBDs become ghost towns?
Are we missing out on the serendipitous idea exchange (water cooler, etc)?
Are we making strategic real estate decisions based on a ‘technical test’? Is it premature?
How do leaders need to evolve to deal with this new way of working?
Is WeWork done? Is regional co-working part of our future?
How do we replace communities? Is John Stepper’s Working Out Loud approach a way of doing this?
How do we maintain our safe sanctuaries at home if we also work there?
I hope you enjoy the discussion and please leave comments on what else you’d like to hear from!
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