'The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he ... [+]
In 2019, I wrote a piece for Dialogue Review reflecting on the changes that were implemented by Japanese tool manufacturers Disco Corp in a bid to improve the productivity and overall effectiveness of its workforce. In essence, they built a culture that treats individuals as entrepreneurs rather than employees; who pitch for involvement in various initiatives and projects, pay the company for use of equipment (for example desks and meeting rooms), and invoice others for work completed.
To its advocates, this is an extremely exciting company to work for - it encourages innovation and autonomy, and rewards success handsomely. Your ‘job’ changes every day and (presumably) you only seek involvement in projects that genuinely excite you. On the surface, there also appears to be scope for individuals to become strategically involved in projects that might facilitate a change in professional direction through experience gained on the ‘job’. As the program architect Toshio Naito put it "We've created a free economic zone, just like what exists outside the company. Work should be about freedom, not orders."
That the model does not appeal to everyone, nor might wisely be applied as a blanket rule across all organizations need not mean there are not elements of its underlying ethos that we might pause to consider; with particular reference to how our perceptions of spending time with colleagues might have changed since the pandemic.
In much of the world, lockdown restrictions are minimal if in evidence at all; yet thus far there has been limited evidence that typical working practices will revert to five days a week in the office accompanied by our entire workforce; and therefore we must concede that (like it or not) some of the changes we have seen are likely to remain in place at least in the short term.
Surely then the question we must ask is not ‘How long can we insist our employees remain in the same room as each other? but ‘how can we ensure the time we do spend in the (physical or digital) company of our teams is as effective as possible?
Peter Drucker wrote ‘The Effective Executive’ in 1967, and despite the fact that many of our working practices have changed, many of Drucker’s recommendations for making effective use of our time together hold. As evidenced by the Harvard Business Review piece ‘Stop the Meeting Madness’ by Leslie A. Perlow, Constance Noonan Hadley, and Eunice Eun, the feeling that time spent in meetings was unproductive was far from uncommon, and this when it was almost a given that the majority of staff would be office-based throughout the working week .
According to the piece, in 2017, on average, executives were spending almost 23 hours a week in meetings, compared to around 10 in the 1960s. Whilst this might be construed as far too many or far too few depending on your personal context, again, perhaps it is not the hours we object too per say, but what are we gaining and losing in exchange for them? Let us think about that exchange carefully before we are seduced by the promise of productivity gains and putting a price on our time in case we lose the camaraderie and social well being that participating in meetings often delivers. This doesn’t have a price ticket, but can pay handsomely.
