The long view on cities and offices
Future Work/Life is a weekly newsletter that casts a positive eye to the future. I bring you interesting stories and articles, analyse industry trends and offer tips on designing a better work/life. If you enjoy reading it, please SUBSCRIBE HERE, and share it!
Thanks as ever for the feedback from the last newsletter and to those of you that shared it with others. It's a slightly longer one this week but since I'm continuing to experiment with formats, I thought I'd just put it out there and see what you all think.
It's Mental Health Awareness week here in the U.K. I try to look for positives in any situation and the openness with which people are discussing their struggles during this period of immense change is undoubtedly one.
I've become more mindful of managing the stress that's come from combining the roles of parent, teacher, and husband, while also squeezing in some work, partially through starting my day (increasingly early) with meditation. I'm relatively new to it and have tested out a few different apps as I get to grips with precisely what I'm doing. One guided session that stayed with me this week was focused on 'wrongness' and treating problems with a 'beginners mind'.
And it's through this lens that I look at the subject of this week's newsletter.
I've read a lot about the decline of the office and cities over the past few weeks. There is a growing consensus that both are on their way out in reaction to this crisis. The primary reasons appear to be our sudden transformation into a fully distributed workforce, and the fear that population density increases the spread of viruses like COVID-19.
These are both, of course, completely valid and logical assumptions to make and an example of first-order thinking. In other words, conclusions are made based on evidence but viewed with a narrow focus. In this case, the backdrop is a poorly handled response by the government and the resulting impact on mortality rates.
The thing is, while many seem to be celebrating (and I've previously been a critic of how distracting the modern office can be), I can't help but think we might be losing something if this comes to pass. The question I'm asking myself is whether that's because my own experience has just conditioned me to this way of thinking?
While I agree that for economic reasons a reappraisal of commercial leases for businesses is not just sensible but necessary, I suspect we'll see a correction in people's assessment of the desirability of an office. The seemingly infinite closing of schools, for one, will leave many parents dreaming wistfully of those quiet, contemplative journeys to work, and long lunch hours with only a Pret sandwich for company!
As far as the death of cities is concerned, I'd suggest this has been greatly exaggerated. I'm currently in the middle of reading Sapiens for the second time. If there's one thing that Yuhal Noah Harari's book emphasises it's the historically transformative impact of cities on economic growth, societal innovation and creativity. Rather than die, it's more likely that cities will evolve and adapt.
In Scale, Geoffrey West points out...
"Cities are effectively machines for stimulating and integrating the continuous positive feedback dynamics between the physical and social.
There is a correlation between increased social interaction, socioeconomic activity, and greater economies of scale."
In the case of Covid-19, it's also not factually correct that living in urban areas is inherently riskier. As Akeem Azhar references in his excellent article, analysis of its' spread is nuanced.
Sameh Wahba from the World Bank, drawing on the organisation's research on the viruses spread, suggests…
"The places most affected are not simply large cities or those with high population density. They are places with poor, overcrowded housing, lacking infrastructure services, especially water and sanitation, and with minimal open spaces such as informal settlements."
While in the West, there has been a trend towards de-urbanisation, in the U.S., for example, mobility is declining. As Azhar puts it...
"While the pandemic is making people nervous this year, next year, and perhaps the next few years, this won't be happening for the length of time that it takes to stop the tide of humanity agglomerating."
It's wise to consider the potential impact of people's attitude towards offices and by extension, cities.
I'm a fan of using mental models to consider whether decisions and outcomes could have unintended consequences, particularly when made under the influence of behavioural biases. In this case, I'm keen to test whether co-opting the principle of second-order thinking (in short, posing 'if this, then what' questions) helps extrapolate the consequences of a fundamental change in working culture.
Second-order thinking is generally used to validate investment or business decisions', and if you'd like to find out more, I'd suggest reading Howard Marks (the investor, not the drug smuggler) book, The Most Important Thing.
I'm especially interested in how a revolutionary change in office culture will affect young people. As Fareed Zakaria points out, the divergent views on whether or not we should 'return to work' are largely drawn along economic lines.
"The COVID-19 divide is a class divide. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report last year on the "job flexibilities" of U.S. employees. Of the top 25 per cent of income earners, more than 60 per cent can stay home and still do their jobs. Of the bottom 25 per cent, fewer than 10 per cent can do the same."
Simply put, older, wealthier people are more likely to have the space and resources to establish a comfortable home office set-up.
What impact will this have on the work-lives of young people?
Cambridge University has committed to online-only lectures for the next academic year, and many more universities are likely to follow. Given the considerable cost of higher education in the U.K. and particularly in the U.S., does that mean we're likely to see more young people not only defer this year but decide to enter work when leaving school?
Without the face-to-face support of more experienced team members, will entry-level employees struggle to find their feet in a remote workplace? Can we quantify the value of 'learning on the job' in building up 'softer' skills that can't be taught via an online training session?
Will these considerations place downward pressure on the earnings of younger people and present more experienced people - perhaps nearing what previously have been considered the end their careers - with new opportunities as companies prefer a 'safe pair of hands'?
Or, does a fundamental change in how we work together render some of these norms obsolete? After all, might the savings in rent and the associated costs of running an office offer companies the chance to invest more in training and development for their team (as Sir Martin Sorrell argued on LinkedIn this week)?
Beyond the office, could a fully distributed workforce restrict how people grow their network of friends, colleagues and collaborators? Moving to the big city when you're young and, in some cases, leaving it again in middle age is a well-trodden path. What happens if job opportunities for the young are more scarce?
Or does the removal of local, geographical limits, present an exciting opportunity to create relationships with people based all around the world, provoking ideas free from cultural biases?
Does the shift towards distributed work lead to an exodus of people from cities, driving down commercial, then residential property prices?
Could these changes paradoxically have a beneficial impact on air pollution as a combination of fewer commuter car and train journeys, and the increased use of bicycles reduce emissions?
And might this scenario create a more conducive environment for families with young children to remain in cities, rather than decamping to the countryside?
So many questions! Do I have answers for them all? I'm afraid not.
Here are a few thoughts, though.
It's inevitable in the short term that many knowledge-work companies keep their employees at home. We're then likely to see a 'blended' approach to remote and office work and perhaps in some cases a complete reassessment of the need for a physical location, resulting in offices categorised as perks, much like health insurance or gym membership.
An absence of a physical office may lead to a longer-term, and in my view, positive, trend, however.
Should fully distributed working become the 'norm', we're likely to see an agglomeration of young workers (and others who don't have a home office) in 'remote office' hubs that become defacto centres of innovation. I know, this seems hard to imagine at the moment with social distancing likely to remain in place for the foreseeable. Given time, though, I suspect that companies will come to see these emerging hubs as a pivotal source of talent.
In this scenario, there are two further possibilities:
Innovation hubs will be the breeding ground for a new wave of start-ups.
Employer-employee relationships will change to such an extent that future generations regard having a single employer as a historic relic. They will, instead, create a new, more positive interpretation of gig work.
Jim Barksdale said, "there are only two ways, I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling." Unbundling of the workforce may prove to be the lasting impact of COVID-19 on work-life.
Cheers,
Ollie
P.S. On a lighter note, watch this series on YouTube for an example of what makes cities great!