Dearest readers, despite what some of you out there may think, I have experience with office work and other work environments that have been plagued by concepts considered as contributors to business success but in reality they mess things up big time when it comes to productivity. I also have a few friends who like to go to work, crush it without being interrupted by coworkers getting up every 15 minutes to stretch and walk around to bum favors that make them look good while the productive people fall behind in their own work. Now, we are in another lockdown here in my dear province of Ontario, and anyone who can work remotely is required to do so. Now, dearest readers, we may be able to break some of those workplace myths that you may have noticed at your own work as well. I would like to share this with you because I felt you may find it super satisfying, and I will also share my real inspiration for this article today.
First, open concept offices. This, dearest readers has been a joke and a total failure. I have experienced this in the past, as have some of my friends. Additionally, studies have been done on open concept offices and they have been discussed in a Forbes article from 2019. "In a recent study funded by Harvard Business School, findings showed that open office spaces with limited spatial boundaries, actually decreased the volume of face-to-face interaction significantly, by approximately 70%. And virtual interaction, via email and instant messenger, increased. Rather than increasing face-to-face conversations and promoting collaboration, open spaces appear to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from team members—the exact opposite result the architectural changes were supposed to produce." So, people pretend to focus on work but instead they are messaging back and forth like crazy while physically distancing themselves from coworkers. In addition, there were negative effects due to lack of privacy, there was a notable negative impact on creative problem solving, as well as decreased productivity due to noise and other distractions travelling all throughout open office space.
The second myth that we have to put to rest is that being a team player is somehow good for business. How many of your hated group projects in high school or college/university? I know I have, and so did many other people I know. They force you to practice group work, be a team player, work well with others, to the point where one or two people sacrifice themselves to do most of the work, while the rest of the team either underperform or completely abuse the system, doing little to no work and relying on other team members wanting to succeed and get a high grade. The worst thing is, those complaining about slackers usually get punished the most, especially in our increasingly PC culture where any complaint you make about someone can be turned into some sort of politically incorrect attack at them rather than a legitimate concern about their performance. This is why I detest group work the way they want you to do it in schools, and then the same same of doing group or team work leaks into the business world. The solution? I actually love businesses that can afford or simply must have project managers. When there is a dedicated person in charge of nothing but managing team work on different projects, dealing with individual team members, assigning work and deadlines, dealing with individual problems and concerns, you get success- plain and simple. A team with a project manager and individual specialists that sit in their corners and do their work without interacting with each other is the way to go. You know your job, you have your tasks, now get to it and talk to the project manager if you have any issues. Individualism, compartmentalization and next level focus are where things should be at in the workplace.
Finally, in larger companies, if you are entry level or mid level and you have what might be a great idea, concept or a suggestion to help the company do better, you need to talk about it with your manager once or twice and then shut up and wait until they run it up the chain. This is another huge problem that reeks of protectionism and a rigid pyramid-like structure of a command economy. Guess what? Neither of those things are elements of capitalism. It is supposed to be about competition and merit, ideas being heard regardless of where they come from if they are really good. Basically, if you look at it in terms of Star Wars (shoutout to all the fans out there), growing and successful businesses are supposed to be a little more Sith and a little less Jedi Order. ;) How many times have you had a great idea at work, you mentioned it to a manager or supervisor, they said it was a good idea and then either it took weeks to run it up the chain and get some sort of response, or your manager claimed it as their own idea and got the brownie points for it? For a business, that is never a sign of health.
Now, dearest readers, you may notice I am passionate about this topic. As many of you either know or guess, I am very work, performance and brand oriented. I know how to have fun too, but I rarely waste time, I am never bored and I always have a plan. :) Then, I hear stories of couples both working from home where one person is fully dedicated, and their partner thinks you can take quick breaks to do chores around the home while work is slow. No; just no. Many of the jobs you can do remotely pay really good money, and I hate to hear that this is the attitude some people out there have when they are working from home while so many other people are out of work because their jobs cannot be done remotely. We always need to let hard work and merit shine through the most and I do believe that businesses need to foster generation after generation of self-sufficient specialists with the least amount of structural and cultural obstacles between them and their work, their creative and analytical processes. Bottom line, if there is anything at your workplace that is preventing you from embracing your work, you will never be able to do your best there, and the workplace will never get to benefit from your best work. Is that how we ought to compete on the world stage? Something to think about. :)
First, open concept offices. This, dearest readers has been a joke and a total failure. I have experienced this in the past, as have some of my friends. Additionally, studies have been done on open concept offices and they have been discussed in a Forbes article from 2019. "In a recent study funded by Harvard Business School, findings showed that open office spaces with limited spatial boundaries, actually decreased the volume of face-to-face interaction significantly, by approximately 70%. And virtual interaction, via email and instant messenger, increased. Rather than increasing face-to-face conversations and promoting collaboration, open spaces appear to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from team members—the exact opposite result the architectural changes were supposed to produce." So, people pretend to focus on work but instead they are messaging back and forth like crazy while physically distancing themselves from coworkers. In addition, there were negative effects due to lack of privacy, there was a notable negative impact on creative problem solving, as well as decreased productivity due to noise and other distractions travelling all throughout open office space.
The second myth that we have to put to rest is that being a team player is somehow good for business. How many of your hated group projects in high school or college/university? I know I have, and so did many other people I know. They force you to practice group work, be a team player, work well with others, to the point where one or two people sacrifice themselves to do most of the work, while the rest of the team either underperform or completely abuse the system, doing little to no work and relying on other team members wanting to succeed and get a high grade. The worst thing is, those complaining about slackers usually get punished the most, especially in our increasingly PC culture where any complaint you make about someone can be turned into some sort of politically incorrect attack at them rather than a legitimate concern about their performance. This is why I detest group work the way they want you to do it in schools, and then the same same of doing group or team work leaks into the business world. The solution? I actually love businesses that can afford or simply must have project managers. When there is a dedicated person in charge of nothing but managing team work on different projects, dealing with individual team members, assigning work and deadlines, dealing with individual problems and concerns, you get success- plain and simple. A team with a project manager and individual specialists that sit in their corners and do their work without interacting with each other is the way to go. You know your job, you have your tasks, now get to it and talk to the project manager if you have any issues. Individualism, compartmentalization and next level focus are where things should be at in the workplace.
Finally, in larger companies, if you are entry level or mid level and you have what might be a great idea, concept or a suggestion to help the company do better, you need to talk about it with your manager once or twice and then shut up and wait until they run it up the chain. This is another huge problem that reeks of protectionism and a rigid pyramid-like structure of a command economy. Guess what? Neither of those things are elements of capitalism. It is supposed to be about competition and merit, ideas being heard regardless of where they come from if they are really good. Basically, if you look at it in terms of Star Wars (shoutout to all the fans out there), growing and successful businesses are supposed to be a little more Sith and a little less Jedi Order. ;) How many times have you had a great idea at work, you mentioned it to a manager or supervisor, they said it was a good idea and then either it took weeks to run it up the chain and get some sort of response, or your manager claimed it as their own idea and got the brownie points for it? For a business, that is never a sign of health.
Now, dearest readers, you may notice I am passionate about this topic. As many of you either know or guess, I am very work, performance and brand oriented. I know how to have fun too, but I rarely waste time, I am never bored and I always have a plan. :) Then, I hear stories of couples both working from home where one person is fully dedicated, and their partner thinks you can take quick breaks to do chores around the home while work is slow. No; just no. Many of the jobs you can do remotely pay really good money, and I hate to hear that this is the attitude some people out there have when they are working from home while so many other people are out of work because their jobs cannot be done remotely. We always need to let hard work and merit shine through the most and I do believe that businesses need to foster generation after generation of self-sufficient specialists with the least amount of structural and cultural obstacles between them and their work, their creative and analytical processes. Bottom line, if there is anything at your workplace that is preventing you from embracing your work, you will never be able to do your best there, and the workplace will never get to benefit from your best work. Is that how we ought to compete on the world stage? Something to think about. :)