March 23, 2023
There’s nowhere near enough talk about our base instincts in the Great Workplace Conversation. Objectively speaking, we remain relatively highly evolved, communal and intelligent primates. And so we are driven by things we like to admit to – love, empathy and the Golden Rule. But also things we don’t care to admit to in quite the same way – status, jealousy and self-interest. More →
March 15, 2023
One of the latest people to invent activity-based working is a sociologist, who combined it with the similarly familiar hub and spoke office model on her substack as a solution to the Great Office Problem and as a way of implementing flexible working. She’s not the first and is a less surprising pioneer of a decades old model than some other people who should really know better. That includes an architectural practice who came up with the idea earlier this year and whose name escapes me. More →
March 14, 2023
Although the legend of Faust is one of the Germanic world’s foundational narratives, its archetypes and themes were already established by the time Goethe codified them in his 1808 play. They have since become universal. The idea that somebody would sell their soul to the Devil to gain something or rid themselves of unhappiness is as resonant now as it was in Renaissance Europe. It has inspired books films and artists to such an extent that its derivatives now have their own Wikipedia page.
March 9, 2023
Between the 9th and 13th Centuries, the world’s intellectual centre and the source of much of its progress, discovery and achievement was Baghdad. This was the Muslim Golden Age and at its core was the House of Wisdom, established by the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. At one point, this library housed the largest collection of books on Earth and drew the greatest minds in the world to share ideas, innovate and explore ancient sources of science and wisdom from Greek and Persian texts. Muslim, Jewish, Christian and atheist scholars worked together to advance human understanding until a slow decline culminated with a later Caliph declaring that its diversity of thought should bow to a literal interpretation of the Quran and Hadith.
March 8, 2023
In the latest episode of the Workplace Geeks podcast, one of the world’s leading experts on work and workplace, Kate Lister, focuses on a recent study in collaboration with Owl Labs, ‘State of Remote Work 2022’. The report, in its 6th year, provides a platform for a much broader conversation about hybrid and remote working (spoiler alert: terms which Kate hates by the way), Kate’s invitation to speak during the pandemic to United States Congress about home-working, and GWA’s long standing and freely available ROI and savings calculators. James returns following his blacksmithing course in the Peak District to a new discussion format – no more Pinder Ponder, get ready for the reflection section.
March 7, 2023
The digital edition of issue 14 of IN Magazine is now available to read free, here. Print copies are in the post. We think it’s the best issue we’ve done so far, but please don’t take our word for it. It’s visually stunning, as always. It offers you the usual eclectic mix of content, covering everything from technology to urban design, management issues, property, office design, the environment, wellbeing and transport as well as all the usual interviews, news, events and commentary. All back issues of IN are available here. More →
February 22, 2023
A number of apparent truisms about work and workplaces entered mainstream consciousness in the wake of the pandemic, and the shift to more flexible and hybrid working cultures. One of them is that people are better off carrying out focussed, quiet work at home, and creative and collaborative work in the office. And that this might suggest our approach to office acoustics would shift in particular ways. More →
February 21, 2023
In 1909, E M Forster – not exactly known for a body of work including dystopian fiction – published a novella called The Machine Stops. You can read it here but the story describes a future in which people live below ground, in isolation but with all their needs met by an omnipresent Machine (you can see where this is going). More →
February 17, 2023
In his recent book, The Constitution of Knowledge, the author Jonathan Rauch argues that knowledge consists of something about which nearly everybody can agree, and which has been arrived at by a structured, ongoing and benign process of debate and discovery. More →
February 13, 2023
Arthur C Clarke’s finest novel Childhood’s End is the story of an Earth that is invaded by a force of alien Overlords. This is not a destructive colonial invasion, which is why there’s no Hollywood blockbuster in the tale, but a seemingly benevolent intervention which ushers in a golden age for humanity. Although humankind initially does not get to meet the Overlords in person (for reasons I won’t give away here), the aliens unite the world’s governments, eradicate crime, conflict and the nation state and do away with the need for creativity and hard work. It is the literal end of history.
February 8, 2023
One unintended but welcome result of the new fixation with AI is that many of the people who became experts on the workplace in 2020 are now experts on AI. You’ll find them on social media and they’ll have written a book about it by May to sit on the shelf alongside the one about hybrid working and The Great Resignation. So, if you want some certainty about where generative AI taking us, go talk to one of them because people who know about the subject seem to have little or no idea. More →
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March 24, 2023
What Studs Terkel can teach us about how we talk about work
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, HR, Workplace design