These are the ways that media gets a lot of their stories. And it’s how politicians win elections. Everyone’s familiar with the last one. But most people don’t think about contrived dichotomies or ecological fallacies or even know what they are. Discussions around remote work are filled with all of the above.
Just like in science, where true discoveries almost always come from outside of the mainstream, a lot of managers refuse to accept that the way we work has fundamentally changed. In 2003, the Journal of Vocational Behavior did a study with IBM where they concluded, “The influence of the home office appears to be mostly positive and the influence of traditional office mostly negative on aspects of both work and personal/life.” I believe this was around the time IBM did away with most of its offices. Fast forward 20 years and most other companies didn’t get the memo. It’s much easier to believe that just going back to the way things were will solve problems and it won’t.
Contrived Dichotomies
A lot of the news articles about remote work start from a flawed premise. Remote work doesn’t work well for me therefore getting people back to the office is the answer.
Unfortunately, this completely ignores the success stories out there of companies that have gone completely remote. They’re just quietly sitting back watching the rest of the competition churn while they have success in their new model. There’s no need for them to share it at this point, it’s a competitive advantage. Sooner or later, everybody else we’ll figure it out. But for right now most CEOs are busy trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Even 10 years ago, Stanford Business reported a 13% performance increase in a 16,000-person company that shifted to remote work. Again it fell mostly on deaf ears.
The other problem with contrived dichotomies is that they tend to force arguments into two buckets. You’re forced to pick a side; either white or black, Republican or Democrat, office or remote, etc. Those are the typical types of arguments that we see that ultimately divide people and don’t get us to what the real solutions are.
Remote work has a complex series of interactions and it affects different workers at different places in their careers differently.
Without going into the exact details of each, it falls to management and leaders to recognize that they have a new structure. They’ve got to develop new tools to deal with that structure, rather than assuming the new structure is wrong, or an aberration as some leaders have described it. They try to force it back to the way that it was or apply the old rules to the new model and then wonder why it’s not working. Every company needs to discover its path for remote work and not get pulled into false narratives.
Ecological Fallacies
Ecological fallacies are another Jeopardy term you don’t hear very much, but it means deriving an answer from facts that don’t match up. One that I’m often reminded of because it was something that a school teacher of mine brought up frequently. Back in the 70s, there was a study to show the correlation between strontium 90 Fallout and the upper atmosphere and falling SAT scores. They tracked almost exactly, but they just happened to do that.
Sometimes these studies have so much credibility behind them in terms of their source and where they came from, that they’re treated as gospel even when that isn’t the fact.
In the case of remote work, the office is often viewed as the solution to a problem. It’s proactive management that is the solution. The office just masks when it doesn’t exist. In an office setting where management is lacking, culture often develops through osmosis. But when you’re remote or hybrid, it has to be intentional. The perception is that not being in the office is causing a problem. Instead, it’s just highlighting a problem that’s always been there. And that’s a lack of management leadership. Now, this is not to say that in real life meetings are not valuable. If anything, they are increasingly valuable. And this is one of the things that gets missed in these false arguments.
By Just saying that remote is the problem and the office is the solution, CEOs miss the opportunity to address the fact that people need intentional interactions and meaningful experiences. The office is rarely a place for either of these. It just ends up being one of the lies some leaders tell themselves.
Lies
Lies are generally more of the realm of politics than media. But in the remote work debate, lies can be convenient tools to move things in a direction. Remote work has some high-stakes issues at play primarily for commercial real estate and cities. As commercial real estate stops being used for offices, it affects the future of cities and it affects the future of work. But mostly, it affects the companies who have invested in either the companies or the real estate. If you look at the CEOs who have been getting the most airplay on their return to work “initiatives”, they almost all have something in common. They are funded in part by Vanguard, Blackrock, or SSgA Funds. These companies stand to lose extensively if the commercial real estate situation doesn’t turn around within the next two years.
The irony is that a return to the office will not fix the problem. Changing the strategy around the use of commercial real estate is how to fix the problem. Some of the early signs of the future of cities are showing up in public transit, thanks of course to Taylor Swift. Ridership has been at historic lows for the past 3 years, but it is showing a dramatic increase on nights and weekends. People aren’t going to cities to work, they are going to cities for activities. This is the future of cities.
Discovering the Truth
Our world is filled with so many narratives that aren’t true. Many serve the agendas of others. A return to the office serves the interests of some commercial real estate and investment companies, but chances are it may not be in the occupant’s interest. They are just caught up in the narrative. CEOs need to take a step back and see who is succeeding and who is struggling. They may be invested in a direction that doesn’t lead to success. Just because it was the right decision 5 years ago, doesn’t mean it’s still the correct path. Take time to discover the truth for today.
The truth can be a hard pill to swallow. “Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more” – Morpheus
