I think having been working from home for the last 10 years has made me a little loopy 😉
Actually I think it has opened up my eyes to what is possible. It’s amazing to think that technology is the driving force behind these new found abilities and given that the internet isn’t even that old, it has really advanced at a pace which I think people haven’t managed to grasp yet.
These powers are like super powers. Imagine 20 years ago telling someone that they could literally sit under a tree in a park somewhere and be able to hold a video call to the other side of the world. Or perhaps you told them that they’d be able to control all their banking from the palm of their hand from anywhere in the world.
With all these new possibilities, why haven’t companies grasped yet the world changing idea that they don’t need an office?
The fundamental problem is trust.
Think about when humans were living in tribal society, back in the days when life was just about survival. Everybody worked from home and the homespace was a very different place in concept to what it is now. At some point in our past, we dedicated the home space to just sleeping and eating, when in the past it was somewhere that we could entertain and do our business as well.
It was when humans began to grow in population that they realised to create more stuff to protect more people, they needed to galvanize into groups and from that point on, it was a case of find the biggest group and ensure your survival.
Groupings occurred because people didn’t trust each other to be able to protect each other. By having a tribal leader who dictated the rules, someone else was held responsible for the welfare of the larger group and someone else was also trusted with this responsibility.
If we fast forward to present day, ask any business owner of 20 years what they think would happen if all their staff worked from home and they would probably answer the fact that nothing would ever get done. They fundamentally don’t trust their staff to be productive outside of a monitored environment.
That’s pretty sad. Besides, all studies have shown that home workers are far more productive in the long run.
No one said it would be easy, we are just saying it’s possible. Get over all the obstacles around how to report, how to monitor remotely, how to facilitate communication etc and soon you’ll realise how much money you can save when you don’t have an office space.
I believe we can all truely work from anywhere. I was in St Lucia recently and armed with just an iPad, I was able to literally do anything I needed to run my company.
Move forward, or move backwards, it’s your choice.