Talking to many people about this concept is an interesting thing. It’s interesting because people fall into two camps, either they absolutely don’t believe it can be possible, or they totally agree that this is the future.
There is no middle ground and that in itself is rather curious.
So why are people so against the idea and why are people so with the idea?
I guess it all comes down to mindset, and mindset is also the biggest hurdle when it comes to convincing people to adopt it. Fundamentally all the technology requird to make this happen at large scales is already present.
As mentioned before there are plenty of examples of successful companies with anywhere from 10 to 100 employees which run their operations completely without offices. So it’s not the fact that it can’t be done, it’s a question of whether it can be done at scale.
So the main arguments I’m hearing about office based work is that people will lose the social connection and also also not be able to disconnect from work. It would seem that people who crave that connect feel the fear of losing it.
Remember an officeless society doesn’t mean we don’t meet and have meetings. All the normal company functions would still run, they would just run slightly differently. Think outside the box.
Another interesting correlation is that those who tend to agree that the future looks like a world of mobile and officeless working, are those who are successful already in their fields. They are people who I would class as visionary people, who can see the wider reaching changes in society and can see that this type of future is not only possible, but inevitable.
I’m really intrigued by this great divide in thought. I’d love to hear what other problems people think there would be to this happening, what are your concerns around working in an officeless society?
