ICYMI: Whither the office, McDonald's, and WeWork? WeDisaster!
4 comms things and 1 non-comms thing
In case you missed it…
1. The Office Is Dead! Long Live the Office!
Google extended its work from home (WFH) operations to mid-2021. Facebook expects half of its workforce to be remote by 2030. Twitter is giving its employees the option to WFH permanently. The outdoor company REI is selling its brand new eight-acre headquarters before a single employee steps foot on the campus.
But but …
Facebook just inked a deal for a massive office in Manhattan.
And Microsoft’s CEO says going from in-office to fully remote is “replacing one dogma with another.”
What is the future of the office?
Lau Hesselbæk Andreasen of ConnectMinds has been watching this shift to remote work for years. Writing (two years ago!) he noticed, “the thing I have seen derail most remote working initiatives is not the infrastructure and tech demands. The real barrier tends to be cultural.” He goes on:
“The ‘number of hours at your desk matters’ mentality is (bizarrely) still prevalent in a large number of organizations; typically those governed by layers of hierarchy.”
“Middle managers sometimes resist [the change to remote work] and in reality don't support it on the ground.”
The most dominant reason “is still an attitude of ‘if I can't see what you're doing, you are probably doing very little’—hardly an indicator of trust in your team!”
💭 MY THOUGHT: Office workers may never fully transition to remote working, especially when extroverts need social interactions to thrive. But I think Lau’s right. Culture is the differentiator in the office/WFH debate. The companies that fully embrace distributed work—the REIs, Automattics, Twitters, GitHubs, Basecamps, and Citrixes of the world—are the companies that put their people over their profits. As cool and important as Microsoft is, their number one priority is returning value to shareholders.
Compare that with a place like REI or Automattic, which don’t pay employees nearly as much as they’d earn for an equivalent role in Big Tech.
But they grant their employees agency and choice in determining how they want to work for the company and, more importantly, how they want to live their lives.
As Lau argues, emphasis should be put on outcomes, not hours spent. It’s an idea the German conglomerate Siemens has embraced. Mobile working is now a core component of their “new normal.” Deputy CEO Roland Busch, declares:
These changes will also be associated with a different leadership style, one that focuses on outcomes rather than on time spent at the office. We trust our employees and empower them to shape their work themselves so that they can achieve the best possible results. With the new way of working, we’re motivating our employees while improving the company’s performance capabilities and sharpening Siemens’ profile as a flexible and attractive employer.
Outcomes, not hours. Can’t we all at least agree on that for the future of work?
2. How McDonald’s Managed a Major Business Transformation Through Emotional Connection
Poppulo’s latest insightful case study features McDonald’s (over 1 billion internal emails served!). Their guide tells the story of how an ingenious internal comms strategy “helped align the restaurant chain’s 2,000 U.S. franchise owners with the most ambitious business transformation in the company’s history.”
If you’re into pulse surveys and regular polling, this case study is for you.
The team regularly monitored franchisee sentiment through quarterly polling
🔮 Simultaneously they created content that anticipated mood changes over a three-year transition
The comms program successfully combined qualitative and quantitative approaches
3. Good Business Writing Is About Logic, Not Words
Leonardo Federico, founder of Pulse and Mister Editorial subscriber, says what separates most good business writing from sub-par writing has very little to do with style, grammar, sentence structure, word selection, or even content, per se. Rather, he says, “Most people can't write well because they don't know how to control the logical sequence in which they present their ideas.” He breaks the argument down into five components:
Understanding how we think
Understanding how we write
What makes for good business writing
Examples of good business writing
Logistics for sharing written ideas
Paid subscribers to Mister Editorial get access to exclusive content, such as a six-part series on how to create an editorial strategy for internal comms.
Part one: Six Steps to Develop an Editorial Strategy for Internal Communications
Part two: Editorial Strategies Must Incorporate Business and Team Goals
Part three: How Do You Categorize Your Employees? Try Psychographics.
Part four: Use Content Series to Optimize Your Internal Communications Strategy
Part five: Publish to a Platform, Not Just a Channel
Part six: Reviewing Data Is the Only Way to Know If Internal Comms Is Succeeding…or Failing
4. What Star Trek Can Teach Us About Diversity, Inclusion, and Leadership
Casey Pettiford, Brilliant Ink’s brilliant intern, argues that Star Trek’s limited run had an oversized influence on our culture. Debuting in 1966 during the height of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, the show was both of and ahead of its time.
Fun fact: Star Trek was the first series to showcase an interracial kiss on TV.
Ms. Pettiford says there are six DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) lessons that leaders can glean from Star Trek that are especially relevant today:
Question the status quo
Embrace challenge
Listening is leading
Diversity is necessary
People first
Go above and beyond
🖖 Boldly go read this article.
5. Adam Neumann Sold the World on His Vision. Did He Really Believe Any of It?
If one of your guilty pleasures is schadenfreude, then you’ll love Bloomberg’s new podcast Foundering. The first season is about the spectacular rise and fall of WeWork and its charismatic leader, Adam Neumann.
By episode two I was glad I had never worked for the company.
By episode three I was shocked how much chaos, ineptitude, and mistreatment people can put up with.
A few things kept the company chugging along long after it should have collapsed on itself.
Bulking up WeWork’s staff with fresh-out-of-college young people who were dazzled by a cool place to work and had no idea that it wasn’t normal to get angry and throw printers against walls and were okay with cleaning up vomit.
A mesmerizing CEO who had a vision for how the world should operate, how WeWork would lead the revolution, but no real sense in how to run a company. Add to that a penchant for showmanship and a strong inclination to the spectacular.
Piles and piles (and piles) of venture capital begging for a place to be spent, even in a real estate management company that pretended it was a tech company. Alongside that, investors and CEOs willing to be duped by a company leading the way on the “future of work,” even though they would never run their companies the same way.
Foundering’s story about WeWork is a captivating lesson in how not to run a company in the most spectacular way possible.
😬 For internal comms folks, there are several cringeworthy comms and HR moments.