Change is painful, isn’t it?

We’re not surprised at all at the findings in this study. We see it everyday when we speak at companies with traditional work environments. People who have less freedom resent the people who have more.

But what interests us about this piece is the paragraph toward the end that proposes the solution:

“[B]y ensuring greater face-to-face contact between co-workers when all employees are in the office and granting greater job autonomy, employers may be able to counter these problems”, according to the study published in the journal Human Relations.

So we’re supposed to ensure greater face-to-face contact, but also grant greater job autonomy? In other words, the way to react to the changing face of work is to make people do what we think is best for them (greater face-to-face), while also letting them decide what’s best for them (greater job autonomy). Huh?

We’re not criticizing this kind of mixed message. Given where we are in this global change in how we view work, it’s not surprising that there is confusion.

Our traditional attitudes about work make tempting solutions to our workplace problems because they give us comfort. They are the devil we know. Our emerging attitudes about work are the devil we don’t. Even though give people more control is better fit with the business and the personal realities of a global, 24/7 world, embracing this idea is a little scary.

But here is one thing we know: we’re never going back. The traditional eight-to-five, in-a-cube world of work isn’t dead, but it’s dying. So the question for those miserable souls watching other people enjoy their freedom isn’t how to make them feel better about being left behind, but how to bring them along with us.

Here’s an article from the Boston Globe about how companies are realizing that “face time” is more important in the digital age. For the co-presidents of a Needham, MA company, the solution is “Home Week”. During Home Week no boss can travel, there a “deep dive” executive planning meeting, a company-wide pub night, blah, blah, blah.

Home Week is supposed to be a cure for the problems people have with virtual communication—the feeling that you never know where people are, and the sometimes impersonal nature of e-mail and voice mail. On some level this is understandable. We’re all trying to make sense out of the enormous cultural changes that are being created by technology and globalization. When work and life get confusing and overwhelming, it’s understandable to want to go back to what you know.

But face time isn’t the answer.

Have you ever been in the middle of a meeting and thought, We covered the agenda fifteen minutes ago…now we’re just spinning our wheels?

Have you ever walked out of a meeting and felt like you really connected with your team, and then two weeks later, what you thought was going to be the result of the meeting hasn’t taken place?

Have you ever heard yourself saying (or heard someone say to you) “But I thought we covered that in the meeting?”

We’re not against meetings. Human beings are social animals. Getting together feels good and it can be a good way to get work done. But we also run the risk of confusing the feeling that we’re communicating with actually communicating something of value.

We’re skeptical of ideas like Home Week, which seem to us like meeting for the sake of meeting. Why have a monthly “deep dive” when maybe you need have a deep dive three times in one month and then not again for another three months? Why have a company pub night when maybe people would rather decide what to do with their own time?

In a Results-Only Work Environment people put the results first, and then work from there. Do we need to meet face-to-face to get this result? Do we need to meet at all or is there another way to get the work done? If we do need to meet, then who needs to be there and what specifically are they expected to communicate? What are the outcomes? What matters most is results. And when your people are meeting their results and rewarded with both money and control over their time, they don’t care how the work gets done.