Workplace Leaders with unconventional perspectives could not be MORE important to the Future of Work.
This is especially true when we’re talking about the “place” side of the workplace. All too often, leaders whose focus is ‘place’ within the workplace become hopelessly romantic about bricks and mortar. Not Phil Kirshner, though…
This guy is a cerebral, tangential thinker who studies the nature of work itself and then how that applies to place.
I had the chance to catch up with Phil for a Beyond Hybrid conversation and am excited to share what I learned.
What do workplace leaders need to hear?
I started by asking Phil “What is the main message that you think workplace leaders need to hear right now, and why should they care?”
To which he replied, “The challenge of our time is going to be a more thoughtful design, or redesign of work.”
We riffed on being much more intentional about how things are done, by who, when, and with what tools (?).
How, who, when, what tools…
Where is ‘Place?’ Oh yeah, it hasn’t been mentioned yet!
The main message from Phil here is that getting more intentional with work itself is the precondition to redesigning where it happens.
A physical workplace can no longer default to the least common denominator. It can no longer be about trying to make it “good enough” for as many things as possible.
This line brings it all home “Solving for fewer purposes with an openness to knowing that if the spaces you don’t control don’t solve for that purpose you can AND should direct someone somewhere else.”
Yee ol’ Serendipity
Phil and I then went on to address the ongoing elephant in the room, serendipity!
At a high level, we agreed that people think serendipity magically happens but in reality, we often have to design for it.
In an in-office capacity Phil cited intentionally placing amenities in different places such as “good coffee is over here” but “free bananas are over there…” — the intent being to create movement in the environment — something that most traditional office environments DON’T contribute to.
In a digital capacity, we talked about technological nudges like the Donut App on Slack that pair people up to have unstructured chats.
And coming back again to designing for serendipity, there has to be a culture whereby when the CEO is paired with employee X, the CEO shows up to have that “serendipitous” chat.
Phil then took this point home by articulating that individuals can create serendipity for themselves by “working out loud.”
A great example of this (among many) is making content on Linkedin.
Most pessimistic? Most Optimistic?
As many of us are tired of the discourse on the Future of Work, I decided to ask Phil what grinds his gears and what he’s hopeful about for 2025.
Pessimism
“Try as we might, we will keep measuring work by inputs like how often you’re supposed to be where.”
“More power struggles between executives and employees.”
“More public stories of companies saying we picked up a whole bunch of talent from those guys…”
Optimism: “We get away from saying AI and instead just do things powered by AI.” (paraphrased)
In closing…
Phil is a guy who is involved with the workPLACE. But as you can see, his brain moves in many other directions, and is curious about what influences the future of ‘Place’. He’s not a hopeless romantic!
More perspectives like this, please…
This is my final installment of Beyond Hybrid for the year.
For those of you who’ve tagged along, thank you and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading 🙂
PS: I asked Phil how he would counsel 25-year-old him if he was entering the workplace world in 2025…you’ll have to watch the recording of our convo to find out more on that!
Dave is Kadence’s Future of Work Strategist. He foresees what’s unfolding in the world of work and advises our customers on how to prepare and adapt to the latest trends easily.
