Future of Work
From Thought Leadership to Sense Making with Perry Timms
Perry Timms
Perry Timms sat at a desk
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Thought Leadership has been a “thing” for some three decades now. It is often provocative, ideological, and agitative, sometimes research-led and evidence-based on trended analysis and experimentation. 

People who are leading “thinkers” are considered very differently from strategists and operational implementors. 

Inevitably, there are tensions between those who do and those who think.

The Role of Thought Leadership

Thought leadership can be considered a proxy or even the antithesis of evidenced facts and data, established practices and proven processes.

Does thought leadership help you make a business-critical decision? Probably not; the data and evidence should do that.

Does thought leadership help you be more adaptable to demanding changes and overcome being trapped in your own orthodoxies? It certainly does, offering you the chance to think differently and fostering a sense of adaptability in the face of change.

One tug-of-war currently between researchers, analysts, thought leadership and evidence-based practice is the use of the workplace—more specifically, the office—for knowledge, creative, and information-led workers, not factories, utility plants, logistics depots, schools, hospitals, retail and hospitality outlets, etc.

Where's the Evidence?

To establish the evidential basis for this, I struggled to find a definitive figure for the number of people in the workforce affected by the “back-to-the-office” dilemma.

I asked bots, searched the web, and downloaded numerous reports. I couldn’t find evidence of a precise measure of how much of the global workforce does office-type work and what percentage doesn’t. 

So we’re going to have to work with estimates that 30-40% of all work is office-based, knowledge, and information-type work, with 60-70% of work NOT of that denomination. Therefore, the office “debate” impacts (at most), 40% of the global workforce. That’s still 1.36 billion people in the 3.4 billion workforce globally.

More interestingly, the financial value of office space is high. Corporate Real Estate globally is set to top £118 trillion in value. Some have predicted a huge crash in 2026, others are more bullish about converting city office spaces for mixed use of retail, hospitality and living spaces.

Urban living and the 15-minute city are concepts that aim to repurpose urban centres from purely retail, hospitality, and commerce to living spaces, education spaces, health, leisure, and work. Is that thought leadership?? Trend analysis and sense-making?

It’s both, and this is where we need to be in the office-v-hybrid/remote debate.

We need facts, evidence, trend analysis, and data to help us decide. However, we also need thought leadership to help us imagine a more creative, participatory, and fulfilling way to position the place of work and to test new concepts and bring energy and momentum – not resistance and friction – to the space/place of work for knowledge workers.

The Practical Use

Imagine this: A thought leader shares that studies of rescue services teams show that performance is improved in teams with stronger social cohesion and who have lunch together. 

A CEO reads this and says to his Executive Team: “See, let’s get all our people back to the (expensive asset that is the) office to lunch together because that will help us perform better”.

But, this enterprise is full of designers and software developers, so are not fire and rescue services. Taken out of context, research like this used in thought leadership could be misleading as much as it is provocational.

This is where sense-making is important. Making sense of the thought leadership in context and as a stimulus for additional thinking, trials and experiments and test-and-learn deployment.

So, upon reading this article, the CEO should have gathered his team and said:

“I see how this strengthens bonds and boosts performance in emergency services, so what’s our version of this where we can build more cohesion, connection and support for each other as colleagues?”

Then, work with ideas and things that sense-make. We need more of that in the office/hybrid/remote debate and tug-of-war.

Less museum curation and more art exhibitions.

Thought leadership – agitating and provocational. Sense-making – testing, applying and contextualising thought leadership.

We need both. We need better, We deserve better.


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