Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

I think of the benefit of the office being the opportunity for continuous partial attention. It affords the ability to be aware of what's going on about you, to learn & see a lot more. But one has to be attentive-ish, have some receptivity, to benefit from this. I feel like I can work without interruption in an office. But it's a risk or a sacrifice to do so: giving up my option of awareness, giving up the chance to share, the chance to learn or teach, the chance to discuss, to focus on my own things.

Rather than argue against open office as a bad construct, my main grievance is that most engagement points are synchronous & exclusive. Those not in the room at the time are not included, in most organization. Most learning, most deciding happens in the moment, in confidence. The open-office works because people are unable to find good forums for important conversations, and so ad-hocracy is an acceptable all-connected fallback.

Remote tends to be way more deliberate. Ad-hoc interaction is replaced by smaller networks of who-wants-to-talk-to-who. Most actions are private & hidden. It's even less communicative.

I'd far prefer an organization that can find more enduring, participatory, accessible ways of communicating. True for organizations which are remote, and those that are in person.