Office Shock

DISCUSSION GUIDE

This discussion guide is an aid for teachers and students who want to use Office Shock in their courses or for more general learning. It can also be used by individuals, organizations, or communities to help navigate office shock.

We wrote this book to help individuals, organizations, and communities create stories that inspire better futures for working and living.

Office shock is not just about when to go back to the office. It’s about opening possibilities for human connection in more meaningful ways. Office shock and its aftershocks will help people transform their organizations and themselves.

To prepare for the opportunities of office shock, every individual office worker, organization, and policy maker should ask in this order:

1. What is the purpose of your office and officing?

2. What are the desired outcomes you aim to achieve with your office and by officing?

3. What will be the climate impacts of your office and officing?

4. With whom do you want to office? This is the Spectrum of Belonging.

5. How will you extend the intelligence of your office? This is the Spectrum of Augmentation.

6. Where and when will you office?

7. How will you design an agile resilient office?

These questions demonstrate the need for clarity and nimbleness in these times of great uncertainty. They reveal spectrums of choice that will make possible the formerly impossible. You cannot be certain, but you can be clear about where you want to go.

Conversation Starters

Below, we suggest questions that will guide your learning to think futureback and make smart choices about offices and officing.

Your Choices about Futureback Thinking

As you think about how strategic foresight might help you write your own personal story of offices and officing, consider these questions:

1. How can you break out of thinking present-forward, reduce your own cone of uncertainty, and move toward the futureback thinking of Future-Next-Now?

2. Full-spectrum thinking requires breaking out of the ingrained patterns of categorizing things into familiar boxes. How might you grow your full-spectrum mindset?

3. How can you develop and practice your storymaking skills?

Your Choices as You Look Back to Look Forward

Your choice is whether to learn from history or ignore it and risk remaking old mistakes. It took more than fifty years for distributed digital technologies to be an overnight success in 2020 and beyond. Zoom didn’t just happen when COVID-19 hit. In chapter s we shared our stories about this evolution and what it implies about what’s next as the officeverse emerges.

1. The networked office broke resistance to change in hierarchical offices. 2020 was a tipping point for change. How can you use futureback thinking to imagine better ways of working for yourself and your organization from now going forward?

2. The birth of augmented knowledge work began in the 1970s, and we are still asking the question of how we best combine what humans do with what machines can do. What is your stance regarding augmented intelligence? What are the aspects of work where you need the most augmentation? What areas do you want to keep to yourself?

3. Technology has evolved dramatically in the past fifty years, making impossible things possible. In chapter 2 we shared our stories about this evolution. What are the lessons you take from this history?

4. The past is riddled with present-forward thinking about technology that limits imagination. How might you encourage more futureback thinking?

Your Choices to Create Impossible Futures

1. Imagine a world where you and your organization are empowered to make the future a better place. What might that impossible future look like and feel like to you?

2. Create a story about the kind of future workplace in which you would want to work and live. Your story could examine:

   What is your purpose in working in this office?

   What outcomes will you aim to accomplish?

   Do you have any concerns about climate change?

   Who would be your ideal coworkers?

   How would you like technology to enhance your abilities?

   Where, when, and how often do you want to work?

   How would you increase your ability to be agile and resilient?

3. What could you do now to be ready for this future?

Your Choices on the Spectrum of Purpose

Our Spectrum of Purpose ranges from individual to collective, personal needs to societal needs. Office shock is fueling a shift from work as what we do to make money, to work as something transcendent, something we do that is connected to our larger goals and values.

1. How might you illustrate your story about a future with a more positive experience of purpose?

2. Do you derive a personal sense of meaning from your work today? If not, how would you change your experience of purpose?

3. What social value (beyond your own personal income) are you contributing through your officing?

4. Does your organization enhance your individual purpose by having a corporate purpose that is linked to community, beyond individuals?

5. Does your organization have a focus on stakeholders, in addition to shareholders?

6. How can thinking futureback enhance your ability to seek meaningful work?

Your Choices on the Spectrum of Outcomes

Spanning this spectrum between profit and prosperity opens an opportunity to reflect on how we define value, how we organize ourselves, who makes decisions, the nature of working relationships, and ultimately our economic models.

1. How might you illustrate your story about a future with more positive outcomes?

2. What are the desired results or outcomes—both individual and social—that you are seeking from your office?

3. Who is obtaining value from the outcomes of your work and the work of your organization?

4. How might you organize yourself to increase a sense of membership among your workers? Will this call for a new model of ownership?

5. What path do you want to take in the pursuit of increasing prosperity for all your stakeholders?

Your Choices on the Spectrum of Climate Impacts

This spectrum focuses on what we feel is the dominant outcome to be concerned about over the next decade: chronic climate emergencies. Certainly, there are many urgent futures to be concerned about, but regenerating life on this planet is so very basic.

1. How might you illustrate your story about a future with more positive climate impacts?

2. How has the question of “to consume or not to consume?” affected your behavior and that of your organization? How might you change your practices to become more sustainable?

3. How do you see yourself participating in the circular economy?

4. How can offices and officing contribute to restoring the planet and increasing its regenerative capacity?

5. How can we get the world working on a more cooperative basis to prevent planetary destruction?

6. How can we convince organizations—particularly corporations—that they have a huge role to play in climate regeneration and that in the long run it will enhance their business performance?

Your Choices on the Spectrum of Belonging

If anything is clear in the VUCA world, it’s that who we choose to office with is going to be a constantly moving target. Although we may belong to and work for the same company, organization, or goal, the teams that help us accomplish our work will be in constant flux. Although we lose the immediate familiarity of who we work with, the purposeful design of mixing and matching will bring forth new innovations and approaches to challenges in the future.

1. How might you illustrate your story about a future with more belonging?

2. What makes you different, and how can you celebrate your otherness authentically while still engaging with others?

3. In your present moment, in your present community, what are the aspects of every member that can contribute to a vibrant organization?

4. How can you use the concepts of roots and routes to bring a purposely different mix of talent into your organization?

5. How will you address the diversity dilemma in your office?

6. The digital natives will likely have very different expectations for offices and officing. They are likely to be less loyal and more critical of current ways of working. How are you preparing for their arrival? How will you benefit from cross-generational communication now?

Your Choices on the Spectrum of Augmentation

In this spectrum we have applied full-spectrum thinking to understanding the multiple ways in which humans will be able to augment their intelligence—brain power, physical power, cooperative power, and emotional power—to extend their performance and therefore their contribution to better working and living.

1. How might you illustrate your story about the Spectrum of Augmentation?

2. How might you balance fear of machines replacing humans with the opportunities that augmented intelligence could bring?

3. How would you increase the chances that augmentation will equitably be available to anyone who wants it within your organization?

4. Do you currently use any enchanted objects and how do you see the potential for your use both personally and within your office?

5. The combination of human creativity and the power of computers will provide the potential to build a better future. How might this augmentation be used to create better futures for working and living in your life?

Your Choices on the Spectrum of Place and Time

The officeverse will give us many more choices for offices and officing—and the choices will be much deeper than with today’s hybrid working. The officeverse can be tailor-made, and personalized. Creating something new and different will trump defining a standard or structure to implement.

1. How might you illustrate your story about the Spectrum of Place and Time?

2. How will you determine what tasks or activities are best carried out together or apart through the varied officeverse media options?

3. In what way does the concept of an avatar appeal to or disturb your thinking about working in the officeverse?

4. Trust will be a critical ingredient for making virtual relationships successful. How will you seed and sustain trust?

5. How does the opportunity to design your workspace affect your comfort level in the officeverse?

6. How will you establish a sense of culture and belonging in your officeverse?

Your Choices on the Spectrum of Agility

Making choices on the Spectrum of Agility, and mobilizing for collective action, will be dependent on coordinating with clarity. With greater agility, people in shape-shifting organizations can focus on the cross-pollination of ideas that not only strengthen interconnections and sustainability but also require a fundamental shift in mindset, behavior, and culture.

1. How might you illustrate your story about the Spectrum of Agility?

2. How have you thought about moving your personal behavior away from the efficiency/effectiveness model and toward a model of increased agility and resilience?

3. Gaming skills will be well developed in the digital native members of the workforce, but what about everyone else? How will you and your organization use gaming to increase your own resilience?

4. How might you make good use of voluntary fear exposure?

5. How will the lessons learned through gaming be translated into actionable tasks and processes?

6. As a leader in an organization, how will you enable distributed authority?

Thinking Futureback about Office Shock: A Quick Start Guide

Your personal story has most likely evolved since its initial creation. In chapter 11 we introduced the concept of the mixing board for helping to navigate the choices on the seven spectrums. Consider how thinking futureback with the Quick Start Guide can help to continue to evolve your story:

1. How has finding Future Self helped you to envision your future self and prepared you to take on a variety of roles in the VUCA world?

2. How have the UN Sustainable Development Goals helped you to define a navigational star to guide your futureback method and keep your full-spectrum mindset?

3. How has the mixing board helped you to consider your choices along the seven spectrums and synchronize with those of your organization?

4. How has the IDeaLs scaffold informed your transition story toward a better future?

Personal Choices: How You Can Navigate Office Shock

At this point in your personal story you are ready to formulate action items to propel you toward a better future of working and living:

1. If you need navigational stars, how can you use the UN Sustainable Development Goals for guidance?

2. As you work through each of the seven spectrums, create a list of factors that will help you envision what success means in your future.

3. With the image of success in your mind, how can you begin to plan a path toward the future that is clear, but not certain?

Now that you have thought about your future self across the Seven Spectrums of Choice, you are ready to engage your organization in a similar exercise. Your choices will reveal the levels of synchronization between yourself and the organizational aspirations of those with whom you work.

Organizational Choices:
How Your Organization Can Navigate Office Shock

At this point your personal story is expanding to include how you can guide, lead, or influence your organization to move toward a better future of working and living:

1. How can the UN Sustainable Development Goals help your organization envision the future?

2. As you create a list of factors for future success for your organization, how can you link them with your personal list?

3. With the image of success in your mind, how can you begin to plan a path toward the future that is clear, but not certain?

Now that you have thought about your organization’s choices across the seven spectrums, you are ready to consider community choices in a similar way. This exercise will reveal the levels of synchronization among you, your organization, and the communities you lead or serve.

Community Choices:
How Your Community Can Navigate Office Shock

Your personal story should include the role(s) you play in your larger community—local or global. What specific things can you do to influence your community toward the better future of living and working that you have been envisioning?

1. Who will you work with to determine how your personal story can be expanded for your larger community?

2. What navigational stars will help guide your community?

3. What does future success look like for the community you are choosing?

4. As you create a list of factors for future success for your community, how can you link them with your personal list?

5. With the image of success in your mind, how can you begin to plan a path toward the future that is clear, but not certain?

Applying the Seven Spectrums of Choice

The ideas throughout this book and especially in part III provide input to the design of a workshop that aims to help people embrace futureback thinking and use the seven spectrums to make conscious choices for a better future of offices and officing. More information about the workshop format can be found on our website, officeshock.org. But here is the basic concept.

The Seven Spectrums of Choice apply to you as an individual, as an organizational leader or member, and as a citizen of a community. Therefore, you should consider your viewpoint when using the spectrums to write your own story for offices and officing. Here is a suggested four-step process:

Step 1: Find Your Future Self.

   Are you using the mixing board as an individual, organizational leader/member, or citizen of a community?

Step 2: What Future?

   Thinking ten years ahead think futureback about better futures for working and living. Begin by choosing a navigational star (or stars) to guide your intentions.

Step 3: What Next?

   Our Office Shock mixing board has seven channels (what we call spectrums of choice) for you to move the sliders as you make choices. Each spectrum of office shock has polarities: extreme positions you can slide between. You can make different choices at different times in different situations.

   To make the spectrums more manageable, we encourage you to define the critical success factors that will show you the way toward your preferred future. They will help crystalize your intentions, where you are on the span of the spectrum, and the path forward.

Step 4: What Now?

   Turn your futureback choices into actions by defining what, how, and who to guide your journey.

   Use flexive intent to develop your compelling story with clarity, but not certainty.