PREFACE

Office shock is abrupt, unsettling change in where, when, how, and even why we work. Office shock and aftershocks will continue with no end in sight. Why we work will be at the epicenter of office shock.

Office shock is happening in a time of global turmoil. The world of work is at an inflection point that was triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it will be about much more. Urgent futures like racial injustices, the staggering rich-poor gap, epic climate emergencies, and severely degraded trust in institutions are gnawing away at everyone in varied ways. Such unsettling change can create opportunities though—despite all the threats, challenges, and fears around us. This book will help you make smart choices about the future of your work.

This is no time to lock yourself into any fixed strategy for what was naively called “Return to the Office” or “Hybrid Offices.” To make a better future, you must first imagine a better future and then prototype your way to that future. Office futures that used to be impossible are now possible because of office shock.

During the COVID-19 crisis, what was called The Great Resignation began—but most of those people didn’t stop working, they just switched to better opportunities. The World Economic Forum called it The Great Reshuffle and The Great Reset.¹ We call it The Great Opportunity. This is a positive book for negative times.

We aim to help people who want to take the lead on creating better futures for work, including:

   Leaders: Use this book to encourage more human, humane, productive, and sustainable office practices.

   Individuals: Use this book to clarify where and how you want to work—and how you want your work to support how you live.

   Organizations: Shareholders, board members, and stakeholders can use this book to identify the most important functions for offices—given your own purpose, culture, work processes, goals, and priorities.

   Communities: Use this book to guide elected officials, policy makers, and citizen groups to design more equitable and sustainable workplaces.

   Society: Use this book to develop collective clarity about how office work can and should contribute to better futures.

“Office” is both a place and a process, offices and officing. Many traditional offices that were shuttered during the COVID-19 crisis had inherent problems even before the crisis. It took a global pandemic to shake open executive minds to the possibility of better ways of doing office work. Traditional offices were often unfair, uncomfortable, uncreative, and unproductive.

Now fortunately, the traditional office is dead.

COVID-19 forced millions of people to work and live in ways they had never attempted before. Fixed became fluid. Unexamined assumptions about offices and office work opened into probing questions that demanded careful thought. Office work during COVID-19 was freeing for many, but imprisoning for others. Our goal in this book is to empower people, organizations, and society to create better ways of working and living for more people.

This book was written by three humble futurists who see office shock as a great opportunity—as well as a threat. Bob is a sociologist now focused on top leadership for shape-shifting organizations. Joseph is a workplace architect by training and experienced transformation advisor, now focused on designing better futures. Christine is an information systems professor, now focused on critical success factors for climate positive organizations. All our experiences, with lots of outside input, were needed to write this book.

Office Shock will teach you how to move beyond a present-forward view to start thinking futureback from at least ten years ahead. Futureback thinking will help you develop clarity and improve your agility. We call it flexive intent: be very clear about direction but very flexible about execution. By thinking futureback—forecasting futures, provoking insights, and aligning actions—you can reimagine where, when, and how office work can and should be done.

At Institute for the Future, we are trained to spot signals of emerging futures that are just starting to appear but have not yet scaled. We have learned from over fifty years of forecasting that the best way to develop clarity is by looking futureback. Our mission is to reduce uncertainty, so you develop your own clarity—but resist the dangers of certainty.

As futurists, we create stories from the future that provoke insights and actions in the present. This book tells new stories about how to improve offices and officing in a climate of chaos. We will show you how to create future/next/now stories. We include in this book our Office Shock Mixing Board, a guide to making better choices for how you will office. Our choices will help us all hone in on a future that is aspirational yet achievable, neither utopian nor dystopian, with better ways of working and living.