Home or Office?
Virtual or Physical?
Face to Face or Hand in Hand….
Mobile vs. Static
Productivity vs. Productivity vs. Savings vs. Investment vs. Lifestyle vs. Innovation and all vs. some inbred sense of entitlement that seems to have infused some in the workforce.
As you have no doubt guessed, my subject is Yahoo! and Marissa Mayer’s recent decision to make her company a physical real-world presence, once again, as she continues to make the hard decisions that just might bring Yahoo! back to its rightful place in the digital world.
It all began with a leaked memo:
“To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be side by side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”
YAHOO!!
In case it wasn’t clear, I have now morphed from being a passive well-wisher for her success to being a full-on fan rooting for her victory.
However, clearly not everyone agrees.
In fact a storm of criticism filled all channels—attacking her, questioning her decision, denigrating her judgment and of course predicating the failure of her initiative.
The debate has begun—and so has the attempted poaching—or more accurately the PR latching on…Marc Garrett CEO of Intridea, a software developer, has achieved press status with a tweet “Hey #Yahoos: if you’re being forced to quit come work with us @intridea. We all work from home.” And Hitlab USA, a start-up, went to Craigslist with a listing titled “Yahoo Telecommuters Welcome.”
No doubt Ms. Mayer’s decision begun with a simple comparative analysis of the productivity of the average Yahoo! worker vs. the competitive set.
Let’s see—Apple’s employees produce six and a half times more revenue per employee; Facebook three times more and Google weighs in at twice the revenue—there is another story here….
Then no doubt she looked at best-in-class companies…
- Zappos, where everyone leaves by the same front door, has eliminated most telecommuting. Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos in a speech at DLD in Munich spoke about allowing for “collisions”—their term for serendipitous meetings and mashing—a necessary component for innovation in their culture.
- Pixar has centralized bathrooms—because Steve Jobs wanted to increase random interaction as he believed in its positive economic effect…HMMM Paris might have been on to something big with the Pissoiors…
- GSK has tracked as much as a 45% increase in decision making when people sit together in open offices
- Google has long been a believer in discovery, collaboration and fun—all aspects of people hanging…as the expression goes.
And returning to the late Steve Jobs, he was quoted in a 2010 press conference praising/bragging about the long hours his people worked in Cupertino but didn’t mention home… “I’ve seen cars in the parking lot late at night, cots in some of the engineering offices…”
And on and on.
Obviously there is plenty of research to prove that working at home is productive—more productive—is creative—more creative—is efficient—more efficient, etc.
Frankly I don’t want to enter that debate—to be honest I believe there is merit; I firmly support flexible work space; I am convinced that sometimes you just need the headspace to get a particular task done.
I also know that many/most of us add work hours at home and at restaurants and family events and weddings and in the bathroom (shout out for SJ…), but, as I pointed out, those are in addition to whatever long hours you are working in the office.
What I do want to tackle is the knee jerk – babble-ridden way the Yahoo! decision was criticized—and point out to you a great piece by Sarah McBride of Reuters that suggested that best in class in Silicon Valley—free meals, great amenities and the like—are not about altruism or socialism but rather are designed to keep workers in place and engaged in work-related discussion—capitalism at its benign best. According to Reuters, the noise came from elsewhere—and by the way it’s the old guard—the HPs and Ciscos who have more liberal telecommuting policies than the start-ups or the successful new guard.
One of the comments I least agreed with—the one that showed a complete lack of digital understanding and human insight—was the story of the “painful irony” in a company that touts mobile strategy limiting the telecommuting possibilities of its employees.
If anything, telecommuting is a throwback to old…pre-mobile culture when we were in serious danger of becoming an isolated world of single cave hermits—linked by technology but tethered to our terminals.
Mobile did change all of that—for sure—it brought us back to the streets, to restaurants, to stores, to movies, to lectures, to events—to places where we interacted—where the power of Digital Exponential became clear—where we began to be human again….
Mobile liberates the collaborative workforce to sit together in impromptu groups, at meals, in the park, on a balcony, around a table or just sitting on a staircase.
Do not confuse mobile with telecommuting—you denigrate its power, misunderstand its potential and ultimately limit its true cultural impact.
I like working at home on occasion—I always write my ramble from home (or on the road like now) because I find the solitude of an early morning keeps me focused for this task but nothing—nothing—replaces the rush, the synapse firing, the sheer joy of being in the office and seeing and talking and joking and crying and arguing and listening and working with my colleagues—NOTHING.
So while I do believe that there is merit in working from home and cannot dispute the data presented—for the long-term prognosis I turn to the master of evolution and natural selection…listen:
“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” Charles Darwin
My bet is with Marissa Mayer…
She has been pegged as antifeminist; anti-workforce; anti-digital; anti-innovative; anti-mobile…
Time to wake up.
None of the above are even close to the issue.
It’s time we get back to business and stop the digi-babble.
What do you think?
Imagine if an entire football or a basketball team all decided to train and learn plays only from home.. and then only physically got together for the games on the weekend.
I wonder if they would win more?
Fair play to Marissa. She has been placed at Yahoo! to fix it. And this is a big. bold and correct step.
You cannot collaborate if you are not together. I am old fasioned. I love home and I like work. I don’t like mixing the two and blurring the lines.
Collaboration is always more potent when it’s in-person, and I think most people believe that. Anyone who’s serious about ascending the corporate ladder knows that being in the office is critical to their personal success. I think the backlash to Mayer is in part the perceived intent and the way it was delivered.
The phrase “it is critical that we are all present in our offices” and “speed and quality are sacrificed when working from home” feels a bit admonitory, as if to subtly imply that Yahoo’s previous way of doing business (and lagging profits) may have been due to this lack of physical presence. But it’s not like before Mayer people were content with no growth and a perceived obsolescence.
In a sense, her approach is more of the “sticks” variety, when other more successful companies (like Apple, Google, and Facebook) are using “carrots” – providing employees myriad reasons and “stuff” that encourages in-office presence, especially at Silicon Valley-type companies – free gourmet lunches and snacks, happy hours, day care, awesome break rooms, etc.
If someone is abusing telecommuting, or not putting in enough facetime, this can be dealt with on a person-to-person basis – I seriously doubt this was a rampant problem at Yahoo. But if it was, there’s others way to rectify. Telecommuting is just legitimately necessary from time to time – family, personal, etc.
Any company can tell their employees to come in everyday. If Yahoo wants to become the best place to work, they need to give people reasons to believe. Demonstrate the same amount of trust in your employees you expect from them. Provide them with the “stuff” that gives Yahoo some bragging rights. A great place to work is one where you show up everyday because you want to, not just because you have to.
David:
I agree with you — she is most likely doing the right thing.
It’s hard to evaluate who are the valuable players on your team when they are mostly remote workers and you can’t observe and interact with them.
I have been most appalled by the criticism from other women execs criticizing mayer for ‘setting women back’ or being anti-woman.
Chip
David, I speak from personal experience but I would not mention the details.
I am not surprised if she is projected and pegged as such. It does not matter what decision she takes as she will still be a subject of antagonism, hostility and resentment. The fact is that we (men and even more so women) do not like women taking a controversial or provocative decision !
The larger question is whether she has the rock solid management support otherwise she is going to find it difficult to navigate rough waters which will undoubtedly follow. I hope she does not get affected with the hatred and quits or is forced out. Not that would be a real shame !
Shilpa
Somewhere between “never” and “always” is where business needs to live. If we haven’t learned that there are no simple answers we are doomed to fail. The truth is the pendulum may have swung too far in the telecommute direction. Let’s just stay vigilant so we don’t go backwards.
On her decision: How could anyone truly argue with this?!?! I don’t care what data may be out there – anyone who works in a creative industry knows collaboration is key to success. If Yahoo is going to compete, and get back to being innovative and exciting, this move can only help.
On her approach: I agree with Harding – a bit too much stick and not enough carrot. In essence, she’s taken away a HUGE benefit of being a Yahoo employee, but seems to have failed to replace it with anything meaningful/compelling. Offering up something(s) in its place could have been a big motivator, getting people excited about going into the office. BUT let’s be honest, Marissa’s words reflect her mindset – let’s not kid ourselves by thinking this was an “oversight” – I believe she’s decided that hard-nosed, aggressive and bold is how she wants to be seen. In fact, I bet she loved all the chatter and PR around this – it put Yahoo in the press and plays to the Street’s mentality (stock prices saw some pretty nice gains the week after this came out.) I think the decision Yahoo employees might want to consider isn’t “do I want to go back to working in the office?” but rather “do I want to work for someone who leads the way Marissa does?”
[...] it’s a lot of digibabble – and I thought it might be interesting to do a little archeological digging and uncover the [...]
[...] it’s a lot of digibabble — and I thought it might be interesting to do a little archeological digging and uncover the [...]