It seems like we don’t have to wait more than a few days at a time before some or other organization is making its own prognosis about how we will be working in the future. The thing these reports usually share in common, other than a standardized variant of a title and a common lexicon of agility, empowerment and connectivity, is a narrow focus based on their key assumptions about what the office of the future will be like. While these are rarely false per se, and often offer valuable insights, they also often exhibit a desire to look at only one part of the great workplace elephant. The more serious reports invariably make excellent points and identify key trends, it has to be said. However, across them there are routine flaws in their thinking that can lead them to make narrow and sometimes incorrect assumptions and so draw similarly flawed conclusions. For this reason, talk of the office of the future tells us a lot about how we view offices right now.
Seven reasons why this will not be the office of the future