No Caves for the Cavemen

In his book The Future of Work Thomas Malone described an environment where knowledge based businesses would be run as loosely based hierarchies or self-managed democracies. Highly skilled workers would group, disband and regroup based on the different project challenges. The focus would be on the work product and ad hoc teams would be created based on each player’s expertise for that specific product.
We can see that happening, more and more, as companies adopt virtual work programs with associates free to work when, where and how they need to so they can produce the best work for the company.

What will the physical workplaces look like to best support that approach? The companion book to Malone’s might be called The Future of the Workplace.
Seems to me they’ll have to be as nimble and flexible as the workers and projects themselves. The workplace itself will become virtual, and be defined less by bricks and mortar and more by technology. That workplace of the future will need to have the following characteristics:

• Lots of different types of workspaces for teaming, individual work, brainstorming, relaxing and so forth
• Super flexibility. It can be quickly reconfigured (in hours or days, not weeks or months)
• Green. Workers, customers and shareholders will demand more sustainable work practices and the environment to support them.
• More seamless integration of bricks and mortar and technology. They’ll really blend to become “the work environment” and cease to be separate teams/components.

The corner office ideal may never go away; it’s in our lexicon just like “9 to 5.” But who works 9 to 5 anymore? Just as they way we work is changing, the places we work in will need to change, too.