Fried on Why Work Doesn't Happen at the Office

Jason Fried is the co-founder of 37 Signals and an outspoken critic of traditional approaches to business. His 2010 TEDx talk titled Work Doesn't Happen at Work recently resurfaced in some LinkedIn discussions.

Fried is a prolific writer/blogger who openly condemns corporate practices such as a 40-hour workweeks and constant meetings. He is a big proponent of remote work and distributed teams; even credits it as a competitive advantage. Therefore one might assume that this talk was about remote working, but it isn't. It's actually about making the office more productive.

He shares that he's asked a lot of people where they go when they want to get some work done, and notes that the responses never include the office. He questions why companies spend so much on their office space (real estate, furniture, HVAC) if that's the last place anyone associates with productivity.

He blames the lack of productivity at offices on meetings and managers because they create too many interruptions. He finds it ironic that these same managers are often against remote working because of all the distractions at home. He rightfully points-out that most remote distractions like TV, food, and walks are voluntary while most at-office distractions like manager interruptions and meetings are involuntary.

He also makes an interesting point that real cognitive productivity takes time. He compares it to sleeping because both involve a staged-based process. Sleep has five stages and you can't simply resume where you left off when interrupted. At work, non-voluntary interruptions are preventing us from getting anything done.

Where I disagree with Fried is with his view of the office employee. He's used to working with highly creative people - what he calls thinkers. Careers such as designers, programmers, writers - the typical knowledge workers that require long stretches of interruption-free time to be productive. He ignores the fact that many people actually work through collaborative discussions - the very meetings he vilifies.

While poking fun at how managers waste time through meetings, he comments that employees never call a spontaneous meeting. Perhaps things have changed in three years, but I disagree. Employees often call meetings to solicit opinions, build consensus, or solve a problem with more points of view. It's called collaboration.

What's interesting about this talk is his target is really managers and meetings, not the office. I wholeheartedly agree that managers and meetings are often toxic to productivity, but I don't particularly associate those with the office (anymore). VoIP, UC, and collaboration have come so far that I have just as many meetings and interruptions at my home office. He also says that a problem can often be better solved with just 2-3 people instead of a bigger meeting. While that may be true, it should be noted that that's still a meeting. I think Jason is really upset about bad managers and bad meetings, but he doesn't state that. Instead it's all about how the office isn't productive.

Jason offers the audience three dubious tips to making the office more productive. A regularly scheduled no-talking day or afternoon. He compares this to casual Friday, and says if no one is allowed to talk, then everyone will be productive. But isn't that just involuntarily stifling productivity? It doesn't seem particularly practical or useful, but it could work in the right environments.

He suggests that people shift from active face-to-face communications to passive communications like email and IM. His logic is passive communications are more controllable - logout if you need to be productive. Problem is face-to-face is typically more efficient. Most organizations are trying to improve real-time visual communications and shift away from email. Many cite email as a huge productivity suck.

Lastly, he suggests cancelling meetings more often. His point is that there is rarely a consequence for doing so. I agree that we have too many meetings, and more thought should go into both the need as a whole as well as the agenda and length, but simply canceling meetings out of principle or randomness doesn't seem useful.

I do enjoy Jason's views on remote working. He's discussed in other works the cultural changes a firm must make to be successful with remote employees. "You will need a place where everyone, regardless of location, talks, shares work, and discusses ideas. It could be a cloud-based chat room, a project-management tool, a teleconferencing system...The key is to find a way to make your virtual workspace the place where everyone communicates, not just the people you can't see."

But I am not sure he understands the office environment as well.