There’s understandably a lot of hand wringing going on around what offices and teams will look like once we cross the finish line on the pandemic and start to adapt to some kind of new normal. I’ve seen countless versions of the same lists, articles, and blog posts about this topic for the past year. Most people writing and speaking on the topic tend to focus on software tools, schedules, commutes, upcoming startup hub cities, and any other number of topics when asked about what the world will look like in 18 months.
I’ve avoided talking about this subject until I was asked about it point blank this afternoon during a panel I was on with MIT’s Enterprise Forum. Instead of studying what startups, Fortune 500 companies, or FAANG businesses are doing to address the situation I encouraged the attendees to look at a very different source of inspiration: Pablo Picasso.
Most people probably conjure up an image of something like Guernica, The Old Guitarist, or Les Demoiselles d'Avignon when they hear Picasso mentioned. Distorted figures in other worldly scenes, cubism, that kind of thing.
You know, standard run-of-the-mill art movement defining stuff.
When I think of Picasso I think of the same paintings, followed quickly by the amazing Kanye West album, followed instantly by Science and Charity.
Not exactly Guernica
Science and Charity is not your typical Picasso masterpiece. It was painted during his early training when he was 15 or 16 years old and looks completely different from his later works. It does not break all of the established rules of painting and establish a totally new paradigm. On the contrary, it shows a mastery of the basic principles of painting.
Why am I giving you an art history lesson in the middle of a blog post about the future of work? Because I think the same principle that applied to Picasso’s career applies to workplaces and company cultures.
The next five years will be full of case studies of companies with bad workplace cultures applying the hottest hybrid workplace trends to their companies and ending up with a slightly different (but still bad) cultures. If your team can’t write well, keep email threads tight, use messaging systems without distractions, or make compelling presentations for internal or external audiences before you adopt a hybrid workplace model, what makes you think they will be good at these things from home?
In the end I’d encourage every company to ignore all of the blog posts and conferences on the future of work and instead spend their time taking a writing seminar to improve the quality of their communication skills first.
Be like Picasso.
Master the basics before you break the rules.