The emotional reckoning around work has arrived with full force

Couldn’t sleep for shit last night and am still somewhat tired, so I was browsing business journalism, as I sometimes do, and came across this article about managerial roles in return to work contexts. It’s an OK article. 55 million versions of this article have been written in the past three months. I actually just wrote a halfway-decent edition of this theme, on the importance of quality managerial conversations.

A lot of these articles focus on … well, they take a very heavy emotional focus, like some employees will be anti-vax, some employees will forget social skills, some people will have reconsidered their connection to work during COVID, etc. There are lots of different things to unpack here, and several interesting combinations of how things might go down in different offices as people grapple with “the return.” I’ve already written about one — which is the definition of “culture.” Execs hide behind “culture” as a synonym for “productivity,” which it’s not. In reality a lot of execs wanting a return is because they want to be worshipped in the cubicles, which they’re not at home (status, relevance) — and they are worried about real estate positions. They saw their 2020 returns. They know work, and money, is achievable with people at home. But they’re playing a game aimed at their ego.