A few years ago Steelcase ran an add: “Revolution @ work” accompanied by a picture book / brochure written by Rowan Gibson. The book starts off with demise of the of the notion of work: “back in the 1970’s everybody sort of knew what ‘work’ meant. Particularly office work…But today, all of that is disappearing…Office furniture has to support a business environment that’s gone flexible, gone hyperspeed, gone mad!”

Gibson goes on: “The important thing today is to align ourselves with the social, technological and economic forces that are driving change. in other words, to belong to the revolutionaries, not the old guard.”

But who are the revolutionaries? Think of that great Monty Python film in which office workers are depicted as galley slaves who start a mutiny by attacking the management. What do you do to make sure YOU don’t belong to the old guard? When I was interviewed on a Singapore radio station last year a receptionist asked me what kind of WorkVitamins I could suggest for her. Receptionsits are the face of the company, but have a price to pay for it, most receptionists are sitting all alone in a cold, empty, big, big hallway. I told her to speak to her boss (he should try to sit there for a while and experience what it means to be a receptionist.)
Revolution (WorkVitamins-type!) to me means what Guy Debord wrote in 1961: “Revolution is not ‘showing’ life to people, but making them live. A revolutionary organisation must always remember that its objective is not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation”.

Read this at Jim Roepcke’s blog:
” There are different degrees of freedom in a home-office environment. There’s working at home, working at home with flexible hours, being self employed, and being self-employed with flexible hours. Some of the benefits are exclusive to different degrees of freedom, some are easier at different degrees of freedom, and some aren’t possible.
I’ve worked in all these situations, so I’ve seen the whole gammit of good, great, and freakin’-awesome telecommuting scenarios.

No commute. Wearing whatever you want while you work. (Maybe nothing :-)) The extra sleep you get by not having to commute and pretty yourself up, or, the extra amount of time you get to work by not having to commute and pretty yourself up.

Your (hopefully comfortable) desk. Your (hopefully comfortable) chair. No cube walls. Your decor. When the phone rings it’s for you or your spouse/friend. It’s oh so quiet… or, maybe LOUD because you’re listening to you’re favourite music that the person in the cube next to you didn’t like, booming with the subwoofer turned up, or you’ve got CBC/BBC/NPR Radio going in the background.

No pressure to go out to lunch. You can eat whenever you want. Drink whatever you want. Hopefully not alchohol, but you’re an adult, be responsible.

Working your own hours. Some people work better in the evening. Some people work better at 2AM. Some people like to work a litle bit here and there, all day long, but not for one long contiguous period of time.

Deciding to go get groceries and run to the bank at 11AM when Safeway (and your bank) is just about empty (if you have flexible hours :-)). Or, at 2PM. Noticing how beautiful a Tuesday morning it is and deciding to play a quick 9 holes of golf, or go for a jog or bike ride before starting the work day.”

I have uploaded a short film I made about WorkVitamins on Youtube. Click below to watch.

Do you agree with the following statements?

1. The office is not a warehouse.

2. Work can be fun.

3. Privacy is a dirty word.

4. Paper does not grow on trees.

5. Grey is not a colour.

6. Forget about storage, buy a large rubbish bin.

7. Email is not communication.

8. Team work requires hard work.

9. The need for storage is a symptom of insecurity.
10. Being in the office does not mean you are working.