The panopticon

There are three ways to tell if people are hard at work in an office:

1. the boss can watch them go to meetings. And they can watch each other in meetings as well.
2. the boss can watch them sit at desks in an open office.
3. we can make promises to each other and then keep them.

It seems as though only the third one is a useful, long-term way to allow us to do our best work together. The first two can help along the way, but if a meeting or an open office exists as a convoluted way to do surveillance, you’re probably wasting precious energy and trust.

And while transferring our work to home makes #1 even easier and #2 irrelevant, I’m still lobbying for #3.