Wolves Don't Work On Zoom.

Wake up. 
Smell your work coffee.

A friend lamented the other day, reflecting as he was, on the broken work / office contract. #Covid having shifted the deal, re written the agreement. Why go back to the office when I can organise my time around me?

True.

Except it isn't. Collective endeavour makes work powerful. Being the pack. Wolves don't work remotely. On zoom. They hunt together. And in so doing, they eat.

This is the crisis of contemporary #work. It doesn't stand for anything. In many cases, it's largely meaningless. Covid revealed. Lots of work turned off, overnight. What does this mean for what I do, for the endeavours of many?

Why come to the office while unconvinced that my work is doing much at all? I'll organise my day around the dog and the electrician, thanks very much.

The answer isn't protocol, forcing my hand.

The answer might be in re-imagining what the work place is. Maybe. Although the solution isn't furniture.

The answer is more in the work you do. In connecting to something important. And I don't mean purpose as sticking plaster.

A few nights ago I watched a documentary about the Miners Strike here in the UK. By miners I mean digging coal out of the ground. Not your children - refusing vegetables. No, the literal and metaphorical battle which redraw social and economic lines in the UK, peak Thatcher / Reagan-omics.

I was struck by a line early on. The daughter of a Miner, who in turn was the son of a Miner and so on, said it so: their work wasn't the digging of coal from the ground, dancing with death as they did. No, their work was a social good. They worked to keep the lights on. Yours. Mine. Theirs. That was their belief. Their story.

Time might have since revealed the dirtier costs of the endeavour. But the spirit is striking. The need to work to something bigger. In service of something more. Bonded. Connected. Together.

That's the crisis of work today. It's not a workplace issue.

It's a crisis of work.

... and it's not as though we're short of important things needing doing.

What's your work in service of?