It’s never been “work at the office” versus “work from home”.
It’s about giving people the possibility to choose where they are more productive and can deliver their better job. And most likely, for most people, that will end up being a healthy combination of the two.
Not everything is a war and the most beautiful stuff is often found in the middle.
It’s normal to want others to change.
Our kids should behave, our friend should quit smoking, our colleague should be more productive, our partner should be more like yourself, our boss should be more available.
But for as noble as our intentions might be, the reality is that others don’t see the world through our eyes.
The only thing we can hope for is to help them find their way.
More instructions.
A little longer text.
One more pop-up to tell users where to go next.
A tooltip with some additional information.
An example to explain what you mean.
These are all things that (almost) nobody will read. Ever. People are not on the web, they don’t use tools and services, they don’t download apps because they lack stuff to read. They do all that to help their own personal and professional journey. And if the website, the tool, the service, the app is designed in a way that requires hand-holding, they will just leave and move on.
The world is full with alternatives.
There might be many wrong aspects in these emails (and some good too), but the key thing here is that they reflect a bias – or a series of bias – that many founders fall for.
It’s the idea that just because they do work (successfully in this case, but that is not necessary) in a certain way, then everybody else is supposed to do that too.
It’s the idea that by doing more of the same they will automatically scale the results.
It’s the idea that in order for their employees to show they care, they need to conform and comply.
This is typically building an enormous blind spot for founders and their companies. And that’s very dangerous in the long term.
No matter what your role is inside an organization, you have the power to change the things you see not working. Much more than you think you do.
You might think that those above you condone a negative behavior or a flawed process, but the reality is that most likely they are simply not aware of them. Or they don’t have the bandwidth to jump on them. Or they have initiated the behavior or the process with completely different intentions and failed to follow up.
If you hide behind that excuse, be mindful that it is just you hiding.
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