-- INTRO --
Chris Moriarty
Hello, and welcome to the award-Winning Workplace Geeks, the podcast on a mission to unlock the world's most fascinating workplace insights. I'm Chris Morty.
Ian Ellison
And I'm Ian Ellison.
Chris Moriarty
Think of us as your workplace historians charting the rise and fall of office. Live through the shifting tides of economic.
Change from industrial revolutions to digital transformations. We're exploring how each wave of progress has left its mark on where and how we work. Join us as we unpack the economic forces behind the cubicle, the corner office, and the open plan, and ask what's next in the evolving story of the workplace.
And welcome back to our regular interview format after a little detour around some event specials. We hope you're enjoying your Holly Bobs if you've managed to get away and you've decided to listen to us whilst you sunbathed by the pool side. But before we dive into today's guest, let's get some admin out the way.
Now, some of you might remember we had Mark Kalo from Millino join us a few episodes ago to talk about the work of Robert Propt. A piece of work from 1968 times the office, a facility based on change. Well, mark mentioned in that interview that they aren't printing any more of these amazing reports, but he did furnish us with three copies for our listeners.
So what do we do? We turned it into a competition. Giving it away to the first three people that rated and reviewed our show on Apple Podcasts. A shameless maneuver designed to promote external validation for our fragile egos, and I'm pleased to say it worked. Ian, tell us more about the winners, please.
Ian Ellison
Well, what we didn't realize when we launched this competition was that Apple Podcasts only shows your reviews for the country you are in. So we have to do a little bit of detective work, but I can say that we have most. Definitely got two winners so far and I'll tell you why. We've got Oliver Boot who said Chris and Ian with their guests cover a range of topics and themes across the workplace sector, breaking down what can be a slightly inaccessible source material from academic research into understandable and actionable information.
Pascal van dot from the Netherlands said, workplace geeks is a gem for anyone curious about how workplace research really works and how it can be actually applied in the real world. Chris Ian do a brilliant job, very kind of turning what could be dry academic material into something genuinely enjoyable.
And he says other the nice things. So congratulations gentlemen. You have both got a copy of the book coming your direction soon. I will work it out with Mark Kale and we will get copies in the mail to you. Now, we've also got a bit of a mystery because we've got two other reviews. One from a Mrs. Foz and one from somebody called Annexes, A-N-A-X-A-R-X-E-S.
The problem is we have no idea who Mrs. Foz or Amaxa says is. So if you want a book, we've gotta solve this problem, Chris.
Chris Moriarty
Well, one of, of a few things could happen here and quite frankly it's 'cause we haven't actually thought about what to do. So here's what might happen. We could start a global hunt for these folk charging all the workplace geeks around the world to kind of.
Put together the clues, like one of those crime scenes where we've got like threads going around, pictures going around, countries going around reviews, and try and work out who these people are. Uh, if they're listening now, and I should imagine they are listening now and they can just get in touch, that'd be much simpler on LinkedIn or email us at hello@workplacegeeks.org.
Or if you're sitting there listening, going, God missed a trick there. I'd really like one of them books, but just didn't get round to leaving a review. Well maybe chance your arm and leave a review and see if you get a book. Let's see what happens. We can consider this like a live. Open case with updates to follow.
It's all content, isn't it? We can keep everyone entertained by this like mystery that we're trying to solve, but look enough of that for today. Let's get to. Our interview, Ian, who are we talking to on today's episode?
Ian Ellison
Well, I'm very happy to say that we've got the workplace Yoda himself, Dr. Rob Harris from Ramus Consulting back on the show with some four decades, four decades, Chris of workplace experience and wisdom under his belt, including working with Frank Duffy, Charles Worthington, and their colleagues at the Seminole DEGW in the mid eighties.
Rob first joined us just over a year ago, July 20, 24, season three, episode six, to talk about his latest book, London's Global Office Economy, from Clerical Factory to Digital Hub. Now a Celia book that was then. This is now because amme year later, he's back with another academic triangulation point for how the world of work and workplace got to now with a history of the office and office work from castle to condominium, available from route ledge in all discerning bookshops and.
And this time the story takes us all the way back to the 17th century and it starts in a coffee shop of all places. Just after the Great fire of London, which happened when Christopher,
Chris Moriarty
uh, we all know this one. It was 1742. Uh, 10 66, 6. That's the bottle of past six. You Bill, is it 16? Uh,
Ian Ellison
16. 16 something.
1666.
Chris Moriarty
16, Ian. Right. We'll cut all that out. 1666. I'll have you know
Ian Ellison: indeed, and you can chart a course from there to all those shiny glass skyscrapers. Jostling for a tension in the EC2 area of London, clustered around, and now dwarfing the postmodern Lloyds of London building built by Rogers and partners.
So there you go. If urban history, workplace design, and sociology, tickle your fancy. This is the episode for you. It's quite a niche, uh, Venn diagram there,
Chris Moriarty
Isn't it? Urban history, workplace design, and sociology. Um, look as always with Rob, you're about to hear about 46 minutes of wonderful content, but the actual interview itself lasted about 90 minutes.
So to maximize Rob time, we haven't got a reflection section. Guess so. We'll be back here after Rob to share some brief thoughts before we wish you well on your workplace travels. So let's go and talk to Rob.
-- INTERVIEW --
Chris Moriarty
Rob, welcome back. Welcome back to the Workplace. Geeks podcast, one of the few that we've asked back. You know, I, I think there's a kind of a select club developing here. People like Kirsten Z has been back a couple of times. Uh, Joe Ya has been back a couple of times, so you are one off the hat trick ball, uh, as I like to say.
So, um, you'll have to get busy writing another book, which we're about to establish. Won't be too much of an effort for you because you seem to be knocking these out a hell of a rate. But look, Rob, Rob, for those that haven't heard the, uh, first episode you are on, I do highly recommend you go back and have a listen to that.
Why don't you give us a, a sort of introduction, a little bit about what you do, uh, and then we'll start creeping towards what we're here to talk about today.
Rob Harris
I'm Rob Harris, uh, company called Ramers Consulting, which I set up in 2003. Having decided that I was no longer employable in larger organizations, I started life at DGW as a, as a newborn.
I went from there to a couple of surveying firms and I guess the sort of high point of, in some senses of that career path was working at standout properties where I was their research director for seven or eight years, uh, doing all manner of things research wise. And then yes, in 2003 set Ramus, which is a specialist built environment advisory business.
So we do quite a lot of workplace planning. So I understand occupiers, hence my DGW heritage, but we also do a lot of economic land use planning work, but it, it's all about evidence-based research for. For investment decisions, plan decisions, and so on and so forth.
Chris Moriarty
Rob, last time around, we, we spoke to you a bit more about some of the work you do before we dived into the book, uh, that we were looking at, and it was when we were talking about your previous book that you sort of hinted at something.
You sort of went, oh yeah. That I'm sort of noodling around with this. Other book idea that I've got and something about condos and condominiums and castles and all this sort of stuff, and me, and he went, oh, that's interesting, but we'll have to have you back. Now be honest, Rob, we didn't anticipate it being 18 months later.
No, it's less than 18 months. It's about 10 months less than no, of course. Less than a year, isn't it? You've not even, you're not even clocked in a year. So, Rob, tell us first what that, that kernel of the idea was, but before we really get into it. Have you sort of just buried yourself in a bunker? I mean, you just talked there about other roles you've got and things that you're doing.
I mean, how on earth did you pull this off in such a short space of time?
Rob Harris
I, I honestly think I was writing it before I said that. Um, oh, well you just given it stage teaser. That's what it was.
Chris Moriarty
Hold on a minute. Hold on.
This is, this is a under promise over deliver situation here, isn't it? I come on.
Rob Harris
I just can't because there's a six month production process, so I couldn't have done it in 12 months.
Anyway, uh, it was quick and no, I, I just, I enjoy write. I, I write about three or four, five books a year. The problem is we call 'em client reports. Um, you know, so the volume of the words is not an issue for me. You just like churn stuff out. The difference between a. If I can say this in between friends, but I know this is going out on air, but if the difference between client report and a and a book is when you put your own name on the front of a book, you've gotta be damn sure that every last little detail of that thing is right.
So it takes a lot of brain and emotion power, but, um, uh, no, I can, I can do one quite quickly. Yeah. The curve of the idea was that the previous one was very much about the evolution of office, sorry, of London as a, as a center of commerce around the globe. But through that, I, I started delving into the nature of work itself.
And what separates that from this book is that this book is about the, the, the way in which the economy and work and workplace have co-evolved over time. People talk today about the workplace on LinkedIn as if it was something which has just landed from Mars. But actually, no. It's, it's, it's been evolving and changing continually for 300 years.
Ian Ellison
The way I would sort of say is this is a book which sort of says, look, cities and towns and people, and the work they do and the places that they work in are all intertwined and for many industries. That makes instant sense. When we talk, for example, about farming and agriculture, you can sort of picture the work taking place on farms.
But you are almost saying in this book that the office is missing. It's everywhere. It's ubiquitous, and it's been ubiquitous for centuries, but it's missing. So this is a book about essentially looking at that system from different perspectives, right?
Rob Harris
It's a fundamental point. I did a geography degree and when, when, when we did sort the economic side of geography, uh, we were talked about manufacturing industry.
If you go to any average library or institution, look at their kind of economic geography, uh, sections, you'll find them littered with stuff about manufacturing and its impact on the urban, urban systems and sort of the economy. You couldn't find the equipment on, on offices, it simply does not exist.
Ian Ellison
And did you go looking, did you sort of try and disprove that hunch or have you just been frustrated for years about that?
Rob Harris
I've been frustrated for years. This, this book is, is partly to address that. There's a section there about looking at, you know, the, the strands of economic geography that have taken place from futurism, you know, Ray Powell Bell and all those kinds of people. But there's never, oh, and uh, um, Pete Daniels one of.
Lecturers. They did some really good stuff, but it didn't happen until the late seventies and early eighties. In fact, there are, there are books written on geography and offices in 1980. Which don't even mention computers so far behind the curve. And so yeah, what this has done is tried to sort of address that as well because it is such a fundamental part of our urban environment.
It gets taken. Nobody looks at cathedrals and, and, and, and, and museums and palaces, anything but all. And yet, and you've got the industrial parts of this country and people will look at mines and, you know, uh, big manufacture plants and Wow. But offices are just ignored. They're just taken as part of that bland landscape.
And nobody else says, why are they there? What, what? Why do we have all that stuff? So that's where that all came from, and that's why this link between history and work and economy. '
Chris Moriarty
Because we, you know, we, we've sort of been flicking through the, but I mean it's a, it is a hell of a book. Right. So, uh, we'll, we'll continue to be working through it for somewhat time, but sort of looked at that kind of intro and before we kind of introduced the book formally, you are talking there about manufacturing and the focus of manufacturing and also that kind of prologue almost.
You sort of talk about how will we view these, and you've mentioned cathedrals there and, and two thoughts really occurred to me. Which one was. You know, we, we still now struggle to talk about performance of offices and things because I, I, you know, in the same way that you've talked about the focus on manufacturing, I think our language is born outta manufacturing.
It's almost like a hangup. So things like productivity and GDP and all the rest of it. You're like, this is, this is kind of a legacy of a manufacturing economy. We haven't moved on for it and. Equally, I wonder whether I sort of jump myself forward and go right in 150 years when people go, do you know people used to gather in the same places to do this work?
You know, look, there's a, there's an ancient office over there that no one's bothered to knock down and they'll go, can you imagine that? Can you imagine us all having to come in these little tubes, these little metal tubes into that big concrete box every day? And you know, it is one of those things. Is it.
Sort of ignore because it is and it's, it's every day. Whereas, you know, even cathedrals, that sort of ancient bit, you're not there every day. It is a kind of a big collective Sunday gathering or whatever it might be. So I guess my question is, that was a ramble, but the question is why do you think there has been such a focus on manufacturing?
Because it seems like that's part of the frustration is that there hasn't been this sort of academic kinda focus on it because manufacturing.
Rob Harris
Was a very helpful political story. People suffered, people had bad jobs, they had bad backs. They had asthma. They had mining. They were digging pits and holes.
They were on, on, on manufacturing production lines. And it was very good from a Marxian point of view to sort of point towards and say, well, there's, there's your owner and there's your slave, and this is what it's gonna be like. You know, from a political point of view. Manufacturing just brought all that together beautifully for, for Marxists, you know, it was just, it was just giving them on a plate.
Offices made people well and healthy and happy. They given middle class jobs, we, it created the middle class. There was nothing wrong. It was all good. People were buoyant and successful and had food on the table, and they, they didn't have to struggle to work and things. So there was no political story there.
Chris Moriarty
So look, we've, we've teased, we've teased this book an awful lot. Rob, why don't you tell us. What it's called and give us, give us a brief overview of what, what's contained within it.
Rob Harris
It's called history from to condominium and, uh, so just that. In two steps, I suppose, a history of the office to office work.
We've talked just now about the relationship to the office and economy and work, and it really is that that interplay between the work itself, the organizations that do the work and the economy that's driving it, and the buildings and how they all work together and change a time. So that's the first bit.
And from Castle to Condominium was a phrase that I first used. I checked this out actually. Oh, you sent us a link about it, didn't you? Oh, I did, didn't I? Yes. The Gerald Eve report from 1990 something, but what it does is it expresses this notion that we used to build offices like Castle. So they, they're, they're huge.
They're defensive, they're impermeable built forever. And nothing much happened inside. They're very unchanging. Whereas now we have condominiums in America. I, I'd have preferred a, an Anglo-Saxon where, but I couldn't find one suitable enough.
Ian Ellison
So it needs to iterate, didn't you?
Rob Harris
Exactly. Exactly. The world we live in.
Hey ho. So, but condominiums are something which is available on demand when you want it. Short term, whatever you need. But importantly. With a layer of service. So it's not just delivered as a product. It actually comes with people offering you services within our package. So from Castle to condominium, it's from old to new to, to impermeable, to to accessible, uh, and so on and so forth.
So that's, that's the kind of derivation of that phraseology. It does start in the, the aftermath of the, of the Great Fire in 1666.
Ian Ellison
Yeah. And that's really the reason for it to start there, right? 1666. Yeah.
Rob Harris
Which is obviously quite a, a signature event. Uh, but one of the things that, that came outta that immediately was the need for insurance.
Not health insurance, obviously even work insurance, but, but buildings, insurance and, and so this is the, the era when, when insurance got off the ground. But also of course when, when merchants were sort of gathering in coffee houses to gossip, to trade, to socialize, and they did all their business through that.
And then of course, at the same time as business became a little bit more formalized, we had the notion of company occur emerge, I should say. And particularly with joint stock companies. Obviously one of the most in was the East India company and the Dutch equivalent, which less center the better at this point in time, I think we also then had the, within all that we had the financial revolutions, I call it, and you'd all, you'd all have heard of the Industrial Revolution.
Back to my point about manufacturing every, knows what the, every school chart of 10 knows what the industrial revolution is asking, what the financial revolution was. No, nobody knows. But it was basically the, the nationalization of money and bringing together a central banking in, in London. And, you know, the, the, the, the Industrial Revolution itself couldn't have happened without the financial revolution.
'cause the financial revolution brought the centralized money together to release the capital, to, to loan people the money, to build factories and railway lines and canals and all rest of it. So it's, but you'd ask, ask, average school child would not know about the, the financial revolution. So that's, there you go.
Ian Ellison
You essentially articulate pages of work and is everything you said there from within the first sort of triggered by the fire of London, the market, market phase.
Ian Ellison
The market first
Rob Harris: to reflect the markets, the, the literal markets, the, the, the, the, the trading markets, the where, where the goods used to come in and, and, and so forth.
Um, yeah, it's market phase.
Chris Moriarty
When, when I read, read through that, you know, that brief description, could you sort of talk about these in that kind of intro that I talked about earlier on? I mean, I loved it because it sort of talks about a messiness and like a, like a spontaneity of things that had happened that you wouldn.
Connect dots with normally, but even talking about the financial freedom, the financial revolution, which meant that organizations could invest in building things and, and investing in companies to grow companies, but that, I guess, was kind of made possible because the people lend knew that there was, there was security there 'cause of the insurance thing.
That wouldn't have happened unless something had burnt down. And everyone gonna call guys, we can't let. Let that happen again and not have a rainy day fund. A reflection on the idea that those things become self-reinforcing, right? The more that you can invest to grow a thing means that insurance is more important, which that in itself grows, which means more, you know, it's suddenly, it's kind of probably, maybe it is exponential.
Who knows? Depending what metric you look at, but you sort of see how something leads to something, but it feeds itself.
Rob Harris
I, the insurance is a good example of that because of course, before the fire you had maritime insurance. Even then, uh, and then, then we started through the experience of the fire to ensure property, and then later on we, we planned ensure health and life those insurance companies developed in that way.
Banking was the same. The, the earliest banks were the goldsmiths and they, they morphed into private bankers That became like your, your drummers, your, your coots, and the rest of them, and your, your merchants became. Merchant bankers. So they, they moved from trading merchant goods to, to, to money. Uh, and so you had these, these two strands of banking even in those days, you know, merchant banking and private banking, uh, which to some extent still exists to this day, uh, least until relative times anyway, so, yeah, I mean, they, they are, they're all interlinked.
That's this, this sort of beautiful point about this. It's just like one big cobweb and you, you move around in one direction. You, you touch another area. All, all these things were happening. To pick up the theme about a coevolution of workplace and buildings and, and work. All these things were happening within essentially domestic premises.
They were adapted houses where the, the ground floor was what was called the shop. Which is not a retail unit, but it was the bank. And then above that, you either had the owner and his family, or the Clark and his colleagues and possibly family. So hence the phrase living over the shop. So these were like domestic premises that people worked from.
They were not designed for work.
Ian Ellison
I always think about lawyers of London at this point, because that's why there's the insurance district, isn't it? Because it grew up around a coffee house, which then became this insurance empire, right? So what takes us from this first a hundred years then in the market era into sort of the next century, which is still the market era, according to a diagram, having a quick lookout, but then it starts to transition towards the factory.
So what's changing about the nature of work and what's that doing to buildings and offices?
Rob Harris
Yeah, well during that, that sort of later, 18th and earlier and 19th century, although buildings remain relatively domestic in. Character. The role of the Clark became much more important, but also it changed because work became more voluminous.
It was done on a greater scale, and it was more repetitive. It was more mundane. It was more laborious. Days were long. People used to work 14 hour days. You had offices that were heated by coal fires, very poor ventilation and, and lighting was either natural or by candle, you know? Um, so really. Quite primitive working conditions right through to the 1870s.
I say we, we call this the clerical factory, partly because this is when joint stock banks emerged in all their pomposity, if I can put it that way, because joint stock banks suddenly had cash in a way that other, the private banks didn't. Because being joint stock, obviously the head, head stock, and so they could spend other people's money on their own buildings.
There's a theme, a and uh, so the joint stock banks came along. They did two things. They, they created these wonderfully ostentatious and grandiose buildings that said more about their ambitions around the world than it did about their ability to, to, to process money.
Chris Moriarty
You know, you talking there about the joint stock banks kind of investing in their spaces, right.
To make them ostentatious and stuff. Well, surely if someone's working for a family. Clerking down the road for a family business. They look up the road go, oh, one day I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be, you know, in that place there suddenly you're now getting into talent attraction, right? And I, I'm sort of hypothetical models in my head, but if you are then going, I'm losing people to that lockdown the road, well, I better start investing in my spaces as well.
So I can start saying, well come and work in our very fancy building and with our kind of. I dunno. I mean, imagine what the services would've been like there. It might have been, we'll even give you two candles to do your work with rather than just the one.
Rob Harris
Well see, not only was there a, a hierarchy of Clarks, it was a hierarchy of occupations because clerking was regarded as, as an aspirational career.
Going back to the point that hierarchy about manufacturing, most people down a mine or worked in the fields or whatever, you know, to put on a coat. And go to an office building every day, even if it was coal-fired and cold, that step up. So it wasn't
Chris Moriarty
Deadly.
Rob Harris
No, exactly. So, or
Chris Moriarty
Not immediately.
Rob Harris:
Anyway, so there was this, it was aspiration to become a clerk, and then within that you had a hierarchy of clerks.
So the clerks that worked for the big banks were the highest paid. And right down through insurance companies, through other companies, you know, there was this hierarchy, this gradation of salary according to who, who you work for as well. So yeah, there's not a lot that's new in the world and that was, you know, that's partly this clerical factory time.
Chris Moriarty
Can I just ask one more question on this? 'cause like, it, it is difficult to not think of London. I think maybe because of what we talk, you know, what we talked to you about last time and also, you know, London's importance. It's not by accident that we're talking about London, but was there evidence of this happening?
Elsewhere. Now we, we will get to America because we, you know, the US has got a big role in this kind of history of the office, but, you know, I'm thinking about even old Colonial Britain. Did we start to see this kind of appearing in pockets around the globe or was this a kind of a. An exported phenomenon or did this kind of happen organically elsewhere?
'cause as, as, as everyone kind of arrived at the same conclusion at the same time.
Rob Harris
Well, well, banking evolved in, in Italy fundamentally. When Italy wasn't Italy, it was 14 republics, I think, wasn't it? And it was very strong. It was very strong in, in what's now Holland and Anto. It was a key center for finance at one point.
But. What London did was what I described earlier as the financial revolution. It, it, it kind of pounced on this thing and it grabbed it and it said, right, we're gonna make an industry outta this stuff. It leap to ahead all those other cities massively. It made a huge jump. Uh, and so Italy just fell by the wayside.
Literally did. And France for a long time, did Trp did another, is roared ahead, uh, on the basis that it had this stuff organized. And it, it what it went out to, um, your, your Liverpool's and your Newcastle's and your Manchesters and your Birmingham in the form of, of, of low level banking insurance, because obviously they were growing cities at the time, at this point, up until 1870.
No, it hadn't gone. It hadn't been exported, if you like.
Ian Ellison
Well, if we're talking about those other cities, they feel quite industrial to me. Which feels like a perfect segue to the corporate office then. Yeah.
Rob Harris
And this later years of the 19th century leading up to those disastrous events in the 20th century called World War I and World War ii.
Really. But I think for the purpose of this, this discussion, there's three things that really happened here, which are massively important. One is that the, the office mechanized. So, obviously we all know about the typewriter and telephone and telegraph, but we had adding machines and address graphs and duplicators and so copiers and so on and so forth, which meant that the office was literally mechanized.
It became noisy, you know, up to this point. Can you imagine Clarks with their quill pens sat around? All they adding up the ledgers was suddenly at this clash bang, wallop, you know, and there were machines going in the office all day long. They literally mechanized and became, they became dirtier. They became more dusty, they became more noisy, they became less healthy to some extent.
And, you know, working conditions really remained quite poor, uh, not just in terms of the, the physical environment because, because the social hierarchy, uh, coming back to one of these themes, um, as the office mechanized, you then suddenly started getting a gradation of, of roles. So you, whereas your Clark oversaw everything.
Whole office. Office this year saw the breakdown of work into components.
Ian Ellison
Oh, so this is where Taylorism comes from as well, right? Smack bang in the middle of this?
Rob Harris
Yeah, it does. Yeah. So you have people that just did telegraphing. You have people that just did typing. You have people that did, you know, addressing and so and so forth.
And of course, more menial. The more mundane the job was, obviously socially, the more, less important you were. And vice versa. So through that mechanization, we had a social desegregation of the, of the workforce, but overlaying that to make it even more complicated and even more profoundly, we had the feminization of the workforce and an extraordinary change in work.
You know, there were no female toilets, for example, in most buildings, and there were a couple of banks in the city, which are quoted quite widely. Where they decided to take on some typists women for those days. And, and they, they were given their own floor in the building so that they didn't mix with the men.
'cause that was seen to be dangerous, you know, can't possibly have, you know, married women with, you know, or unmarried women with married. Uh, and so this whole social dimension re re took off in a way that hadn't been the case up to that point. We made a point about politics earlier, and there have been several authors who've tried.
Relatively unsuccessfully to convince us all that the new, the new office workforce was the new product area. But never was, of course, because it was well paid and it was looked after and it was given, given benefits and you know, we then had the universal education come in and all the rest of it. And so that argument never really took off.
But, um, yeah, there were several authors that have tried to, you know, turn the off early office workforce into the new proletariat.
Ian Ellison
So the, the exploited masses in the same way that the factory workforce were the exploited masses. Exactly. Interesting.
Rob Harris
So the, the two big strands were the mechanization and the feminization.
Uh, I mentioned three points. Um, the, the third one, the rise of the modern corporation, uh, in, in America in the literal sense with its skyscraper. So you suddenly had these, these massive corporations at the end of the 19th, and it started at 20th century, huge organizations building skyscrapers to accommodate very large, really rapidly expanding workforces that had grown outta the, the unification of the American economy.
This is when America jumped on board, you know, 18 70, 18 80, 80 90, and created their version of the office, which was obviously the skyscraper on an urban grid pattern. It arrived like that. Our, ours, ours has been evolving at this point for 200 years. And there's just like, oh, we need offices. We, we've got a new economy.
We, we need offices.
Chris Moriarty
You know, your, your thing. Actually thinking about that, you going back to that, no one looks at these, the, these buildings with all the, one challenge that I would have is when I go to New York, for instance, I'm looking up going, wow, that's tall. And anytime you see a kinda an artist's impression of a landscape, and even with London.
You know, people draw the grk in because it's so distinctive. Or the shard because it's so distinctive. Um, okay. That, you know, particularly the shards, not just an office, but that's the one thing that, that a kind of American let's go up did, which is it was an element of awe, but not, wow, there's an office building.
It's, wow, there's a bloody tall building,
Rob Harris
And it would have Wrigleys or Ford or Chrysler or something. Yeah.
Chris Moriarty
Yeah.
Rob Harris
Um, on the outside of it, it was, it was, it was, it was corporate Heman at the end of the day.
Ian Ellison
So with, with the rise of the corporation, this also signifies a transition in from sort of Clarks to corporate men.
Rob Harris
But simply to say that, that organizations became, as they became much larger. They obviously departmentalized, structured and created these hugely complex layers, labyrinthine sort of structures of, of, of functionality within, within corporations. So people no longer knew who were, who was on the same floor as them, for example, and the businesses changed fundamentally.
And the whole kind of notion of management took over everything.
Ian Ellison
This is the word that you use, which I've never, I've never seen this word before. Do you pronounce it Demi? Demi, yeah. Demi. So the management demi.
Rob Harris
Yes.
Ian Ellison
So what does that mean then?
Rob Harris
It means an overbearing presence essentially.
Chris Moriarty
I'm gonna use that so often. Now.
Rob Harris
It's not my word, by the way.
Ian Ellison
No, no. Well, I looked it up, you know, but, but it's the, so, so in this context, it's an overbearing presence. It, it's born of bureaucracy, it's born of these massively expanding organizations. It's born of command and control and hence forth. We have the management demi.
Rob Harris
So management becomes a function in its own right. Rather than an activity or, or a craft. And still to this day, you know, we have managers who become managers because they become managers. They're not trained to be managers. They just, they've been around for 20 years, and so they find themselves in a managerial position.
But yeah, this, this is the golden age of, of, of management when it really became encrusted into organizations, um, ossified them really, because once that ossification takes place, it's difficult. I'm tired. We had a good go of it in the early nineties in that massive recession. You know, we had the first ever white collar recession, uh, which resulted in downsizing and outsourcing and delaying, do you remember all that stuff?
Michael Hammer and people like that. But up until that point, you know, it was, it was impossible to disentangle all this management structures, um, because it was so, it was so much, part of it
Chris Moriarty
Was like your veins running through your body. Yeah. What births out this period is management science. Right. You know, you think about all the universities in the US and Harvard and you know, all these guys are teaching the next generation of managers how to be better managers and research into management's going through.
This is what it goes back to this. I, I, I'm, 'cause of a book I'm reading at the minute, I'm kind of really, there's this idea of culture, shapes, values, values, shape, history, right? And, and, and then history changes your culture. So you can sort of see how the things work. And in effect, what you've described there, Rob, is that, you know, this explosion of management, you are now a manager.
Uh, hold on. How do I, you know, I used to, if I wanted to be, uh, you know, a a, an engineer, I did an apprenticeship. What do I do if I'm a manager? Ah, what we do is we send you on a management. Business administration course, and you know, all the rest of it, and you go and learn. And we need teachers for that.
Well, if you've got teachers and they're gonna have to do research to get published, okay, we'll do ma uh, management research. And then people in 40 years time like me are doing their MBAs reading about it and almost ingraining the thinking 40 years. Hence, because like we talked about, theory x, theory Y is based on observations of the office in.
The fifties, you know, is it still relevant now? Is it, you know, and it just, it sort of blows my brain 'cause it kind of gets you into time isn't linear, everything's happening at the same time. Kind of paradox and it makes my head hurt. But you know, it's, it's when we have conversations like this that you go, oh that's why that's, you know, I get it.
Right. I see. I can sort of see this happening now 'cause you're sort of taking us through it from a first person perspective. You know, this is what's happening as we go through.
Rob Harris
You see in America in particular. I'm kind of going into the post-war period now. You had these huge corporations, not only with massive hierarchy and the the Demi urge, but almost denate workers.
You, your man in a suit, in, in his hat, you know, and his pinstripe going to the office. The notion of Anthony Sampson's company, man, this emerged in this time, so all these identical workers, you know, streaming, streaming across the bridge on a train, going to the same place, same day, doing the same work coming home.
But the point is. America in particular, they were made, they were made comfortable, dare I say wealthy, they had guaranteed income salary, they guaranteed food on the table. They guaranteed two weeks holiday in the salary, and life was suddenly, particularly in the postwar period where there was so much privation.
Life in America was was wonderful.
Chris Moriarty
I've got these sort of images of these, the sixties and the suburbs and the, you know, the, the family and everyone's smiling and I've got a car and I've got a television.
Rob Harris
And so as you played the game, then as you were told and behaved in a kind of social sense. There you are.
Yeah, there you go.
Ian Ellison
So this is sort, we're talking now about sort of the birth of the white collar worker and c Wright Mills wrote a very famous book about that, which Nikhil Val in Cubed, sort of lent very heavily on. Almost Cubed was an homage to that from a US perspective. So this takes us to the digital age, then I believe the final office era preceding the future, whatever that brings.
Rob Harris
The digital era really for me begins in 1981 when the first PA PC was launched, the digital era. Um. Was an expression of the emergence technology economy. So the digitization supported the growth of knowledge and vice versa. The more we're able to process digitally, the more we were free to apply knowledge to thinking creativity.
So I think the, the, the digitization and the, the rise of knowledge economy is fundamental because we've moved from agriculture fundamentally to manufacturing, uh, to production, to service. And then now we're moving into that kind of. Digitized network, morphous, world of thinking and creativity that we, we talk about now.
Um, so the digital area was very much to my mind. It was a transition between, between the old mechanical world and the future cerebral world, if you like. The digitally was all about equipment, wasn't it? Remember the Het Packard and the IBMs and people that, that came into this, this country anywhere else, and set up campuses and buildings to produce the hardware.
Well, the hardware is kinda like almost incidental now, isn't it? It's all about the, the software. The digital era was almost a transition, clunky telephones, clunky mobiles and clunky copiers. Um, it all, a lot of that technology now is, is redundant and we're moving to a very different era. So yeah, it was the, it was the kind of the release of workers also from being tied to a desk.
Which we talk about a lot in workplace these days. You know, when I started work, you were tied to a desk in so far as your telephone, your pens and pencils were there. Didn't even have a computer then. But the, the, the, the, the PC and then ultimately the laptop obviously, uh, freed you to become more agile.
It was ly more agile, a lot more meetings, a lot more, uh, collaboration, a lot more, uh, you know, social activity. So digital era became a very much a period about releasing people from the, the mundanity of, of work to to, to that more creative piece.
Ian Ellison
Where does this book go up to? Does it literally go up to 2025 or do you sort of stop at the pandemic?
Rob Harris
No, the final chapter is an attempt to go beyond COVID and to say what the future of the office is about. And that's very much about very fundamental things actually about work itself changing. You know, we, we've got, for example, in this country at the moment, we've got 9 million people who can work but don't.
Now that tells me something. If you go back to the age of the Clark, the age of company, man, throughout that whole period it was sort, you must go to work, otherwise you'll starve or, or you'll lose respect in your community or, or something. Whereas now we've got nine people, me, people who think, well, I don't need to work.
So what does that tell us about the nature of work itself? It's becoming less important, less critical. Not all of us have to do it. Anymore 'cause there's less of it or more of us can do more of it. So, you know, there's something happening about the nature of work and what it is and what it means to us.
And there's just, there's lots of debates now about four day weeks and two day weeks and the rest of it. But within that there's a, there's a discussion about why do we go to a workplace? And so the final chapter of the network era is suggesting that we're moving to a point now where. We, well literally, networks become more important than physicality.
So some are all networks we can get on with whatever we pretty much want to do. But I have a social conscience and my fear here is that. We're gonna do what we did in earlier times and create a secondary social class in all this. 'cause. While some of us can thrive and prosper on laptops and foreign holidays and working from some beach in somewhere, a lot of people cannot either because they don't have the choices in their life or because their works not allow 'em to.
Um, or a combination of those. And we've gotta be really careful that we don't create a two tier society of those that have the knowledge and the ability to go and do things. At their will and those that are confined to essentially serve our those other needs.
Ian Ellison
When we started series four, we interviewed Jeremy myON and Philip Ross about their book, and one of the things that Jeremy Lamented was essentially putting their bets on virtual augmented reality.
Talking about that when they wrote it in 2022 as opposed to what's happened with, with AI and generative AI in particular, it feels like you've put an awful lot more weight on what generative AI will do to the future of work in terms of replacement and automation and generation of new opportunities. I, I believe that to be the case.
So, whilst you've been gazing into your crystal ball and running an educated commentary about what the future might hold and what we need to be wary of, what things annoy you when people make their predictions or make these declarations about, you know, the office. Dead or whatever. Um, and they make them from sort of single perspectives that don't appreciate the office economy as a system.
What's the stuff that grind your gears? What's the stuff do you, do you wish people would just stop talking about because it just can't be true because you don't appreciate the system at work.
Rob Harris
Right. Yes. Yeah. Um, gosh, that's a really tough one actually. There's so much of it, I suppose.
Chris Moriarty
Um. Can I put it another way? I mean, my kind of take on that, and I, I guess I'm one of those people that post pandemic was sort of cheerleading this dramatic change in, uh, the way we work. This is, you know, the genie's out the bottle. I definitely wrote that at some point. Or the cat out the bag. Those sentences were all over.
Yeah. Well, there we go. There we go. Look, Ian, if you're ever in doubt you need someone to get grumpy with, just let me talk and I'll, I'll get there eventually. But what, what I have learned with a little bit of and experience, but also that sort of struck me about the sort of passage of the book that I was reading, is that there are systems at work.
I've been hanging around with Ian long enough now to know that there's systems at work and what we've talked about today. I think is that some of them are obvious. Some of them you can sort of see the linkages between them, but other times there there's something that's kind of invisible but their powers that influence each other and they sort of feed each other as well.
And you know this whole hybrid and death of the office. And you talk about the existential questions that are being asked about it. Well, the thing is. Because of the history we've got. We made offices, right? We needed offices, and there is a, an economy, there is a, you know, whether it be pension funds have started to grow off the back of developing buildings.
That's part of their business model. Therefore, you know, what, what are they gonna do? Right? Well, they're gonna carry on. Building the buildings and therefore organizations have got buildings that they want to get more cost effectiveness out of, which means they do office mandates, which is driven better value for money, which has shaped work, which will continue to shape offices, which means will carry on and all the rest of it.
So the changes, you know what I wonder is that is the temptation is always to talk about big sweeping changes. But just looking at your time periods and yeah, they accelerate, but then a lot of things are accelerating. At the minute. I talk about a, a rubber band in that. It's got its shape, but when you really pull it to an extreme, it doesn't stay at the extreme, but it equally doesn't go back to where it started.
It might be a little looser when it gets back and then you'll stretch it again. It might not be so tight. Next time it pings back. Is that a better reflection of how you think these cycles are gonna go in that each time you push to the envelope, we might retreat a little bit, but we retain a little bit of that extreme and that helps shape where we'll end up,
Rob Harris
I think that's really, really helpful. Analogy, actually a really helpful analogy. It captures so much of this, this stuff. Um, I mean, for example, you take the whole supply industry. You, which you touched on there. I I, I mentioned that, that last chapter. It's not just gonna go, you know what, what a fan, that's just not gonna happen.
So there has to be, there has to be an economic response to this, you know? Yeah. And that response will take time and rational thinking and adaptation. And so that's the point about the network economy and you know, the condominiums, that somehow the supply process will adapt and change, become. A customer facing business to business part of the economy, as was what it has been for the last only 50 years, which is a supply driven construct built around, you know, investment money.
So that will happen. It will be like next week or next year, or. We'll had this conversation in 20 years time, God forbid, and we'll say, oh yeah, that happened, didn't it? Oh, that, yeah, yeah. Course it's here now, isn't it? But it, it, it would, it's like the, the Gerald Eve report, you know, you suddenly get 20 years on and you think, oh yeah, that would happen.
Yeah. And so you stretch, elastic, and Yeah, some of the stuff stick and some of it doesn't. And I, I, I think that's absolutely right. So, yeah, the supply process will change. We, we don't wanna lose offices. You know, I'm a fundamental, fundamental believer in some form. And don't forget, the office in its etymology, is that the right word?
Chris Moriarty
Probably both them. Never heard it in my life. So I'm just gonna nod. Yeah,
Rob Harris
I think that's probably right about the origin of work, isn't it? Yeah. Right. Well, office referred to a function, not a place. So, you know, you, you were a sheriff, you had the Office of sheriff, for example. Religious people had offices.
Not, not in nice, not in places, but their, their office of position. So offices were about functions and activity, not about places. They became physical places when, uh, uh, I dunno exactly when that was. But, um, so, so, you know, we, we should be thinking about offices, not so much terms of the place, but the activity as well.
Office work.
Chris Moriarty
Rob, you've just blown my mind. Like this is, like, you've basically put. Like, you know that that kind of moment in conferences, like I think it's, it's less so now, but it's like work is something you do not somewhere you go and actually you've gone no go. But that is true. But let me tell you why it's true.
Because you're just saying a thing and putting it on a slide and you say the office of which is meant, it became that over there is the office of sheriff and they go, oh, well that, you know, it's almost like a translation problem. So he goes, well that room over there is an office. It's like, no, no, no. The function is, but we'll go with it.
That's why we've got a TV series called The Office like Ricky Jase wouldn't have ever had a thing. Look, the the last, and we could, and we nearly have talked for hours on this, but we, we really could talk for hours on this, but I hinted earlier on, on an exam question. I sort of touched on it, but one of the things that I can't help pondering is we talk about the history of work and the evolution of work.
We talk about the evolution of the office economy and we talk about how they're connected. But is the shape of the office a lead indicator on the nature of work? Or does it lag behind it? Does it respond to work or does work respond to the office? I'm, and that's quite philosophical, right? But,
Rob Harris
uh, I'm not sure it is.
Ian Ellison
Um, you're talking about form of function? Yeah. With factories, form follows function. It had to.
Rob Harris:
It had to, and the office factory had to, 'cause you had that equipment, you know, the copiers, the printers, the, and latter times, you know, the, the heavy computers as you might call 'em, that. But in this knowledge economy, I think the work will lead the place because the, the place comes a matter of choice.
Work is a matter of necessity. I think it will be more and more a case of the, uh, the activity. And we see this in, in the sort of workplace debate, don't we, about people expressing preferences about what the workplace should be in terms of, uh, what, what we don't cover off in that debate. Of course. Is there a home environment?
There are, there are other places of work or other places of work. We never talk about the what we, we know as the office of work. Um, but we, you know that in that ecosystem of workplaces. Um, I think it'll be very much more about the. Activity leading the place in the future rather than what we have had, which is the place leading the activity in the fifties or sixties.
We used to, we used to he people into these kind of rectangular boxes, didn't we? Which, you know, it was horrible when look back on it, but, and we've, we've moved away from that. We'll move even further I think. 'cause the time was gone.
Ian Ellison
So in his forward at the front of the book, Jeremy Myerson talks about almost coming full circle.
So we've gone from market to factory to corporate to digital, and he sort of says, and we've almost come full circle. And when I first read that, it didn't make sense to me. I think what he's getting at is the reasons to gather in the original office era of the market, people coming together in those coffee houses.
To, to talk, to communicate, to share news. I think what he's referring to is post pandemic. So many of the, so much of the argument for having offices and returning to offices is for that corporate communication. For the organizational glue, if you like, that originally was born in the market era. Is that understanding correct?
Is that why he talks about we've gone full circle in 350 years?
Rob Harris
Yes, exactly right. And that office place is looser. It's simpler and you engage with it as in when you want to, just as you do with the market, you don't go every day 'cause you feel like a slave to it. So, yeah, it becomes much more one about collaboration and socialization.
You know, gossip was an enormous thing in those, in those coffee houses. It's pure and simple gossip and rumor as well as the news and, and so that, that has not changed at all. But we've gone from that through that massive corporate period I described with, with the demi urge and the management there and all that kind of structure and edifice and ossification through now to simpler organizations.
More accessible buildings, more permeable buildings, more permeable workplaces that you engage with, as in when.
-- REFLECTION SECTION --
Ian Ellison
Okay, Chris, so no guest this time. Quick reflection section. What stood out to you?
Chris Moriarty
Well, why don't you tell everybody what I wrote down in the notes for my reflection, uh, four words, planet of the Apes. Right. So the reason I wrote Planet the Apes was because we were talking with Rob about this, kinda looking at buildings like churches and all the rest of it.
And you know, when you do go and look at these historic towns and look at these historic buildings, particularly if there's like load of modern stuff around it as well, you can't help sort of try to, well, I can't try to picture. What was going on when that was built and all the rest of it. And you know, we sort of to touched on whether we're gonna be doing that with offices and stuff like that.
But I, I find it funny that I'm sitting there, I know looking at Spanish Cathedral, trying to like infer what I think probably was going on and there's some stuff to help us, you know, a bit of history here and all the rest of it and our artifacts there. But, you know, probably, probably sitting there going, oh, it's really interesting that they chose to go in that direction with the roof in that direction.
And we try and sort of make it sound really kinda. Interesting. And then you, you know, find out that someone said, no, no, that's just, uh, we just just had to do that because the water was running off in the wrong direction and stuff like that. And I always hope that there's a really mundane story behind something that we've decided years and centuries later was like really meaningful.
And the reason it reminds me of the Planet Apes, 'cause there's, um, in one of the sequels, it's beneath the planet of the Apes. All the humans there, they're worshiping a nuclear missile, but they don't realize what it is. They think it's just sort of this thing. And, and, you know, and. You're sitting there going, guys, guys, you, you've got this all wrong.
That's, that's not what you think it is. It's not a deity and all this sort of stuff. So with all of these conversations, I sit there and go, what will people in 200 years time, when they're looking at these skyscrapers and looking at all these mobile phone shaped buildings and all the rest of it, what will work look like then and how will that help or shape what they think work was like now?
'cause the period that we are talking about. I know that we talked about it across the course of centuries with Rob, but really in, you know, the sort of modern workplace era is the kind of last 70 years. If you think about some of the stuff we did with Mark Catch Love and some of the stuff we've looked at recently, it kind of feels like the last 70 years are kind of a chapter.
That's not really a long time in the grand scheme of things. So when I hear someone as educated as Rob, take us through that, but not just take us through it, explain why the things happened in the way they happened. I find that so fascinating, but it does make me wonder what will the workplace geeks, whoever they are, 200 years, looking back on 2025, the post COVID era, what will they decide was happening based on the facts that they have at their disposal?
Ian Ellison
Do you remember right at the very end we were talking very briefly about JE Myerson's forward and mm-hmm. He was kind of drawing full circle saying the reasons for market area offices were for people to convene and gossip. And now we're being told it's the same reason for the office there. And, and that's the reason to get your butts back post pandemic.
Yeah. So maybe you, maybe things just circle
Chris Moriarty
Amazingly, the interiors of these buildings don't look any different to what they look like when that wasn't the case, which always boils my brains. It's like we're being told that's the reason we're not changing any of things. So, no, I just, I really enjoy listening to Rob.
I really enjoy listening to Rob and, you know, I'm glad we've got someone like him that can pull this stuff together in a coherent timeline. So, so yeah. So what did you make of it? Did you think about weird sci-fi movies and, and stuff? I actually did.
Ian Ellison
You did that too about a question that I used to do with students occasionally when I was teaching at uni a few years ago, uh, to sort of try and open.
A particular session somewhere a little bit different, I'd say. So, which academic subject does space and place belong to? And they'd sort of look at you blankly and you, and they'd be like, what are you talking about? But I'm like, well, if time belongs to history, who does space and place belong to? And they kind of still look blankly.
And I go, geography. Surely right? Geography is about space and place. Is that what you would've said?
Chris Moriarty
Uh, no, probably not. I would've been one of the ones looking blankly and going, hopefully he'll tell us in a minute.
Ian Ellison
And the reason that sort of bounced into my head was because right at the beginning when Rob is kind of painting this picture of, we all know, we all get taught in school what the industrial level revolution is, but nobody talks about the financial revolution.
And he talks about he did geography at university and. This concept of economic geography, like industry is located in place, agriculture is located in place. If I say industry to you, maybe you'll see something like Ridley s Scott's kind of like ICI based Skyline. Or if I say agriculture, maybe you think about Clarkson Farm, but you can picture a place, right?
And the point he's making is that all these people that kind of live and work around offices. It just doesn't exist, but it does because work always exists somewhere and I'd never really realized until recently, maybe 'cause this is one of those things that comes as you get a bit old, you get interested in history, you get interested in geography in different ways.
I think geography's possibly one of the most important topics for our future because of the whole sustainability piece. It lives there. It's in science and it's in lots of other things, but it lives there. And so to this episode, what I really got was this timeline. We sometimes talk about these exemplar buildings in workplace, you know, old and new.
We can talk about brand shiny new buildings that are winning awards. We can go back a hundred years and talk about buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright. But what you get with this episode and with this book from Rob is you get this timeline which locates these exemplars. But in a much bigger idea of workplace, and I kind of dug that.
Chris Moriarty
Okay. Well look, that is all for today's episodes. Like with all of our episodes, share your thoughts and questions on LinkedIn. You can look for us by searching Workplace geeks or use the hashtag Workplace Geeks, that's hashtag Workplace Geeks. You can always email us at hello@workplacegeeks.org. Visit the website, workplace geeks.org.
And if you like, you can even send us a voicemail straight from the show notes. You'll find a link in there. Just do that. There's also a link on the website. There are just so many ways to get involved in the workplace. Gee community, to make sure you do speak soon.
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