We Can’t Solve a How Problem with a Where Solution

For years, much of the workplace debate has focused on one question: where should people work?

Amanda Schneider thinks there’s a more important one underneath it. How should work actually work?

Amanda is the founder and president of ThinkLab and author of Work for What’s Next. Her research explores what happens when human expectations begin to outgrow the systems and structures built around them. As she puts it, we’re operating with “analog era rules in a digital speed world”.

In this conversation, Chris and Amanda explore why generational differences can be more useful as signals than stereotypes, and what Gen Z might reveal about changes that will eventually affect all of us. They get into “phygital” work, the difference between genuinely digital-first experiences and simply digitising old ones, trust across different forms of communication, and why employees increasingly experience manager culture rather than company culture.

But one idea keeps bringing the conversation back to workplace strategy: moving people doesn’t necessarily change how work happens.

Or, in Amanda’s words, “We can't solve a how problem with a where solution.”

Perhaps the next phase of workplace thinking starts there.