“the next great disruption is hybrid work.”

This current phase of pandemic-driven change is no more certain in the outcome than the earliest days of Covid when much of life needed to be rethought and redone.

But now the starting point is different, and the outcome possibilities seem to have come into a modicum of focus. Thank goodness we have the word “Hybrid” in our vocabulary…as it is going to get driven hard over the next few years as we develop just what that means for work, education, and healthcare.

One equation we have deciphered in the last year is that the more parents work from home, the more schools can escape their otherwise seeingly essential warehousing function.

But of course, theoretically, educational practice in the US should be determined by addressing goals more profound than having a place to warehouse kids. Yet it seems that warehousing inevitably comes to the fore and drives public policy as to what forms of Hybridization of Learning we will “end up with”. Because what is greatly determines what will be; it’s generally the starting point in any reform. And kids at home all the time are problematic for large numbers of WFH parents.

Bucky Fuller would beg to disagree…he says we can rarely change the current entities and processes, so our best bet is to “route around them”. Bucky was a genius, so we might do well to ponder his viewpoints. OTOH, he sort of brought us the house of the future, the geodesic dome, which many alternative lifestyle citizens constructed for their residence.

While the ingenious aspect was the reduction in building materials needed because of the geometry, the not so genius aspect was they were almost impossible to make leakproof during rainstorms.

From Axios 4.24.21

 

As a sprawling study from Microsoft last month put it, “the next great disruption is hybrid work.”

 

More than 70% of workers surveyed in the study want flexible remote work options to continue, while about 65% say they want more time in person with their teams.
Attempting to satisfy both desires points the way toward a hybrid setup, where many workers would continue to operate remotely most days of the week while gathering in offices or other communal spaces occasionally for meetings or collaboration.