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gapingvoid culture design group

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Last week we wrote about Richard Branson and the folly of billionaire-funded space tourism.

Then earlier today Jeff Bezos blasted off into space as well. The Guardian Newspaper is not pleased.

The super-sharp Scott Galloway had a few wonderfully cranky words on the subject, as well.

So why do we really need to send humans into space?

Well, most of the time, we don’t. Robotic space travel works just fine, say, in the case of asteroid mining or gathering data. Not to mention, robots don’t need huge amounts of food, water, oxygen, exercise, gravity, etc. to do their job.

But for all the naysayers, well, as IBM says, a lot of good things came out of the space program so far, and the smart money would predict this trend to continue.

“Camera phones. Wireless headsets. Scratch-resistant lens. CAT scans. The portable computer. They’re just a few of the enduring technologies the space program helped create, and which made their way into improving everyday life on earth.”

But for all the wonderful potential material benefits of space travel, the real need remains psychological. We are human. We need to explore, we need to strive. We need to feel like we’re conquering new worlds and possibilities. If that was not our nature, we’d still be living in caves.

Life, at its most rich, is an experiment. And astronauts, billionaires or otherwise, are there to remind us of that.

How to make a success of the new era of hybrid working

As offices partially reopen, hybrid working is set to become the new norm.
This has the potential to increase diversity and inclusion in workplaces.
However, to realise this potential, organizations will need to create a different kind of working culture for the new era.

Despite early fears, the work from home revolution that swept across much of the world during the pandemic did not destroy productivity. “A new study finds that, in fact, remote work does indeed make us more productive,” Bloomberg reported in April. And in some cases when productivity did suffer, studies show that it was largely due to constraints that workers had no control over, such as “poor telecommunication environment at home” and “rules and regulations that require some tasks to be conducted in the office.”

But what about company culture? Again, fears that it would fall apart did not pan out. In one survey, more people said their work culture actually improved during the pandemic. There’s no guarantee, however, that these successes will continue - or that any problems will be rectified - as more people start returning to offices. The world is entering a new era for what work will look like, and organizations need to adapt all over again.

READ THE REST OF JASON'S ARTICLE HERE

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