Why the Future of Work Isn’t About Place but Purpose

WTF??? Everyone is STILL debating RTO versus WFH, how many days and TWATs, missing the real question which isn’t WHERE we work….but HOW.

As far back as 2018, as we were writing the original pre-pandemic edition of Where Is My Office? Chris Kane and I were already discussing what we called Omniworking™; the very concept illustrated by this infographic by Anna Vital and Alexandr Unak.

The idea that knowledge work is evolving beyond fixed roles or locations is hardly new. As early as the 1950s, Peter Drucker foresaw the rise of the knowledge worker, together with the rise of technology and its role in organisations; and Charles Handy’s 1989 notion of the Shamrock Organisation anticipated a future where organisations would rely on a mix of core staff, contractors and freelancers.

Yet here we are in 2025 still caught up in the logistics rather than the logic.

Many of us already have portfolio careers, multiple roles, sometimes within the same organisation. The days of a single, clearly defined function are gone. The real conversation should focus on how organisations support and manage multiplicity: the specialists and the generalists, contracting and outsourcing, the jack-of-all trades, sidepreneurs and everything in between, not forgetting robots too, as well as building in adaptability across the spectrum of people, place and process - not an easy feat by any stretch of the imagination, but are these conversations going on?

This also includes the role of the intrapreneur, a concept we showcased in the first Where Is My Office? and one coined by Gifford Pinchot III back in 1978. Those individuals who explore and develop new, innovative directions that add value within their organisations. Good business leaders should nurture this mindset, creating environments that encourage employees to become invested in their company’s success through initiative and creativity by becoming those “dreamers who do”.

These ideas have been with us for decades. The question now is whether, with the advance of technology, we are finally ready to accept that work itself has become inherently multi-faceted and to build systems and structures that support and reflect that reality.

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