Thinking through the “paradigm shift” to a hybrid workplace

Nine months ago—when talking about a return to the office within the calendar year was not such a ridiculous idea to entertain—my firm went ahead and formed a committee to explore what that reality would look like.

Casting about for a committee name, the first stab was the “New Normal” committee, which, I suppose, lacked the oomph necessary to convey the committee’s mission. Instead, we settled on “Paradigm Shift.”

The concept of the paradigm shift is a relatively new one, first outlined by American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which sought to explore the occurrence of “revolutions in thinking” within the world of natural sciences.

In that book, Kuhn points to plate tectonics, the germ theory of disease, and the Copernican theory (as opposed to the Ptolemaic) as paradigm shifts, where scientists quickly assimilated new ways of looking at their fields.

The concept of paradigm shift, though, had legs beyond the world of natural sciences. It didn’t take long before people began loosely adapting Kuhn’s concept to all other sorts of “revolutions.”

What is lost in this extended use is the specificity of Kuhn’s concept—the specific framing he offered for a paradigm shift and the typical course of events. Drawing, as always, from Wikipedia, he outlines that course of events as follows:

1. Normal science—”This paradigm is characterized by a set of theories and ideas that define what is possible and rational to do, giving scientists a clear set of tools to approach certain problems.”
2. Extraordinary research—”When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis. To address the crisis, scientists push the boundaries of normal science in what Kuhn calls “extraordinary research”, which is characterized by its exploratory nature. Without the structures of the dominant paradigm to depend on, scientists engaging in extraordinary research must produce new theories, thought experiments, and experiments to explain the anomalies.”
3. Adoption of a new paradigm—”Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers. […] During this phase, proponents for competing paradigms address what Kuhn considers the core of a paradigm debate: whether a given paradigm will be a good guide for future problems – things that neither the proposed paradigm nor the dominant paradigm are capable of solving currently.”
4. Aftermath of the scientific revolution—”In the long run, the new paradigm becomes institutionalized as the dominant one. Textbooks are written, obscuring the revolutionary process.”

You can see, based on the above steps, how elegantly one can adapt Kuhn’s concept to areas outside natural sciences. I’ve particularly enjoyed rethinking the above steps in light of our past 18 months of seismic shifts in how office employees conduct their work. See below my game of Mad Libs with Kuhn’s concept, with my changes and additions in bold:

1. Normal working conditions—”This paradigm is characterized by a set of theories and ideas that define what is possible and rational to do, giving employers a clear set of tools to approach certain problems.”
2. Extraordinary circumstances—”When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm (such as a government-mandated work-from-home order due to an ongoing pandemic), the workplace is thrown into a state of crisis. To address the crisis, company leadership pushes the boundaries of normal working conditions in what Kuhn calls “extraordinary circumstances”, which is characterized by its exploratory nature. Without the structures of the dominant paradigm to depend on, employees working in extraordinary circumstances must produce new theories, thought experiments, and experiments to manage the extraordinary circumstances.”
3. Adoption of a new paradigm—”Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers. […] During this phase, proponents for competing paradigms address what Kuhn considers the core of a paradigm debate: whether a given paradigm will be a good guide for future [workplace] problems – things that neither the proposed paradigm nor the dominant paradigm are capable of solving currently.”
4. Aftermath of the scientific revolution—”In the long run, the new paradigm becomes institutionalized as the dominant one. Employee handbooks are written, obscuring the revolutionary process.”

It’s amusing to note the parallels here. Beginning with #1, we can recognize the previous paradigm as work that happens in an office environment, where, for example, most meetings happen in the same room, face-to-face.

In #2, the pandemic upends that paradigm, forcing companies like mine to engage in “extraordinary circumstances”—basically, working from home and determining the best set of tools and strategies to complete work that was previously done in the office. For me, this involved a trial-and-error of using various tracking measures and communication tools—Teams calls, Teams chats, emails, new folder structures, cloud-based documentation—to suss out the best way of managing my work given the circumstances.

You’ll notice that I have left #3 more or less unchanged, as it adapts so cleanly to the workplace switcheroo of the past 18 months. This is where my firm’s “Paradigm Shift” committee entered the picture, attempting, through debate and evaluation, to determine the best way of managing employee work going forward, given the new workplace paradigm.

I love the core debate proposed by Kuhn in #3: the question of “whether a given paradigm will be a good idea for future problems—things that neither the proposed paradigm nor the dominant one are capable of solving currently. I think this is so key, and something that is easy to overlook in our discussion of the shifting workplace.

While we have recognized that a “hybrid” or fully remote workplace is now the dominant workplace paradigm, I’m not sure that we have taken a close enough look at the bold item above. What things does a “hybrid” workplace not assist us in solving?

I suspect that we will see answers to that question sprung on us over the coming months and years, even as we pursue step #4, embedding the new workplace paradigm into our employee handbooks, which will no doubt frame the shift with an obviousness that, as Kuhn has it, “[obscures] the revolutionary process” that made it all happen in the first place.