Lately, the questions I hear most aren’t about office policy or productivity metrics. It’s more personal.
“Will there still be jobs?”
“Is my role safe?”
“What should my kids study?”
“Does my work still matter?”
The pace of change feels fast. New tools are helping people draft, analyze, and respond more quickly than ever. Expectations are rising alongside output. It’s understandable that uncertainty is rising, too.
Inside organizations, the acceleration is tangible. Work moves more quickly than it did even a year ago. Timelines are tighter, expectations for responsiveness are higher, and ideas move from concept to iteration at an ambitious pace. More is happening in less time.
As work accelerates, the value of human connection compounds.
Why Connection Matters More at Speed
Technology can expand individual capacity. It can generate options and streamline routine effort. What it cannot do is build trust between colleagues, create shared context across teams, or help a group develop confidence in a difficult decision.
As routine tasks become easier to automate, human contribution shifts toward judgment, interpretation, and alignment. The most consequential work increasingly involves deciding which path to pursue, which risk to accept, and which opportunity to prioritize. Those decisions are rarely made well in isolation.
Research from Microsoft, published in Nature Human Behavior, examined collaboration patterns during extended remote work and found that cross-group connections weakened as networks became more siloed. Employees collaborated more within established teams and less across them, and informal interactions declined.
That finding carries weight in an environment where output is expanding. When more ideas, drafts, and analyses are generated, organizations rely even more on strong human networks to evaluate, refine, and prioritize effectively.
Physical space plays a practical role here.
The Office as Performance Infrastructure
For years, debates about offices centered on attendance and utilization. A more strategic question is how space can strengthen the human connections that support performance.
When talented people gather with intention — a concept I’ve previously explored in the context of talent density and synchronized presence — connection deepens in ways that are difficult to replicate digitally. Context transfers more quickly. Assumptions surface sooner. Differences in perspective are addressed in real time rather than stretched across long message threads.
In faster environments, decisions carry greater consequence because they set direction for a larger volume of work. Bringing people together at key moments helps ensure that direction is shared and understood.
Consider two organizations using similar technology.
Both experience higher productivity. Both generate more ideas and options.
In one, teams move quickly but separately. Leaders spend increasing time reconciling overlapping initiatives and clarifying shifting priorities. Progress continues, yet energy disperses.
In the other, leaders deliberately convene cross-functional groups at critical inflection points. They examine options together, debate tradeoffs openly, and leave aligned around a focused set of priorities. The gathering itself becomes a mechanism for clarity.
Over time, alignment compounds.
Alignment is a Competitive Advantage
The fear surrounding automation often centers on replacement. Yet within many organizations, a different reality is emerging. As tools absorb routine tasks, distinctly human capabilities become more visible: the ability to build trust, connect across disciplines, interpret nuance, and move a group toward shared conviction.
These capabilities strengthen through direct interaction.
The future of work will not be defined solely by what technology can produce. It will be shaped by how effectively organizations help people connect and expand on the incredible progression technology makes possible.
Used thoughtfully, space becomes a setting for that expansion. It creates conditions where relationships deepen, alignment strengthens, and abundant output is shaped into coherent strategy.
Work will continue to accelerate. Tools will continue to evolve. Questions about job security will continue to surface.
And that deeply human question — “Does my work still matter?” — will likely remain.
The answer rests in how people come together. When humans connect with intention, they amplify one another. In a faster, more automated world, that amplification becomes one of the most important drivers of meaningful progress.
