Listening recently to Microsoft’s Dave Coplin was a real treat, but also a little worrying. Apparently, many people have better IT capability at home than at work, so are we limiting what we can achieve by not investing in good equipment, when the costs have been reducing?

It may be one of the reasons that cause many people (apparently) to be disengaged at work.

Dave talked about having the right environment for creative thinking, which isn’t an open plan office, and building teams that all think in the same way. The latter might be a problem when we recruit people who will ‘fit in’.

He challenged our approach to flexibility, which is generally viewed as adjusting working hours, as opposed to being flexible about working locations or shifting the boundaries between work and home life. Is it true that many people share more information and ideas on social media than they ever do at work?

Perhaps we miss out on innovation because of the need to control e.g. measuring processes not results or needing to see physically that staff are working.

When we no longer expect people to follow one career path and we don’t know what the jobs of the future will look like. Dave may be right in suggesting that the most useful skills we can teach young people is critical thinking, to prepare them to cope well with whatever they encounter.

Finally I liked his advice to turn off your email, stop multiskilling and create time to think.