Re-reading this, it's actually quite instructive in many ways. A lot of their approach to private office spaces maps really well to our present circumstances.

Re-reading this, it's actually quite instructive in many ways. A lot of their approach to private office spaces maps really well to our present circumstances. By encouraging folks to use on-line tools and develop communication styles that work well with those tools, lifting and shifting your team to their homes due to a business continuity interruption won't have quite the same impact to continuity. This is especially true for knowledge work focused businesses. In addition, the small office approach they took to their offices likely assists with implementing improved ventilation as well as social distancing protocols. This is important where you have mixed work teams where knowledge workers have to work alongside more hands-on workers. The other thing I think sticks out is the role of scheduled time for "cross pollination". Every remote organization I've worked for has had scheduled times where the team would gather for direct, in-person interaction. Typically this has taken the shape of quarterly gatherings. If you look at successful open source projects, teams defined by their distributed, decentralized "organization", they also have these kinds of gatherings. In fact, my own practice as a manager to leverage these kinds of gatherings was born from my experience on an enterprise open source project. There are important lessons to take from this. I'd be curious to read about their experience with Covid in relation to this blog post.