How come, if you are a serious, important work place, you all need to sit in boring, serious offices and dress as if your only asset of credibility was your suit?? Have a look around, the world has changed!
You’ve probably seen or heard about ‘The internship’ movie featuring Google – why should only Google be a fun place to be, play, learn, work and explore? Imagine your lawyers, accountants or insurance companies with people dressed in colourful, diverse, personal style, sitting on exercise balls and taking the slide to next floor – why not?
When I started in corporate 20 years ago, I went from ‘Uni Uniform’ of jeans and a sweatshirt to buy long skirts, jackets and silk scarfs (??!! Yes, I did!! Horrendous to think of, but that’s what we did back then). My male colleagues wore suits and ties. Day in, day out. Luckily two decades later, it is much more casual, and my jackets have gone to recycling ages ago.
But what if we pushed it further? Last week I heard of an online company that banned suits to enter their offices (and yes, they do have a slide..). Can you think of any entrepreneur starting up an exciting new venture renting a unit in a boring office block and ordering a big phone and IT system? No, they would manage all invoices and messaging from their phone (at the beach or a nearby café) and be wearing clothes expressing who they are. Let’s start role modelling that for your work place, no matter how big. How can you help unleash the entrepreneur in us all? Who decides what you as a teacher, lawyer, accountant, hairdresser or secretary should wear?
So, what about we start bringing ALL of ourselves to work? It is us and our way of thinking and creating solutions that the work places want. If it was standard right/wrong black/white deliverables they expected, we would have been swapped for computers and robots long ago. So, what about we turn up even more OURSELVES? And start livening up the work places. It doesn’t need to be for newly built offices in fancy locations only, we can add spunk and new wine to the old bottles, wherever we are based, can’t we? Have fun expressing more of you!