Member-only story
Why Have Our Offices Become Like Touchy-Feely Kindergartens?
It’s come to the point where we’re using Legos to improve our job performance
On a Wednesday morning in June 2017, I find myself in Menlo Park, California, sharing a small table in a faux-European coffee shop with a woman I’ll call Julia — and I’m making a duck out of Legos.
Outside, it’s sunny and warm. A late-morning breeze ruffles the big brightly colored umbrellas above the tables in the plaza. Inside, young techies gaze up at the chalkboard menu above the counter and sit at tables, clicking at laptops. Django Reinhardt’s guitar emanates from hidden speakers. Nobody pays any attention to the two gray-haired people sitting over near the window with their plastic toys.
Julia and I have never met before. She’s a cheery, round-faced woman in her fifties with a disarming smile and an easy laugh. Julia arrived carrying a big canvas bag filled with Legos, and they’re now scattered out on the table. As we’re making small talk, she plays with the pieces, idly snapping and unsnapping them. Soon, between sips of my caffè Americano and bites of a remarkably good almond croissant, I start tinkering with the Legos too.
A few years earlier, I briefly worked at a Silicon Valley–style startup in Boston, a disastrous experience…
